The JavaOne Session Builder is now up and available for setting up your sessions. If you are not used to the JavaOne ritual, it is always a good idea to sign-up for sessions well in advance so you don’t get bumped out of the more popular ones. This also helps them fix the room allocation so popular talks get the right size room.

I put together my own schedule of all the JavaFX-related content I plan to attend, and published it on Google Calendar. It is also a pretty good guide to some of the top JavaFX content that is being featured at JavaOne this year. — Apologies to my fellow speakers with conflicting session slots. I wish I could be in multiple places at once, but even rich client technology is not that advanced — yet.

Note: Click for details — sessions I am actually giving are highlighted in green.

Also, for those of you brave enough to attempt to use the schedule builder, it is no simple feat. The UI is fairly convoluted, so getting your schedule tweaked to be just right takes a lot of time and experimentation. Fortunately, I did a lot of this work for you and have figured out the happy path through the system.

JavaOne Schedule Builder Happy Path:

1. Login to the system and go to the JavaOne Content Catalog
2. Setup your filters to get the sessions you want (if you are reading this, you probably want to search on “javafx”)
3. Click on the stars to pick the sessions you are interested in — this adds them to the “My interests” list
4. Finally, click on “Schedule My Interests” and follow the little wizard UI

Just about any other path through the system (scheduling by time, resolving conflicts as you add sessions, etc.) is fraught with peril, so be warned.

Enjoy, and I hope to see you at JavaOne!

This past weekend we held the very first OSCON JVM Languages Symposium.

This was truly a meeting of minds with a huge brain trust of language authors, JVM hackers, and professional developers tackling some of the biggest issues for the Java community at large.

I think we had a pretty good recipe for success that went something like this:

• We ate some yummy Voodoo Donuts
• (while discussing the impact of Java 7++ on JVM languages)
• Washed down our donut remains with some of Portland’s finest Stumptown coffee
• (while discussing JVM language interoperability)
• Had some tasty pizza and drinks on a private patio
• (while pontificating on JVM community dynamics)
• And then back for some more Voodoo Donuts…

As you can see, we took our work (and play) very seriously.

Thanks to our sponsors, Typesafe and OSCON, this event was entirely free to the participants.

The full proceedings of our event can be found below… given the success, I am looking forward to making this a long standing OSCON Java tradition!

OSCON JVM Language Proceedings

Conferences are expensive…  they assume you work for a stacked megacorporation that believes the fastest path to increasing their shareholder value is investing in your individual career training.  If your employer is not having a great year or has had a surge of resignations from last year’s crew of esteemed conference goers, chances are that you won’t be getting reimbursed to attend your local geek-fest.

Fortunately for you, I happen to know the inside secrets to enjoying all the conference perks at OSCON without handing over a single Benjamin.

Secret 1:  Conference pre-events are free and easily crashable!

Today I dropped in completely unexpectedly on the Community Leadership Summit today, and even after boldly announcing myself as a party crasher was awarded with a super-secret badge (a.k.a. index card w/sharpie etchings).  This gave full access to their sessions and let me attend the after-party for free drinks!

Tomorrow I am planning on crashing the free OSCON JVM Languages Symposium…  I hear they have some of Portland’s scariest pastries being brought in and might even be doing a free lunch outing thanks to their sponsor, Typesafe.

It helps that both of these events have an unbelievably high Rockstar to attendee ratio…  more on why this matters a little later.

Secret 2:  The best type of conference pass is the free type

There are 9! different OSCON passes available for you to choose from on the registration site.  While this is a bewildering array of options, but if you pay attention to the price it is quite an easy decision.  Click the “Register Now” button below and you are good to go:

Register now for a FREE Expo Hall Pass (use code EXPOPASS)

So what are you missing out on with an Expo Pass?  Well…  you can’t sit with the rest of the attendees and listen to a canned lecture, but you can hang out with your new Rockstar friends in the hallways.  Which takes us to Secret 3…

Secret 3:  Conference value = # of Rockstars / # of Attendess

This makes sense if you think about it…  if you were the only attendee, surrounded by a cluster of speakers and geniuses waiting to impart their knowledge on you, it would be infinitely valuable.  Most conferences you are one speck of sand in a huge pool of attendees vying for a little bit of wisdom to be imparted on your section of the audience.  The smaller the audience, the more chance you might actually get something of value out of the experience.

So what does this mean for the value you get from difference conference events?

