JavaOne Conference - San Francisco
Author: Matsobane Khwinana - Senior Java Developer
#TheTimeHasCome...
Java One conference has finally arrived, and I am attending the conference for the first time this year. The conference is hosted in San Francisco, California, USA. I will be writing on this blog daily, on all my learnings at the conference.#ABitOfHistoryAboutJavaOneConference...
JavaOne is an annual conference inaugurated in 1996 by Sun Microsystems to discuss Java technologies, primarily among Java developers. JavaOne is held in San Francisco, California typically running from Monday to Thursday. Technical sessions on a variety of topics are held during the day. In the evening, Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions are held. BOF sessions allow people to focus on a particular aspect of Java technology [1]. Since the take over of Sun Microsystems by Oracle, now the conference is held alongside the the Oracle Openworld conference. The conference now runs from Sunday to Thursday.
With the conference being hosted in San Francisco, this meant I had to travel to USA for the first time; and I did this with Phillip Kruger, what a pleasure! It was an exciting trip; Phillip constantly reminded me of any itinerary that we had to do in preparation for the conference and the trip, ensuring that we are doing everything on time. This started from preparing documentation for the Visa application, back in May, to booking the best flight seats online, to booking the sessions for the conference ahead of everyone; I am certain that we were first on every itinerary by far. The trip was tiring - 8 hours from OR Tambo International airport (Phillip paid for our stay at Bidvest Lounge) to Dubai International airport, 3 hours of waiting for the connecting flight (Phillip bought us the wonderful breakfast a.k.a Heineken beers at the Heineken Lounge - Dubai) and finally the long 16 hours to California.The flight flew over the top of the world (North Pole), I finally believe that the world is round. After landing at the San Francisco airport, we waited for an hour to get our luggage and boarded a train to our hotel. The friendly hotel receptionist gladly welcomed us and told us that she visited South Africa a couple of times including the Pretoria northern township of Soshanguve.
#TouringSanFrancisco...
Saturday morning we headed to Pier 33 using the famous San Francisco tram, here we took a ferry to the Alcatraz prison. I must say that I knew nothing about the prison or Al Capone, I am glad we came. We had a nice audio guide of the prison and headed back to the shore. We then walked to Pier 39 a.k.a the Fisherman's Wharf, what a place - here we watched a "delayed live" game between Springboks and All Blacks at a sports bar named Players. I ate giant chicken wings, really, there were big. After the game we hopped into the open city tour bus and toured the city including the famous Golden Gate bridge.
#TheConferenceRegistrations...
After the city touring we ended our Saturday by going to Hilton Hotel for the conference registrations. Here we received the conference pack - awesome name tags with Oracle certification status at the bottom, JavaOne flask, JavaOne backpack, white JavaOne T-shirt, a pen and a note book.
#MyObjectivesForTheConference...
To learn the new Java languages features from the creators of the language in order to improve the coding efficiency for my everyday application development. I will try to take in as much as possible and mingle amongst the Java language experts and network, in order enhance my Java skills therefore increasing development productivity.
#DayByDay
Expect daily updates on the content covered the previous day. I will add new links on daily basis. Below are the links:
