Felipe Gaucho's Blog

Community: Java User Groups Archives

Footprint: stable release is out (codename: FOR)

After a long vacation, I finally had time to release the first stable release of Footprint :). The project is new and should evolve to something more sophisticated in the next few months. For now, we are proud to provide the community a simple tool to enhance the quality of JUG events or perhaps bigger or more commercial events. I hope you follow our Footprint. * The project's license is LGPL and the full source code is available at the SVN repository.

The Footprint project

As explained in my last blog about the Footprint, the aim of the project is to provide an easy way of delivering certificates to JUG meetings attendants. The basic user story is the following:

1. The JUG promotes an event.
2. During the event, a JUG representative collects the name and email of the participants.
3. After the event, all participants receive a certificate of presence - signed PDF file - through email.
4. The generated certificates can be validated through the public key of the JUG, published in the JUG web site.

How it works?

The algorithm of footprint:

1. Reads an XML config file, and uses JAXB to construct an Object representation of the configuration. The configuration file contains several definitions, such as JDBC connection, PDF template and keystore details.
2. Reads the PDF template, previously created with OpenOffice or other PDF generator tool.
3. Access the JDBC connection to read the JUG members data. For each addressee:
   1. Fill the PDF template with the member data (name, address, etc.)
   2. Generate a new PDF file with the member information.
   3. Sign the new PDF
   4. Send the new file by email to the addressee

The security part of the project is based on the Bouncy Castle's library, and all PDF manipulation is done with the fantastic iText library. Other basic features are the logging over all operations and the internationalization of all classes.

How to run the example?

The release contains a README.txt file with brief instruction on how to start using Footprint, but in short you must:

1. download the release and extract it in your computer.
2. Edit the file resources/configExample.xml and change the user and password of the SMTP server:

   <email smtp.user="EMAIL_ACCOUNT_LOGIN" smtp.password="EMAIL_ACCOUNT_PASSWORD" msg.from="EMAIL_ACCOUNT_LOGIN" smtp.transfer.protocol="smtp"
   	smtp.star.ttls.enable="true" smtp.host="SMTP_HOST" smtp.content.type="text/plain"
   	smtp.auth="true" socks.proxy.port="" socks.proxy.host=""
   	msg.subject="Footprint Certificate - DEMO"
   	msg.body="You can write a message body here.. or customize it through the code, check the demo file..." />
    />
   

   The example comes pre-configured to access the gmail server, but you can change it to any SMTP server. You can also configure the proxy information in case you are behind a firewall. You can also try a first time without configuring the SMTP settings, it will generate the signed PDF without sending it through email.
3. Edit the file demo.csv in order to include an email address you can verify later :). You can include several new lines in this file in order to observe the system generating multiple PDFs.
4. Open a console and run the following command:

   java -cp .;lib\bcprov-jdk16-136.jar;lib\csvjdbc.jar;lib\footprint-config.jar;lib\footprint-core.jar;lib\itext-2.0.2.jar;lib\mail.jar FootprintDemo

That's it - if it fails for any reason, please don't hesitate to send me an email with the failure description.

How to change the configuration file?

Documentation is an issue by design of our project. Since we don't have many collaborators, we always prioritize the implementation (code first). But you can check the configuration schema, and if you have doubts about its structure, please leave a comment below this page.

CEJUG Certified: free vouchers of Sun Certification Program

Yes, it is true: FREE VOUCHERS! We from CEJUG just created a program called CEJUG Certified, that works as follows:

1. A JUG member succeed in a Sun official certification exam.
2. He nominates himself to be reimbursed by one of the local companies participating in the program.
3. If there is a voucher reimbursement available, the approved member receives back the full cost of the voucher.

Every good company has internal training and certification programs, so what is the big deal ?

The big deal is the local companies supporting the community as a whole - not only their employees but any member of the community can receive the money back. It is a changing of behaviour, the companies are not just repeating some traditional enterprise strategy or offering benefit pack to attract good employees - they are betting in a better relationship between their business goals and the local community. Companies, students and professionals are part of the same community and this program aims to promote this idea - people must know each other, respect and collaborate for a better society, and when companies start investing resources in a more holistic way it is a good sign.

Recognition and respect for the good companies

The greatest benefit for the companies participating in this new program is the recognition of the JUG members. Companies that invest beyond their business borders show a commitment with the local community and a level of maturity that attract good people, attract good professionals - when you sow good seeds you pick good fruits ;)