• Keynote = 1 speaker to 1000 attendees:  Avoid this at all costs…  you can always get the highlights off twitter, so who cares.  [as you can see, my days as a conference chair are clearly numbered.  ]
• Technical Session = 1 speaker to 100 attendees:  This is slightly better, but still the odds are clearly against you!  [yes, and now my days as a speaker are coming to an end as well...  see if anyone invites me to give a technical talk again]
• Birds of a Feather Sessions = 1 speaker to 30 attendees:  A slightly better ratio, more focused, and absolutely free!
• Ignite = 30 speakers to 300 attendees:  Ignite talks are for the speaker grazer in all of us…  yeah, talk your heart out…  for 5 minutes.  If you haven’t impressed us in that amount of time, at 40 minute session will not change our opinion.  It also helps that this event is absolutely free!
• Unconference = 20 speakers to 100 attendees:  Now we are talking.  With this many technical gurus walking around you are virtually bound to learn something…  without even without trying!  This includes the JVM Languages Symposium and Community Leadership Summit, both of which are free!
• OSCON Hallways = 1 speaker to 1 attendee:  When you bump into Martin Odersky in the hallways after having had some good times over beer and pizza at the JVM Languages Symposium you are at a ratio where the real value comes in!  (and didn’t pay a dime to start the conversation)

If you were paying attention, you probably noticed an interesting relationship…  the most valuable parts of the conference were the parts that cost absolutely nothing to get into.  (don’t let your megacorp friends know about this, or all the wonderful corporate sponsorships that pay for all these extras might dry up!)

Secret 4:  Free stuff is the open source way

Open source is all about giving software out for free, right?  Well, maybe there is more to it than that, but there is still plenty of free conference stuff flying around that you can take advantage of with over 60 exhibitors waiting to hand you prizes just for the privilege of scanning your free badge!

Secret 5:  And parties galore!

While all those folks who paid for the high priced admission tickets may think they are special, the reality is that from a sponsor’s point of view, their eyeball is worth exactly the same as yours.  This means that you have an equal opportunity to take advantage of the most important part of any conference experience…  the parties!

Here are some of the free events that you won’t want to miss out on:

• Opening Reception – Grab a drink and mingling with exhibitors and fellow attendees
• OSCON Carnival – Join us for food, drinks, entertainment, and lots of good old fashioned fun
• Puppet Labs Party at their headquarters in Portland’s Pearl District.
• OpenStack Party – Join OpenStack for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at the Spirit of 77
• Surprise Attendee Event on Wednesday evening (sorry, we can’t tell you anything else about this event because it’s a secret)
• Booth Crawl where you can quench your thirst with vendor-hosted libations and snacks while you check out all the cool stuff in the expo hall.
• Media Temple Party at the Jupiter Hotel with open bar, music, and all you can eat tacos!

Final Secret:  Everyone can be a Rockstar

What makes the difference between a Rockstar speaker and an attendee?  Just the drive to do something with technology and be proud of it.  You can be an open-source contributor, user group leader, and technical speaker if you simply apply the skills you already have to the benefit of the community.  Don’t expect to get paid much, but at least it is a really easy way to get invited to conferences around the world.

—-

While this article is all meant in good humor, on a serious note I want to thank the O’Reilly folks for putting on OSCON, offering discounted expo tickets, and compiling this great list of free events.

OSCON Java is a new conference that I am helping to kick off as co-chair this July.  While there are plenty of conferences out there that you could attend, I am confident that this is the one you won’t want to miss.

To celebrate the Java 7 release, I put together 7 reasons why you should attend OSCON Java.  Also, make sure to use the 20% discount code of “OS11COM” when you register:

1. Come Celebrate the First New Java Release in Half a Decade!

The last major release of Java was Java 6, which came out 5 years ago on December 11, 2006. After only a year of the Sun acquisition, Oracle has already made a major Java release happen with another scheduled in a year’s time.

We have broad coverage of the Java 7 release with a keynote and technical session by Joe Darcy, and technical sessions on OpenJDK and Coin by Dalibor Topic and Stuart Marks. I have been pretty impressed with Stuart’s coverage of topics from a developer’s perspective and am looking forward to his talk myself.

2. Because Google Matters

Regardless of what you think about the Android lawsuit, I think the biggest detriment has been the lack of good content on Google technologies at Java conferences. We are an independent conference, so it allows us to bring content that you would otherwise not find, such as an exclusive keynote from Joshua Bloch and several mobile Android sessions to help you leverage your Java skills on modern devices.

3. You Think JVM Languages are Cool

It has been said that the crown jewel of the Java platform is the JVM, not the language. Java 7 has further solidified this with better support for dynamic languages. Come find out what is the latest and greatest on the alternative language front with a keynote and some meaty sessions from Martin Odersky, deep technical sessions on Groovy, Clojure, Scala, and other languages, and some bytecode hacking with Charles Nutter.

4. And You Wouldn’t Mind Hanging out with JVM language Authors for a Day…

On the Sunday before OSCON we are organizing a free JVM Languages Symposium that many of the speakers will be attending.  This is a great opportunity to hang out with JVM language authors and the movers and shakers in the industry in an informal unconference atmosphere.  Events like this are what I believe sets apart community-driven conferences from large corporate events, and provide a lot more value to the attendees than simply one-way content.  If you happen to be in the Portland area, you can drop by for this free event with no obligation to stay for OSCON.

