goodbye spring experience 2007
This blog post is ancient. If it is technical, the information is likely inaccurate, or at least out of date. If it is non-technical, it’s entirely possible that the relevant facts and my own opinions have changed significantly since it was written.
It is only preserved as part of this site’s permanent historical archive.
Well it had to end eventually. As you can see, I’m hopelessly behind on my blog entries, having only made it through my first day of sessions. I’ve still got several more I intend to cover (I probably won’t do the last two as I started blanking out - I think my brain was pretty much melted by this afternoon). Look for those entries in the coming days. Many thanks go out to No Fluff Just Stuff and SpringSource for putting on an awesome conference!
There were several things I really liked about this conference that I believe set it apart from most of the conferences that I have attended.
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The technical content was top-notch - Spring topics from the developers themselves. There were also quite a few architecture/design sessions that were also superb.
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The session length, at 90 minutes, provided ample time to cover each topic pretty well in-depth. The session scope cooperated with this, as most of the speakers didn’t try to do too broad of subjects for the time allotted.
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It was a smaller conference, at a little over 500 developers. This meant you weren’t trying to weave through crowds to get in queues for packed out sessions like at JavaOne. Much less stressful.
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The atmosphere was just plain fun. Everyone was laid back. I mean, how many conferences give you a bobblehead doll on the first night! I now issue a call out to Sun that we must have a James Gosling bobblehead doll issued to every attendee at JavaOne 2008!
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The food was top notch - every meal was provided, buffet-style (no boxes!!!). I ate way too much.
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The location was great. You can’t beat a front-on view of the Atlantic Ocean from the conference center balcony during session breaks.
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SWAG! Let’s see what all I collected: a computer bag, a binder with all of the slides, two t-shirts, a hat, sunglasses, a beach towel, a Frisbee, a NFJS Anthology, a bobblehead doll, a Spring Source toolkit (two screwdrivers and a measuring tape - you’d have to see it)…what’s more, Jay Zimmerman distributed the left-over swag after the conference closed. I picked up two more computer bags full of swag and two conference binders to give away at the January and February Memphis JUG meetings! Once again, thanks for a great conference. It was easily the best all-around that I’ve attended.
