Josh On Design

I woke up this morning painfully early, 4:00, which, as anyone who knows me can say, is the time that people should be going to bed, not waking up. Until recently I didn't even know there was a 4:00 in the morning. Oh well, such is the cost of jetlag. Considering I'm 14 (or 10) hours different I think I'm adjusting pretty well.

At night the skyline of Tokyo is simply amazing. During the day with smog: ehhh... not so much.

The hotel breakfast was excellent, if expensive, and I am constantly amazed by the number of employees here. They seem to have people to do everything. Open doors, show you the elevator, explain the train system. There are two extra guys whose only job appears to be saying "Good morning". I guess that's the result of a full employment policy.

After breakfast we took a pleasant half hour train ride to the convention center. Supposedly all of the trains in Tokyo are packed but ours was only half full. Perhaps because it was a bit after rushhour. Our day at the conference consisted of checking in, getting badges and paperwork, going to check our email, giving a presentation, getting more badges and paperwork, then getting dinner. Now I'm in the presentation ready room (ie: the check email room), awaiting my final conference duty for the day and then we'll head back to the hotel to get our first real nights sleep.

The presentation today went pretty well. It's about how to improve graphics performance of your Java 2D application. It's the same one from JavaOne San Francisco back in June, but I'd never given this talk before so it was new for me. I think it went well, but it's hard to tell. The japanese attendees are very quiet and don't ask questions. They don't even have many facial expressions while they are watching. I'm sure part of it was the need to listen to the real time translator, but it was still disconcerting. As any actor knows you give a better performance when you have an interested audience. They all applauded once we finished so I think we did well. I guess I'll know after seeing the survey results. At least I know what to expect for my next session tomorrow.

Speaking of which, tomorrow is my first day of booth duty. Since we will mainly be non-japanese speakers I don't know how many people will come to the booth, but maybe someone will come for the free t-shirt.

Well, I'm off to meet developers at the Peabody BoF (a smaller group meeting on special topics held in the evening), and then I'll try to get some sleep. Until then...

....

One last thing. I just got back from the Peabody BoF and it went great. It was very well attended (around a hundred people, I think) and lots of people asked some very good questions. This shows that there is certainly a lot of interest, which makes me happy.

Also, Chris has created a forum for discussing JavaOne Tokyo, so if you have any questions be sure to go there and ask. Okay, off to sleep.

- Joshua