5. Your Boss Won’t Let You Fly to Belgium

I travel to speak at different conferences around the world and I would have to say that the golden standard for Java conferences is Devoxx. They have an amazing venue — it is great to see your slides on a huge movie screen, and relaxing for attendees to take it in from nice, plush seats. They attract an international audience… not only Belgium, but Italy, France, Germany, and citizens of many of the other surrounding countries consider Devoxx their home conference. Even though Devoxx is a wildly successful conference, they still have a small-conference feel, run by a very tight knit conference committee that acts more like a user group than an organization. This makes the entire conference experience much more personalized.

OSCON Java has a lot of similarities with Devoxx. It has a small, enthusiastic program committee with folks who really care about Java technologies. We are also following the Devoxx model of recording and posting talks online afterwards, so even if you miss a great talk because you are in the room next door, you can always watch it online later. Finally, since we are an independent conference, you get the full experience of Java, Android, and other technologies that you would otherwise have to go to multiple conferences to see.

6. OSCON is a Pretty Sweet Conference as Well…

The O’Reilly OSCON conference has been underrepresented in the Java community, but is a pretty huge event in its own right.  They have some amazing content around emerging languages and mobile platforms.  Plus, you can get OSCON, OSCON Java, and OSCON Data all wrapped up in one neat package with the OSCON Superpass.

7. There is Only One Inaugural Year!

This is our first year putting on OSCON Java, so we are pulling out all the stops with the best speakers, tutorials, content, and events.  You will have a unique opportunity to participate in the creation of a new Java tradition, and a decade from now can brag to your friends about being a founding attendee of the biggest open-source Java conference in the world.

It is pretty easy to get lost in the media hype around the Java events of the past year.  If you follow the headlines, you might believe that all the Java talent left Oracle in a mass exodus, Larry hates open source, or Java is turning into the next COBOL.  Regardless of the factual correctness of these headlines, the Java ecosystem is about more than a single company or set of individuals.  Java has the largest open-source community of any language in existence!

So how big is Java and open-source?  Here is an informal search poll of some of the most popular open-source project hosting providers:

The data for this chart comes from the top six open-source hosting providers using Google Search as a metric for gauging activity level for each of the platforms.  As you can see, Java is still the most active open-source platform in the world, followed closely by PHP and Python.  While not an indicator of language popularity, Bill Gates has gone on record speaking out against open source, so the poor representation from the C# community is not surprising.

This takes us to OSCON Java, which is a new conference I am helping to kick off as conference co-chair together with Laurel Ruma.  It is colocated with OSCON in Portland, Oregon, but is exclusively focused on Java and open source.  O’Reilly is the conference organizer, but they are very neutral when it comes to corporations and technologies.  This allows us to reach out to a wide variety of Java technology players including Apache, Google, Adobe, Oracle, the JCP, and many others.

We have big plans for the OSCON Java keynotes, technical content, and exhibitors.  Also, we are working on making this a model conference from the get-go based on my experience attending and speaking at premier conference venues across the world.  Expect a huge focus on community outreach, a lot of interaction between speakers and attendees, and a particular focus on the JVM languages of tomorrow.

If you are interested in participating as a speaker, it is still not too late to submit a talk.  The CFP ends on March 28th (4 days!), so you still have time to submit a last minute talk:

http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/cfp/159

If you have a great idea, but can’t get your talk together in time or miss the deadline by a few days, shoot me an e-mail via the contact form on my blog.

I look forward to seeing you at OSCON Java, uniting the Java open-source community towards a brighter future!

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at the Chennai Java User Group during my trip to India.  I was expecting a small group of very devoted Java fans; however, I was surprised to walk into a room of over 200 developers eager to learn about JavaFX 2.0.  The venue was very impressive with rows of workstations that we later used for a lab, as well as plenty of seating.

Chennai User Group Venue at Tenth Planet

Also, Raj was a great host, and both he and the folks at Tenth Planet went completely over the top with this event.  This included:

• A life-size poster with the event details
• An ornamental flower arrangement with the event details
• Two gifts presented at the conclusion of the talk

Life-Size Event Poster

The session ran from 10AM through 4:30PM with a break for lunch in the middle.  When half the hands went up for returning after lunch, I didn’t believe most of them would be back, but we easily had 60% of the folks back in their seats by the time we were ready to start.

If you are interested to see the slides from the talk, you can find them on Slideshare here:

Thanks again to the folks in the Chennai JUG for being great hosts!

The folks at Marakana did a great job hosting the recent Flash Android event, as well as recording and publishing the talk. As a fellow user group leader, I can appreciate the hard work that went into preparing the video, including some fine editing and splicing by Max Walker (the presentation was not as flawless as he made it look!)

