Caveat: I qualify hardly as an attendee, since I was only there Monday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. Yesterday, after a couple of drinks with the JBoss folks (and finally shaking hands with Marc Fleury who gave me some not-too-serious nudges and blows when he was told I'm an ASF Member), Werner, Andy, Bruno & I went for dinner at some nondescript Chinese place near the Antwerp cathedral. It was good catching up with Werner again, who sort-of disappeared into the real world when he joined his new job. Andy was still his usual self - definitely one of these persons who manage to hide all the good content they have to offer under the disguise of an abrasive style. It's good to know though that Andy and I are actually brothers and that our mum lives in Antwerp.
The conference was great, if only because you get to meet all your ex-colleagues who are still connected to Java: it was good to see Patrice & Peter back after quite some time. For some reason or another, it seems like all the companies I worked for have turned into splinter bombs over time, spreading seeds of entrepreneurship all across the place. It's nice knowing you're not the only one with the uphill struggle of keeping your own company alive. And it is obviously also that time of the year where folks are wondering about the professional part of their life, to the effect that you get all sorts of things suddenly being dropped into your mailbox.
The organization was quite excellent this year: badges being sent in time, no registration queues, plenty of food baggies, a noteblock in our conference bag, music in the exhibition hall, a bookshop, (non-free) wireless access, XBoxes to have fun with, etc etc... kudos to the staff!
Content-wise, there was the obvious sponsor pollution: I counted 29 or so sponsor-related slots amongst the 52 talks of the 2 conference days. This meant some folks weren't really qualified to speak about a topic, yet were allowed to because a slot was allocated for them in return of their sponsor pennies - a funny interpretation of handpicking a conference if I may say so ;-) It's a bit funny also to make a public fool of yourself the one year by complaining about JBoss not being allowed to present, and then the other year see that same company return as a sponsor and consequentially fill up quite some slots (with, thankfully, at least some decent speakers). I know I'm extremely picky but my patience with conferences has grown thin over the years, after finding out (on the other side of the virtual wall between speakers & attendees) that some folks actually make a living just traveling around, not spending time with actual users, in-breeding the monoculture of tech conferences. And blogging has made this phenomena even more widespread, hosting a continuous (Hani-warning!) circlejerk-fest for the technorati of this world. Ahum. Sorry about that.
This (minor) digression aside, I had quite a lot of fun during the past week though, and I'm looking forward to next year's edition. Doing the same thing for a 120+ crowd every year, I can appreciate what the Bejug, Navajo and Janssen family have been gone through for the past few weeks: nice work!
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