May 31 2008

JavaOne 2008

Category: ConferencesOren Hurvitz @ 9:43 pm

I was at JavaOne 2008 this month. I attended mostly server-related sessions, with a few J2SE and J2ME presentations thrown in to see how the other half lives. This is my photo report.

Moscone Center

Moscone Center

JavaOne is held at Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.

Crowd
It was crowded!

Lines
People queued up outside the rooms until they were allowed to enter (about ten minutes before the session’s start time). This was surprisingly well-organized: Moscone Center staff stood outside the rooms with large signs containing the room’s number and made sure everyone stood in the right line. The Esplanade was especially crowded, so the staff took to standing at the end of the line, holding up their sign and shouting their room number every few seconds.

Hang space
There was a space with bean bags and video games, which is apparently de rigeur in any geek gathering these days.

Bathroom queue
Men outnumbered women at least 15:1. This led to an unlikely scene.

General Session
The General Sessions were held in a huge auditorium.

Book and music
The regular sessions were in smaller rooms. This guy utilized the time before the session to the fullest.

Smash Mouth concert

Smash Mouth concert

On Thursday night there was a Smash Mouth concert in the adjacent Yerba Buena Gardens.

Vringo BOF Session

Vringo BOF Session

My company, Vringo, presented a BOF called Real-World Challenges in Signing Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME Platform) Applications. The reason the title is so unwieldy is that Sun enthusiastically replaced the text in all the presentations with the One True Marketing Terminology. This turned a simple title such as “Real-World Challenges in Signing J2ME Applications” into the monstrosity above.

This photo shows our CTO, David Goldfarb (right), and mobile developer Chaim Kutnicki (left).


May 30 2008

Glengarry Glen Ross

Category: Fun,MetaOren Hurvitz @ 12:10 am

The movie Glengarry Glen Ross is about a group of sleazy real-estate salesmen and their desperate attempts to hoodwink reluctant customers and one-up each other. It was adapted from David Mamet’s award-winning play of the same name. The movie contains a memorable scene where Alec Baldwin, as the representative of the head office, tells the salesmen that they must win a sales contest in order to keep their job.

According to Baldwin, the following things are reserved for Closers (salesmen that close deals):

  • Coffee
  • The Glengarry Glen Ross leads
  • Their job

I will add a fourth item to this list:

  • Cookies

Especially the kind with lots of chocolate chips.