Yesterday, we had another successful installment of the Amsterdam Java Meetup. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera, so no pictures from the event. After the last meetup got cancelled because of my own stupidity, I didn’t particularly spend a lot of time on getting the word out. Fortunately Arjen blogged about it and so did Bram so there still was a bit of buzz afterall.

40 odd people turned up and we had a good time discussing both technical and non-technical stuff. Best part of the evening was Erik E. from K.H. discussing how his new Nokia supports Wip, Wap, Wifi and Wop so he had all the latest and greatest in mobile technology packaged in 15 x 1.5 x 7 (or something). He was wondering how he could use this stunning piece of technology to fill up the parking meter from right inside the bar. When he found out technology still hadn’t advanced that far yet, he finished his beer in one go (I guess he never heard of uncle Bob ;-)) and left.

Earlier that night I ran into a mysterious Russian guy asking me what all these Java developers were doing in ‘his’ bar and whether or not it was some kind of committee. After I enlightened him about the fact that this was the Java Meetup and handed him my business card (he asked for it, I’m not the guy that just walks into a place and starts handing out business cards usually :)), the guy gave me this startled look: he was just sitting there in his bar reading a magazine (I couldn’t tell what magazine, it was Russian) and all of a sudden he was surrounded by all kinds of Java developers (he himself was one too) on a meeting organized by one of the Spring guys. That was an overdose of coincidence for him; he finished his schnaps and also left.

Next meetup is schedule for January. I was kindly asked to not name that installment the New Y(e)a(v)(r)(s)(a) Meetup. I’ll think about it.

p.s. despite of what many people suggested, the Amsterdam Java Meetup is not only meant for Java developers from Amsterdam. We had a huge turnup, with people from all over the country including people from Nijmegen, Rotterdam and Utrecht.