I just got back from Apache Con in San Diego. It was very well attended (one of the hotel staff told me there were over 500 attendees.) Of special interest were the two MyFaces sessions conducted by our own Matthias Wessendorf and Gerald Muellan.
Both MyFaces sessions were extremely well attended. The first session was an overview of JSF and what MyFaces brings to the table. I told Matthias and Gerald that they could tell the seesion went well because 90% stayed for another hour long session covering Ajax and MyFaces. Thanks to Matthias and Gerald for making the trip and putting all of the hard work into the presentation. I was proud to see them up there on the stage representing our community. The large turnout for the sessions also seemed to mirror the recent trends on our mailing list. There was certainly a lot of curiosity for MyFaces if not outright interest. Expect more newcomers to the mailing list after those talks! There were also some interesting Struts sessions. The first session focused on what is now being called the Struts Action framework, including some details on the recently announced WebWorks merger. The second session focused on Struts Shale. That session was also well attended. I had not seen Craig's Shale talk until that point but it was an excellent overview of the project. Craig also unveiled a few new editions that are coming to Shale, some of which he was working on in between sessions at the conference. If you are a JSF developer you should definitely keep an eye on where Shale is headed. An alpha release is expected shortly and the entire Struts team is working to collaborate on areas of overlap between the Action and Shale frameworks. This combined with more user feedback should move this project along nicely. Don't let the "alpha" status fool you. This is primarily so the API isn't locked up in the first release. Its definitely production ready though. My team is currently using it in my day job. Its an exciting time to be part of the Apache community. I expect more great things to come out of the next year.
