2010 brought a huge transition to JavaOne, as it morphed from its own event in the Moscone Center under the auspices of Sun to a satellite event of Oracle Open World, relegated to a rabbit warren of hotels around Union Square. Despite all the resulting downsides, we had a good show, as we got to engage with what became new customers and help them quickly solve their interoperability pain.

This year, the downsides have tipped the scale, and we decided to pull out. This decision wasn’t taken lightly — backing out of a commitment is a serious, angst-raising business around here. It wasn’t any single thing, but a whole lot of small things that pushed us away.

We don’t wish to sound snarky or petty, but little things matter, a lot. Despite signing on the dotted line to exhibit in 2011 at the 2010 show, we, like the rest of the world, were left in the dark to interpret bits of speculation in the media about whether JavaOne 2011 would even happen.  When it was announced last April, we were left to discover the news on the web — somehow we’d fallen off of the exhibitor email distribution list, and we stayed off.  When we finally woke up and realized what had happened, it was too late — the desirable hotels were booked, and the stress level of trying to get the team into decent housing was the final straw. This was on top of the hay pile of stuff we experienced last year. No media services: the media room was way off in the bowels of the Moscone Center, journalists and analysts either couldn’t find us or couldn’t fit the 15 minute trek uphill into their crowded schedules.

Other downsides weren’t exclusive to us, they impact all attendees. Relegating JavaOne to the outskirts of Oracle Open World forces it to be a bastard step-child — there’s no way a show of what’s now reduced to 3000 attendees can get the attention it deserves while competing for resources against a 40,000 attendee show. Many services, like extended registration hours and evening events, are that 15-minute walk away. The physical location is a rabbit warren – making both sessions and the exhibit floor difficult to find, so everyone struggles just to figure out where they are going. Gone are the chance confabs in the hall. Gone is the ability to walk up to anyone at the party and ask “so, what do you think?”, as in all probability are they are attending a very different event. We maintain that the Java community deserves better.

Finally, we recognize that we embarked upon a costly experiment some years ago. Would spending our resources and our time on trade shows be fruitful? It’s a tough and rather subjective thing to measure. In retrospect it was probably the right decision. But times have changed, and we now need to experiment with other ways to engage. Look for us in other venues in the coming months and quarters. If you have a preferred way of interacting, we’re all ears!

So, farewell JavaOne. We wish you, and the Java community, much success.

Addendum: Wayne Citrin, our CTO, will be wandering the halls the first two days. Give him a shout at @waynecitrin if you’d like to hook up.

We’ve also posted the slides  on the Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne On Demand site: http://openworld.vportal.net. You’ll need to log in and then visit http://openworld.vportal.net/?profile=23108&show=presentations.

The synopsis:

Cross-platform transactions between enterprise Java and .NET should be easy, right?  After all, both platforms have implemented the same specification.  How hard can it be? This session will attempt to answer that question by providing an in depth look at distributed transactions including implementations in enterprise Java and .NET.  Technologies that provide cross-platform transactions will be demoed providing a look at code from examples using  WS-AT/WS-Coor and direct bridging using a shared-memory JVM-to-CLR implementation. In closing, the session will discuss performance benchmarking, “gotchas�, tips and tricks and the move towards eXtreme Transaction Processing and what that means for current Java EE and .NET based technologies.

The first talk is part of the “Unconference”:
Interoperability issues in the cloud… and how to solve them
1PM Tuesday 9/21
Hotel Parc 55 – Lombard Room

The second talk is session ID: S314687
Bridging Transactions from Java EE to .NET
2:15PM Wednesday 9/22
Hilton – Continental Parlor 1/2/3

And of course we’ll be hanging out in booth 5409. We’re also prepping some cool new demos to show off! Check our news on Monday for details.

Hope to see you there!

Title: Bridging Transactions from Java EE to .NET

Abstract: Cross-platform transactions between enterprise Java and .NET should be easy, right? After all, both platforms have implemented the same specification. How hard can it be? This session will attempt to answer that question by providing an in depth look at distributed transactions including implementations in enterprise Java and .NET. Technologies that provide cross-platform transactions will be demoed providing a look at code from examples using WS-AT/WS-Coor and direct bridging using a shared-memory JVM-to-CLR implementation. In closing, the session will discuss performance benchmarking, “gotchas�, tips and tricks and the move towards eXtreme Transaction Processing and what that means for current Java EE and .NET based technologies.

• Embed WPF components and controls directly into Java applications that are written in Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), or Swing.
• Embed Java Graphical User Interface (GUI) widgets and controls written in AWT or Swing directly into WPF applications.

Are you at Tech-Ed this week? Come see a demo in booth 644.

The BOF session will happen on Tuesday, May 12, at 8:30AM-9:45AM PDT.  The room will be published in the program or on the conference Web site as the conference gets closer.

We hope to see you there!

Microsoft Tech-Ed
May 11-15
Los Angeles, CA
Booth #644

JavaOne
June 2-5
San Francisco, CA
Booth #208

We’ll be at both TechEd Developers (June 3-6) and TechEd IT Professionals (June 10-13), demonstrating some of our latest products.  Come visit us at booth 1545 in the exhibit hall!

In other exciting, related news, JNBridge is honored to be recognized as a finalist for a Best of TechEd 2008 Developer award.  The awards will be announced on Thursday, June 5, at the TechEd attendee party.

We just came back from JavaOne in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, where we exhibited for the first time.  There was a lot of interest in JNBridgePro.  Many people are still unaware that interoprability between Java and .NET is possible, so there’s plenty of opportunity for us to spread the word at shows like JavaOne and TechEd.

There was plenty of talk about our upcoming JNBridgePro 4.0.  See some of the recent coverage here.

Thanks to Kirk for putting together the interview!

Update: Kirk blogs about the interview, and says nice things about the JNBridge JMS adapters, here.