I had visualized in my mind that a meet would be like someone giving a talk standing on the podium and rest 
So moving onto my first BOJUG meet, i would actually like to share my experiences right from 1 hour before the meet upto the end of the meet. I had earlier read in the mail that one had to reach before the time scheduled for the meet, that was 6:00PM. It was 5:00PM and i was still not ready and had some unfinished business to deal with. Evening traffic in Bangalore is a nightmare for every commuter 🙁 I somehow managed to leave for the meet at 5:30PM. Still not far from my home i started to feel “Why not turn my vehicle and go back home and watch Kill Bill-Vol1, which i thought was more comfortable”. But then i suddenly realized that being a die hard Java follower i cannot miss such an meet. Chalo i somehow managed to zip through the roads and the good thing was there was not much traffic to deal with except some hiccups here and there which is usual. I reached the venue by 5:50PM, but i could not find a place outside to park my vehicle, so i pushed my vehicle inside the gate and parked it in the parking lot available.
I was pretty happy that i was on time, though was asked to be well in time. Rohan was with the list of people who had registered for the meet. He came up to me and asked if i had come for BOJUG meet and when i told i had, he asked my name to check if it was in the list so that he could get me the Visitors pass. When i told him my name, he asked me if i recognised him. I was mumed for a second and he then added that he was the one who took my interview for the Sun Campus Ambassador. I had thought that i would never have a face to face talk with the person who had taken my interview. I somehow managed to peek into his ID card to verify that he was Rohan. I got some intros from people who had come to attend the meet. I got my pass and then with my notions i had mentioned earlier, was escorted to the venue where the meet was going to be held. To my surprise it wasn’t a seminar hall instead it was a Conference room. I started to wonder how are they going to organize talks in a conference room. But then as Rohan came up and took the introductions i just got cleared that a talk can be arranged anywhere and everywhere and what is important is a speaker and active and enthusiastic listeners. I got myself a pretty good place, close to the speaker, actually right in front of him and i could here the slightest of noise from the speaker.
There where three sessions scheduled for the day- Talk on JavaFX, Java SE 6 Update 10 and a general talk on “Rockstar Developers”. The first session was on JavaFX taken up by Harish Singh. I was looking forward for this talk, but was disappointed with the lack of technical inputs, other than what Rohan gave in, the talk was not worth listening to. Actually it was the discussion that went on about JavaFX that put something across my mind. The second session on Java SE 6 Update 10 taken up by Vaibhav Choudhary was pretty good and the speaker was jovial at times. He spoke about the new features added in the Update 10. The third session “From Journeyman to Master” by Rohan was the most interesting of all the talks. It was a great talk and a most inspiring one. He had prepared some superb slides and had loads of content to talk about. I would have sat through his session for another hour if he had extended it. He spoke about what it takes to be a “RockStar Developer”. He listed that RockStar Developers have Pace, Passion, Eye For Finer Details, Avoid Being Responsible for Code Crashes, Supreme Knowledge. He listed some important concepts which one has to be perfect in, listed some Blogs to follow, some Podcasts, Books to read. There was a good discussion after his talk. His talk has made me learn loads of things. And I have planned a visit to Sapna Book House on Saturday, seems like I need to order another book rack 😉
Anyone interested in attending the BOJUG meet join the mailing list here.
More About the meet here.