JavaOne was fun...

Tuesday September 28, 2010

...in a twisted way. I didn't attend any of the sessions, I just wandered around in an obnoxious t-shirt. JavaOne attendees were friendly and chatty. OpenWorld attendees were confused. Oracle employees behaved like there was an invisible force field around me: they did their best to keep their distance. I didn't run into anyone else wearing one of the shirts, but I talked to lots who said they had them but couldn't bring themselves to wear them. Apparently one exhibitor had a box of "Just Free It" shirts that they started to give away at their booth, until the thought police descended. Mostly I went to bars and receptions and had chats with reporters. Lots of entertaining conversations.

Most of the folks I talked to who attended the keynotes were struck by how little of substance was said by anyone. The LPOD's 180º turn on the topic of cloud's was pretty amusing. The generally wooden presentation style of most of the senior executives was also amusing. Several folks commented on the body language of the audience. Mostly apathetic, but for Mark Hurd's talk, it was pretty tense.

At one point I was chatting with a crowd of folks from HP. Their general consensus was "Oracle's gain is our gain" :-) He's famous for over-the-top cost cutting. One person I know well worked in the HP HQ building, where Hurd's office was. Like most offices, they had break rooms sprinkled around the buildings with coffee machines in them. He discontinued the coffee service, but he didn't just set the coffee supply budget to zero: plumbers actually came out and removed the coffee machines and the plumbing to them (which had to be expensive). This caused all employees to have to hike over to the cafeteria whenever they needed a cup of coffee. Huge loss in productivity. Nutty. One of the formerly Sun, now Oracle, folks asked roughly "Larry hired Hurd, saying that fudging his expense report wasn't grounds for dismissal; does that mean that all Oracle employees now have permission to fudge their expense reports?".

One of the more entertaining lines I heard was at a cocktail party held by some 3rd party partners. "We love the Oracle sales force!" (what?? surprised look on my face) "They're so nasty, their prices are so high, and their tactics so obnoxious that all we have to do is be credible and treat the customer with respect - then the deal is ours!". Yow.

Comments[13]

Comments:

This was the first JavaOne I missed in perhaps ten years (my memories of J1 are a bit blurred, for reasons that escape me at the moment :-) Perhaps I didn't miss the last JavaOne conference; one could argue it was held last year :-( Afterall, there were no no "see you next year" signs in Moscone then.

Posted by Ron Ten-Hove on September 28, 2010 at 02:32 PM PDT #

Sadly I did not see you when rushing between the sessions... As lucky we all JavaOne attendees where to not be allowed to attend Larry Ellison's opening keynote at the Moscone Center and had something to eat and drink instead! It was quite boring listening over one hour for one box of hardware. You and the Java-Spirit with it where missing there :-( At least the sessions that I have attended where good and very helpful.

Posted by Patrick Reinhart on September 28, 2010 at 02:34 PM PDT #

Hi, Let me start by saying that this comment is not directly related to the blogpost it's attached to, yet I'm hoping what I have to say might still interest you and I just don't know how else to contact you directly. My name is Erlend, and I am a manager with the jMonkeyEngine project; a 3D game development suite written entirely in Java. See jmonkeyengine.com - and .org I would like to share a piece of news that I sincerely hope you will find intriguing: http://jmonkeyengine.org/2010/09/24/jmonkeyengine-is-a-finalist-in-packtpub-say-what/ Bottom line is, if we manage to climb up on the top3 podium, that would be a major breakthrough. Considering the amount of Java developers out there, we can't help but feel like a disproportionate amount of people are plain unaware of our existence. Wordcount! So, bluntly put: #1 - Mention jME’s nomination? #2 - Places to promote jME? I hope your freely contemplative state is treating you well, and I wish you all the best. Best regards, ~ Erlend Sogge Heggen

