The ServerSide Java Symposium 2010 Recap

20 March 2010

I'm in my hotel room thinking about the last 3 days here at The ServerSide Java Symposium. I've had a fantastic time. I gave and/or participated in two talks: one was a talk on jBPM and Spring, the other was participation (representing Spring Integration) in a panel with Jeff Genender (representing ServiceMix) and Ross Mason (representing Mule) on ESBs. I enjoyed that process and enjoyed talking to Jeff and Ross gentlemen to the last. The 400+ people in the audience were invigorating too. Im pretty sure anybody would tell you this year was a welcome, marked improvement over previous years, especially in attendance numbers. It also heralded the introduction of a new editorial lineup, with Cameron Mckenzie taking the lead-editors position. Hes got his work cut out for him, but Im confident hes up to the task.

Rod Johnson gave a "zepo" (zero-powerpoint) Spring / Roo keynote, which was very impressive until it seemed to have failed him at the end. A post mortem revealed that the demo was fine, just a simple error. It was interesting to note that he misplaced his wedding ring and still gave a 99% performance without slides in front of 400+ people! Well done! Spring Roo seemed to garner a lot of attention from the audience and the Twitterati. Matt Raible and James Wards talk on Flex vs. GWT was fun, as expected. Jeff Genender and Keath Hesler both turned in good talks on ServiceMix. Ted Neward and Scott Davis gave their talks to great reception, as usual. Finally, my old friends Reza Rahman, Kito Mann, etc., did very well too. I missed some of the JBoss crowd (Emmanuel Bernard and Dan Allen, notably) this year, however.

It was nice meeting James Gosling, too. Can't help but feel a little in-awe. The final treat was partaking in the festivities, libations, etc., with my colleagues at Shopzilla. Tim Morrow, Senior Architect at Shopzilla, gave a very well received talk about the scale story at Shopzilla.