I organize this conference together with The Famous Java Posse Podcasters. It is an open spaces conference, which we've all agreed is both more fun and more educational than any other conference we've been to. We allot afternoons as free time so you can go skiing, but a surprising number of discussions happen on the slopes. Non-skiers often organize afternoon sessions and workshops.

Although the bulk of the attendees are indeed Java programmers, I find that most are also those who are interested in looking above and beyond the language to other languages on the JVM, new concepts in programming, and the business of programming. We record the sessions and you can listen to them as podcasts if you want to get a flavor of previous conferences.

The post-dinner lightning talks continue to be exceptionally popular, especially because any topic is fair game (not just programming-related subjects). We often get to know each other far better through the lightning talks than through the ordinary sessions.

As I did last year, I will be instigating numerous sessions on the concepts I've been discussing here in Reinventing Business. Last year it was an experiment to see if anyone showed up -- many did, and we had excellent conversations. Even if you're not a programmer, if you want to come just to discuss business topics I think you'll get a lot out of it.

You can find more information and register here. As we have experienced increasing numbers every year since the conference started, it's possible we will hit our size limit of 70 this year so you might want to register soon.