The 2011 JavaOne Conference, the sixteenth, had its own distinctive identity. The Conference theme, “Moving Java Forward,” coincided with the spirit that seemed to pervade the attendees – after more than a year-and-a-half of stewardship over Java, there was a clear and reassuring feeling that Oracle was doing its part to support Java and the Java community. Attendees that I spoke to felt that the conference was well put together and that the Java platform was being well served and indeed, moving forward.

For me, personally, it was a week in which my feet barely touched the ground as I rushed through tours from session to laptop to session, dashing off blogs and racing back to events, socials, awards ceremonies, BOF's and more.

The Keynotes

Start with the keynotes. Monday’s Technical Keynote debuted and open-sourced JavaFX 2.0, looked ahead to Java EE on the cloud and reminded us that there are about 6.5 billion people in the world and five billion Java Cards.

Tuesday’s Java Strategy Keynote offered Oracle's long-term vision for investment and innovation in Java.

Thursday’s Java Community Keynote while touched by the awareness of Steve Jobs’ passing, celebrated Java User Groups, Duke’s Choice and JCP award winners, and was capped off with the inimitable Java Posse.

Sessions, Sessions, and more Sessions

And then there were the sessions!

JavaFX 2.0, which was represented in more than 50 sessions, deserves special mention.

There was a lively panel discussion of the future of Java EE and the cloud.

Oracle’s Java Technology Evangelist Simon Ritter, in his session, showed off a fun gadget that worked via JavaFX 2.0.

Oracle’s Greg Bollella and Eric Jensen, gave a session titled “Telemetry and Synchronization with Embedded Java and Berkeley DB” that presented a vision of the potential future of Cyber-Physical Systems

Java Champion Michael Hüttermann explained best Agile ALM practices in a session.

Oracle’s Joseph Darcy took developers deeper into the heads and tails of Project Coin.

A JCP panel talked about JCP.next and the future of the JCP.

The JCP Awards gave recognition to some well-deserving people.

Oracle’s Kelly O’Hair gave a session on OpenJDK development best practices.

Oracle’s Terrence Barr showed developers how to get started with Embedded Java(http://blogs.oracle.com/javaone/entry/getting_started_with_embedded_java).

The Duke's Choice Awards reminded us of the sheer ingenuity of Java and Java developers.

Adam Bien, Java Champion, Java Rock Star and winner of Oracle Magazine’s ninth annual Editors' Choice award as Java Developer of the Year was all over the place.

Go to Parley’s.com to take in some of the great sessions.

Oracle’s Java Technology Evangelist Simon Ritter, one of the most fun-loving Java developers I know, with a long history of JavaOne gadgetry, gave a session (25011) at JavaOne 2011 on Wednesday afternoon showing how “open source APIs for the Kinect, the Wiimote combined with a tilt-compensated compass, a head-mounted stereoscopic display, and some old Sun SPOTs can build a truly immersive application.” The large audience appeared immersed throughout the session in Ritter's colorful and clearly delineated demos.

He explained that the way we interact with computers is rapidly changing and that the days of the keyboard and mouse are gone. (Maybe so, but I'm sitting here using a keyboard and mouse.) And with his usual dramatic flair, Ritter invited attendees to behold the rise of something he calls the “gestural interface”.

The presentation used the latest JavaFX 2.0 "pure Java" implementation and began with an overview of the different components being used and explained how they are all brought together to enable the user to interact with interfaces in ways never before possible. Building an interface with the new JavaFX 2.0, Simon pointed out, is a continuation of the JavaFX product line, which is now a Java API with no scripting language and most APIs ported across while features such as binding and animation have required more thought. JavaFX now embraces more web technologies and enables the use of CSS for all JavaFX controls and a web specification for Drag-and-Drop. Also, developers use Scenegraph instead of DOM. He pointed to both pro’s and con’s of using JavaFX with gestural interfaces. On the plus side, it has built-in features such as data binding and animations, is a relatively simple API, and is able to build rich, visually appealing interfaces. On the negative side, JavaFX is currently limited to a 2D environment. The engineering team is currently working on 3D support.

He contrasted this with jMonkey Engine (jME), a game engine made especially for modern 3D development, written purely in Java and consisting of a collection of libraries that has game engine facilities and a full physics engine, but is hard to program and focuses on games and not generic interfaces. Ritter proceeded to demonstrate how to use the Nintendo Wiimote with a Java interface. The Wiimote communicates using a Bluetooth stack that needs to support L2CAP, has JSR-82 Java Bluetooth API implementation plus Wiimote-specific Java APIs (IR sensors, accelerometer, etc), most of which is free and open source.

He then presented a demo making use of the Sun Spot controller, a gyro sensor for precise rotation data, three bend sensors for finger movement for head tracking and data gloves, hand and head tracking sensors and hardware and more.

This followed with a demo using the Kinect Sensor with Java for 3D sensing. Not to be lost are his larger points: Java is still a really cool and powerful language. It is easy to interface with exotic hardware using free and open source libraries to build interesting applications using modern hardware.

After a brief Q&A, Simon -- as he always does -- implored attendees to be inspired and go build their own FUN stuff.