Posted by Erlend Sogge Heggen on September 28, 2010 at 03:03 PM PDT #

Hi, Let me start by saying that this comment is not directly related to the blogpost it's attached to, yet I'm hoping what I have to say might still interest you and I just don't know how else to contact you directly. My name is Erlend, and I am a manager with the jMonkeyEngine project; a 3D game development suite written entirely in Java. See jmonkeyengine.com - and .org I would like to share a piece of news that I sincerely hope you will find intriguing: http://t.co/G3Gam6u Bottom line is, if we manage to climb up on the top3 podium, that would be a major breakthrough. Considering the amount of Java developers out there, we can't help but feel like a disproportionate amount of people are plain unaware of our existence. Agh, wordcount! So, bluntly put: #1 - Mention jME’s nomination? #2 - Places to promote jME? I hope your freely contemplative state is treating you well, and I wish you all the best. Best regards, ~ Erlend Sogge Heggen

Posted by Erlend Sogge Heggen on September 28, 2010 at 03:05 PM PDT #

Java has provided for me since '95, a big Thank You! Somehow it was a victim of it's own success. The race to add new APIs led to neglect on bug fixing. The new APIs appeared, and then froze in time. As a result, today we have to deal with flash, where applets should be. SWT where AWT should be. JOGL where 3D should have been, and don't get me started on date handling, logging, webstart, FX, caching and JS when Java should now be the language of the browser. It's sad that it came to such an end, but maybe it's a sign to start again. I think the key to moving forward is not necessarily an open source Java, but firstly the complete world wide abolishment of software patents. Otherwise these battles can never be truly won.

Posted by Peter on September 29, 2010 at 12:48 AM PDT #

I've still got the shirt from the 1995 Solaris Network Developers conference, sometimes known as Java Zero. I should have worn that.

Posted by Scott on September 29, 2010 at 02:52 PM PDT #

You actually attended JavaOne? Really?

Posted by Jon on September 29, 2010 at 03:27 PM PDT #

Hello, my English is poor, but I want to say, I love JAVA, JAVA gave me confidence, gave me dignity, I consider him as life, if you will be back to my mail, can communicate with me, I think this is my idol, who ever. --

Posted by WuXuwen on September 30, 2010 at 01:15 AM PDT #

It's sad when politics takes over from common sense!

Posted by James Gosling on September 30, 2010 at 02:41 AM PDT #

Thanks for your contribution James. As a software employee from Sun, thought that at last the Oracle thing would mean an end to boring endless hardware slideware... how wrong I was, Oracle is now being infused with the "iron-spirit on steroids"... but it seems they are prone to do different mistakes from what we did at Sun in the past. About credibility: a few months ago, when we still operated as separate companies, we went to a customer and told them sincerely: "we don't know which products will survive, we cannot assure that, but whatever you choose we will back your decision". Customer said: "Oracle sales people were here yesterday and they swore they were discontinuing all Sun products. We don't like that style of doing business, to be safe we'll do the project with Oracle products, but from now on we don't want to see an Oracle sales rep in our premises, we only want to see Sun sales reps and Sun PS people deploying the project...". More or less the same that the third parties told you about Oracle sales expressed with a real sample.

Posted by Jerry on September 30, 2010 at 02:52 AM PDT #

I like all movie incarnations of the Body Snatchers, I also love the original novel. I think I know what you meant by attaching the movie poster to your blog. I felt like that when I was working for the United Nations... Thanks to Oracle, Java has become so incorporated, we won't see any new "cool" and "great" things being done with it from now on. It will be all about business and shareholder value. James, you and the other Java engineers have done great things. But I think it's time to let go and move on.

Posted by Winfried Maus on October 02, 2010 at 06:15 AM PDT #

Mr.James, i would like to see you in a new track with those good people left from Oracle. You all guys can join together and start a new company. New innovaitons, new technologies. I am with you. It is does not matter how many people coming with. Mater is If you are there it is great for innovation. :)

Posted by Prince Roy on October 02, 2010 at 11:22 AM PDT #

Mr. James, this is my first time visiting your blog and i'd just like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your work with the Java Language. Secondly, i've always been curious about the Java logo - the black and white triangle, called Duke, i believe. What exactly is he and how did his design come about?

Posted by W.K. on October 02, 2010 at 11:42 AM PDT #

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