12 November 1999

21 November 1999

The United Airlines flight from London arrived at JFK around 5pm last night and I was home before 6:30 -- roughly twelve hours ago. I've slept about ten of those hours and now feel compelled to add to this journal before I do anything else -- I haven't even unpacked yet.
The crowds were good in both Brussels and London. Between the two cities I think we reached about 1,000 developers, pretty well filling both venues. The "road show" was a two day event this year, up from one day since we began this adventure. This was actually our third Technology Days tour out of the Developer Relations organization within Sun. The events have grown and changed considerably since we began, but the focus remains the same: evangelizing software developers. From a technology evangelism perspective, these shows are the highlight of the season.
I served as both the Master of Ceremonies (MC) for the main event as well as the Jini speaker on one of the technical tracks. And once again, or rather twice again, I had the great fortune to work with James Gosling. James was our keynote speaker in both cities. And while he's really quite a wonderful speaker -- calm, wise, engaging -- he would much rather just answer questions than click through a bevy of corporate slides. So in both cities we did the same thing: he spoke to some slides for about 10 minutes and then answered questions that had been previously written out by developers at the event. As the MC, I was asked to work with James, pulling the questions out of the bucket and reading each to him, sometimes engaging James in dialogue in the process. And as much as I love my role as evangelist, doing a tag team thing with James Gosling was for me the high point of the show. It was so much fun....and in a way, a dream come true. I've actually wondered what it might be like to engage a Fellow like Gosling in dialogue on stage; it was better than I'd imagined it to be. I hope to work in such a way again.
The Micro$oft legal issues are making a difference. This time I noticed that something has changed in hearts of developers. In the past, we drew Sun-friendly engineers for the most part, but most engineers are going to be reserved and prudent regardless of their emotional bias. As such, there is always a grain of salt to be taken no matter the level of commitment to a platform. And Micro$oft is a large force in our industry. "What will Micro$oft do?" has been a pervasive if unspoken question at Sun events for years now. But in both cities I noticed that something has changed. Micro$oft is less important than it once was. The legal issues are likely part of it. Clearly, the Redmond giant will be otherwise engaged, at least for a time, fighting those battles. But the fact that Internet access is no longer something tied to a desktop is also a large part of it. I heard a fellow from Zona on CNN in my London hotel room claim that within 18 months, 50% of all Internet access would be from non-PC devices, up from around 0% today. And while that is a bold prognostication, it does speak well of the trends we are within this very day. Things are changing fast. I clearly remember speaking to a crowd at Internet World in late 1997, saying something like desktop systems would one day be museum pieces; we'd access the net via our wearable devices which would be fully integrated into our lives. That day is coming; I like to think of myself as a bit of a futurist, but even I am surprised at how quickly it is coming.