Much has been written about OpenSource - the idea, the promise, the impact. And while lately the pundits have focused on Linux, the grandfather of the OpenSource movement is Java which was written and carefully managed into the worldwide standard it is today by Sun Microsystems.

From the beginning, Sun has played an enormous role in evangelizing, educating and supporting the Java developer community. JavaOne, the premiere developer event has been held annually in San Francisco since 1996.

Each year some 15,000 people from around the world attend. They immerse themselves in a five day overload of seminars, keynotes, birds-of-feather meetings, the Pavilion and of course those infamous Silicon Valley parties.

In 2005, our client, Scott Schenker, VP Client Services at the George P. Johnson Company was awarded the production and management of the event. Scott brought us in to help to refine the research program. Along with Scott, we worked with Betsy Hansen, the Marketing Director for JavaOne and a large team.

Beyond looking at attendee satisfaction with the event, Betsy and Scott wanted to know what specific things they could do to ensure that JavaOne would remain the preeminent event for the JavaOne community.

The first year, we spent three days onsite conducting interviews with key sponsors and focus groups with attendees. When the event was over, we integrated data from multiple sources including census data from registration, session evaluations, a post event survey we developed and historical data.

By integrating multiple data sets we could then slice and dice the data to enable Betsy and Scott to understand the audience in new ways. For instance we could look at how groups with certain titles or from specific verticals were satisfied with the content created specifically for them. They could see the differences between US and international attendees. And look at why some alums keep coming back while others don't.

To meet the initial objective of providing the team with choices on which to base a long term strategy, we synthesized the event data, additional research and our trade show experience into a roadmap we called "JavaOne 2010: Defining The Center Of Influence."

Safe to say that not all of our recommendations have been adopted. But a few were. And on a tactical level, our findings over the past few years have impacted budgeting, audience acquisition, event promotion, content development and session management.

Most recently we undertook a Developer Preference study to gain a deeper understanding of the influence of factors such as price, location, time of year and program length on the decision to attend a conference.