2006 JavaOne Conference - Daily Prompt Day 1

Okay, now for the important stuff. The organizers of the 2006 JavaOne conference have asked me to pass on some crucial information. Things will be a little different at this JavaOne than in years past. In an attempt to cut down on the "overstuffing" of rooms for popular talks, and the sore feet that follows from those who were required to stand in the back, we've borrowed a model from some other conferences that we've seen work.

If you pre-registered for the conference online, then you know what I'm talking about. That is, you used the online Schedule Builder to "reserve seats" for sessions. If you didn't, I really encourage you to find one of several dozen terminals scattered throughout Moscone and start reserving sessions slots as quickly as possible. Here's why: individuals who are pre-registered for a specific session will be allowed in ahead of time, like normal, and will get the best seats. Individuals who are not pre-registered will still be allowed in *if there are seats remaining*, and then only shortly before the talk begins. Put succinctly, they get the "standby seats."

So, at this point, you're probably wondering what happens if there are several hundred people in the hall, unable to get into a session because it's packed denser than the next Star Wars premiere. Don't worry. The reservation system lets the conference organizers keep track of which sessions are full, and the organizers will be watching. If they need to repeat the session, they'll try to arrange it with the speaker.

At this point, I've noticed one or more things typically occur:

1)	Before the speaker can finish saying, "Wow, my session was that popular?!?", they're ambushed by a publisher racing to sign a book deal. Have no fear, we'll still get through to them.
2)	The speaker's hopes of flying home right after their first presentation and taking the rest of the week off to recuperate are hopelessly thwarted.
3)	The speaker is relieved because it gives them a chance to debug that demo code that caused an embarrassing exception during their first presentation.

That being said, if there's a session that you simply couldn't get in to, and you want to make sure your voice is heard, send me an email at Robert.Eckstein@sun.com. Yes, you read it correctly folks, my inbox is at your mercy this week. I'm not a conference organizer, but I do have access to them, so I can tell them if a volume of attendees couldn't get into a specific session. If you do email me, keep it short--maybe just a subject line like "Please repeat TS-12345. Thanks!" But please be fair. If a session was totally packed, and you arrived well ahead of time, then by all means say so. If you and five other people missed a session because you partied hard the night before and overslept, well...

Speaking of last night, did you get a chance to attend the Java University sessions on Monday? Tons of great content! I couldn't look away from the slides. It was like some bizarre form of enterprise hypnotism. Seriously, though, that was some heavy-duty EE material! And the evening session on (Ajax) was great! Lots of good JSF and server side content there.

What's that? There are still some of you that don't know what (Ajax) is, other than a bathroom cleanser? Well, don't worry, my friends, there are plenty of sessions on Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) at this year's conference, so you can quickly get up to speed on the buzzword of the year. But like I said earlier, be sure to reserve seats early. Trust me, they'll be the first to fill up.

By the way, I hear that Joshua Bloch and our friends at Addison Wesley will be releasing a second edition of Effective Java. If you don't have that book, get a copy. No, I'm not moonlighting as a marketer for Addison Wesley (Hey, I used to work for O'Reilly Media, a worthy competitor!) The book is just that good, and if you're a serious Java programmer, you already know how invaluable Josh's tips are. On that note, be sure not to miss those popular Java Puzzlers that Josh will be presenting at the conference. That's also some good content to floor your colleagues with.

Finally, we all know that there are exciting things that are announced in the keynote addresses, and this year will not be any different. So, without giving anything away, here are a few things that you should be on the lookout for in this year's keynotes.

Jeff Jackson really likes the Caps portion of his Caps Lock key.

Graham Hamilton seems to have a passing interest in one of Mars's moons.

James Gosling loves to push his phones to the limit.

And, of course, what would JavaOne be without our friend Scott McNealy and his trademark witticisms?

So, with that, it's off to the sessions. Enjoy Tuesday's show, and I'll see you on the conference floor!