David Coldrick's Weblog

where's david?
I tell you what, it's been an interesting few weeks. I just returned from 3 weeks of travelling:

1. First was CEC (Customer Engineering Conference, as I recall), where about 3,000 Sun techies got together to get up-to-date on what Sun's doing, and get inspired to be part of the action. It was great. I sat with two Oz guys during Jonathan's preso on the last day, one sales rep and one delivery techie, and then  had lunch with them. They spent at least a half hour being amazed at how capable JS was, how he simplified complex problems, etc. Such a great communicator, for everyone. The interesting part to me - I was already sold on "The Schwartz" - was how he could appeal to different folks. He has also surrounded himself with equally great communicators, like Don Grantham, who runs worldwide sales. My share holding may yet support me in my old age :-)
   
2. A week with my Mum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, which was good: finally got her PowerBook up to OS 10.4, ate some great (cheap) seafood (her town, Digby, is the "scallop capital of Canada", where the fish guy came to the door, and offered what was fresh from the boat that morning, including haddock and scallops. I have never had such wonderful seafood, and for $6/pound).
3. Back to Silicon Valley, where I attended NoFluffJustStuff, a very good conference. Emphasis was on FLOSS, and there was a bit of fluff, as the presenters were generally consultants and trainers, eager to make/ maintain their name. For all of that, it was excellent value, and the presenters generally knew whereof they spoke, so all good stuff. Except for the guy who said that Swing was slow (where the hell have you been the last coupla years, mate?), and the one who spent a lot of time trying to convince us that EJB3 was a disaster compared to Spring/ Hibernate, when he really appeared not to be too knowledgeable on EJB3.
4. Finished up with presenting at the ANZ developer days sessions in Auckland, Brisbane and Adelaide, where I presented on Java Desktop and EJB3

Only problem was that I came down with the flu the day before I left, and still haven't thrown it :-( So it's been better living thru drugs. I'm now recuperating at home for a couple of days. And that's probably the reason I haven't blogged before now. Back to the good stuff soon.

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