The Java SIG From the Back of the Room
I poked my head into the Java SIG to see how it went and I was surprised to see so many Java developers as I was beginning to think there weren’t any. 
Anyway I was very happy to see how the SIG was run. Pretty much all Q&A, no demos. The Java devs pretty much asked asked away and the Java team responded to just about all the questions. I was happy to see when Steve Citron-Pousty asked how many developers read blogs and almost every hand went up (I’ve always said the Java developers were a smart and handsome bunch). Of course Steve was sadden to hear that most didn’t know he had a blog, but it does validate what I’ve been saying all this time. Developers look for information in areas that ArcGIS Desktop users do not. Blogs should be very important to ESRI’s community.
I was glad that some Java developers are reading this blog so I’ll try and pass on more Java info as I hear it. I’ll write up my final post on day 2 at the Dev Summit and my thoughts about the whole experience probably late tonight or tomorrow.
I think it ranked #1 session on my list. I thought the confirmation of blogs.esri.com was interesting as well as the RSS enabled forums. I eagerly await those and it sounds like the feedback they took was that more of the Java team will start blogging.
Yeah, thanks Aaron and thanks James. It was indeed a good session and it truly had a “community” feel to it… I’ll personally persuade more on our team to blog… And we’ll indeed take all feedback seriously - particularly those which foster more communication among us developers.
Looking forward to more of such candid sessions with fellow developers.
I always give him a hard time- but thanks are overdue to Steve who put this session together!
I second Aaron. The Java SIG was my favorite part of the conference (other than meeting so many great people). Steve did a great job of getting the ESRI java group involved. I appreciated their candor and excitment.
My hats off to Steve and Keyur.
Jeremy
[...] It seemed like the SIG was a hit with the Java developers (you won’t believe how much I had to pay those guys for those comments). I really enjoyed the atmosphere of openess and brain-storming. We are going to try and move forward on some of the ideas mentioned, such as a monthly newsletter and I may try to prototype the javadoc system soon here on my blog. I was thinking about starting with the SDE javadoc since it is relatively small and developers seemed very interested in contributing to it. If you have a better suggestion please let me know. I am going to be looking at the ashkelon project written by Eitan Suez, who I met at the blogger meetup last year at JavaOne. What a nice guy… [...]