The Java Posse Roundup overwhelms a town's pizza capacity

Today is the last day of the Java Posse Roundup open-spaces conference. Last night, the group got together at the house the Posse is renting for some Scala demos, lightning talks (including a very impressive JavaFX demo in which Parleys.com duplicated their Flex-based conference viewer in JavaFX), and pizza. Problem is, with 38 attendees, we apparently overwhelmed the pizza-making capacity of the small skiing town of Crested Butte: the first two delivery places we contacted balked at the size of our order. So we ended up having to order pizza from three different places to get everyone fed. Yeah, hardship, I know, but when was the last time you heard of someone turning away a big order?

Anyways, after last night's lightning talks, Dick Wall took his portable mic and gave everyone a chance to talk about where they'd come from, what they did at the conference, and what they might change in the future. This session has already gone out as Java Posse #168. While the comments give a good overview of the conference, they don't delve into specifics, and for that, you'll presumably have to wait until the recorded sessions start going out on the Posse's podcast feed.

This year's discussions have displayed a tendency to stray in unanticipated directions. A talk about Java's many widget frameworks spent significant time on Joe Nuxoll's assertion that not being component-based, and thus not fostering a third-party market for components, has badly harmed all of them. One session was based on the idea that the GPLing of Java has led to a second renaissance for the platform, and that it would have perished if not open-sourced. A session kicked off by Bruce Eckel with the broad goal of trying to reinvent work in the style of an open-spaces conference tried to find the common points between everyone's favorite jobs. And Dianne Marsh led a session on the often-unappreciated importance of networking, how to do it, and when you need it. Being an organizer of CodeMash, she also launched a very detailed session on hosting smaller, user-organized conferences, exchanging ideas and details with our host, Bruce, and Stephan Janssen, founder of Javapolis.

So, one more day of geeking out on Java here in Crested Butte, then we all head out of the snow and back to real life. It's been a blast.