The NetBeans worldTour Wraps up 2006-2007 Season

August 2007


With multiple stops around the globe, the NetBeans worldTour is a road trip that fans of the NetBeans IDE have come to expect and enjoy as an opportunity to learn more about their favorite development tool.

Organized around the Sun Tech Days, the worldTour's NetBeans Software Day is a free event where developers can attend technical sessions led by NetBeans evangelists and engineers. Attendees learn about improvements to NetBeans and pick up new tips and tricks for working within IDE. For the uninitiated, the sessions offer a first-hand look at the ways the IDE can improve their development projects. The day also serves as a gathering point for the community, with users interacting with each other and the NetBeans team, and mingling with Java and Sun luminaries such as James Gosling and Jonathan Schwartz. Chances to win cool NetBeans giveaways serve as an added draw.

In the 2006-2007 season, the worldTour delivered the NetBeans agenda to 17 cities worldwide. The message? That NetBeans had muscled up thanks to a functionality overhaul.

Developers in Seattle, where the season kicked off in September, received previews of NetBeans 5.5 and new features in the IDE such as Java EE 5 support, the NetBeans GUI Builder, and five add-on tools—Mobility, Enterprise, Profiler, C/C++, and Visual Web packs. The new features were demoed by NetBeans experts who touched on the advantages of each and showed users how to integrate the tools into their work.

NetBeans' new features and improved functionality garnered praise from veteran users and acquired converts as the tour traveled to Shanghai, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Prague (the birthplace of NetBeans!), Atlanta, Hyderabad, Kuala Lampur, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Sao Paolo, San Francisco, Mexico City, Washington D.C., and Zurich.

A testament to the tour's popularity among users, seating at NetBeans Day events was often hard to come by--many stops witnessed record attendance. In Hyderabad, the technical sessions were standing room-only; in Buenos Aires, attendees looking to register at the last minute found that sessions were fully booked. At almost all stops, during breaks in the day, NetBeans presenters often fielded questions from more users than time permitted.

After a brief summer break, the worldTour returns for another thrilling season this September with 14 scheduled stops, and more to be announced later in the season. The goal for this tour is two-fold: as expected, bringing committed NetBeans fans news about the latest features in the IDE, and reaching out to developers who use other IDEs and showing them how NetBeans can complement their productivity. And as always, the day is also a chance to rub shoulders with popular NetBeans bloggers and Java personalities and with other NetBeans enthusiasts.

So, check out the NetBeans calendar for a NetBeans Software Day near you, mark your calendar and register!

The first stop on the 2007–2008 tour? BOSTON!

NetBeans worldTour 2007 – 2008 Agenda

From the 2006–2007 Season

Blogs & Press

Buenos Aires: Press, Roman Strobl's blog
Prague
Hyderabad: Press, Blogs
Paris: Henry Story's blog
Mexico: David Botteril's blog
San Francisco: Geertjan Wielenga's blog, Gregg Sporar's blog
Zurich: Gregg Sporar's blog, Roman Strobl's blog