Global JUG community leaders together

JUG Communities represent the core of the Java universe - the first layer of organization between Java professionals, like local sport teams or that bar you used to go with your school friends. It is something glued to the roots of your society - something stable that is always there, no matter the velocity of the transformations around you. They speak your language and they share your values, that good-bad-ugly feelings that only local boyz can understand - they are your people and you love it. The original format of JUGs was quite informal and promoted by Sun as a simple and natural way to reinforce the adoption of Java technologies around the world. Globalization seems to be strong motivation behind American companies, and Sun as many others promoted this label "Java User Group" in order to recognize local Java heroes. The renascence of JUG Community After an initial period, when everyone with a computer could create a JUG, the profile of the groups started to become clear. Today is less complicated to know where are the JUGs and who are the people behind them - but we are still sufering the natural issues of global scale initiatives. Not all JUGs are visible, not all are well supported. To understand and support the behavior of JUGs all over the world, Sun created two special leaders communities: Java Champions and Global JUG Community Leaders. These special members of the Java community has the privilege and the responsibility to help others to promote Java. It is not a simple task, because you must handle very different cultures and localized issues. That's why it is important to promote meetings between these special leaders and also to push visibility to the local communities represented in such meetings. During Jazoon, we will have a JUG Leaders BOF with the presence of a lot of JUG leaders, Java Champions and, for the very first time, the presence of all JUG Community Leaders together: Michael Hüttermann, Leonardo Galvao and Fabrizio Gianneschi. A great chance for confluence and an open forun about ideas that can help JUGs to get even better in a near future. All JUG members are invited to participate, to know what is being done in other countries and what could be changed in order to facilitate the Java adoption all over the world. Suggested Topics for the historical session The importance of JUGs, and how to create your own and keep it alive Java.net and the JUGs Community: what’s available and what else should be there Making the most of the growing corporate support for JUGs Closing chasms: Java User Groups and social initiatives Discussing the future of Java from the trenches

Michael Hüttermann Leonardo Galvao Fabrizio Gianneschi

Introducing the Footprint Project

Few months ago, my JUG participated in the Sun Tech Days Brazil - with more the three thousand participants over 20 different cities. The event was fantastic and the international evangelists sponsored by Sun made a great work introducing new technologies and the prospective innovations about Java. Despite the great success, the management model of JUGs - uniquely based on community collaboration - caused some issues on the organization of the events in all participant cities.

This kind of situation motivates international JUG leaders to discuss on how to prevent or mitigate these problems in order to aggregate more quality to the local events. * If you are JUG leader, you can (and must) participate of our discussions here.

The need of events certificates

The most part of Java professionals invests in their carriers without much concern about proving when they buy books, attend conferences or courses - they are just serious professionals looking for technical education and they usually don't care if the conferences provide digital or printed certificates of participation. In many countries it is common such investment to be supported by the companies as part of their competitiveness strategies. Unfortunately, not all societies are so stable and fair with people and some markets are so competitive that forces people to register their investment in education as a better chance during job interviews. People living in these under development countries - like Brazil - looks forward some official way to prove they are skilled, including all types of certificates: Java Certifications, graduation and post-graduation diplomas and even minor certificates like participation in local events.

Other common situation in such emergent societies is about the working time. Most part of the JUG events are scheduled during weekends or evenings to provide the local professionals a better chance to attend. Despite that, some bigger events like Sun Tech Days are only possible during the commercial time. Every time we invade the companies working time we feel some kind of disturbance in the JUG community, when some members are just not allowed to participate because their companies don't believe in changing the contracted working time for self-education working time. The discussion about the relationship between professionals and companies are far beyond the goal of this blog entry, and in many cases JUGs can do not much about that. I guess however that one of important goals of a JUG is to promote this kind of discussion to help the community to evolve through examples and identification of what is good and what is not so good in the local Java community.

Other important learned lesson for me - after 5 years as JUG leader in a community without good salaries and without good working conditions for the average case - is that the discussion about better ways to work must be done in parallel of actions to promote a better life for people today. We cannot just discuss philosophically or wait a better society in ten years, we must dream of that but we also must try to mitigate any problem that bothers the quotidian of the JUG members. In that sense, I created the footprint project.

The footprint project

Inspired by the need of JUG Events certificates, we wrote a set of User Stories in the project home-page, but the main goals for the moment are summarized below:

• Generate certificates for JUG events: basically signed PDF documents that say this person attended this event. It is already working in the current snapshot release of footprint.
• Provide a web-service to validate the generated certificates:it means, once a JUG member present his CV to a human resource department, they can validate if the attached certificates are valid and recognized by the JUG. This feature is just planned to be done, but we are still discussing the best technologies and also the best way to use digital certificates to sign the documents.
• Fidelity Program for Java events: it is an old dream,to have a way to do cross-conferences promotions, giving your JUG or commercial conference a chance to check if you attended the last JavaOne or Jazoon, per example. If your JUG can know who attended the last three events, you can provide them some vip attention. It is easy to be done in your local community, but if I go to one of your JUG events and say I was present in the last three events of a JUG elsewhere..., how can you check that? Easy use case for one or two people - in a simple perspective,you just trust in my words and it is done :). But if you promote a conference with a thousand people, and you want to give some special privileges to the old customers or the ones that usually goes to international conferences - how to check that? I particularly love this feature because it detaches the project from localized problems and provide business possibilities for all Java community.

The project is new,we have a snapshot release available and we are discussing the user stories and designing the project modules. We are looking for help, and even small contributions are very important now, like logo design, early adoption and design tips and suggestions. Your experience and your thoughts about the User Stories are also very important, and any suggestion that help us to do a better product will implies that your name will be included in the hall of fame of the footprint project.

