3350 attendees from 40 countries lived in "paradise" for 5 days last week. This paradise had 170+ rock star speakers delivering 200+ hours of technical content in about 150 sessions. And it truly was a paradise with a clear differentiation from other Java conferences.

There were several Oracle speakers at the paradise covering the entire gamut of Java platform. I delivered a Java EE 6 hands-on lab (new content), showcased Java EE 7 and GlassFish 4.0 early work at the keynote, and participated in a panel to talk about Contexts and Dependency Injection.

The demo in the keynote showed how to deploy a Java EE application in a managed environment. The demo showed a Conference Planner application that can be used by conference organizers to display sessions, tracks, and speaker information. This same application can be deployed and display data from JavaOne 2011 or Devoxx 2011 based upon the SQL chosen for database initialization.

If javaone-sf-2011.sql is chosen for datbase initialization then the application looks like as shown:




If devoxx-2011.sql is chosen then the application looks like as shown:



And of course, clicking on Tracks, Speakers, Sessions shows you information from the respective conference.

The complete source code for the application and detailed instructions are availaable at glassfish.org/javaone2011. In short:

• Download the sample app and unzip
• Download GlassFish build b05.
• Download platform-specific Load Balancer template
• Run "bin/install.sh" to configure GlassFish
• Pick javaone-sf-2011.sql or devoxx-2011.sql for database initialization
  

You can also watch the application in action in this video:




A breaking news shared at the conference was that Devoxx France is coming from April 18- 20 and 75% of the talks will be in French. Stay tuned for more details on that. I'm sure Antonio and gang will put up a great show out there!

Just a tip for the first timers to Devoxx ...

• A bus leaves from Brussels airport to Antwerp city center between 4am - 11pm at the top of every hour, takes about 45 minutes, and costs 10 euros (only cash).
• Take a tram #6 (going towards Luchtbal) from Astrid station (next to the city center) and get off at the last station for Metropolis. It takes about 15 minutes. Purchase a day pass at the station using kiosks (much cheaper) or you can buy in the bus as well (about double the price). Either way, cash only.
  

Here are a few pictures captured from the event:


And the complete album here:



Thank you Stephan for giving me an opportunity to speak at my first Devoxx. I hope to be back next year, just in time for Java EE 7 going final!