For two years now, I've been trying to come up with a good English pun on the name of the JAOO (apparently, officially pronounced "[DJA-OU]"), and that's the best I could come up with. Fortunately, the quality of the show isn't dependent on my puny punability.

Once again, the JAOO folks deserve a peerage. The venue was great (not often do I get to perform on a concert hall stage), the speaker selection was diverse and entertaining (not often do I get to see two people I deeply respect, in this case Glenn Vanderburg and Ian Griffiths, go at each other--respectfully--over the benefits and/or drawbacks of a technology, in this case, the Seaside web framework), and the opportunity to "hang" with those speakers (which is always the principal draw for me) was first-rate. I always love it when a conference dares to bridge the technology gap by bringing Java, .NET and "other" folks, such as the Rubyists, together, and JAOO does that magnificently. What was once a Java-centered conference is clearly no longer; now it's a Java/.NET/Agile/Enterprise/Client/Academic/Pragmatic conference.

Hail, JAOOers!