No Fluff, Just Stuff eXchange: London 2007

Way back in the late nineties, I was working for The DSW Group, which was a Borland partner. We did Borland training classes worldwide, and that's ultimately how I got into the business of speaking at conferences. At the time, I was all geeked up about Delphi and at the first few BorCons I spoke exclusively about it and C++ (in the form of C++Builder). However, in the late 90s, I stopped having that lovin' feeling for Delphi and started really dedicating my efforts in the rising tide of Java. But what was interesting to me was the adoption level in different countries. I was still traveling to BorCons around the world, talking about JBuilder. And some countries I would have huge audiences. And in others, you could see tumbleweeds blowing through the aisles. I remember the first few Java talks I did at the Entwickler Conference in Frankfurt, no one even knew what "Java" was.

It was interesting because the UK seemed to be one of the last holdouts for Java. Even into the early 2000s, I would go to Borland conferences in London and be in the small room, while the Delphi groups were packed. Of course, these were Borland conferences, so the crowds were self selecting, but it seemed to me like Java was a slow burn in the UK. Then, of course, overnight, it was the cool thing to do.

London is now a first-class Java city, with lots of Java work going on (Java is very popular in the financial sectors, and London sure has lots of that). The only thing missing from the London Java scene finally appears this August: No Fluff, Just Stuff. What better place to make the cross-ocean debut of the premiere Java conference. In the past, people have literally flown from the UK and mainland Europe to see No Fluff, Just Stuff shows in the US, in random cities like Columbus, OH. Now, you can ride the tube to see a No Fluff, Just Stuff show!

The traveling circus that is No Fluff, Just Stuff invades London on August 29th, for 3 days. It's the normal cast of speakers from the US (including Venkat Subramaniam, Ted Neward, Brian Sletten, David Geary, and I've managed to stow away as well) mixed with some great guys from the UK (my ThoughtWorks colleague Erik Doernenburg, Graeme Rocher of Groovy/Grails fame, and some wild cards).

To help pump up the enthusiasm for this event, No Fluff, Just Stuff and Skills Matter have a cool promotion. Every attendee who registers before August 17th with the special code of NFJS-NEF666 will receive a Nintendo Wii. Not "entered into a drawing for a Wii" -- "will receive a Wii". Wow.

Come see us in London -- it should be a blast.