Nominations should be sent to gbnominations-at-mobileandembedded.dev.java.net. Full details on the Mobile & Embedded Governances Board can be found at here.]]> 2008-01-19T20:34:17Z 2008-01-19T20:34:08Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2008:/blog/brinkley/169.9024 2008-01-19T20:34:08Z

You woke up Saturday morning and realized that the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days, the conference with 26 intermediate to advanced technical sessions, 14 lightning talks and 12 poster session that you wanted to attend since it was announced, closed it registration on Friday at midnight and you forgot to register.

Ok don't give up and don't despair, we changed our minds and have decided to keep registration open a while longer. We still have a few seats open and don't want anyone that wants to be there to miss it. That said you could help us out just a bit by actually registering sooner than later.

Register now at the conference home page. This is a great conference by developers, for developers and you don't want to miss it.]]> 2008-01-20T19:55:03Z 2008-01-19T02:24:40Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2008:/blog/brinkley/169.9023 2008-01-19T02:24:40Z

Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days attendees will have an opportunity to win a SunSPOTs Java Developer Kit at the conference.

brinkley Roger.Brinkley@Sun.COM Community: Mobile & Embedded

In WWII the bombardier would yell, "bombs away" as the bombs left the airplane. Attendees at the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days will have an opportunity to win one of four SunSPOTs Java Developer Kit.

The Contest

Throughout the first day attendees will hear several presentations on SunSPOTS. Any attendees that wants to enter the contest will submit a proposal on "What I would do if I won the SunSPOT Java Developer Kit" to conference organizer by 4:30 pm on Wednesday January 23.

Judging Criteria

All Entries will be judged by the SunSPOTs development team based on the following equally judging criteria:

• 40% Innovative use of SunSPOTs
• 20% Commercial or educational utility
• 20% Usefulness in the SunSPOTs projects in Mobile & Embedded Community
• 20% Chance for success

The SunSPOTs development team will then select a maximum of 8 projects. Those selected will be given 1 minute to present to the conference there proposal and then the conference attendees will vote on each proposal. The four sessions with most number of votes will be declared the winners. In the event of a tie, the person among the tied Entries with the highest score in innovation will be declared the winner.

How to Prepare

Go to the SunSPOTworld and read as much as possible about SunSPOTs. Read the forums, ask question, catch up on the documents so that when you come to the conference you have some type of an idea of what you would do with a SunSPOTs Java Developer Kit if you won.

And Don't Forget

If you haven't already registered for the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days it isn't too late. Register now at the conference home page. This is a great conference by developers, for developers and you don't want to miss it.]]>

I'm happy to say that we have achieved both goals. We will be doing a live broadcast world wide using ustream.tv. If you haven't had any prior experience with this tool you are in for a real treat. In addition the live broadcast, ustream.tv has a wide range of features including chat, an applause meter, polls and comments. We'll be using all of these features when we go live at 8:30 PST on January 23.

Where to find the broadcast

We are still toying with idea of requiring an account to be able to chat so you might want to set up and account on ustream.tv in advance of event on next Wednesday.

To attend or not attend, that is the question

But it won't be the same as being there. No matter how hard we try it just is not the same as being there in person. We won't be able to cover the poster sessions. We won't cover lunch. Trust me I've watched my colleagues eat before and it is not worth covering. And of course we will not be covering the social event or the bar camp.

An former co-worker of mine once told me that the most important aspect of any conference isn't the content that you hear but the people that you meet. As we said once before the emphasis on the conference is an intimate conference where application developers get to rub elbows with other application developers along with the operators, manufactures, and platform developers. Relationships initiated here will be beneficial over the next year and beyond. Combine that with some other activities specific to attendees and you got some pretty strong reasons to attend.

I can make it

I can not make it

I am thinking that there is a good chance that one of the most interesting presentation formats at the Mobile and Embedded Developer Days, January 23-24, won't be the technical sessions or the lightning talks but the poster sessions. We currently have 4 poster sessions time slots scheduled mid morning an mid afternoon both days of the conference.

