JavaOne, TechEd Europe

It's been a really busy two weeks! I just got back from a two week road trip; first to JavaOne in San Francisco. We had a really great time down there talking to Java customers about interoperating with .NET Framework-based applications. While it may be a bit shocking that Microsoft had a presence at JavaOne, customers were really happy - several of them came up and thanked us profusely for finally coming to JavaOne. I must admit - I was even a bit skeptical of the reception, but once we got there everybody was really nice and had lots of great questions about Java and .NET interoperability. I also got to go with a really great crew of Microsofties - people like Simon Guest, Doug Purdy, Kevin Wittkopf, Dino Chiesa, Jas Sandhu, Ashwin Karuhatty... these are all people who spend a lot of time talking to both Java and .NET customers alike. While I was there I did an interview with Syscon-TV - it turned out pretty well, here's a link: https://tv.sys-con.com/read/108560.htm. One of the best parts for me was getting to meet James Gosling, Mark Fleury, Rick Ross, and several of the other Java big wigs. They are smart, nice people and I look forward to going back next year. Even Scott McNealy came by our booth for a few minutes!

Then this past week I was at TechEd Amsterdam where I had the opportunity to do a keynote demo with Andy Lees, the Corporate VP of Server and Tools at Microsoft. I did basically the same demo that I did at TechEd Orlando since we were able to replicate the RFID infrastructure in Europe. I wish we had that luxury at all conferences, since it's a lot of fun to show the RFID data bubbling up through SQL Server 2005 and into the application we created with Visual Studio 2005. But right now we're limited to the really big conferences.

Now I'm focused on launch planning... our Visual Studio 2005 launch date - Nov. 7, 2005 - has been announced which means there's a lot to do over the next 4 months to get ready! It should be a fun and busy time and I'm looking forward to every minute of it.