JavaOne 2007 
I feel compelled to jot down a few words about JavaOne 2007 but I am not sure where to start. It was my first time attending this massive conference and after the initial shock of being surrounded by literally thousands of Java junkies I got into the zone and tried to absorb as much as possible. With over 260 sessions there was certainly plenty to learn.
The experience was really somewhat exhausting as sessions would go all day with a break for lunch and dinner and then BOFs (Birds of a Feather presentations/meetings) would go until about 11PM. My flight left San Francisco early Friday afternoon so I was only able to attend 3.5 of the 4 days. Even though there were 2 or 3 presentations on Friday afternoon I would have liked to see, my brain had plenty of new ideas to churn.
I learned some useful things, some very cool things that might not be useful, and gained more insight as to the pulse of the Java community and it's direction.
I have transposed notes from many of the sessions that I attended here:
JavaOne 2007 NotesI'm not sure if these will be very useful to anyone besides myself but I primarily took them as a memory aid.
As I continue to ponder some of the ideas and things presented I will blog them individually. However one thing was very clear to me, Java is far from dead. There are many individuals still innovating technologies and improving software development with the Java platform.
Also I was very disappointed that Josh Bloch didn't release the second edition of "Effective Java" as was rumored. He retitled his presentation from "Effective Java Reloaded: This Time it's for Real" to "This Time it's ^not for Real" which the crowd got a kick out of, especially when he assured everyone that he is actively working on it and submitting chapters for review. Based on the corner-cases, nuances, and new patterns he demonstrated in the session I will definitely be getting the book.
Interface21 announced they have secured 10 million dollars in series A venture capital which is awesome. Spring was a very pervasive theme and seems to have truly become a dominant force in Java development. The Oracle application server is using Spring, the nice guys who developed the JAX-WS reference implementation are using Spring, and there were multiple other non-Interface21 sessions dealing with using Spring in combination with other technology stacks.
