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From JavaOne to JavaOne-Half


By Allen Holub
August 15, 2004 — 
The most interesting thing about this year's JavaOne was that it wasn't-interesting, that is. Over the years, the conference has gone from one of the best technical conferences that I've ever attended (in 1996, if I remember right) to one of the most vapid.

Admittedly, as the platform matures there are fewer wowie-zowie features to discuss, but most of this conference just rehashed the new features of Java 5 (formerly known as 1.5)-material that was covered last year in sessions that used the same slides as this year's sessions. You come away from a great conference knowing how to do new things and having lots of new ideas. I came away from this year's JavaOne ready for a vacation.

SD Times' editor-in-chief, Alan Zeichick, came up with an interesting characterization of the problem: The goal of a technical conference should be to educate, not to influence or persuade developers.

The context for Alan's comment was Microsoft's recent developer conferences, but his comment applies to JavaOne as well, which has developed a very Microsoft-like flavor of late. The main goal of this year's JavaOne seemed to be to convince attendees that Sun, and Java, were relevant. I don't need to be convinced that Java is relevant, but Sun's relevance is another issue.

The first JavaOne was so good because it was focused entirely on education, on learning to program in Java. I came away from the conference eager to apply what I had learned, and I had learned a lot.

I vividly remember a session on the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), for example, where the speaker analyzed the library in terms of the implemented design patterns and showed how the APIs fit into those patterns. The APIs were put into a context that allowed me to understand the whole library, including those APIs that were not discussed during this session. The talk, which didn't follow a rigid format, was packed with information. I came out of this session thoroughly understanding AWT and its architecture, and could immediately apply what I'd learned.

By contrast, this year I listened to somebody droning on for an hour about a list of APIs, with no attempt to describe the overall architecture and design considerations of the subsystem. Mix in a heavy-enough accent so that you understand only half the words, a pace so slow that it puts you to sleep and no real code examples, and you'll understand the depth to which the conference has fallen.

So, how to fix things?

First, Sun has to eliminate marketing sessions entirely. (It could start by eliminating the all-morning keynote addresses, which have degraded to feel-good propaganda sessions.) The session-selection criteria should be determined by programmers.

Sun should ask the user community, "What are you working on, and what programming problems are you encountering?" and then develop sessions to address those problems, to help programmers write programs. I don't want to be convinced that some technology is good. I want to learn something useful.

Next, pick the presenters carefully. Most sessions I attended were presented by people who were undoubtedly good engineers, but were lousy speakers and incompetent educators. Presenting technical material is a skill that takes serious practice to develop. Sun should either pick competent people from outside the organization to do its presenting (and pay them well-speakers at JavaOne currently are not paid at all), or it should train its own engineers to be good presenters.

Also, Sun forces presenters to create slides that conform to rigid templates and formulas. These formulas have to go. Speakers are required, for example, to talk about what they're going to talk about, talk about it, then talk about what they talked about. This formula is rarely followed by good educators. There's a difference between a "presentation" and a true classroom session.

Finally, lock the lawyers in a closet. I'm guessing that all presentations are reviewed by Sun's lawyers, who do their best to turn content into garbage.

Someone, for example, has decided that "Java" always must be used as an adjective, not a noun, to protect Sun's trademark. Imagine that instead of saying, "Things go better with Coke," you'd have to say, "Things go better with the Coca-ColaTMbrand beverage." This rule leads to ridiculous stuff like: "Building Peer-to-Peer Java Technology-Based Applications With JXTATMNetworking Technology," which isn't even English. What is a "technology-based" application anyway? And yes, that's a real class.

You get the idea. JavaOne was once a great conference. It could be great again. To get there, however, Sun needs to wrest the conference away from the marketing department and give it back to the engineers and educators.


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