A Weekend full of Learning

Where do you find people who willingly spend their entire weekend learning about things like Java class loaders, Groovy, Java Server Faces, Google Web Toolkit, Test Driven Development, Alternative languages for the JVM, and other similar topics? Well, last weekend you’d have found about two hundred of them at the 2008 Greater Atlanta Software Symposium put on by No Fluff Just Stuff.

The conference started Friday at 1PM and ended Sunday at 6PM, with breaks for food and sleep. The primary draw was twelve 90-minute opportunities to learn about one of 72 topics being presented by some of the best speakers out there including people like David Geary, Scott Davis, Neal Ford, and Ted Neward.

And if that weren’t enough (Is it ever?), each day had an extra goody; on Friday Jared Richardson presented a potentially life-changing keynote titled "Career 2.0" (keep an eye out for the book), Saturday ended with a choice of BOFs, and Sunday's lunch was followed by an hour-long “expert panel” featuring seven of the speakers holding forth on topics like architecture, testing and SOA.

If you’ve never heard of No Fluff Just Stuff then you’re in for a treat. It’s kind of like a traveling, three-day long, JavaOne. I recommend checking out their web site for a time and place when they’re either someplace near you or someplace you want to visit, then sign up and get ready to learn. It's good for your career.