ÜberConf kicked off yesterday with the pre-conference iPhone/iPad workshop. The workshop was completely full, with just over 90 people. The view from the front of the room was pretty impressive -- all those glowing apples. ;-)

Later, the conference proper got going with a great dinner and a keynote by industry luminary Cliff Click. At the time when a normal No Fluff, Just Stuff event would wrap up for the day, there was an opening reception with more food and drinks and a roving magician. A great time was had by all.

This morning, the sessions are going in full swing. I'm actually skipping one right now to finish up my sample project for the Grails workshop tomorrow. But the rest of the week is packed with great technical sessions, and not a marketing person in sight!

I caught Keith Donald's Spring MVC session this morning and plan on making it to a session by Ted Neward this afternoon. The content choices are amazing. You've got Java Collections, Functional Java, Groovy, Grails, Wicket, Camel, Hadoop, NoSQL, Agile Architecture, JRuby, TDD, and on and on. In fact, it's hard to think of a buzz word in the Java ecosystem that isn't covered here.

And the attendees are the best part. I've met folks from all over the country and beyond. I even ran into members of CapJUG and the Gateway Groovy Users. Seeing so many old friends and meeting so many new ones is definitely the best part of a conference like this. And with the longer breaks, receptions, etc., you actually get time to visit with folks without missing the tech sessions.

With all due respect to the many great folks who make the pilgrimage to San Francisco every year, this is what JavaOne should have been.