The event was an all-star line-up kicked off by Jonathan Schwartz in full-blazing ponytail style.  He went over the full vision of code ubiquity between the desktop, set-top boxes, DVD players, and mobile devices, but I was too mesmerized by the cool slide transitions to really pay attention.

This was followed on by a very animated Eric Klein who felt like he was on the verge of jumping out into the audience to share his overflowing enthusiasm.  He was also joined by a beaming Nandini Ramani with demos aplomb:

Nandini and Eric Demo JavaFX 1.0

For those who have been tracking JavaFX at JavaOne and with the Preview release, none of this was particularly new, except for the final act with Malden Labs.  Out of the blue, they ripped out a full-on virtual world called 6thSpace complete with video, avatars, and an immersive world:

Tom Theriault and Mike Wetzer demoing 6thSpace

Overall, here were the big positives and negatives of the night:

Positive:

• Venue – Tasty appetizers and an open bar helped to smooth over any negativity
• Cool Chotchkis – Some very nice handouts from the vendors including premium chocolate and a 2GB memory stick
• Malden Labs – Demos are nice, but it was refreshing to see a real business app up on stage.

Negative:

• Invites – If you tried the automated invite system, and didn’t get a response you weren’t alone.  Fortunately the ladies at the door had sharpies ready to go!
• Sun over-representation – It was a veritable who’s who in Sun Microsystems with what seemed like 4/5 of the attendees straight from the mother ship.
• Demo alley – Having some vendors there to show off their wares was a good idea, but it was sure hard to get to them with all the booths sandwiched next to the bar.

All-in-all, it wasn’t a bad event, and had all the fanfare you would expect for the release of a killer new technology.  Now go download the JavaFX 1.0 SDK and get cranking on widgets!