Fluffless Stuff in Austin

Jay Zimmerman brought his travelling road-show "No Fluff Just Stuff" to Austin this past weekend, and it was great fun. If you aren't familiar with these events, imagine a cross between a three day long Java User's Group meeting and a Star Trek Convention and you won't be far off the mark. Attendence is limited to 200, so it's a lot more intimate then an event like BEA eWorld. I'd estimate that each session (there were 55 in total) had less then 20 folks in the audience, so I feel like I really got to meet Bruce Tate, Erik Hatcher, Ben Galbraith, Neal Ford, David Geary, Craig Walls, and Eitan Suez.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, attending 11 ninety minute long sessions and three "expert panels" in two and a half days (the convention started at noon on Friday, and ended at 5 p.m. on Sunday). All of the sessions were good, but my favorites were Ben Galbraith's session on RelaxNG, Erik Hatcher's session on Lucene, and Eitan Suez's session on Cascading Style Sheets. Eitan's presentaion blew my mind... I had no idea how powerful CSS was.