NetBeans Day Hyderabad: Standing Room Only

What was the most sought after item at NetBeans Day Hyderabad? Judging from the turnout, a good guess might be: a vacant seat.

Empty chairs were hard to come by on February 23 when over 900 attendees gathered inside one of the halls of Indiaís largest convention center for a chance to listen to presentations from NetBeans experts and partners and to connect with other users.

NetBeans Evangelist Ashwin Rao started the day with an opening address in which he thanked the diverse crowd of developers and students for their impressive turnout and for helping to give NetBeans the clout it enjoys today with millions of downloads and a vibrant community of users. He also acknowledged the impact of the more than 130 partners that presently make up the NetBeans Partner Program, a program that recognizes companies and individuals that add value to NetBeans through module building, code contribution and endorsements. Before Rao stepped aside for the dayís first presentation, the audience received a quick overview of developments within NetBeans and what to expect in the coming months.

Their appetites already whetted, veteran users and the uninitiated listened attentively as NetBeans writer and popular blogger Geertjan Wielenga turned the focus onto the NetBeans editor in theìOn the Move with NetBeansî. To give the audience a better idea about improvements to look forward to in the new editor of NetBeans 6.0ófor example, stop-and-replay on run, smart code completion, and moreóWielenga gave his demo from two computers, one displaying the 5.5 editor and the other the 6.0 editor. He later gave a second presentation that day about the NetBeans Platform: ìPorting a Java Application to the NetBeans Platform", in which he moved a simple JMF client to a TopComponent, installed it into the IDE, and then into the NetBeans Platform.

Unlike airline travelers, why should developers not have a fear of packing? There are no weight restrictions if they ìpackî with NetBeans!

Fortunately for the audience, it never got to hear this bad joke, instead it heard and saw something better: Raoís ìUnpack Your Favorite Featureî presentation, an overview of the Enterprise pack, the Profiler pack and the Visual Web pack, and the ways that each can enhance a developerís productivity.  Attendees were also treated to presentations by NetBeans partners YASU Tech and InfoSys. InfoSys engineer, Dr. Kumar, along with Sun developers Prakash Narayan and PCM Reddy, co-presented on ìDid You Get Your Tools with That?î, a Java EE tools demonstration. Afterwards, Kumar announced, to the audienceís delight, that his teamsís developers use NetBeans frequently for their development projects, citing that the IDEís tool set allowed them to develop scalable and robust applications and that it improved developer productivity.

In classic NetBeans Day fashion, presenters were swamped with questions and comments from attendees during scheduled Q&A segments after individual presentations and during breaks in the dayís program. Wielenga, for example, fielded inquiries about the NetBeans IDE and platform as waiting users typed their questions on his laptop for him to review and respond to later.

Overall, NetBeans Day Hyderabad was another worldTour success with fans learning first-hand about the latest and upcoming enhancements to their IDE of choice, NetBeans experts receiving invaluable feedback about the product, and converts getting an introduction to the vibrant community that is NetBeans.

To those planning to attend upcoming NetBeans worldTour events: reserve early AND show up earlyóthe seats really do fill up quickly!

Read More about NetBeans Day & Sun Tech Days Hyderabad

Press:
ìWhere Java means Jai Hindî (Newspaper: The Hindu)

Blogs:
NetBeans Day Hyderabad: Standing Room Only (Geetjan Wielenga)

Success at Sun Tech Days (Sathish Vaidyanathan)

Sun Tech Days, Hyderabad 2007 (Madhu K.)

Sun Tech Days, Hyderabad 2007 (Sravan Kumar Sarraju)

Sun Tech Days 2007, Hyderabad (Adi)