my first ever time on the big stage at javaone

Every year, JavaOne has a community keynote. Last time, it included a skit for a lot of people in the Java community. This year, it was a number of segments. I was asked to be in one about Java authors. Maurice Naftalin and I each got to answer two short questions about writing/our books. Mine were

  1. Why did you decide to write a book?
  2. How does studying for the certification exam

We were given the questions in advance so we could have a prepared succinct answer. While the answer was content reviewed, we didn’t have to stick to it word for word.

The keynote was on the main stage and quite a production. It was really cool to see the behind the scenes. They even had a make up person to ensure everyone looked good on camera.

I speak twice for about a minute each at the timestamps in each of these videos:

And then at the end everyone who spoke at the community keynote got to go back on stage at the end. This video is that moment timestamped.