JavaOne is amazing, exhausting, a brain-overload, and a huge nerdfest. I’m loving every minute of it.

This is the first real chance I’ve had to stop and compose my thoughts. Some impressions so far:
– there are a ton of people here (and by “people” I mean 98% men), somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000.
– even with all the people, things are fairly well organized. There are still line-ups for everything (especially the guys washrooms), but they all move quickly. Everyone’s conference badge has an RFID tag that they scan at the door to sessions to ensure you’ve pre-enrolled. This ensures people who enroll get a seat and popular sessions can be moved to bigger rooms ahead of time.
– I spent 14 hours listening to talks yesterday, and it was too much. I woke up at 6:30, was at the conferenced center at 7:30 for breakfast, the keynote started at 8:30, and from then until 10:00 I never had more then a 20 minute break between sessions.
– the food is decent – bagels, muffins, and fruit for breakfast and sandwiches, fruit, salad, and a brownie for lunch. Although it was the same today as yesterday, so it’s already getting old.
– there’s a big environmental focus. They cut down on printing and what is printed uses FSC certified paper with soy-based inks. They have sensors everywhere monitoring power usage, CO2 emissions, and the movement of people around the conference center. All of the lunch waste is composted, including the cutlery, cups, and containers all the food comes in. All the garabage cans have recycling and composting bins next to them. I haven’t seen any bottled water.
– I’ve picked up lots of free swag- a backpack, t-shirts, a hat, a slinky, lots of pens, cloth bags, and a Duke doll.
– I run into Chris Pope a lot. We just had dinner together. It’s good knowing people, especially at dinner time.
– I’m learning lots, and I’m very excited about Java programming. Can’t wait to dig into the Platform Java Server code when I get back to work.

I’ll write more later and upload my pictures when I get back to Vancouver.