It started as a humble idea: to get together with 30-40 people participating in the Java Hellenic User Group (JHUG) and/or Greek JBoss User Group (GR-JBUG) to talk about technology. We ended up setting up a half-day mini conference with 4 speakers and almost 130 attendants, on a nice Saturday morning in Athens/Greece!

The place was packed with standing people in the back rows and the speakers trying to speak up so everyone could hear. It was absolutely fantastic for me to present in my native language, although embarrassing at times, trying to translate on-the-fly some word you've used a thousand times in English.

My "condition" (working remotely for JBoss from home) often reminds me of that joke, with the guy that he, and a gorgeous lady being the only survivors on a deserted island. After the initial "honeymoon" period, he became so depressed: he was all alone on that little island with that magnificent woman, but there was nobody else to talk about it :)

I had 2 talks, one on the current JBoss status, history, products and professional OpenSource model, and another one on the advanced clustering infrastructure of JBoss. I hope I made my point clear that OpenSource is an undisputable trend with far-reaching and deep impact in the IT industry, and that JBoss and Professional OpenSource is one of the best proofs for that.

I enjoyed also the other 2 talks on JDO (G.Kostaras) and Practical Iterative Development (K.Flokos). I got to meet very interesting people and a Tapestry developer. Again, congrats to the JHUG guys (P.Apostolopoulos/P.Konstantinides) for organizing this.

There are already plans for the next meeting in May, with speakers from abroad this time. If anyone, company or individual is interested in presenting/sponsoring let me know.

Cheers
dimitris@jboss