TSSJS, slouching towards irrelevance
It could be that I’m jaded and cynical. It could be that I’ve seen one too many events in Vegas. This year’s TSSJS was sadly very….tedious.
The conference stunk of TechTarget’s cheapskate approach in so so many ways. For one thing, trying to cajole speakers into doing at least two talks limits the coverage of the conference, and harms attendees. The entry price was also jacked up (double, I believe) which drove away a bunch of people.
The talks were pretty much same old same old, but I suppose that’s par for the course. Again, this could just be me, but the whole thing felt tired and bored, a cynical attempt at making money first and foremost, if users accidentally happen to have benefited along the way, then that’s fine too. Previous conferences on the other hand made many attendees feel like they’re seeing new stuff, cool stuff, shiny toys for all.
Instead what do we get this year? Vendor stalls, and more vendor sponsored talks. These are now cleverly interspersed with real talks, and the titles often make it sound like it’s actually a useful or interesting talk. If however you’re stupid enough to attend, the bottom line for all of them is ‘buy our product’.
Another turn for the worse this year was the lack of a wiki or any kind of community/attendee driven interaction. It was quite fun last year for example to check the wiki regularly and see ad-hoc BOFs created, meetups arranged, drinks schedules, and so on.
There’s also a carelessness that’s surprising to see in any environment that pretends to be professional. At least one slide in every intro given by Nitin (conference manager) had one typo. Some were funny, most were just sad and pitiful.
We had the same little doodahs for live voting that we’ve had before. Instead of being amusing, interesting, or even a worthwhile endeavour, this time it was a mad rush to see if we could get to the end of the question. The doodahs often didn’t work, the questions sometimes didn’t match the answers, and just as you were about to vote, chances are Nitin had already shown the results and moved on to the next question.
End result? I’d say the attendance this year was the lowest of the last 3, with much of the content rehashed from previous years.
All is not lost however, I’m still glad I went, if for nothing more than the regularly nightly plane masturbation poll, or the (for better or worse) ‘pantyless Friday’ event. I’m not sure either though are a good way to sell a tech conference.
UPDATE
: I’ve gotten a number of mails from other attendees who also had other things to bitch it. This list (by no means exhaustive, sadly) includes the far inferior food quality (no real breakfast, sandwich for lunch), no liquor during the pool party, and most annoying during such an event, having to pay a ludicrous amount for wireless access.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:00 am
first yay
April 4th, 2006 at 10:01 am
See, I knew you’d miss me ;-)
April 4th, 2006 at 11:36 am
Maybe it’s because TSS as well as java as a whole is a little lame these days. Speaking in duck typing: TSS and java look like lame ducks, they behave like lame ducks, chances are good they ARE lame ducks…
April 4th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
“java as a whole is a little lame these days. Speaking in duck typing: TSS and java look like lame ducks, they behave like lame ducks, chances are good they ARE lame ducks…”
Hey, I’ve read this script, too. What comes next… ah,
“… which is why I tried out Ruby, and now I’m never going back to Java LOL. I can express myself Agilely in Ruby with the metaprogramming and the objects and the Extreme Agileness of the language. The Ruby has Eclipsed the Sun!! ROLF MAO!”
April 4th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
lol, you sound like an spatial ajaxian, “I can express myself Agilely in Ruby” do you know that joke with left side and right side of the brain ?
April 4th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
dynamic types? metaprogramming? right…
you people, you want Lisp, but you just don’t know it yet. just look deep into your heart and accept the truth.
Lisp will rule the universe.
April 4th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
I learned quite a few things this show. The discussion on Rife continuations was very informative. And, although I will never use Rife in total, the ideas in the framework were pretty cool. Also, the talk on TestNG was well done and informative. There were a few more that slip my mind right now.
The Spring talks, besides the jabs at EJB3, fell pretty flat. This is mostly due that I saw the same talks in Florida in December.
The show did loose its community appeal. I thought the best TSS show was the one in Boston. This was before people did not like one another so extremely.
And yes, I really did miss Jason Carreira….
Really any excuse to go to Vegas will work.
I also got to meet Hani in person. As it turns out, he is much nicer in person.
April 4th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Jan Prill,
Either you are very inexperienced, or very retarded (or both). Parts of Java suck. Parts of Java rule. The point is: Java is more than one half-witted project like RoR.
I am glad you discovered dynamic scripting languages. It seems you may have missed ColdFusion, PhP, Perl, Python, Visual FoxPro, etc. etc. But that is okay, you were probably sucking your mom’s tit when we were using those.
Go back to your toy language and leave us alone.
RoR is a square turd
http://www.jroller.com/page/killjoy?entry=ruby_on_rails_is_a
RoR secret weapon is what we like to call a Map or a switch statement.
“What is RoR secret weapon? It is a joke. They have a method that gets called when no other method gets called to resolve a property that only really exists in the database. Their ADO framework is based on this magic bullet. So suddenly you have objects that don’t really have APIs. Forget about code completion. If you deviate from the RoR core, you get no help, just crappy error messages (if you are lucky). Create a method that has a method called exectute that passes a string called method name, and you have RoR secret weapon. Oh you say, this is just a string. Yeah so is any object’s method that allows an arbitrary string become a method. What a load of crap!”
