Annette Vernon's Blog

What's New for JavaOne in 2007

A quick recap: 2006 JavaOne: Over 15,000 attendees, nearly 400 technical sessions, BOFs and Hands On Labs. Multimedia versions of all technical sessions can be found on Sun's Software Developer Network (SDN) website, best accessed from the 2006 JavaOne Conference homepage. And data. Lots of it. Over 36,000 individual session surveys were submitted. Over 35% of the attendees submitted a post conference survey. And it's my job to make plans to respond to this feedback.

In the last few years, many attendees (and especially the speakers) commented that the selection of content should be more open and involve the community. After all, Java does belong to the community, shouldn't the selection of content involve members of the community.

One of the most exciting new developments in the Program Committee is that we are going to invite some of the community's brightest stars to review submissions and help us select the content for JavaOne. I can't tell you who yet, but I'm willing to bet you will recognize them.

And it hasn't been a completely popular idea. There are some who believe that as the major sponsor, Sun solely owns the responsibility for content selection. Not quite. As I see it, Sun's responsibility is to be a champion for the developer. Provide a community environment where they can gather, network and share their experiences. In the context of content selection, that means we need to be more open and transparent. We may own it, but we can and should invite members of the community to share their comments on which sessions will make JavaOne an event that truly "rocks."

You do have the date in your calendar, right? May 8-11, 2007 at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Comments

• Hi,
  Many people like me (I am from Sweden) travel from long distant to join JavaOne.
  I think JavaOne should be 5 days instead of 4 days.
  Regards,
  Ove

  Posted by: ovjo122 on October 18, 2006 at 11:38 PM

• when does the call for papers open?

  Posted by: eitan on October 19, 2006 at 06:50 AM

• I think it's about time Sun had an open committee for content selection. Java One has been dominated by Sun-agenda for way to long. We should see strong representation for alternative programming models that are part of Java which include Spring, JBoss SEAM, AspectJ, and web frameworks other than just JSF. :) Doing so will increase the credibility of the conference.

  Also, it is doubtful that there were 15,000 paying attendees at last year's Java One. It felt more like 7000 max. :)

  Posted by: fmarines on October 19, 2006 at 09:58 AM

• Yes - content selection shouldn't be done by just a small committee. There wasn't even a *single* session on JDO 2.0 for the 2006 conference, which strikes me as a completely political decision by the EJB 3 camp in the JCP.
  Why can't you run an on-line poll for at least half of the conference content?

  Posted by: dave_clark on October 19, 2006 at 11:57 PM

• Call for Papers wil open sometime later this month - stay tuned for details.

  We are considering options for on-line "voting", no promises but we are considering.

  The team is reviewing the lenght of JavaOne, but no decisions have been made yet. We heard this comment from a lot of attendees.

  Posted by: amvernon on October 20, 2006 at 09:13 AM

• ovjo122, there's a lot of stuff that happens the weekend and Monday before the conference. (Last year Mother's Day was Sunday, so most things happened Saturday and Monday.) It's a good way to see some special topics you don't encounter every day.
  

  Posted by: dwalend on October 23, 2006 at 04:04 PM

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