My JavaOne was OSUM!

My JavaOne experience was like an explosion of technical knowledge, networking opportunity, and all the geek-fun that I could have ever had. In short, it was incredible, unbelievable, fabulous, exceptional, marvelous, astounding, Breath-taking, knowledgeable and a lot of fun. So many companies, So many developers. So many students. So many countries. So many innovative ideas implemented in amazing projects. So many brain-feeding technical sessions. So many rockstars, evangelists, Java champions, JUG leaders, original book authors, CEOs, Java hackers, hardcore professionals and extreme programmers roaming about the conference hall, always read to have a chat with you if you want. JavaOne is true platform of convergence and collaboration for the entire Java community at one single place. The volume of things you can do at this place is overwhelming. There was just too much to catch up with – the innovative technology spotlights at the Pavilion, the fun robotics and Sun SPOT demos at the Change Your World playground, the LincVolt car, the Java Real time system, web-based sensor networks, next generation server processors, Sun’s compelling new cloud computing software, the activities at the Java Utopia, the raffles, the goodies and giveaways, the spinwheel, getting photos taken with the duke, bagging T-shirts, T-shirts and more T-shirts! I talked with James Gosling in person, face to face for more than 30 minutes. I had fun meeting a lot of students, enthusiastic attendees, Java rockstars and community leaders on the conference floor to take a minute for them to ask about their JavaOne experience so far and capture it in a JavaOne Minute. I enjoyed some very thrilling keynote sessions, seeing people like Scott McNealy and Jonathan Schwartz speak on stage. The James Gosling’s Toy show was very inspirational and enigmatic – it really showed how versatile the Java platform is and how people are making so many innovative projects with the platform. It was good to be a part of the OSUM booth and get to talk to university students about the OSUM community and it’s benefits. I met all the people I had just contact with on email till now and wanted to meet including people from the Sun SPOT team, Wonderland Team, Netbeans Evangelists and Dream Team members, OpenSolaris engineers, the Swing team, the JavaFX team, the Alice project team, Java Champions, Duke’s Choice award winners and many others. I attended some amazing technical sessions which were relevant to my interests and needs like "How to run PHP faster by using Java technology", "Alice 3: Introducing Java Technology Based Programming with 3D Graphics", "Continuous integration in the cloud with Hudson", "Fusing 3D Java technologies to create a mirror world", "Augmented Reality with Java Platform Micro Edition", "Maximizing Java technology based application performance on multicore platforms", "Storing Data in the Cloud" and "Ajax versus JavaFX technology". In the daytime, JavaOne was this platform for gaining vast amounts of technical knowledge and awareness and in the night time, things were a little different.. or I should say totally happening! – there were multiple parties every night hosted by different groups within Sun – first the OpenSolaris and Cloud party on the night of CommunityOne, then the Connected Student party, the JavaFX party, the JCP party, the JavaOne After Dark Bash. It was crazy. Sun folks really know how to kick-butt and have fun all at the same time. Mind-blowing keynotes, Quality technical sessions, BOFs, fun taking JavaOne Minute videos, checking out the cool pods at the Pavilion, networking and meeting people i've always wanted to meet in person, and other exciting JavaOne stuff in the day time and partying hard and eating at the best places at night was the usual order of the day. On the last day of the conference I took some time off from the conference and took a southbound caltrain to visit Palo Alto, the heart of the silicon valley. There I spent some time at Stanford University with a JIIT alumni who’s studying there.

Everyone was speculating about the future of Java after the acquisition of Sun by Oracle but Larry sent some very positive vibes for reassuring us that Java will continue to rule, and the combined company will do expanded investment for Java. Scotty McNealy left the stage with some emotional last words and everyone gave him a standing ovation. There were many grand announcements and product launches from Sun at JavaOne. The biggest undoubtedly being the Java Store – something which the Java community should have been given much earlier, but it’s never too late. This will open up consistent revenue streams for all the innovative Java developers out there. Sony Ericsson launched a similar app store too. All this is very exciting news for Java and specially JavaFX developers – if you haven’t already learnt JavaFX yet, jump on board before its too late. The opportunities are limitless now with such definitive distribution channels for your apps! Those who use iPhones know what I’m talking about – its the same thing now for Java/JavaFX. It’s going to be huge! Apart from that we got to see the first sights of JavaFX TV in action, the amazing JavaFX designer tool, JavaFX Mobile 1.2 along with the first JavaFX mobile handsets, Project Jigsaw, new offerings from various Sun partners like Paypal’s developer program (X.com), eBay’s JavaFX app, and lots of cool Duke’s choice award winner projects at the toy show!

Also, this year Sun has really made lot of efforts to connect with students at JavaOne and CommunityOne, starting with the OSUM lounge, which was THE place to hangout for students and all the fun activities like the scavenger hunt, the duke photo opportunity, a hang space with play stations, a lot of places where you can just sit down and relax on bean bags or watch a movie or play games! On the technical side, there were a lot of sessions of interest to students like a lot of stuff on JavaFX, Cloud computing, Project Kenai, etc.Not to mention the on the spot Java certification exams, Deep Dive sessions on OpenSolaris and a complete Java University track just for students and educators.  Did I mention students got in free this year? :). In addition to all that, James Gosling led 80 students on a guided tour of the Pavilion at noon on the June 2nd (first day of JavaOne). David Douglas also conducted a tour of the cloud zone for students. The most exciting part of JavaOne was when I myself got a chance to sit down face to face with James Gosling in the students Q&A session at the Pavilion. There were giveaways at almost every exhibitor booth and lot of lucky draws to be won just for filling up a survey form. There were various other cool things for students at the Java Utopia and fun robotics and Sun SPOTs demos at the Change Your World playground. There was a lot of opportunity to network and connect at the Pavilion.

When we were done with our day full of serious conference business, Gary and David would make sure we had a fun time in the evening, taking us out to dine at the best restaurants. They even took us to a tour of San Francisco. Honestly, you guys have done more than we could have expected. Thanks for everything :) I had great fun at JavaOne. I whole-heartedly thank Sun and the CA Program for giving me this golden opportunity. Personally, I want to thank Gary, Tzel, David and Lin Lee for making sure we had a nice time both during the conference and outside in San Francisco. Thank you Liana, Colin, Kirby for helping out at the OSUM booth. Thanks Tom, Felipe, Kevin, Hyejin, Avinash and Ashwin for your company. Thanks Ganesh for giving us the entire opportunity to be present there. It would never have been possible without your support.

Me and other folks had participated in this episode of the JavaOne Radio Show with Chris Melissinos, Chief Evangelist and Chief Gaming Officer at Sun, talking about what we were looking forward to at JavaOne.

Here are all my JavaOne minutes:

• JavaONE Minute by Angad Singh / J1 2009 / 1 - "What all am I looking forward to at JavaONE 2009"
• Javaone Minute by Angad Singh / J1 2009 / 2 - "What am I doing here at JavaONE 2009"
• JavaONE Minute with Jim Grisanzio - "A quick chat wth Jim Grisanzio, OpenSolaris Community Manager, after the CommunityONE opening keynote session by David Douglas. Jim talks to us about OpenSolaris from the community development perspective"
• JavaOne Minute with Angad Singh - "A quick JavaOne Minute with Kira at OSUM booth, the Pavilion. Kira was a campus ambassador 2 years ago and is very excited to attend JavaOne 2009"
• The Sun Cloud Party - "The totally rocking party thrown by the Sun Cloud folks on June 1st at CommunityOne's eve featuring the spazzy Spazmatics!"
• JavaONE Minute with Angad Singh / J1 2009 / 3 - "A little post-keynote conversation with Valeriya Alaverdova, Program Coordinator in the Sun Marketing Team who's travelled to JavaONE from Russia"
• JavaOne Minute with Vipul Gupta by Angad Singh - "Vipul Gupta describes the amazing new web-based wireless sensor project at Sun Labs which can be used to gather data from different types of sensors."
• Student Scavenger Hunt Prize Distribution on Monday at the Pavilion, JavaOne 2009 - "Raffle and Prize distribution for the Student Scavenger Hunt at the OSUM booth, Pavillion on Monday"
• Student Q&A with James Gosling -  "Students got a unique opportunity to sit down with the father of Java to ask a few questions at the JavaOne 2009 Pavilion"
• The Java Real Time System at the Pavilion - "The Real time java system booth at JavaOne 2009 demoing last year's a Duke's Choic Award winner project made by Sun"
• A car that uses Java! - "A sneak peek at the Perrone Robotics' 1955 model LincVolt which has been revved up to use Java And it has won a Duke's choice award this year!"
• Robotics @ JavaOne 2009 - "You must visit the cool robots made by high school students in the bay area at the Change (Y)our World Playground in the Pavilion area"
• JavaOne Minute with Eric Reid - "Eric Reid over at the OpenSolaris SourceJuicer Pod explains the ubiquitous web-based package builder anyone can use"
• James, Eric and Chris throwing T-shirts during a keynote - " James Gosling, Eric Klein and Chris Melissinos throwing T-shirts at the Mobility General Session-II on June 3rd 2009. The 3 lucky winners got a JavaFX enabled mobile device as prize"
• Raffle at the Intel Booth - "A drawing for an Intel Atom processor powered NetBook which took place at the Intel booth at the Pavilion"

Here all my photos from the conference. I’ve uploaded around 6000 photos and videos taken from all our cameras and organized them into 50+ sets in my shiny new flickr pro account (upgraded just for this purpose). I’ve put all those sets into a single collection:

JavaOne 2009 (6000+ Photos and Videos)

Those of you could not attend JavaOne this year, don’t be disheartened – you can still watch all the keynote replays online, read articles on them, and download their presentations in PDF! It turns out that there’s even a blogging contest. Share what you’ve learned from the online PDF’s and get a chance to win $300.

I have published a series of 9 blog posts on JavaOne 2009 describing my experience in a bit more detail under these headings:

JavaOne 2009: The Prelude and the Journey
JavaOne 2009: CommunityOne
JavaOne 2009: The Pavilion
JavaOne 2009: The Conference Floor
JavaOne 2009: Keynotes
JavaOne 2009: James Goslng Q&A
JavaOne 2009: The Parties and Dinners
JavaOne 2009: San Francisco Sightseeing Tour