Java does not lack competitors to RoR. You couldn’t make me use RoR if you put a gun to my head.
April 5th, 2006 at 12:32 am
“At least one slide in every intro given by Nitin (conference manager) had one typo. Some were funny, most were just sad and pitiful.”
I dont mean to be racists or anything, but its an Indian thing. It’ll never change. Heck! I’m Indian and I’ll admit that my English is not as good as the Queen’s English… but …er…it might be better than Dubya’s. :)
-Ryan
April 5th, 2006 at 5:49 am
Haven’t said that java isn’t great. thanks to sun for making c++ less painful. I’m having quite some fun programming it, as well as I’m having fun programming in ruby or python.
You call me retarded? That’s ok I don’t give a shit on your opinion. My opinion: Java is too lame! Look at comment counts on TSS, look at the comment counts here and then have a look at the mailing list of various ‘toy’ projects. There’s a reason that people don’t care any more about the next irrelevant java framework: java is indeed the fat old enterprise. sun isn’t even cool enough for microsoft! at least ms throws experienced developers on their cli to attract dynamic programmers to it. java answer is groovy, don’t need to say much on this…
so you don’t like to play with toys, suck the nipples of freshness? that’s ok, others like to play and get their work done with less pain. so stay away from their grounds and do your ahh so ‘serious enterprise’, have your ohh so serious meetings with the ahh so cool management that decided to use java and/or .net without a clue.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:15 am
‘suck the nipples of freshness’
Ah … the sweet resonance of the successful metaphor ! With a sly allusion, no doubt, to the oft-touted (touted oft, indeed, in the BileBlog) love-juice of Rod ‘Double Tool’ Johnson’s manboobs. Clearly you are not retarded, whatever all the others may say.
I agree, of course : Java is the fat old enterprise. Most excellent, Ted ! This smells like work ! Work for many years to come !
I think the commoditization of these conferences is just evidence of the maturity of the J2EE product.
‘I dont mean to be racists or anything, but its an Indian thing.’
I think we should have left the Indians on their reservations. They’re incapable of understanding the values and essential decency of the white man’s culture. Oh, well, at least they are Americans – right ? I can’t stand those foreigners !!
April 5th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Yep, I say TSS needs to fire Nitin and get Floyd back. Last year’s conference was ten times better. I couldn’t have agreed more with this bile. I was so FURIOUS about the wireless access CRAP they provided I was about ready to walk out on the conference all together. I had to pay the price, ofcourse, I had to have access. What on EARTH were they thinking? Make me spend $1600, and I can’t even get free wireless access. I had access for free last year!!! Make me spend $1600 and get a cheap box sandwich lunch? I was eating baked salmon for lunch last year!!! CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP!!!!
Seems like TSS is really trying to kill off TSSJS. They sure made a convert out of me.
April 5th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Dear Jan,
RE: “Java is lame?”
I think you convinced me. Thanks for that thrilling repertoire with me. Please share your witty thoughts with all future employers. By the way, good luck finding a job you dimwit, nitwit, knuckle-dragging, mouth breathing, nimrod.
I wish you the best.
April 6th, 2006 at 10:42 am
Dear Mr. Hadji :
< < good luck finding a job you dimwit, nitwit, knuckle-dragging, mouth breathing, nimrod. >>
Well, you would hardly believe it, but Uncle Wiggly heard those same words himself last week in an interview.
Who would believe that McDonald’s has such high standards ? The Wiggly One was looking forward to deep-frying some meat by-product, too.
Oh, well. Into each life a little rain must fall, right ? Keep a stiff upper lip and all that, eh ?
< < I wish you the best. >>
Mr. Hadji, that shows a generosity more typical of the true faith than of your heathen Hindoo beliefs. It’s inspiring ! Surely you, too, will do well, despite your racial handicap.
April 6th, 2006 at 11:01 am
TSSJS is slouching towards irrelevance? Strange that, ‘cos so is TSS.com. I swear, if I hear one more announcement about PantsSoft’s new webframework, CrapperWeb 0.01 or another word from Bruce Tit (sic), I’m going to crack.
April 6th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
” Yep, I say TSS needs to fire Nitin and get Floyd back.”
I appreciate the complement about the quality of last year’s event, but I gotta emphasize strongly that Nitin is a great guy and is not in any way responsible for some of the complaints in this thread. I think he and Joe Ottinger (TSS.com editor) did as best as any of us could have given the circumstances.
Floyd Marinescu
Former TSS creator and guy who ran TSSJS from 2002-2005.
April 6th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
I was also dissapointed with the treatment this year. Given that they raised the prices it is a bit insulting that they’d go cheap on the food. If TechTarget wants to keep the attendees at the event from 8am to talk to their exhibitors, and stick around until 9pm for the party they could at least offer some basic nutrition. I didn’t pay $1600 for some fuckin muffins and vegetables with no dip (the dip ran out in the first 5 mins). Very poor taste!
April 6th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
< < fuckin muffins >>
Hmmmm … tell me more …
April 7th, 2006 at 5:25 am
last?
April 10th, 2006 at 4:08 am
probably not
April 10th, 2006 at 4:46 am
last.
April 10th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Nope Last.
April 11th, 2006 at 10:13 am
I think TSS is moving towards irrelavance too. It’s down yet again with Kodo errors displaying.
April 17th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
last