Microsoft at JavaOne 2007 - Day 3 - General

About: This blog post is part of the “Microsoft at JavaOne 2007” series; it provides general commentary about Day 3

Greetings,

Its 5:40 p.m. on Day 3 at JavaOne and I am sitting in a session by Steve Marx (http://smarx.com ) of Microsoft called “Java Technology-powered Microsoft AJAX” , Steve has done some really interesting work in showcasing interoperability between an AJAX front end based on Microsoft technologies integrating with Java Midtier through web services.

I got an invitation to a private party hosted by Google; it was a fun event and I got to meet some really interesting people. My ‘Microsoft” shirt attracted a lot of attention, someone from Yahoo came over and asked why I wanted to buy him (a few drinks can have a great impact on some people), I assured him that I am pretty low on the totem pole and have no influence on acquisitions that are above 25 billion dollars J , he then asked me if I was there for corporate espionage and I told him that I did get an invitation to the party and would not have wore my Microsoft shirt if I really wanted to spy. Another open source company guy congratulated me on the ‘great joke of wearing a Microsoft shirt at a Google party” and said that he saw me at the Oracle booth and knows that I actually work for Oracle (after I showed him my card, we had a loooooong conversation on open source, software companies running as charities, difference between making money on software development vs. on support and services and on the future of the internet).  The Google guys and gals were very gracious and we had some really interesting conversation around search, the price Google paid for DoubleClick, .NET vs. Java and why Sun has found it so hard to monetize the innovations they have made in the area of Java technologies.

In terms of the overall day, I had some really fun conversations at the booth, last year my tag line was “I am from Microsoft, I come in peace, take me your leader”, this year I changed it to “I am here to convert you to a .NET enthusiastJ” and after the shock reaction talking about the interoperability and Web 2.0. I am looking forward to the party which features “Grinder Girl” and “Mini Kiss” (I am counting on my wife not being a reader of my blog). Based on the number of questions I got on SilverLight  (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight ) and on the British library Turning pages application (http://www.bl.uk/ttp2/ttp1.html ) I will include them in the series I plan to write soon on the next generation web applications. I also met lots of Canadians from RIM, HSBC, Ontario Lottery Commission and bunch of other companies (you could see the signature smile, friendliness, laid back, a little high... etc. to detect them from a mile J).

Best regards,

Mohammad