I’m not currently scheduled to any more No Fluff talks till probably the fall and I’m starting to think about some new possible presentations. I’ll submit here some new half-formed ideas and maybe you smart people can tell me what would be interesting to you (particularly if you plan to be at the Seattle, St. Louis, or Chicago shows this fall).

1. Java 7 Preview – I maintain a Java 7 page and link blog so I’m fairly well-versed in the possible features for Java 7. This would be a whirlwind tour through the main features (real or possible depending on the state of the not yet existent Java 7 JSR). I gave a talk like this last year at the St. Louis Code Camp although it’s now out of date.
2. Java Closures – Another possibility along the lines of Java 7 would be a talk focusing specifically on the closures proposals. By this fall, it’s hard to say what the state of the closures proposals will be and whether there will still be different proposals even to consider.
3. Java Date & Time – An overview of what exists in Java today, why it sucks, using Joda-Time as a replacement, and the upcoming JSR 310 overhaul for Java 7.
4. Practical Generics – Basics of using generics in Java, generics and collections, wildcards, and solving some common problems.
5. Design Your Own Language – Something about using ANTLR to develop new DSLs and implement interpreters. Mark Volkmann did a talk on ANTLR in St. Louis No Fluff in March (and will be again at the St. Louis JUG soon). I haven’t seen it yet so I’m not sure whether my idea is too much of an overlap with his to be worth it.
6. API Design for Usability – A talk about techniques for designing public APIs, with an eye towards clarity, maintenance, etc. Could talk about fluent APIs and a bunch of other techniques.
7. Scheme / Clojure – I thought it would be kind of fun to do a talk about Scheme or Clojure or something based on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. But I haven’t done much with Scheme and friends in a long time. I’m not sure whether this is practical enough although I think it could be a lot of fun.
8. Concurrent Architectures – My current talk on concurrency focuses down at the toolbox level. This would pick up at the next higher level and talk about how to structure concurrent programs. Could talk about things like SEDA, Master/Worker, fork/join or work-stealing, etc. There’s probably also room for a version of this that also pulls in how to use Terracotta to implement these as distributed architectures as well.</ul>

So, there’s some ideas. Let me know if any of those sound interesting. Ultimately, I’ll probably only do 1 or maybe 2 of them, at least this year.