You can view the talk on the Marakana website, or here as an embedded video:

All the slides for the talk can be found on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/steveonjava/beginning-android-flash-development

Flash Capability Reporter

Also, as promised I am going to start posting different samples from the book. The first of these is the Flash Capability Reporter. It is a simple application that displays your device characteristics in a scrolling text field.  Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the Capability Reporter in action.

Figure 1. Flash Capability Reporter running on the desktop

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my coauthors on the upcoming Pro Android Flash title, Oswald Campesato, and I had the pleasure of speaking to the San Francisco Android User Group.  It was a packed audience with around 150 eager Android developers who wanted to hear how they could use Flash on their devices (they were a great audience).  Here is what some of them had to say about the meetup:

• 
  Alec Dara-Abrams

  Stephen and Oswald gave a very good over view of Flash development on Android. Like a number of other SF Android speakers, packing the hour or so with the right level of technical detail. Thanks to them also for being responsive to audience questions – not so easy I’d guess with 100+ people out there past the lighting for the video. I’m looking forward to following Stephen’s blog.

• 
  Drew Dara-Abrams

  Stephen and Oswald gave a good overview of the current state of Flash on Android. Unfortunately the Adobe tools and their book won’t be out until spring, but I appreciated all the working examples of code that Stephen demonstrated. I’ll definitely look for their book when it comes out.

• 
  Francisco Carretero

  Looks like an incredibly useful topic for android for giving android that push to the next level.

As I promised folks in the audience, here is a copy of the full presentation.  Lots of this information was added very recently from different chapters in our book, so it is definitely the latest and greatest source of information on what you can do with Flash on mobile devices:

I will be posting examples from the book on this blog over the next few weeks.  Please follow my blog if you are interested to see the latest examples of Flash Android capabilities.

I did my JavaFX Alternative Languages talk at Devoxx and will soon be presenting it at JavaOne Brazil (December 7-9th).

During the Devoxx talk I was honored to have Martin Odersky in the audience (for those of you who don’t know him, Martin is the man behind Generic Java and now Scala).  There were several great questions at the end of the talk, one posed by Martin himself.

The question was around this Scala code fragment:

def timeline = new Timeline {
  repeatCount = INDEFINITE
  autoReverse = true
  keyFrames = List(
    new KeyFrame(50) {
      values = List(
        new KeyValue(rect1.x() -> 300),
        new KeyValue(rect2.y() -> 500),
        new KeyValue(rect2.width() -> 150)
      )
    }
  )
}

He was wondering why I had the extra parenthesis after the variables (x, y, and width).  In Scala using parenthesis is optional for methods and allowed for variables, so it appears to be a style issue.  However, there is a good reason for this.

The current JavaFX property model has 4 helper methods for each variable:

• int getX() – Standard JavaBeans getter function for the property x.
• setX(int x) – Standard JavaBeans setter function for the property x.
• static PropertyReference X() – A static function that returns a property reference for x that can be used to refer to this field.
• ValueBinding x() – A member function that returns a mutable reference to x that can be used to get or set the value dynamically.

So the extra parenthesis were to differentiate between a normal method call (“x”) and a ValueBinding (“x()”).

By popular demand at the earlier SvJugFx Event, I also added in some new content demonstrating usage of the Fantom language for coding JavaFX. Besides being extremely easy to create DSLs in, it also has a built-in Duration operator, making the end result extremely similar to the equivalent JavaFX Script:

Here is the full talk on alternative languages with all the updates for the latest conceptual JavaFX 2.0 APIs:

If you are going to be at JavaOne Brazil, please drop me a line and I will be happy to meet up and chat about JavaFX futures.

We did a double header meeting in the North and South bay to kick off the Flash On group. It was a lot of work to coordinate and present back-to-back meetings, but it all came together. A big thanks to my co-presenter Oswald Campesator, my co-coordinators Keith Sutton and Justin Webb, and also, Nick Turner, from Plug and Play’s Mobile Meetup, who did an outstanding job on Thursday evening.

Here is what some of our new members had to say:
Tony Constantinides
“ Great meetup and very informative. Many good issues were raised at the meeting by developers which will lead to a followup meetup which will be hands-on hopefully. With Mobile nothing beats hands on with the fun devices! The possibilities of Android development with TV, tablets and mobile seem endless! ”

Drew Dara-Abrams
“ A useful introductory presentation and discussion. The mix of formal presentation and informal question and discussion worked well. ”

.

Aaron Tong
“ This was a great meetup! Lets have more of the same! ”

.

As promised, here is the presentation that Oswald and I gave (skip to page 30 for the links):

If you haven’t already, sign up for the Flash On meetup group to get informed of upcoming events:
http://www.meetup.com/flashon/