JavaONE 10 Afterglow - A List Of Thoughts, Surprises And Back To Moscone

At Sunday there was a NDA-Event :-) with Oracle product managers and engineers regarding strategy and positioning. You had the chance (after signing a auto-expiring NDA) to chat with product managers and engineeers. We got some insights why certain things are as they are. It turned out - it takes some time before the culture of both companies merges.
The conference started with well attended Glassfish Community Event. During this unconference you had the chance to talk directly with Oracle product managers and engineers. What I can say: they are very pragmatic about everything around Glassfish.
The "traditional" Glassfish Thirsty Bear party was really good. Was even attended by James Gosling - he seems to be a Glassfish fan. James worn an interesting t-shirt :-). I had the chance to chat with him - his current "job" is really interesting.
I tried to attend as much sessions as possible - the content was very good. It exceeded my expectations. There were no product presentations (what was criticized in the previous JavaOnes) - just technical content.
The amount of NetBeans sessions was even higher (didn't counted them - just a feeling), than last year. Oracle's commitment to NetBeans also surprised me.
Quality of food, WLAN, overall organization was better, than the years before. The location would be also more than o.k. for a "usual" Java conference, but somehow strange for JavaOne.
Session Scheduling could be improved. Session locations changed too frequently. There was also too much "dead time". Sometimes even without any reason. It was not always clear, whether it is an Oracle Develop, or Java Keynote.
Ray Kurzweil keynote was entertaining and very interesting - but I would use less slides next time. He mentioned "Java" far more often, than Larry Ellison :-)

Conclusion: Back To Moscone, deliver more charismatic keynotes with attention to detail, and we will get a great JavaOne 2.0 conference in 2011.

Decoupling From OpenWorld would be even better. 41.000 attendees are a hard limit for everything. I would even sacrifice the Treasure Island event and attend a BOF instead :-). Considering the circumstances JavaONe was even great this year. For a while it wasn't even sure, whether JavaOne will take place this year, or not.