This week I was in St Petersburg for Sun Tech Days. Last time I came to St Petersburg for Sun Tech Days was in 2007. It was great to see an even larger crowd this time and the team, as usual, did an awesome job hosting the event.

The main venue for the keynote was overflowing and they had to stream a feed outside. Almost half of the audience raised their hands when I asked them if they had heard about JavaFX. What has been consistent yet always surprising at Sun, is how successful we have become in evangelizing technology to the rank and file developers. The adoption curves for GlassFish and NetBeans are truly amazing despite tough and sometimes seemingly insurmountable, entrenched competition. I also had the pleasure of attending a press conference and a partner event at the venue. The press questions were tough, focused and very perceptive. Many of the press people were developers themselves and some of them had done development in JavaFX. Needless to say they had a great number of probing questions. It was also evident that they admired Sun for its amazing commitment and success in outreach among the developer and student community in Russia. The partner meeting was even more enlightening. They too had played with JavaFX and asked very directed technical and business questions. They were eager to start projects on JavaFX. I know we have a long road ahead of us on JavaFX , but it is days like these that make me pause from a break neck speed and enjoy the moment. What a testment it is to the site team, the developer outreach team, and the Java team. You all rock !!!

PS. It is the renaissance of Java that we want and anything less is unacceptable.