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JavaOne 2008 - What a week! Best JavaOne yet!

Monday May 12, 2008

I am finally catching up on some sleep after, what was for me, the most action packed JavaOne yet. This was the most crowded I have seen the conference in quite a while and the buzz around the show was extraordinary. The breadth of Java technology demos on display was deep and focused across the board, but with a heavy emphasis on the client (finally!) As well, the show was very exciting for me as I was asked to co-host this year. To be sharing the stage with John Gage and James Gosling was a tremendous honor and I loved every minute of it. Here are the highlights of my activities for the week:

- Co-hosted the General Session kick-off

- Hosted Intel and Motorola sessions

- Hosted the CommunityOne student breakfast and lunch, where we gave away a Nintendo Wii at each for the first person to answer the following:
Breakfast question: What does the Sun in Sun Microsystems stand for?
Lunch question: Was was the original 3 letter name of the technology before it was named Java?

- Hosted the Game Technology BOF on Wed. evening. Also participating were Doug Twilleager, Jeff Kesselman, Josh Slack and Paul Byrne. The session was completely filled up and was a lot of fun. We stayed around in the main hall for an additional hour answering questions. Next year, we may shoot for a 2 hour "Town Hall" style instead. Or perhaps bring back the Game Development "mini-conference"....hmmm.....

- Participated in Games Gosling's keynote and did a Project Darkstar overview/demo with Gamalocus's "Call of the Kings" game, currently in beta. Josh Slack also presented during the session and did a FANTASTIC job.

- Was on stage with Jonathan, Rich and James to present John Gage with his Lifetime Achievement Award. Very very cool and I was thrilled to be asked on stage with them.

- A personal highlight for me was spending time with Josh and discovering that, at one point, we lived within 5 blocks of each other. Small, SMALL world. Josh is an awesome guy and a tremendous ambassador for Java technology.

- Produced 16 video segments:

And here is my personal favorite:

There were a bunch of other photos, videos, etc. that I'll provide links to later (I'm on vacation this week ). Again, amazing JavaOne and I can't wait until next year.

[5] Comments

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Posted at 09:52AM May 12, 2008 by Christopher Melissinos in General
Tags: awesome javaone

Comments:

Hey Chris,

very entertaining and great products/tech to see!

Posted by Jerome on May 12, 2008 at 11:57 AM EDT #

Can't believe that I missed it! I'm going next year. Now drop off the Internet and get some more sleep...

Posted by mike p on May 15, 2008 at 01:17 PM EDT #

Chris! You so rock! Thank you for everything at the SDN Rocks party and for being such a great Rockband partner! I am still holding out to hear Oasis..next time! Thank you again! Once I have the links for our video, I will send it your way. :)

Posted by Jenn Winger on May 15, 2008 at 08:06 PM EDT #

Just curious if you have seen the new Penny Arcade game. It looks like it was done in Java. Was it?

Posted by Dan on May 24, 2008 at 05:41 PM EDT #

Not done in Java, but it does, INDEED, rock! BTW, it could have been done entirely in Java, no question about it. Need more developer education!

Posted by Chris Melissinos on May 28, 2008 at 01:08 PM EDT #