The advantages of being independent

Geertjan Wielenga: Going back into the general developer advocate discussion, since you don't work directly for a company, does that means that you can be 100% honest about everything and just speak from the heart?

Kirk Pepperdine: That's what I do. I generally speak true to my experiences. There have been some really funny situations.

Heinz and myself were the first non-Sun Microsystems people invited to speak at Sun Developer Days. The most embarrassing thing was that Simon Ritter, who was working for Sun Microsystems at that time, had something like 19 people at his talk. Heinz and I were looking at each other saying, "Okay, that's crazy because Simon Ritter is an absolutely fantastic speaker. He just nails it every time."

I actually really enjoy going to see his talks and I attend them regularly because he's really good. But he had 19 people at his talk and at my talk, I had 385. I remember the number because I remember the...