Seems like not many people are blogging about Javapolis (yet), so here goes...
I drove from Ghent to Antwerp yesterday afternoon, in order to avoid traffic jams, and because I was only expected to host my Java/Open Source BOF at 6PM. I was actually quite amazed how many people were already attending the University days. I just followed the largest crowd which eventually led me to the JDK5.0 Tiger presentation from Joshua Bloch and Neal Gafter. I'm not qualified to make any judgment on programming languages, but it felt kinda cumbersome to see yet more type-related stuff added to a programming language in these loosely-typed days. Joshua is a great presenter BTW, his sheer enthusiasm helped a lot to keep me interested in the bone-dry topic of his talk. He has this way of waving his arms, and I'm pretty sure the middle part of his body is actually elastomere or something similar:
Most folks left at 5PM (when the theater needed to be vacated for proper movies again), so I was a bit anxious to find out if the BOFs would be any good. I attended the first BOF of that evening about JavaBlackBelt.com, which was interesting though I'm not entirely sure whether simple questionnaires are the ideal way to screen Java competencies, especially when I remember how easy it was to earn my "Master in XML" certificate at Brainbench.
The BOFs were a "low-profile" thing for the conference, so I was worried when quiet a few people started packing their bags after the first BOF. The cloakroom was closing as well. To my surprise however there were about 10 people at the entrance who apparently had been waiting to join "my" BOF, so in the end it was a pretty crowded thing - with at least 30 people attending. I did present a bit about myself, our company and our open source achievements, and after that we chatted for about an hour about various open source things. Two recurring threads come to mind: transparency and enthusiasm.
We and apparently quite a few others in the room try to transpose the open source community development model into the corporate context of our customers: by installing Subversion, commit mail scripts, mailing list software, unit testing, Gump integration building, etc etc. These are all techniques that help open source developers to collaborate through asynchronous points of synchronization, and which make the development processes of the project totally transparent. When you install this same level of transparency in a corporate context, people often do not like it - even when they share desks or cubicles. That's a bit sad to see happen, since you would expect that paid employees working on a single goal would find it logical that everybody knows what they're up to. Apparently not.
The other meme was enthusiasm. Some folks asked me how we "sell" open source to our customers - whether we use ROI calculations or similar stuff. I'm convinced that open source in a business context is still a matter where enthusiasm, gut feeling and emotional weighting are an integral part of the decision process. It's all about that cluetrain, remember?
I really enjoyed the BOF - it went very well for a totally unprepared thing, and even the silent folks were nodding all along. And I met Simone Bordet of mx4j and HP afterwards, which was cool. I'm looking forward to meet other folks on Javapolis tomorrow and thursday.
PS I: if you were at the BOF and happen to read this, please drop me a note. Thanks!
PS II: part 2 of my interview is online.
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