JavaDay IV – A Day in a Different Universe!

It is cold, it is raining, I am in Roma.

It is JavaDay IV at the Engineering Faculty of the University of RomaTre on January 30th. The bad weather did not stop people turning up – over 1600 came to listen to 30 experts in their field. The talks were divided into 6 tracks – What’s Hot; Object-Oriented and Beyond; Managing & Turning; Mobile & Content Management; Web 2.0; and Scalability & Concurrency.

JavaDay is organized by JUG Roma, Java Italian Association and Java Italian Portal. The University lends their premises for the day. Over 20 sponsors – including big companies such as Red Hat, Sun, IBM, Cap Gemini etc, came to display their wares and to speak with the attendees, who were encouraged to leave their CVs with whichever company they would like to work for. This way everybody is happy – people have a chance to talk to the company’s HRDs and the companies get to meet a selection of the best guys available. I understand that students are asked to send their theses, which will be read and judged. The authors of the 6 best theses will go home with €1000 to help develop their projects.

Year after year, JavaDay is growing, which shows the importance of Java in the business world. I believe this year the number of attendees grew by over 12%. Unfortunately, I was too busy at our booth to mix with the attendees or talk to the sponsors but I was invited to a great lunch where I talked to several people. Once again, I am overwhelmed by the Italian hospitality and savoir faire. I hope to be back next year at JavaDay V, even if the weather is not agreeable.