There is another side of Java One that alot of people don't get to see. It's the behind the scenes stuff that goes into the production of the keynotes, presentations, and the overall event. In particular there was a person that we were all supposed to meet and see, named Alissa Anderegg. I got to meet her and work with her and here's what you missed.

There was supposed to be a Jeopardy-style game show on the "History of Java" during Scott's keynote, but it got pre-empted by the late breaking finalization of Sun's acquisition of SeeBeyond. As such, something had to give in the packed agenda of the Keynote, so it was the game.

It's too bad, because in the rehearsals it was pretty funny. Scott was to be the MC and the contestants consisted of James Gosling, a "random developer", and a 10 year old girl played by Alissa Anderegg (pictured on the left, with me in the green room back stage). In normal Jeopardy fashion, Scott would read an answer and contestants would ring in to propose what they thought the question was.

Of course there was a twist.

For many of the answers, the painfully obvious question associated with the answer was not always to the correct one. In many cases, an unexpected and often funnier question was the correct answer. This made for a lot of good one liners for all of the contestants. Here's some examples of some of my favorite questions and answers:

• Answer: 1995.
  Question: - How many times a day does Scott get asked about open sourcing Java?
  
• Answer: $4,000,000,000.
  Question: - The Price Tag for StorageTek? [wrong]
  Question: - How much would Scott have if he got $1 for every time he said "Kick Butt"? [correct!]
  
• Answer: JNLP
  Question: -What is the acronym for "Jonathan Needs Lots of Press"?
  
• Answer: Yes.
  Question: - Is Duke a girl or a boy?
  

Well, it was a very funny in the rehearsal and we all got quite a laugh as some of us heard these for the first time. There were even funnier ones that were deemed "inappropriate", but lets just leave it as they would have been PERFECT for last years Java One!

Alissa is a very cute, very funny, very professional and naturally likable girl that was completely comfortable on stage. This is no small feat when this includes sharing the stage with Icons like Scott and James.

Too bad you had to miss her and I'm glad I didn't, but I thought you should know about the other 10 year old at Java One this year.

Thanks for reading.

-jbob