Wednesday, August 3, 2011

OSCON Java 2011 by Proxy

I previously wrote that I was disappointed that I could not attend the inaugural OSCON Java 2011 because of prior commitments. After reading posts summarizing this conference, I still wish I could have attended and hope that there will be an OSCON Java 2012 held in conjunction with OSCON 2012 that I can attend next year. I had planned to use this post to provide links to many of the useful accounts of the conference, but Java.net editor Kevin Farnham beat me to it. So, instead of listing them here, I simply reference his editorial Experiencing OSCON Java from Afar (for Those Who Didn't Attend). He starts that post with a sentence that articulates my own observations from reading about the conference: "It's becoming clear that if you didn't attend OSCON Java, you missed something special."

Among other things, Farnham references OSCON Java Makes a Difference, the Harold Carr blog series covering OSCON on a daily basis (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday), the availability of YouTube videos of select presentations, Arun Gupta's OCSCONJ 2011 Trip Report, and OSCON 2011 Proceedings (speaker slides and videos).

I thought that Harold Carr highlighted some interesting facts about the conference. According to his Friday notes, OSCON (appears to be greater conference rather than OSCON Java alone) had 3500 attendees, nearly 20 thousand online streaming views, and only 1 in 7 submitted abstracts accepted.

The list of sponsors for the greater OSCON is impressive and includes Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Intel, HP, Dell, Ebay, JBoss, VMWare, Oracle, and several others. Speaking of Google, it is also nice to see Google employees discussing Java (such as Josh Bloch's Java: The Good, Bad, and Ugly Parts).

I was sorry to be unable to attend OSCON Java this year. I anticipated that it would be a great conference and the reports I have seen seem to verify this as a correct assumption. I hope that O'Reilly will hold OSCON Java next year in conjunction with OSCON 2012 (July 16-18 in Portland) and that I will be able to attend.