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TSSJS Prague AfterthoughtsJune 21st, 2008 | by Jevgeni Kabanov | |
The event is over and I’m heading back home for another five days. This was my second time on TSSJS and it definitely felt different. Last time it was in Barcelona and we weren’t exhibiting (in fact ZeroTurnaround didn’t even exist yet). Also this year had a lot of changes for TheServerSide, with a bunch of new people on the team and a bunch of old people leaving.
The conference content this year was great. Unfortunately I didn’t get to sit in on much talks, but I heard other participants discuss them and I know that the speakers who were there always deliver. There was quite a range of topics and none of the sponsored bullshit (there were sponsored keynotes, but apparently they were decently technical instead of unrefined marketing).
From a speaker perspective it was quite nice as well. I got to hang out with really cool dudes and had loads of fun in the evenings. Also my talks were surprisingly well attended this year, so I couldn’t be happier! The only hiccup was the “Special Appreciation Dinner” to which only half the speakers were invited. That wasn’t very well communicated and the choice of invitees was also very weird. Kudos to Brian for handling the situation and inviting everyone in the end.
However from a vendor perspective I was rather disappointed. The vendor space was hard to access and very dark, and the breaks between sessions were extremely short. The dedicated “vendor networking” time was put in the early morning before sessions and noone bothered coming. Perhaps for vendors who only need to make a few sales it was better, but for us numbers count. Luckily one of the (well attended) talks was (among others) about JavaRebel so in the end it played out OK for us. But I do think that next year TSS guys should either improve the situation considerably or do the conference without a trade show.
Finally I want to thank Geert, who was kind enough to record both my talks on his spanking new HD camcorder. I’m not sure at the moment if and when I could publish them (one recording takes more than 3 Gb at the moment), but at the very least I can make a podcast from the Fireside Chat we did with Geert and Guilaume.