What a weekend and what a conference. Jay Zimmeran has created a truly great product with the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) line of Java conferences. The price is amazing and the speakers are awesome. The content is awesome. There really is no excuse I can think of as why a Java developer would miss a NFJS stop in their town.
The worst thing about NFJS is that you pick one presentation in each time slot which means you miss the other 3. Honestly, just about every time-block I had a real problem choosing between the various topics. This is what I finally settled on:
Friday
Ant for Newbies – Erik Hatcher
JavaServer Faces Fundamentals – David Geary
JavaServer Faces Advanced Topics – David Geary
Saturday
Tapestry by Example – Erik Hatcher
GUI Development with SWT and JFace – Ben Galbraith
Converting XML into HTML, PDF, and Vector Graphics: An In-Depth Look at XSLT, XSL-FO, and SVG – Ben Galbraith
Pragmatic Mock Objects – Dave Thomas
Sunday
Test First Development – Venkat Subramaniam
JDOM 1.0 – Jason Hunter
Spring in Action – Craig Walls
Spring in Action (cont) – Craig Walls
I enjoyed every session I attended and learned a ton. I think I will immediately put what I learned in the Ant session to work, like tomorrow morning. The same can be said for the Converting XML session. I think my favorite session of the weekend was Venkat’s session on Test First Development. I wish that would have been a 3-hour session.