Ben Galbraith's Blog

The Desktop Matters

With the advent of Ajax, it's been fun to watch the Web in a renaissance as technologies we dismissed years ago have come into vogue. There's such buzz in that space that some are beginning to predict that web applications will replace desktop apps entirely and that perhaps even a "Web OS" concept will take root.

Maybe the future is in Web browsers. But I'm pretty satisfied that for years to come, desktop applications will continue to play an important role in the software ecosystem. In short, the desktop matters.

In this vein, we're happy to announce Desktop Matters, a desktop-focused conference to take place in February 2007 in the Bay Area, California (probably Feb. 23 somewhere close to Santa Clara). My Ajaxian partner-in-crime, Dion Almaer, will be co-producing and co-hosting the event with me, and Jay Zimmerman of the No Fluff Just Stuff conference series will handling the heavy-lifting and lending his conference expertise to the event.

We had considered making an event for all desktop technologies across all platforms. That vision may eventually come to pass, but this first Desktop Matters event will be focused on Java Desktop technologies.

While our recent Ajax Experience conference had sixty sessions across six tracks over three days, the Desktop Matters will be a one day / one track event. It's not that we couldn't find enough content to fill up a bunch more slots, but we felt that the Java Desktop community is a pretty tight-knit crowd and it would be more fun to throw everyone in the same room.

Sun's Swing team has graciously offered to participate; Scott, Hans, Chet, Richard, and former-intern-extraordinaire Romain Guy will be there presenting.

The attendance fee will is still being worked out, but it will obviously be far lower than the typical $1,500 range for multi-day, multi-track events. We're trying to make it as accessible as possible.

The agenda is still being finalized, but it will include topics such as how to be more productive with Swing, how to make Swing look amazing, and sessions on third-party Swing libraries and tools. We may even have some non-Java folks present, just to show us how things are done on other platforms -- but that part of the show isn't finalized yet and may not happen. The show will wrap up with a party / networking event, while Chet doing stand-up comedy at some point (he doesn't know this yet, but we're confident after a few drinks we'll get him on stage).

Speaking of the agenda, would you like to present a session at the show? What with it only being one day, presentation space is very limited, but if you have an interested in presenting or simply being a part of the show in some way, please let me know (send email to desktopmatters@galbraiths.org).

I'll follow up with a commitment on the date, the venue, and the price a little later this week or earlier next. In the meantime, I hope you'll clear a space on your calendar and join us!

Comments

• Ben,
  It's exciting to hear about this conference. I've have been following your blog concerning having such an event for some time now. My only concern is that the conference is only one day. This will probably make it hard for me to justify attending this conference to my employer. I'd like to see at least a two-day event with one day of tracks and the other day in a combined room. Anyway, thanks for continuing to evangelize on the importance of the desktop.
  

  Posted by: robjkc on November 08, 2006 at 08:54 AM

• Interest feedback, thanks! Would having some sort of pre-conference activity the day/night before change things? We have so much content, it may yet be a two-day event. Stay tuned...

  Posted by: javaben on November 08, 2006 at 09:01 AM

• Yes, I think some sort of pre-conference activity the night before would be a good idea. This would be a way to do some preliminary work like speaker introductions, keynotes, and Q&A. That way the second day could be focused on the presentations. Also, I wonder if instead of having one room for both the thin (Ajax,GWT) and thick (Swing,Swt,..) client technologies, it might be better to have two rooms where attendees could choose between presentations. It would also be nice to see some presentations of real-world applications. Just a few thoughts...

  Posted by: robjkc on November 08, 2006 at 01:08 PM

• Echoing the thought of real-world applications, maybe another option would be a feedback room - people could bring their applications and display on-screen for real-time feedback. Not sure how this would work. Looking forward to more information about the event.

  Posted by: gpayne on November 08, 2006 at 05:19 PM

• Ben!

  So are you going to release the demo code from Java One at this conference? :-D

  http://galbraiths.org/javaone2006/ you state 'two more week's' I guess my next question is what is your velocity? :-D Cause if you are traveling at the speed of light that could mean those of us moving at 17 miles a second might not live to see it. :-(

  I REALLY liked the random data builder demo for doing GUI demos with POJO type objects. :-) I will check it again in another two weeks. sigh....

  Posted by: cupofjoe on November 08, 2006 at 05:36 PM

• robjkc: Interesting ideas. We're definitely not going to have Ajax content at this show -- this is all about the desktop, my friend. Ajax is the content bully dominating most shows while the poor little desktop usually gets short-shrift. Not at this show! The desktop strikes back. ;-) We'll see about the pre-conference stuff, I like your ideas there...

  
  gpayne: Hmm... interesting. I like that very much. Sort of a clinic for folks who have questions about how to improve their apps, etc. Great idea.

  cupofjoe: Yes, it's true -- I am bravely redefining two weeks for the entire nation of independent software developers. I feel bad about that, but obviously not bad enough to have fixed it up until now. It's on my stack, but hasn't quite popped off yet. It will soon... :-D

  Posted by: javaben on November 08, 2006 at 07:22 PM

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