What is a poster sessions?

A poster presentation involves showing your poster to numerous attendees at the conference in the main auditorium. As viewers walk by your poster should quickly and efficiently communicate your given topic. Unlike the fast pace of a slide show or verbal presentation, a Poster Session allows viewers to study and restudy your information and discuss it with you one-on-one. The posters should present general information and invite viewers to ask more detailed questions of the presenters.

I found the following points about posters from a George Mason University document on Developing a Poster Presentation useful:

• Posters are designed to appeal to peers and collegues at conferences and/or public displays, and to meet the organizational and informational requirements of conferences and/or public displays
• The audience of a paper is a person, the audience of a poster is people.
• A poster presentation allows for question-and answers sessions, and the exchange of ideas and information.
• A papaer presents all of the information, a poster present the most important information.

What information should I share?

What's important to you? What information would you like the attendees to know or what idea would you like to share? What feedback would you like to get back from the attendees?

Ok, some of your creative juices are wiped and you need some examples. Below are some of the posters presentations that you'll see at MEDD:

• Tira Wireless - Mobile Content Lifecycle Management
• Qusay Mahmoud - JavaME in Mobile Education
• Intel - Optimizing a Java Platform for the Mobile Internet Device
• Medio - Benefits of a Markup-Based Mobile Application
• MicroAI Engine - Artifical Intelligence using Java ME

Guidelines

• Size: Please stick to a 24" x 36" size (2x3'). If you need more space get creative with fold-outs, etc.
• Material: Choose a stiff poster board that can be hung on the wall. Use every day materials and your kids' glue and crayons. Skip the professional look, this is about creativity.
• Layout: Hummm one week to go so I'm guessing that the guidelines in
  • The Poster Session: a Guide for Preparation
  • How to Present a Poster Session
  • Writing Guides: Poster Sessions
  • How to Make a Great Poster
  • Providing Poster Session (19 links)
  
  are probably out of the question so it time to consider

  The Alternative Poster

  The professional-looking posters discussed above have an attractive counterpart. The artistically inclined can make a poster by sketching it entirely by hand. This has to follow the same design guidelines as described in the documents above, but it is produced with colored felt-tip pens on poster board of pleasing complementary or neutral color. Text material (a minimum of 18-point type) is easy to do by hand with felt markers if there are lightly penciled lines to follow. This less formal kind of poster is fast and inexpensive to do, and if neatly and imaginatively done can have a very special charm as you can see in the example to the right.
• Logistics: We want to start hanging posters on Tuesday, and alternatively starting at 7:00am Wednesday morning.
• Each presenter needs to be at their poster presentation during the four poster sessions times. Yeah, yeah we all need a bio break but do your best to be there.
• Bring a notepad. Hopefully, you will need it and if you do not bring it you will assuredly need it.

How do I sign up

Developer Days registration is still open

This is the first time we've done MEDD and we want the social event to be something that would be unique and memorable. We were also looking for an intimate setting where attendees could unwind for dinner and drinks at the end of 10 hour conference day. We found the perfect place just 3 miles from conference auditorium

Maria Elena's Taqueria Restaurant isn't your typical conference dinner stop. But then the Mobile & Embedded Developer Days isn't your typical conference either. Maria Elena's serves some the best Mexican dishes in the bay area. It's seating is close and cosey and the service is...well...what service should be. Once we started talking to the manager we realized it was the obvious choice.

We're going to start dinner right after the Developing and Deploying Content in the Real World panel discussion. Well right after means however long it takes us to load up in cars and drive 3 miles north (no cutting out early). Get there as soon as you can because it will be buffet style serving and communal seating. The staff will keep serving until everyone is stuffed and the cash bar should help wash everything down. Mix in some spirited table conversations and we've got exactly what we were looking for in a social event.

Now I wouldn't suggest that you should come to conference just because of Maria Elena's. You can and should go there on your own anytime your in in the bay area. But I would suggest that this is going to be an intimate social event and an itimate conference. A conference by developers for developers that you'll remember and benefit from for a long time. Sign up now at Mobile & Embedded Developer Days website. It's the best $225 you will spent this year.]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-11-30T17:46:55Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.8742 2007-11-30T17:46:55Z

Unfortunately, he did point out a serious flaw in the registration system where the price got incorrectly set to $225 instead of $175. If you tried to register and saw the price was $225 instead of the $175 try again. If you haven't tried to register and you want to take advantage of the early bird discount you have until November 30 and then on December 1 the price will definitely go up to $225 and all the pleading and begging in the world won't help. ;)

This is the premier Java mobile developer end of the year and something that you wont want to miss. One look at the agenda and you'll see this is a conference by developers for developers. Register by November 30 and you'll be able to attend for $175.]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-11-13T06:56:17Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.8634 2007-11-13T06:56:17Z

Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days agenda do so. This is really a revolutionary conference in the Java Mobile & Embedded space.

Crammed into 36 consecutive hours you'll find 25 sessions, 21 lightning talks, and 4 30 minute poster sessions. And if that isn't enough you can stay up part of the night at the brainstorming and bar/camp sessions.

Yeah, but it's a Sun conference! Wrong, it's a Mobile & Embedded Community conference that was developed by developers for developers. One of the things that Terrence and I did was make sure that the selection committee was made up of a lot of outsiders so this conference has a lot of outside voices, industry leaders, and forward thinking companies presenting. Of those 25 sessions only 12 are from Sun. In the conference you'll hear from Sun, Nokia, IBM, and Intel and you'll hear from a truly international cast speakers from Brazil, Sweden, Ireland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Russia, and the United States.

And the content, oh my, the content. It's like being a kid in a candy store when it comes to width and breadth of the topics. Java FX/Mobile, JavaME Security, Near Field Communication, Sun SPOTs, Pervasive Computing, SVG, new JXTA for JavaME, phoneME VM architecture, JavaDB and tear off databases, mobile augmented reality, blu-ray, interactive set top boxes and many more.

So print out the agenda now that it's 99.9% complete and stick it under your boss' nose and say "I'm going" and get him to cough up the measly $175 to register. That right I said $175 for two days. Let me put it to you this way that's $7 per technical session and I'm throwing in the 21 lightning talks and 4 poster sessions for free. ;) Ok I admit that's a little bit cheesy but still you aren't going to find this value anywhere else.

So come on. Go to the conference site and hit the register button and sign up. You know you want be there. You know you should be there. Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days is calling.]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-11-13T06:15:29Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.8633 2007-11-13T06:15:29Z

13 is my luck number. I wore it on my baseball uniform and on my school issued books so having the Mobile & Embedded Community Launch on November 13 was no big deal.

brinkley Roger.Brinkley@Sun.COM Of course some people thought the 13th was a terrible day to start the community. It was the 13th after all. But I never have shied away for the number 13. I wore it on my baseball jersey in High School and it has nothing to due with fact that my front tooth was knocked out on a warm up pitch or that I got leveled at home plate more than once. And by the way each guy that leveled me was OUT!!!!

Naw 13 doesn't worry me one bit and this first year has proven it isn't a jinx at all. We now have over 80 projects in the community and more are coming in every day. The phoneME bits are being reused in a number of external projects. Some of those projects are now coming knocking on the door and asking what they have to do join the community. What I think is amazing is we're seeing both application developers and platform developers side by side in the community. That's something that is rarely seen and this community is doing a good job of it.

I've also traveled around the world sharing the news about the community with people in Asia, North and South America while my counterparts have been visiting sites in Europe and joining me in Asia. This year we might actually make it to Africa as well. The response? Pretty outstanding. One thousand in Hyderbad, India and solid 400 at two sites in Brazil.

It's taken a full year but this international community of ME devotees is growing and now they have their own agenda and you'll find speakers from Brazil, Sweden, Ireland, Italy, the Czech Republic, and the United States. I don't think any other conference has this type of coverage.

So come celebrate the community with us today by registering for the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days conference. Seating is limited and early bird registration ends November 30.]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-11-06T05:37:33Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.8575 2007-11-06T05:37:33Z

Reviews of the Mobile & Embedded Developer Days continues this week as the team of reviewers analyze the submissions

brinkley Roger.Brinkley@Sun.COM Community: Mobile & Embedded We preselected three topics so I know Rick Hillegas' "Tear-off Databases on Phones", C. Enrique Ortiz "Near Field Communication in Mobile Commerce", and Hartti Suomela's "JavaME Security Domains and Access to APIs" are easy choices.

From there I've got a couple of other favorites that I hope make the final cut. In the embedded space David Beberman's "Real-time Java in embedded critical applications. Could Java control your pace maker?" makes my heart skip a beat. And face it, I'm sucker for Bruce Boyes and his TrackBots so that talk is high on my list.

There are a lot of game development talks as well, some of which will definately make it into the final schedule. Erik Hellman's "Combining OpenGL-ES and Mobile Sensor API for new gaming experiences" and Marlon Luz and Andreas Frank's "Mobile Augmented Reality: Bringing the World Virutal Elements to Java Phones" are really cutting edge type of presentations.

Hinkmond Wong shows us all in the how to "Developing with Project PhoneME" and then Eric Arseneau's "Project Squawk, Leveraging phoneME Feature for other types of devices" and Lorenzo Pallara with "JTVOS, a free interactive set top box middleware: introduction and architecture" illustrate how to extend phoneME.

In short the final decisions aren't going to be easy but attending should be. This WILL DEFINATELY be a content rich conference. If you haven't signed up yet hurry up cause space is limited. You can sign up here.]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-11-02T03:26:33Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.8547 2007-11-02T03:26:33Z

The last 36 hours have been quite a ride. Full of highs and lows and not much sleep. I'm still not sure if it's dream or reality but I think I remember that James Gosling is going to be our keynote speaker.

brinkley Roger.Brinkley@Sun.COM Community: Mobile & Embedded Yesterday morning at the beginning of the day there were just around 30 submissions for the conference. There were some really good talks, but still not a tremendous amount of content. I wasn't overly surprised when I got up rather sluggishly and found 5 new submissions in my inbox. What was a surprise was the number of sessions that kept pouring in all day. We must work in a industry of procrastinators because I received over 35 submissions yesterday and I'm talking rock solid presentations.

Knowing that we were going to open the site for registration today there a strong need to have a least 3 technical talks and 3 lightning talks selected by the end of the day. I sent our team of external reviewers the morning list of about 35 sessions. Problem was they kept going to the web page that was being automatically updated and say, "oh, oh, can I choose that one?"

I thought that choosing would be a pretty simple task. I figured this bright group of reviewers would make my life easy. I thought they would be the I Ching of conference selection and give me the "obvious" answer. They did for the lightning talks but my goodness they were all over the board selecting the technical sessions. I couldn't decide if the content was that strong or if I had 10 truly diverse set of engineers on my hands that made obvious choices not so obvious. In late afternoon Terrence and I made a decision, almost totally ignoring the selection's team guidance, and selected what we think are the 3 strongest and surest submissions. You can see our final list here.

After a short evening with the family, I started working on changing the conference web site. How hard can it be to add a "register here" button? It didn't take me long to realize that we need to streamline things and one thing led to another and walla we have a totally new look and ready for registrations. Ah it's 4:30 in the morning. Oh what the hey, may as well do the agenda timeline while I'm at it. The fact that I greeted my wife as she left for work at 6:30 am doesn't seem to matter.

Sleep? Never mind, I'll just go back downstairs. The timeline doesn't look right so I fix it and work on an email to my superiors. It goes something like this:

Yesterday we closed the call for papers. There have over 60 submissions: 33 Technical Sessions; 23 lightning talks; and 6 poster sessions. I'd say that over 80% of the talks are of high quality. 24 of the submission are from Sun but that's largely because the SunSpot team has decided to submit a series of 7 lightning talks instead of one large sessions. Next to Sun Nokia has submitted 4 talks. The lionshare of the talks are from the United States, but Brazil submit 6 or 7 proposals. Europe has about 2 or 3.

After the weekly medd (Mobile & Embedded Developer Days) team meeting at 8:30 I plopped into bed for a few hours of rest. It is what everyone does at 9:20 in the morning, isn't it? You know what I can't figure out is why when you work all night the phone has to ring all day? Where were you people when I was awake and somewhat coherent in the middle of night? Geez!!

At 1:30 I stumbled out of bed and started another day. Over 200 new messages in the Inbox. What do you people do work while I'm sleeping in the middle the day? The gall of it all!

We're still short a key note speaker so we're working on our number one choice. After a lot of back and forth we can now say that James Gosling is going to be the keynote speaker. Yeah...pinch myself to make sure I'm actually awake.

It's now late afternoon and the stragglers are coming begging. "Uh, I missed the deadline! Please, pretty please, I won't do it again. Gravel, gravel, gravel" Right! Three years as a JavaOne track lead. Come on I know better. I wasn't born last night I just worked the night. Everyone knows that there is a hard date for closing submissions and soft date. Besides when JXTA, Intel, Java FX/Mobile, and Netbeans developers come asking are you going to say no? So that ups us to around 65 or 70 talks now.

It's almost the end of the 36 hours. I took the family out for dinner at the local ice cream shop. The eye lids are falling and I'm really ready for the rag bag.

I know that I'm going to have a good nights sleep and dream about selling out the conference on the first day. We've got James as a keynote and the best mobile content ever assembled. So good in fact that a couple of really good talks that would make any other conference might not make it here. Combine that with an excellent format this puppy ought to sell out the limited number of of seats in a matter of hours.

Yeah I know, you think I'm dreaming. Maybe I am! Maybe I was six months ago when I pitched this idea to Terrence and we took it to management. Maybe I was when all our external advisers said do it. Maybe I was when my director finally said do it and the M&E team started October 1 creating this conference. Maybe I was when submissions came flooding in yesterday and maybe I am when I say the auditorium will be completely full January 22 at 9:00 am.

Maybe so...but I can tell you now it is going to be the hottest ticket in town for ME developer and if you miss it....well your going to miss the first and best mobile and embedded conference of the year. Don't wait, register now, register here. ]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-10-31T00:03:37Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.8525 2007-10-31T00:03:37Z

Only one more day for the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days call for papers and the submissions thus far promise a very strong conference.

brinkley Roger.Brinkley@Sun.COM Community: Mobile & Embedded

Tomorrow, October 31, is the final day for call for papers for the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days conference. The submissions thus far are indicating a very strong conference. Just to give you a taste for what has been submitted below are two technical sessions and three lightning talks that I think are keepers. Technical Sessions Tear-off Databases for Phones - Rich Hilegas Near Field Communications in Mobile Commerce - Enrique Ortiz Lightning Talks Mobile Communications for Social and Environmental Benefits - Jackson Feijo When Disaster Strikes: Putting the Power to Respond in Your Hands - Kevin Johnson Adaptive instrumentation of MIDP application for on-device testing - Roman Zelov But it's not too late

With content like the one's above it would be easy to resign yourself to attending only. DO NOT DO THAT There is still one days left and believe me, being a JavaOne track lead for the last few years I know that many a good submission has arrived on the last day.

So get those grey cells active and those fingers moving and submit a technical session, lightning talk or poster session for what will be the best Java Mobile and Embedded Developer Days ever (ok it's the first but it's better than anything else you'll attend)]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-08-06T22:40:35Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.7979 2007-08-06T22:40:35Z

A Nokia 6086 Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) phone that I've just started testing and I could not be happier.

brinkley Roger.Brinkley@Sun.COM Nokia 6086 Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) phone that I've just started testing and I could not be happier.

UMA phones allow a seamless transfer between WiFi VOIP calls and traditional cellular networks. Walk into a place that has WiFi and there is good chance that the phone will switch over to the WiFi VOIP without dropping your call. When you leave you'll be back on the cellular network.

Truth is I've been searching for a new phone ever since my old carrier decided to charge me over $500 for mobile to mobile minutes I made while my father was sick in the hospital. From that day on I started searching for a new provider and the right equipment. It's taken almost 2 years but I think I finally have a winner.

What makes this phone I winner for me is the ability to use it at home. I don't live in the sticks, but then again it isn't the middle of city either. We've got lots of trees and hills and the cell tower is just too far away. One or two bars max when your upstairs but if I descend into "the cave" (my wife's term) in the basement I can forget getting any reception. That is until now.

Now I've got 4 bars because now I am using the WiFi VOIP. I can talk in the basement and it is as clear as standing under a cell tower. In fact it's better because WiFi VOIP calls with this carries are free (with a minimal monthly charge). This next week I'll be switching over all my business calls to my cell phone. Since I'm a remote commuter that will further reduce my costs.

And it doesn't just work at home but anyplace where there WiFi is available. Yesterday morning on the way into the church I was explaining how this works to my son. Low and behold the church has a free wireless connection so I hooked it up. Before the services got started I fired it up by checking my voice mail. Crystal clear 4 bars in the middle of a meddle building. Wahoo!!!! Course I need to make sure I go silent once everything starts. Hello? God? Sorry about that! Silent mode, right!!!!

This WiFi connection has another advantage for me. Now when I travel overseas or even to Canada or Mexico I might not have to take another phone along and use a local number. I can call home with my US number and won't be charged for the call if I'm using WiFi. And of course the reverse is true, I can receive calls as well. Even Skype which is only 2 cents a minute isn't that cheap and I can't receive calls on it.

Downsides? Yeah a couple. You have to set up the WiFi connections. The carrier does have several connections automatically setup in airports and coffee shops but it might not be in the airport your in or the coffee shop you frequent. But it really isn't that hard. I set up the church in less than 20 seconds.

Another downside was I had to replace my NetGear wireless router with the Linksys WRT54G-TM wireless router. The NetGear router would just kill everything connected when a call came in. But on the upside I was able to move my NetGear router upstairs as a wireless access point and let me tell you everyone using wireless devices upstairs is really happy now with the internet speed. One machine went from about 25Mps to 108Mps in the move.

Of course making the NetGear WGT624 into a wireless access point wasn't an easy task. It's full of pitfalls which I'll cover in another blog. It took a lot test guessing before I was able to make it work. Enough that I'll do a write up if anyone else is interested.

Oh and one last thing. The phone does run Java ME MIDP 2.0!!! So I can run all the ME applications that I find necessary for my life.

Your mileage will vary with this phone but all in all it has really been a good experience for my and my clan thus far.

Binky]]> 2008-06-24T19:17:03Z 2007-04-24T17:42:04Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2007:/blog/brinkley/169.7136 2007-04-24T17:42:04Z

Ray Gans and Roger Brinkley discuss Sun's Open Source Java efforts in a video cast here

brinkley Roger.Brinkley@Sun.COM I think I'll try to stick to the audio podcasts in the future but it sure was fun doing this. My only regret is that Juggy, the JUGS community mascot, didn't get in the podcast. He was there but hiding behind the couch. He just couldn't find the right time to get into the conversation.

You can find the video here or all the videos at JavaOne home page

Binky ]]>