JavaWorld Forums: Sun hospitality

I'm glad the author pointed out the unwelcoming booths setup by Sun. There literally was no room to move among the various demos. I entered the maze once or twice and tried to start a conversation with the booth attendees but the lack of space made it difficult. The aspect that set the tone of the conference for me was the seating arrangement. The center front section was reserved for conference speakers and Sun employees. I can understand giving the speakers VIP status, but Sun employees are the event hosts. They should take a back seat in the keynotes, unless of course if they are speaking that day.

When speaking to a few Sun folks I wasn't encouraged. They first asked what hardware we used. That's fair enough; Sun is a hardware company so I can't blame then for trying to sell it. Then they wondered if I was using Sun's application server. That question concerned me because it means many people at Sun are living in a parallel universe. My only regret is that I didn't ask them which IDE they use. Most likely NetBeans for public demos, IntelliJ or Eclipse back at the office.

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