CEJUG is organizing the Caravan Jazoon'08, a group of JUG members interested in to participate of Jazoon'08. Inspired in similar initiatives by SouJava and other groups, this one has a differential: the JUG serves not only as communication channel, but also as a secure source of information about who are attending the conference - and it is a valuable input for conference organizers. Jazoon'08 is open for business and the goal of the conference administrators is to give fair opportunities for everyone interested in joining the conference, including very low fares for students, discount for JUG members and discount for groups of professionals. One of the main issues of that flexibility is how to control Who is JUG member?. Since the conference is international, it is virtually impossible for the conference organizers to check the information provided by more than two thousand attendees.

The social network strength of Java User Groups

As a JUG leader and also as a professional, I helped Jazoon to organize its first edition in 2007. My task was to provide information about Java community, and put the conference administrators in contact with the community stake holders - not all of them, of course, but I guess I did a good work in helping conference and Java community to get closer to each other. The experience provided me a good feedback on how big conferences are organized and what are the big issues in provide discount vouchers and free passes - basically, the lack of accurate information restricts the ability of conference organizers of thinking about better conditions for the Java community. Jazoon has a very elegant package of benefits for its attendees, but it causes a lot of headache for the organizers, and I can assume this is the same scenario for JavaOne, Javapolis and any other conference with superlative numbers. The good news: JUGs can help conferences to attract more people in a more fair way - JUGs are the local community snapshot, and they are the place you must go if you need information about Java communities all over the world.

How Caravana Jazoon'08 works?

It is simple: we created a home-page, where we publish useful information about traveling to Switzerland, and we also publish the pictures and names of the confirmed attendees. This way, we can identify ourselves, exchange traveling tips and - the most important - guarantee for the conference organizers clear and trustful information about who is asking discount vouchers.

It is our first travel initiative, but we plan to extend it to JavaOne and others. If our group of interested travelers grows up enough, we can start to negotiate with conference organizers, tourism agencies, etc.

* Caravan @ wikipedia