I was at the 2000 JavaOne mentioned in this C|Net article when I worked for a SF Java-based Web consulting company (remote employee). I don't think I was at the keynote in question but I was certainly in awe of the 18,000 attendees. Microsoft's PDCs paled in comparison. Ah, but I did not know about the CLI as-of-yet. I did an analysis for the company on .NET in January 2001. .NET was better in every way. It did not take me long to find a company that was in the .NET early adopter program. The rest, as they say, is history.