Welcome to the 2009 JavaOne Conference!

Welcome back to San Francisco, the home of Sun's annual JavaOne conference. Since we had an extra month to plan this year -- last year's JavaOne conference was at the beginning of May -- we took advantage of the extra time by packing as much content as possible into the five days that we're taking over every square inch of the Moscone Center. Along with our standard Java technology tracks on desktop, enterprise, and mobile, we have some excellent content on games and the latest Ajax and REST APIs. This year, we also have bleeding-edge topics such as cloud computing and our JavaFX programming language.

I'd like to point out a few things on the general sessions as well: You'll see Jonathan Schwartz, Bob Brewin, and James Gosling. You'll also hear Dave Douglas talking about our new Sun Cloud initiative, and partners including IBM and even Microsoft -- yeah, I did a double take on that as well -- talking about how they will be working with Java technology in the future.

Also, when you first enter the Pavilion area, you'll likely notice that a huge part is devoted to Java Utopia. Java Utopia is not only a showcase for different ways to use Java technology for programming, it's also a great place to find out about the brand-new technologies announced in the general sessions. A ton of kiosks, both Sun and non-Sun, demonstrate all the activity that is going on with the Sun development community across the globe.

Also, note that admission to the Pavilion is free this year, even after the Conference begins, so if you have any local friends who want to come visit, invite them to the Moscone Center anytime this week.

By the way, a special thanks to those of you who are attending the CommunityOne conference. For those who are not in San Francisco, CommunityOne is a sort of miniconference that is dedicated to showing the latest and greatest that the Java, OpenSolaris, and Sun Cloud communities have to offer. Also, I heard some great things about yesterday's Java University programs, including the J2EE/SOA class and of course my own personal favorite, Filthy Rich Clients.

Finally, you probably noticed that this year we have a bunch of themes for the Conference, as opposed to years past, when a single theme dominated. This year, the themes all start with Java + (x) = (y). Now, those of you who have taken programming language theory are probably itching to tell me that this is not a properly formed expression (l-variable should be to the left of the assignment operator), but hey, remember that this is a marketing thing, which you'll see on posters all across the Moscone Center.

That being said, the geeky side of me can certainly sympathize, so I've taken the liberty of scribbling some improvements to our marketing slogans, this time in true Java language. Let's start with "Java + Community = Powerful":

try {
    double power = JAVA + getCommunity();
} catch (CommunityPrettyDarnBigException e) {
    //  Start putting stuff in the cloud
}

Hmmm... still pretty marketing-ish. OK, here's my stab at "Java + You = Expressive":

try {
    expr.setExpressive(JAVA + System.getProgrammer().getResource());
} catch (ResourceNotAvailableException e) {
    //  Drink more caffeine
}

And finally, "Java = Innovation":

try {
    if (JAVA == Innovation) {
        continue;
    } else {
         //  Should never get here
    }
} catch (RDBMSCoacqException o) {
    //  (This line intentionally left blank)
}

With that, enjoy your first day at the JavaOne conference, and I'll see you tomorrow!

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