Sun Tech Days in Manila 2008

Almost a week had passed since the extremely pleasing days filled with Java technologies from the Sun Tech Days in Manila that was held at the Makati Shangri-La. If I remember correctly, this one’s the 3rd Java event I have attended since Java in Manila (2 years ago) and the Sun Tech Days (4 years ago) that were both held in the same venue. Well, this year’s the 10th anniversary of Sun Tech Days and there was even a cake made for the celebration:

So what makes this Java event different from the previous ones?

In this Sun Tech Day event, I was attending it as a participant having VIP passes along with the UP JRDC student assistants (ada, ruzette & karen), UP ACM volunteers (marianlbt & rem), and the DCS faculty (jdlcaro, rom, mariocarreon & sir pros). Matt Thompson started the Demo Showcase that featured the technologies in live action.

Some of the technologies that were featured in the event were: Carol McDonald’s jMaki, Sang Shin’s Web 2.0 Frameworks/Toolkits & JavaPassion, Java Development on the Mac, Java FX Script, and OpenSolaris. The features of NetBeans 6.1 were so emphasized especially in the NetBeans DeepDive Session on the first day. Applications were being developed and deployed fast – almost without writing any single line of code.

So what’s the effect? I was craving to try all of the stuffs at the same time. However, as expected, there were overlapping sessions which gave me a hard time of choosing which to track to take. Luckily, there were LCDs for every track so you get to have a preview of all of the sessions (and if there’s a freebie giveaway going on).

Freebies?! I got myself these stuffs: STD bag, STD notebook, SDN moleskine, Java/JEDI pens, OpenSolaris CD, Netbeans CD, Nokia post-its, Nokia notebook, Pen+ruler keychain, and a STD bag tag/ID.

There were really lots of giveaways for the delegates; there’s even a Java leather jacket! So who won it? Check out Em’s blog post about the turn of events (and her Sun Tech Days experience as well).

Throughout the event, I’ve found out that Matt Thompson’s on Twitter too! Same as Carol McDonald and Aisling MacRunnels. Isn’t it amazing that they’re easier to reach now through just a single Twitter message? And oh, Sun Tech Days in Manila got the Best Audience Award! Woot!

All-in-all, it was a great Java week! Happy 10th Anniversary, Sun Tech Days!