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Poll: The Definitive Java Conference

04.26.2011
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Once upon a time, JavaOne was the definitive Java conference in town. It was also the first large-scale conference exclusively focused on the Java language. Those days are long gone. Today, there are plenty of other popular Java conferences to choose from. Many Java developers are choosing other conferences, possibly due to the new management (Oracle) or their choice for location: in the cramped hotels around the Mason Street. 

Since JavaOne 2011 was just announced for October 2nd through the 6th, it's probably a good time to revisit the public opinion on Java conferences.  What venue do most Java developers consider to be the definitive Java Conference?




Which of these do you see as the definitive Java conference? 

JavaOne
31% (284 votes)
Devoxx
42% (389 votes)
SpringOne 2GX
6% (59 votes)
JAOO (now GOTO)
1% (13 votes)
No Fluff Just Stuff
12% (112 votes)
Other (Tell us!)
8% (74 votes)
Total votes: 931

Comments

Ryan De Laplante replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 12:45pm

There is also The Server Side Java Symposium, and Java Posse Roundup. 

Paul Michael Bauer replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 1:06pm

Clojure Conj :D

Andreas Billmann replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 1:07pm

Java Forum Stuttgart a german java conference with german and international speakers.

Website

Andres Almiray replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 3:29pm

Guys, as much as I love many Java related conferences (gr8conf, Uberconf, Strange Loop, Codemash, ScanDev, Jazoon, JavaZone, Oredev, JFokus, SpringIO, GEECon, CONFESS, 33rdDegree, Jax, JaxConf, OSCON, etc ...) there is no single conference that has reached the size and level of JavaOne, and probaly there wont be one.

Devoxx is by far the closest thing to the JavaOne of old days sans the big marketing ploys.

Reza Rahman replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 5:30pm

For better or worse, I agree with Andres that JavaOne is "still the one" although my personal favorite is TSSJS (very surprised not to see it on the list?).

I also think that globalized versions of JavaOne are a very good thing -- the ones in India, China, Russia and Brazil (I personally absolutely love Brazil/Sao Paulo and would be ecstatic to go to speak there again :-). They just have such a unique energy/vibe as a nation/community. The same goes for China though!).

I do still hope that Oracle sees the light in the next few years as to the JavaOne North America venue...

Floyd Marinescu replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 6:01pm

QCon (organized by InfoQ.com) always has a Java track and many of the other tracks are in the context of Java.  It's been running with close to 1000 attendees in San Francisco, London, Beijing, Tokyo, and Sao Paolo for years now.

 Check out http://qconferences.com.

 Floyd

Jonathan Fullam replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 8:28pm

The ServerSide Java Symposium gets my vote.

Hantsy Bai replied on Tue, 2011/04/26 - 8:32pm

In China, JavaONE and QCon....others are not available at all.

Harald Ommang replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 1:59am

The best Java conference ever, was the Colorado Software Summit. Unfortunately, it is no longer held. I sure wish someone would start something that good again.

Sven Peters replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 2:14am

There is also goto Aarhus (formally known as JAOO) and Jazoon in Zurich. I'm surprised and happy that devoxx get most of the votes until now!

Mattias Karlsson replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 3:04am

There is a lot of good conferences in Europe. Devoxx is the premium one. But I am surprised that the list dont contain either JavaZone or Jfokus both attract more then 1000 developers.

 Check out: http://www.jfokus.com

Kai Wähner replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 3:32am

My favorite is also the TSSJS in Vegas. I prefer small conferences with less than 1000 attendees for several reasons.

Tormod Overlier replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 4:25am

My favorite is JavaZone in Oslo, celebrating it's 10-year anniversery this year, with around 2300 attendees. . One of the great things about JavaZone, is that it's completely vendor independant.

Werner Keil replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 7:27am

  • Java2Days for Eastern Europe (7-800 attendees in its 2nd year)
  • Great Indian Developer Summit for Asia (4000+ attendees in 2010 and 2011, keeps exceeding DevoXX not only by numbers ;-))

 

Javin Paul replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 8:38am

Glad to see the result Java one is still leading  :)

Javin

How Classpath works in Java

 

Craig Doremus replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 9:22am

Google I/O!! After all, Android is the fastest growing area of 'Java' today.

Gregory Smith replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 9:39am

I second Harold Ommang's nomination of the Colorado Software Summit in Keystone Colorado as the best Java conference ever. It is greatly missed.

 But I was disappointed that other popular conferences were not even on the ballot, e.g.: ApacheCon (in Vancover for 2011), Uber Conf in Denver, Colorado.

Tom Wheeler replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 11:04am

While not Java-specific, the Strange Loop conference held during October in St. Louis is the one I most look forward to attending.  The speakers are top-notch and the attendees are there because they want to be, not because their boss made them go. 

Alex Miller does a great job of putting on the show and seems to care a lot more about quality than size -- it's kind of like seeing your favorite bands in a small club instead of a gigantic arena.

Reza Rahman replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 6:01pm in response to: Werner Keil

That's very interesting -- I would have guessed a much higher attendance number for the Great Indian Developer Summit given that it is the premier conference being hosted in a region of the world that has no less than three of the world's most populous countries (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh)...

Also pretty surprising that Devoxx is in the ~3000-4,000 neighborhood? I've never attended myself but have heard decent things. To be honest though, the biggest weakness for Devoxx might be its Geo-location (as well as perhaps competition from the other numerous conferences in Europe). I just don't see folks from North America, Asia or South America making long flights there in great numbers...

As a side note, the past few year's attendance for JavaOne hovered around ~12,000-15,000. Only Oracle can say for sure, but the numbers were not too terrible last year as far as I could tell (although I think it was down for sure). The number of sessions, tracks and room capacity was about the same and sessions were still packed/had the usual long lines (which makes the location thing terrible). The technical quality was about the same too. I am curious to see what happens this year...

Weirdly, OpenWorld has ~40,000 attendees -- probably because Oracle holds a virtual monopoly on the Oracle DBA space...

Alex Miller replied on Wed, 2011/04/27 - 4:37pm in response to: Tom Wheeler

Thanks Tom!

Mihai Dinca - P... replied on Thu, 2011/04/28 - 1:58am

A list with some upcoming java conferences:

http://confradar.com/conferences?tag=java

 Nice to hear about Java2Days for Eastern Europe.

Joe McTee replied on Thu, 2011/04/28 - 9:52am

Throwing my vote to NFJS. No, it's not the biggest in terms of a single venue, but when we look at the distributed impact (cmon, we ARE software folks, right? :-) it is amazing. It is often hard/impossible for devs to travel to large shows, but fairly easy (and affordable!) to take a long weekend and hang with Jay and crew.

The shows are local in scope, have high cohesion in terms of great speakers, and stay focused on the domain in question (the JVM). For a software geek, what's not to love?

Reza Rahman replied on Thu, 2011/04/28 - 11:28am in response to: Mihai Dinca - Panaitescu

That's a very useful tool, thanks for posting it. Just for completeness, it shows OSCON, but does not call out the newly launched OSCON Java: http://steveonjava.com/tag/oscon-java/. It looks very promising to me personally and Steve seems to be a pretty intelligent, technically-oriented, level-headed guy. It would be hard to imagine the conference would not be very good in quality...

Martin Spasovski replied on Fri, 2011/04/29 - 6:38am

Agreed with @Werner Kei

Java2Days for Eastern Europe http://2010.java2days.com/

Also Jazoon must be mentioned http://jazoon.com/

Carla Brian replied on Sun, 2012/05/20 - 1:14am

I hope I can join any of these conferences. I want to learn Java more. - Tawny Tucci

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