No JavaOne

If you're a professional Java developer, you really can't have missed it: past week was the week of the annual JavaOne conference. And somehow I managed not to attend it once again. As a Java enthousiast since 1994 (the beta) and a Java professional since 1999, I often wonder why I never attended a single JavaOne conference.

It probably has to do with two things. First I'm not a big conference-go'er to begin with. I know conferences are a great way to get a glimpse at all kinds of technology and -more importantly- are about the best way to improve your network, but somehow I prefer learning a new technology by working with it. And networking... well, that's not really my thing.

The second reason I never attended JavaOne must be the distance. Coming from Europe, it's really quite a journey to attend a conference on the other side of the pond. It's not just the journey itself, but it's also all the arrangements you have to make. Including getting my employer to pay for the trip, because -let's face it- these things aren't cheap.

So once again I didn't get to see the keynote and the introduction of new cool Java-based technology. And once again I didn't get to see the winner in the T-shirt hurling contest. But then again, neither did anyone else because the T-shirt hurling was canceled this year.

Eleven days... feels like a month

I would like to start this post with an apology. I might not reach a huge audience through these pages, but the audience I do get hasn't heard anything from me for 11 days. In the blogosphere that is almost like an eternity, especially since I didn't announce it up front.

What happened is that for once work caught up with me. Within those 11 days my company shipped a new product, got acquired and held a conference where I hosted a session. I can't believe it is less that two weeks ago that I said "Go" to the release of our new product to customers.

But I really can't believe that at our first conference we get more than 375 attendees and about a 120 of them came to see my technical workshop. This was the first time that I presented a technical topic to more than 50 people, so as you can imagine my adrenaline level was quite high. But still I wasn't stressed or uncomfortably nervous: I was excited. It is great fun to tell people about something you've been working on for months. Especially if you've got a good story to tell about it.

That brings me to the sound-byte for this time. I found it in a dictionary while looking for something else a few weeks ago, and it is so true: proper preparation prevents poor performance.