Adam Bien's Weblog
Is JavaONE Only Good For Socializing?
I hear the saying "JavaONE is only good for socializing" over and over again. This is exactly *not* my experience. You get the unique opportunity to talk to Sun engineers and get your questions answered. During the last JavaONE I had some nice and informative conversations with the core HotSpot, Glassfish, openSSO, and Java FX team. I had to sacrifice the After Dark for that purpose - but it was really worth.
BOFs are especially valuable for deep technical conversations and get your questions answered. But even the Glassfish Unconference and CommunityOne were interesting. I got some Hadoop, Google App Engine, Hudson, IceFaces, JavaFX and openSSO questions answered - directly from the committers. It saved me probably days, if not weeks, of research.
From my perspective JavaONE is absolutely worthless for socializing - it is too much interesting stuff going on :-). I try every year to spend more time at the pavilion, but I couldn't manage that. This was also the reason, why I scheduled my podcast at the very last - it was hard to find other free slots.
I actually only used the breakfast for socializing - few minutes a day :-). Lunch was already problematic - there were some interesting, technical sessions during the lunch as well.
This year I even didn't used my notebook during the sessions (except some general sessions) and entirely concentrated on the content and asked questions - this really paid off. JavaONE from my perspective is 12h / day technical content with 1% opportunity to spend time on parties :-). You need vacations after that event for sure - and probably some time for socializing :-).
Posted at 11:08AM Jul 22, 2009 by Adam Bien in JavaONE 2009 | Kommentare[6]
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Even though I did not attend JavaONE, I couldn't agree more with your points. Besides, I would imagine that the exchange of experiences between people immersed in different Java technology domains inevitably has a social component of some sort.
Gesendet von Angelos Sphyris am July 22, 2009 at 12:36 PM CEST #
Well, it just depends on the target of that "socializing". I've always thought that J1 is good for socializing with engineers ;-)
Gesendet von Fabrizio Giudici am July 22, 2009 at 01:13 PM CEST #
@Fabrizio,
exactly - but even last year we had only few minutes to talk to each other - what I really enjoyed!
thanks for your comment!,
adam
Gesendet von Adam Bien am July 22, 2009 at 01:46 PM CEST #
@Angelos,
social component - for sure. But my personal goal for JavaONE is gaining knowledge and inspiration.
thanks for your comment!,
adam
Gesendet von Adam Bien am July 22, 2009 at 02:57 PM CEST #
maybe I have a different definition for socializing but I definitely find the social aspect of J1 to be as huge a benefit as the technical sessions. As many good things happen during "social" time as happen during sessions.
Gesendet von kirk am July 23, 2009 at 09:46 AM CEST #
@Kirk
absolutely. BUT: the technical sessions are too interesting - so there is no much time for socializing between them (about 15 minutes) left :-).
Its absolutely o.k. - but it was hard for me to find time to meet old friends...
thanks for your comment!,
adam
Gesendet von Adam Bien am July 23, 2009 at 10:28 AM CEST #