Max Katz

Some thoughts and review about JavaOne 2010. This is part one. The second part will cover the news announced about JavaFX.

JavaOne 2010, hosted by Oracle for the first time, came and went in late September. I’ve been attending JavaOne since 2002, I think, and this was my third year as a speaker. This year I presented Hands-on with RichFaces (slides).

New Location

This was the first year JavaOne was not in Moscone Center. (Oracle World was there, instead.) JavaOne was spread among three hotels, the Hilton, Marc 55, and Hotel Nikko. I spent most of my time in the Hilton. The sessions in the Hilton were spread over 3 different floors. Finding your room felt like running inside a maze. It was just confusing. Most rooms were rather small and it was sometimes difficult to see the bottoms of the slides on the screen if you were sitting in the back.

For some reason, there were a significant number of room changes, and those changes were not communicated in a efficient way. So, you would come to a room, look at the screen with a title (each room has a monitor with talk title, speaker name, etc.), and you would see a different talk than you expected. People who worked at the doors rarely knew where the original session had moved.

An additional aspect of this year’s conference was scheduling problems. There were sometimes large breaks between the sessions, and, a few times, sessions on the same topic were scheduled in the same block of time.

One last thing about location. For me, being based in the San Francisco Bay Area (Concord), it was somewhat strange not to travel to a conference. I’m so used to getting on a plane and going somewhere for a conference.

Java Desktop community lunch

I was invited to Java Desktop community lunch on Wednesday (Sept. 22) organized by Jonathan Giles and Steve Chin. It was a great community event. I got a chance to meet Richard Blair (JavaFX lead developer) and other folks as well. A secret surprise guest was invited who turned out to be James Goslin. This was my second lunch with James. The first time I met him was in 2008 in Nuremberg during Herbstcampus conference. A few pictures from the lunch:

Beer and coffee tent

During the conference, there was a large tent, taking up the entire street between Hilton and Hotel Nikko. Besides comfy chairs, you could get free coffee and beer for the entire day, I think. Thank you to Oracle and BlackBerry for sponsoring this.

There was also some sort of Lego table inside the tent. I think it was sponsored by Google. So, I guess Google was at the conference in some form.

Community, meeting people

Of course the best thing about such a conference is your chance to meet a lot of people. I got to meet and talk with a lot of people from the JSF, JavaFX, and Flex communities. That was great.

On the very last day and after the last session, I headed to Moscone Center with Kito Mann and Matthias Wessendorf for the closing party where we grabbed some beers and appetizers. Again, thank you Oracle.

Party

There was big concert on Treasure Island featuring The Black Eyed Peas. I heard it was an excellent concert with other bands playing as well, but unfortuantly I didn’t get a chance to go. However, I did give my ticket back to the community.

To summarize, it was a good conference. Of course, the best thing is that you get to meet a lot of folks and community members. I just wish that the conference had been held in just one hotel, that the rooms had been bigger, that there had been fewer changes to the schedule, and that it had been easier to find the rooms.

Well, there is always next year. I think Oracle did a good job considering this was their first time and less than a year ago some wondered if JavaOne was going to be held at all.

More pictures from JavaOne: