My trip to JavaOne in San Francisco was an amazing experience. One that I can probably not describe completely in words (with my limited vocabulary). It was the most thrilling and exciting journey of my life, yet. It was great to meet many of the people I've been interacting with since the past 2 years on IM, email and virtual worlds, in person. It was the right mix of conference business as well as a whole lot of fun. We used to attend engaging technical sessions/labs, meet tech rockstars and industry professionals in the Pavilion, check out all the amazing products showcased at the exhibitor pods, interview people high on the JavaOne spirit to share their JavaOne experience and get a slice of all the amazing activities scattered all over Moscone Center. Through this series of blog posts I would like to take you through my enticing journey to the beautiful city of San Francisco and the best developer conference in the world, JavaOne 2009.

The Prelude (Before June 30th)

I was totally thrilled to get the golden opportunity to go to JavaOne. It was my first trip to the US, heck, it was my first JavaOne and I've been wanting to this conference ever since I became a Java developer and Sun Campus Ambassador. I had always been wanting to get a chance to meet the rockstars of the Java world all under one roof, to experience the great knowledgeable sessions and to feel the great conference spirit in person, and not just in videos streamed over the internet. And lo and behold, Ganesh our manager sends out a mail one fine day saying that me and Ashwin, the 2 campus ambassador tech leads from India are sponsored by Sun Microsystems, India to attend JavaoNE 2009, rewarding our 2 years of hard work with Sun first as campus ambassadors and then as campus ambassador tech leads. Apart from us, 4 campus ambassadors were sponsored for their outstanding performance this year as campus ambassadors - Avinash Joshi from India, Kevin from China, Tom Petreca and Felipe Cerda from Brazil and Hyejin from South Korea. Avinash was also there for being the campus ambassador of the year. Carlos Alejandro was also supposed to come but sadly he couldn't make it as he wasn't issued a visa, bummer! The Open Source University Meetup had a booth setup over there for the first time this year and Gary Serda, our superboss, gave us the opportunity to man the booth for the 5 days of the conference, and so we did that in shifts. Our work at the booth was to inform students coming over there about the ever-growing OSUM community, the Campus Ambassador program, interesting opportunities for Students at JavaOne and any other query they may have. We were also given another cool opportunity to participate in the JavaOne Street Team -- each JavaOne street team member was supposed to make 3 one-minute videos per day, each, from June 1st through June 4th. These videos could be interviews with conference attendees, Pavillion exhibitors, Rockstars and prominent Sun folks to capture the buzz of the conference for those who could not attend J1 but still want a glimpse of the experience here and also for updating attendees about all the cool stuff happening there. Each of us got a Flip MinoHD cam for this job, which is way cool. It's a pocket sized camcorder which captures HD video. We were supposed to make 3 of these videos before the conference and the rest while where there. Here are 2 of them which I made on the 31st night. In addition to that, we were also interview by Chris Melissinos a couple of days before the conference for the JavaOne Radio show to discussion about what we all were looking forward at JavaOne 2009. I got my visa just 4 days prior to my flight, just in the nick of time, all because I did not get an early date for the visa, but anyway, alls well that ends well.

Journey to San Francisco (June 30th-June 31st)

It was my first international flight but it all just went fine. We were flying Emirates! It was all very exciting. Ashwin and Avinash were boarding from Bangalore and me from Delhi, we were meeting mid-way at Dubai and then taking the same flight from there to SFO. The flight uptil Dubai was just a 3 hour journey.

Dubai International Airport

The Dubai international airport was amazingly huge, ultra-modern and breath taking. We had 2 hours to rest and take snaps there and then move on to the longest flight of our lives. The in-flight experience with Emirates is good. They have this entertainment system called ICE (information, communications, entertainment) which provides you bundles of movies, music, news and interactive services like SMS, Email, Phone. It even lets you enjoy watching pictures you took with your digital camera via USB on the wide touch-screen. We had plenty of time to figure out that it's a thin-client system powered by Linux and Flash (yep, we caught the linux bootscreen). After a 16 hour journey, with lots of food and lots of drinking we finally set foot on San Francisco International Airport. The first impressions of being in the US weren't really that impressive. The airport in Delhi and Bangalore were just as impressive. There were certainly more security cameras and much more security, but the level of technology was pretty much the same (except the finger print scanners perhaps!). Unbelievably someone stole the lock on my baggage!

As we started moving out, things started getting better. We went over to the BART station inside the airport (woot!), completely automated ticketing system. The train was pretty empty though, quite unlike the metro in Delhi, but what am I comparing anyway :). We got a bird's eye view of the city while in the train for the 35 minute journey from SFO airport to the Powell Street station.

First impressions..

We got a first look at the real San Francisco just after we exited the Powell Street BART station. It was awesome - lovely cool weather, beautiful streets, trams and limousines! We were finally witnessing what we had been able to see in Hollywood movies and TV - the US of A in all its glory - in the flesh. Then began the real excitement. I quickly took out my iPhone to start making use of all the navigation apps I had downloaded from the appstore back in India to get around SFO - an app called iBART to find BART routes, nearby stations, and schedules, an app for MUNI schedules, and a couple of tourist apps specific to San Francisco. And then also began, my photo taking spree! I have captured around 6000+ photos and videos from my trip and at the time of writing of this blog entry I was still struggling to upload them all to my flickr pro account :).

Powell Street

We walked down to Hotel Nikko on Mason Street, bumping into Mayuresh on the way (talk about being in a small world!). It was a pretty decent hotel with a room big enough for 2 people. We quickly freshened up and came down to meet Tzel in the lobby. She took us to a Starbucks right inside the Hotel premises and then we discussed a few things related to a few initiatives in next year's CA program. Tzel wanted to get our feedback on it. We soon caught up with Gary, who was a lil tired running around whole day. He took us to the japanese restaurant in our hotel - Anzu.

Dinner at Anzu

We had some amazing food and a great time there. I had this amazing cook-it-yourself japanese speciality called the "Rock". They serve raw slices of beef with a real sizzling black rock heated up to 400 degrees F. You're supposed to cook the slices by laying 'em on the rock. That was so cool! Just like barbeque! The vegetarians from India had some trouble choosing what to order though, as in most restaurants in the US veg items on the menu are too scanty. I just couldn't wait for the next day so after dinner, I went on a night walk with Avinash to explore the neighbourhood. We went off to Powell Street again. I saw a real Apple store!

The City at Night

The city looked even prettier in the night. The air was full of energy. People followed the traffic rules. Although many shops were closed, they left the lights on. There were just so many restaurants. For the first time it actually felt nice walking down the street! There was this peculiar trait of SF's roads - you get to hear a lot of echo of the sounds coming from the vehicles on the road - it has be the road's material. It sounds nice and creates good ambience. After coming back to the Hotel, I did 2 quick JavaOne minutes, which were a prerequisite to entering the JavaOne street team and went off to sleep. The next morning we had to report to the lobby at 7 am sharp to quickly go and register for JavaOne and CommunityOne.

This is part of a series of blog posts on my JavaOne 2009 experience..