Is Java Becoming More Globalized?

In his post-JavaOne blog post, James Gosling talks about Sun's early concerns regarding attendance at this year's conference:

... between the Oracle situation, the global meltdown, and the financial situation, [JavaOne 2009] was very different. Early on, we were really concerned (==nearly paniced) that no one would show up. Almost every company that usually sends a crowd of people to JavaOne had travel restrictions that meant that few could attend. And yet, attendance ended up being about 15,000. Very respectable!

I wonder if the better than originally hoped for attendance may have been partly due to the conference's location (within a long commute for everyone who works in Silicon Valley) and relatively high attendance by people who do not live in the United States? The economic situation is worse in the United States than it is in many other countries. Furthermore, for non-U.S. companies, the benefit of attending JavaOne may exceed that of U.S. companies.

JavaOne is a primary and unique opportunity for non-U.S. companies to participate in the global Java community, showcase their skills and products at a very high profile event, etc.; whereas a great many of the major U.S. firms for which Java is critical technology have a footprint in Silicon Valley, and hence could better afford not to commit to sending as many employees from far-away locations.

That's all my own speculation, to be sure; but I certainly noticed a great many conference commuters, and many attendees from countries like Brazil and Germany -- moreso than was the case in the other conferences I've attended in San Francisco (Web 2.0 Summit in November 2006 and Web 2.0 Expo in April 2007).

Since this is my first JavaOne, I can't compare what I saw in JavaOne 2009 with previous JavaOnes. If you were at this JavaOne and previous JavaOnes, did you notice a relative increase in local commuter and non-U.S. attendees? And a decrease in long-distance U.S. attendees?

Is Java becoming more globalized?

What are the implications for Java if the technology is increasingly "globalized"? In February, James wrote about the week he spent at TechDays in Hyderabad (India), concluding that India is amazing! There:

The locals were apologizing that "only" 6000 developers were there: the conference center is only big enough to accommodate 6000 attendees, and it's the largest conference center in India. The place is just jammed. There are about 800,000 professional Java developers in India, and we just don't have room for them all.

While at the Hyderabad conference, James also commented:

It's nice to have a break from the incessant pessimism of the global economic meltdown.

In February, of course, the U.S. economy was rapidly tumbling, yet the enthusiasm surrounding the TechDays event in India was remarkable (see, for example, the comments posted to James's "India is amazing!"

Likewise, I noticed a strong and vital Brazilian contingent at JavaOne 2009, and I was not alone in noticing that (among people who've never attended JavaOne before).

So, India, Brazil... two of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) that economists used to talk about. In 2001, Goldman Sachs argued that:

since they are developing rapidly, by 2050 the combined economies of the BRICs could eclipse the combined economies of the current richest countries of the world.

If what's happening with Java in Brazil and India is also happening in Russia and China, the center of the "Java world" may be migrating away from the U.S. as well.