This year, I went to San Francisco to attend JavaOne. In general it was great and I'll try to go back next year.
Technologically, it was rewarding enough to meet people. Most of the topics were not a surprise for me and my colleague. EJB 3.0, Tiger or Java 5.o (Formerly known as Java 1.5), J2EE 5.0 (Formerly known as J2EE 1.5), JavaServer Faces (JSF) and mobile application development in general were hot topics. I overheard people talking in the internal book shop that, according to the sales figures, the best sold book was a Java gaming book. I guess people are now back home, developing wireless games in their garages.
The Siemen's Java on BMW demo was really cool. Actually I was much more attracted by the car. Java, Perl or COBOL, I wouldn't care if I could get one of those new 6 series.
It was more than unusual to stay until midnight for geeky discussions. The BOF sessions were great but without coffee, the average developer just doesn't go far.
I have a few complaints though. First thing is the "coffee". I was extremely annoyed to pay $3.00 for a cup of coffee, during the day, which I think has to be something complementary after having paid a good sum to attend the conferences. The worst was during the evening sessions. There was no coffee. None at all. How do you want to survive a techy session after midnight without coffee. Please tell me! The food wasn't great either. There could be more updating boards for cancellations and changes.
In 2002, I attended the Microsoft TechEd in Barcelona. I have to admit that TechEd's non-technical organization was better than JavaOne, especially in terms of catering.
I found the exposition area big enough, however according to what I hear from the community, it wasn't as good as the previous years. Well, I didn't run after the free t-shirts or regular freebies mainly because I was busy with attending the conferences.
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