My Life Blog

Who turned off the light in here? Yeah, its been dark, but I’m back for a post or two.

This weekend I attended the Dallas version of the No Fluff Just Stuff conference. Despite the name, I didn’t actually find a lot of “fluff.” But I will admit my expectations were pretty high given the conference name, so I’m probably judging them pretty harshly.

I think the way to approach any conference is to go for breadth of knowledge and exposure and not seek depth. In my case, I had done a lot of reading and a bit of experimentation with Spring, so I was looking for some depth — some hidden gems to unlock whatever limitations that I perceived to be there. Unfortunately, the speakers must to some extent speak to the lowest common denominator in the audience. So given that, I didn’t learn much new on that topic.

My favorite sessions were for topics that I knew nothing about. In those cases, I was the newbie that lowered the lowest common denominator. AOP was definitely a subject that I knew little about, so I enjoyed a talk about AOP refactoring. I also was intrigued by Naked Objects, though its doubtful that I’ll do much with that framework.

Overall, the conference was very nicely organized and executed. The people were friendly, the food available and good, the sessions were as planned and on time, etc. And there was much to learn — in future events, I’ll just drop into sessions where I know nothing about the subject matter.

So for me the conference was “Some fluff and some stuff”…but overall a pleasant experience.