So, visit our project, contribute and tell to your JUG leader about that - we certify you :)

SUN Tech Days @ Brazil

The giant SUN Tech Days @ Brazil

Certificates of presence - how to deal with that?

An interesting point of our tech days is about certificates. The attendants of the event are coming from all layers of the software industry, including students, professors, professionals and business people. Different people, different goals but since the event is during the commercial hours, some of the students and professional require certificates to show to the companies they are out of the office but still investing in their technical education. A burocracy, simple and quite reasonable, but something a bit complex if you think about that.

Two issues: first of all, the certificate themselves: they must be designed, printed and released in some way - that's the easy part, since you will reuse it several times. The second aspect about certificates is the controlling over who is really attending the conference. After some evaluation, we agree the controlling is not feasible without a lot of resources investment, so we decided to simplify the certificates process. The SUN Tech Days has a web application for registration, that includes the name and the e-mail of the participants. Well, we decided to generate a PDF with the individual certificate and send back to the registered users after the event. It is not bullet proof, but at least it is a simple, economical and echological solution. People who really need to get a printed certificate, can do it by themselves. We plan to use locked PDF - the ones you can't modify - to guarantee a minimum trustful level. Or use a PGP key to sign the original documents, or other great ideas about trustful documents that geeks love to discuss :)

Global registering of conference attendants.

Other idea I already posted here about a global server containing the registering of all conferences people had attended all over the planet - sorted by region, country or whatever it is required to be useful. In this case, a person would be identified by a unique ID, and this ID would be associated to his JUG. It is not useful only for dummy reasons like proving to your boss you were in a conference, but it can be used for marketing campaigns and discount programs similar to the ones used by Las Vegas casinos. If you are a frequent attendant of big conferences, why not receiving a privileged treatment on the next events ? Or why not receiving business benefits as a vip attendant ? :)

That's all. Remember to check the SUN Tech Days nearest your home, these events are really a great moment to keep in touch with your community.

Special offer to Java Champions and JUG leaders on Jazoon'07

In recognition of the great job done by Java Champions and JUG leaders around the world, the Jazoon committee decided to offer a special condition for them: free tickets for Jazoon'07. And even better, each of them can invite a Java member of their community to come for free also. The idea is that the Champions and JUG leaders identify remarkable members of their community and take these guys to the event - promoting the sinergy between the remarkable community members. Imagine the happiness of a guy being chosen by his community for attend an international conference for free? This guy can be you, just ask your JUG leaders about it.

All details about the Conference fees and conditions can be found here or through this address: registration@jazoon.com

Important notes:
• It is 2 free tickets per JUG. It means if your JUG has more than 1 JUG leader, you must select one of them to receive the free tickets.
• Participating JUGs are asked to do some endorsement of the event, like the logo of the event on the JUG page and/or some advertisement about the event during the JUG meetings.
• The choice of the second free ticket beneficiary is solely up to the responsibility of the JUG leaders and Java Champions.

JUGs support for Jazoon'07 JUG members and leaders will receive a special support during the event - including the visibility of every community through exibhition of logos and jug leaders BOF. The special good news for your JUG members is that every JUG member pay half-price during the Early Bird registration until March 31st, 2007. Considering the registration is including food & beverages, we expect a large number of Java Champions and JUG members circulating within the event lounge. It will be a special ocasion to get in touch with other cultures and communities, discussing how they promote Java in different parts of the world. The events to promote the communication between the JUGs members include a BIG OPEN PARTY for celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Switzerland Java Users Group - JUG'S - The party will be open for all Java community including free beverage.

Prices and official registration page

There is a lot of more information on the Jazoon official web site, just go there and check the best condition for you and your company. If you have questions, just ask the Jazoon'07 customer support team.

A Java connection to Macedonia

Despite all marketing about Java communities, the world is big and sometimes the spotlights loose some interesting groups. Last week I had the privilege to visit Macedonia, a small country on the Balkan peninsula. My destiny was Ohrid, a city on the shore of the beautiful Lake of Ohrid. If you know that game Age of Empires you will feel yourself a character of the game walking through the narrowed alleys of Ohrid. The city is sorrounded by the Tsar Samuel's Fortress - and from the top of this fortress you get a fantastic view of the lake and the city down there. A good place to shot enemies two thousand years ago, and a nice place to test your photo gadgets nowadays :) Other interesting novelty about Macedonia is about its Java community - I confess I had no much information about that before visiting Ohrid, so I decided to share with you some hints about what is happening over there.

This trip opportunity happened when I started working for Netcetera AG - a business group established at Zurich with a brother office at Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. Despite using a portable technology and all communication facilities of the Internet, these two offices are located in very different countries, and the company promote this annual meetings to integrate people - two days of a friendly cultural mix.

Macedonian Java

For some reason there is no JUG at Macedonia, and even asking dozen of macedonians about that, none of them could give me an acceptable reason to that. Here a special requirement to macedonians: just create your JUG, no excuses :)

That's all I know about Macedonia, it is not much but I returned from Ohrid with a very nice feeling about that Java community, I believe we will start listening more and more about their Java. If you are looking for business partners, or just thinking about a nice place to your next vacation, think about Macedonia.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.