JavaOne 2007
// May 17th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // Java, Photos, Programming, Web, Work
I’ve always heard about JavaOne over the past few years as I’ve been more keen to Java and the like, but have always been unable to attend. Well, last week I had the privilege of being sent to JavaOne in San Francisco, California on behalf of my company. Myself and another engineer attended.
It was quite an experience. First of all, I had never been to the West Coast of the United States before. I’ve always stuck to the East Coast, and even then, I am not too well traveled. So it was pretty neat to fly across the country, and to add to that, we were bumped up to first class on the way there…very nice.
There were a ton of people at this conference. JavaOne is pretty much the “mecca” for Java developers and it stood up to that label. There were tons of vendors there pushing there latest and greatest products and tools. The keynote was cool, got to see some nice presentations on the new announcements from Sun, like JavaFX, OpenJDK, etc. You can see what was covered here. Overall, there is some cool things being worked on at Sun.
The Technical Sessions were very good as well. Our days were booked, with sessions from 9:30 AM until 9:30 PM, and even later some nights. There was alot to cover! But we went to topics ranging from the web tier, to EJB 3.0, to JSF, to Shale, to JPA, to Real Time Java 2.0, JavaScript frameworks like Prototype and Script.aculo.us, as well as AJAX and all the possibilities with that. It was alot to absorb in just four days.
All of the stuff I am very excited about, there are some up and coming things in java that I am looking forward to. It was nice to see all the good things that are happening in the Java world. One can get to focused on tasks and projects at work and so you put your blinders on to get it all done and don’t get to see all the neat things that are being done out in the community that can allow developers to make better applications with better tools.
I hope to attend next year, but we’ll see. The budget has to accommodate it and the moons of Jupiter may have to align as well. 
Also, it might be good to spread the experience around and send different developers. We’ll see, although I would love to go.
Oh, and I snapped some pictures of the conference as well, and then on the last day got some pictures of the San Francisco bay area landmarks. Most people wouldn’t consider it a landmark, but we also were able to stop by the headquarters of digg.com, one of my favorite sites. It was pretty cool; saw some of the developers as well as Dan Huard, site admin of Digg. Enjoy the pics!
