This year will be the first time in 10 JavaOnes that I haven't been a Sun employee. As I am now fairly local to the show I should be able to attend again this year. I've met many developers from around the world who make the annual trip to San Francisco. Many still see it as the Java event to network at, even though attendance is off the highs of the dot.com days.

Now you may think that being a Sun employee automatically gets you a free pass to the JavaOne show. Well it doesn't. In the early days there were a small number of passes for JavaSoft engineers, but the only way we could attend was to prepare a session or an evening birds of a feather discussion. At the peak Sun engineers were even banned from buying a JavaOne pass to free up places for Sun customers and Java developers. So to accommodate the Java developers inside the company Sun runs a mini-JavaOne conference originally called Java Premier that included select talks from the conference. At its peak JavaOne was almost too big. It was impossible to get a hotel room months before the event and I remember Pat Sueltz, the VP of Java, asking in her keynote if anyone had a free room since she didn't have a place to stay that night. I don't think she was joking. I only managed to find a place with two other colleagues in a flea-bitten motel south of Market.

The JavaOne stage has seen a Who's Who of the Java world and beyond. One of the most memorable sessions for me was a talk by the late Douglas Adams whose cult classic "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" is currently showing in theaters in the U.S. He gave a great perspective on things and just not Java. I don't know who they've lined up as the special guest this year, sometimes availability isn't confirmed until very close to the event. I'll be checking MaryMaryQuiteContrary's blog for details of the keynotes and the after-show parties.

For the main keynotes, I would expect the usual presentations we've seen for the past five years, lots of statistics about Java including the number of downloads and an emphasis on phones and J2ME from Sun. The first day's keynote rarely starts on time so unless you have your wireless laptop (hint) you may be sitting for quite a while. The keynotes are often available by live webcast so check back with the JavaOne site nearer the time if you can't make the show.

One final thought on keynotes, I wouldn't be too surprised to see Microsoft on stage or with their own keynote session since they're apparently a sponsor this year. The last year I remember Microsoft having any real presence was at the first JavaOne when they organized a free party at a local restaurant.

The rest of the day is made up of hour-long sessions. The limit on rooms makes session selection difficult, often a speaker will get at most one talk accepted and the temptation is to try and target the session at a middle ground, especially if the planners expect a large audience. This is one of the reasons the advanced sessions can never be that advanced. For Sun employees writing the presentations is more drawn out since there are trademark and other reviews that have to take place while meeting your own work deadlines.

My tip, if the presenter didn't cover the material you wanted to see I would recommend asking questions at the end (after they've cleared the stage to make way for the next presentation). More often than not they'll know the answer but couldn't cover it in the given presentation time. I was always happy to sit down over coffee if it came to that.

The evening brings the BOFs and after-dark entertainment. We probably won't see parties like the Iona Spinal Tap concert again but many of the smaller vendor events can be just as much fun and are useful for networking. Make sure you ask around the pavilion floor for events. Most will occur in the first two evenings so make sure you visit the pavilion early.

In closing if you don't get to attend the show look for slides and webcasts afterwards. There are many dedicated folks at Sun who work tirelessly to make JavaOne the best developer conference they can so I hope you enjoy it.