Ben Galbraith's Blog

Ajax and Desktop Conferences

Dion Almaer and I were given the opportunity to deliver a talk on Ajax at JavaOne earlier this year. The session went pretty well, and I found myself giving a repeat on the last day of JavaOne that also went pretty well. Many thanks to those of you that attended and especially to those of you that gave us feedback both in person after the talks or via the eval forms.

One of the things a lot of you told us was that you wished we went into greater depth in some area of Ajax. Indeed, in a 60 minute session, we had to leave a lot unsaid.

I'm happy to say that for those of you that were left a little wanting, the Ajax firehouse is wide open: Dion and I are hosting a conference in Boston next month (www.theajaxexperience.com) where sixty 90-minute sessions will be delivered over the course of three days. We've got a ton of Java-specific content, including the lead of Google's Java-based GWT framework, the lead of the excellent DWR framework, and one of the core Spring developers.

Desktop Conference

A while back, I solicited feedback here on the possibility of giving a Desktop Developer's Conference. I'm happy to say that I'm moving forward with this concept. At first, I was going to make it a Java, .NET, and Cocoa/ObjC affair, but as I evaluated the marketplace, I decided to give it a Java focus. I've seen a few .NET conferences start and then abruptly stop, and I've seen no precedent for a Cocoa conference, so I got cold feet building out a lot of content for those technologies.

But, I still am planning on having Microsoft show up and talk to us about both WinForms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). And, I'm still planning on having Apple show up to talk about Cocoa. Nothing like seeing how the other half (1/3?) lives.

I would like some more feedback on a few things:

1. How much (if any) SWT/Eclipse content should there be? Anyone have any strong feelings one way or the other? It's hard for me to get a good read on this -- not a lot of hard data and my own experience suggests that SWT/JFace/EclipseRCP usage is a small fraction of Swing, but I could be off-base here.

2. Should this be a multi-track event or a one-track event? If multi-track, should it be a large track event like The Ajax Experience with six tracks, should it be mini-track with 2-3, or mega-track like JavaOne with 10 tracks+ (like I could find that much desktop content)?

Thanks,

Ben

Comments

• 1. SWT *must* be there. I have a personal distate for it but it's a very important toolkit now in the Java landscape. Even if it's a small fraction of Swing, and I think it still is, it cannot be overlooked.
  2. I just came back from JavaZone where they had a ~6 tracks event and I liked it, but I would prefer less, like 2 or 3, so I could attend most of what I am interested in.
  I would love to see some WPF and Cocoa talks because we can get great inspiration from these. Thanks a lot for doing that man!

  Posted by: gfx on September 25, 2006 at 04:20 PM

• Just curious, but why would you be calling this a "Desktop Developers Conference" when you appear to be focusing on AJAX? Are you intentionally using "Desktop" in the title to try and draw real Desktop developers to your conference? i would expect a Java "Desktop" conference to focus exclusively on Swing with possible topics that include SWT. I would also expect a Java "Desktop" conference to defintely include Netbeans AND Eclipse RCP since they both play key roles in building a good "Desktop" environment.

  Posted by: evickroy on September 26, 2006 at 05:50 AM

• I would be interested in survey/intro material on SWT/EclipseRCP stuff, but we truely develop only Java desktop applications, so that would be our main interest.

  I think a modest number of tracks (3?) might be better than 10+.

  Posted by: allanc on September 26, 2006 at 06:04 AM

• evickroy: perhaps I should have made myself clearer: I am talking of a separate conference for Desktop Application Developers, which is why I spoke of technologies such as WinForms, WPF, SWT, and Swing, none of which relate to Ajax but all of which relate to Desktop applications.

  It would be pretty silly to call Ajax applications Desktop applications...

  Posted by: javaben on September 26, 2006 at 06:52 AM

• evickroy: Did you actually read the blog posting or just scan it?

  Posted by: javaben on September 26, 2006 at 06:53 AM

• Hey Ben,

  Where do we submit papers ;-)

  Posted by: rbair on September 26, 2006 at 09:16 AM

• rbair: I'm tied up with the Ajax conference until end of October, but in early November I'll launch the conference site and open up the call for papers. It'll stay open until Jan. or so, and then conference itself should be in Feb. or Mar. Sound good?

  Posted by: javaben on September 26, 2006 at 03:12 PM

• You know I'll be there with a couple of good presentations. I can't wait to attend as well to see the Mac and Windows stuff. Oh, and what about Flash/Flex? That seems to be gaining some traction and Adobe is clearly trying to jump into an out-of-browser experience. (hmm. maybe that would be a good name for a conference? :)

  Posted by: joshy on September 26, 2006 at 09:22 PM

• More of a quick read before work rather than a scan, but apparently, I took your title literally as a combined conference. I must say that I was baffled by the concept, but wasn't really surprised with many of the Web fanatics trying to steal Desktop terminology lately. My apologies in implying that you were one of them. ;)

  Posted by: evickroy on September 26, 2006 at 10:10 PM

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