Speaking at JavaOne Shanghai 2013

I was expecting this...

So, I was in China last week.  It's not really what I expected, but then my knowledge of China comes almost entirely from visiting various Chinatowns and watching martial arts movies, so I guess I wasn't all that well prepared for a modern Asian city like Shanghai.

...and found this instead

The city is, in my opinion, clean, modern, and attractive.  I was surprised by American-looking early skyscrapers, and really surprised that the city overall felt more European than American - with Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Carrefour, H & M, Zara, Costa Coffee, as well as the inevitable McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut.

Some of the architecture reminded me more of New York than Europe or Asia

I felt like they had the option to take the best of all worlds - the modern, high tech and sometimes downright weird influence of Japan; a care for heritage from Europe; the consumer choice of the US; and food from all over China and the world.

OK, I didn't eat here, but I did love the food in Shanghai

The food was awesome and, by my London-standards, very reasonably priced.  Our hotel was amazing, and also a good price for such luxury (although it was in the arse end of nowhere, but that didn't matter when taxi journeys to the center of Shanghai were around £3.00).  Road users were mental (although there are probably many worse places I haven't visited yet) and we got into the habit of not looking out of the cab windows when we traveled.

Apparently road accidents kill 300 people a day in China.

The conference itself was a weird mix of the familiar with the massively unfamiliar - familiar, because it felt like a JavaOne - the branding, the badges, the signage.  Unfamiliar because I don't speak Chinese - most of the signs and documentation were in Chinese, and not all the stewards spoke English.  The attendees in particular were not expected to speak English (which is totally understandable of course! Conferences should cater for the local population), which made it more difficult to feel like a part of the event.  I think I've mentioned before that the more I come to these events, the less I feel like an outsider as one of the rare women.  But as a blonde-haired European woman I did feel a little... conspicuous.

It was an Oracle conference.  In case you're not sure.

Oracle probably liked the fact that the event is small enough that Open World and JavaOne can be in the same place at the same time, but to me it feels a bit odd.  I couldn't easily find the content that was applicable to me as a Java developer, and I really don't see much crossover between the two conferences - I can't see what I, as a developer, would get out of "How to use Oracle blah blah more effectively". And I can't see the suited business types enjoying "Effective Scala".

It's less obvious than at the SF conference(s), but there's a very distinct difference between the JavaOne attendees (emphasis on the casual part of business casual) and the Oracle people (do they sleep in their suits?). I didn't envy the latter at all - wearing a full suit and tie in 40°C heat and humidity you could drown in must be extremely uncomfortable. Speaking of clothes, all the women are dressed in summery, pretty clothes (except the business-suited Oracle types), and looked like normal human beings, and the geek guys were wearing less badges of geekness (geek t-shirts, jeans etc).
In terms of presenting, this was an entirely new experience for me.  The slides had all been translated into Chinese⁽¹⁾, which I've already mentioned I don't speak, so this meant I had to have my laptop out with my English notes on, as well as the slides on the main screen.  I had two remotes, one in each hand, and I advanced both sets of slides at the same time. The fact that the slide on the screen were also on a monitor in front of me made it relatively easy to make sure I had both in sync, but it did require a bit of extra cognitive power.  I felt lucky that most of my slides are practically content-less - if my presentations followed the Bullet-Riddled Corpse pattern, a) the poor translator would have had to work harder and b) it would have been more difficult to work out which slide I was on.