John "jbob" Bobowicz's Blog

June 2003 Archives

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Innovation doesn't just happen elsewhere, it happens by accident

Thank God for "failure"

So, the funniest thing about the .com bubble was that people actually believed that if they concentrated really really hard, that they could think up the "next big thing". While venture capitalists learned the hard way, most modern marketing departments are still disillusioned. Sorry lads, it just doesn't work that way.

We learn and advance from failure. A very smart person, whom I hold in very high regard, once referred to a now very popular open source tools community as a "failed experiment". Also, consider that Java was originally conceived to run set top boxes. Thank God these experiments didn't go according to plan. If they had, we may not have one of the coolest, most highly adopted, and robust developer platforms and tools around. Talk about being careful of what you wish for!

History is chock-full-O-examples of apparent failures turning into major advancement in human achievement. A true scientist is not afraid of failure and typically tries to prove their theories false rather than defend them blindly. Unlike the .com era, true innovation has no ego. The natural process of innovation is quite humbling.

So, this is one of the reasons why I am excited about java.net.

java.net brings together communities that may not normally congregate. I see this being the accidental meeting place that will launch innovation. Consider that we have communities like Netbeans and JXTA and Jini mingling in the same place. These folks may not naturally run into one another during their normal daily activities to drive their individual projects forward. I, myself, never used those three words in a sentence prior to java.net. Imagine what we could get by applying all of these technologies together.

I remember last year's Java One (I believe it was Java One 2002, but I'm not known for my time management). I somehow scored a full conference pass and was like a kid in a candy store. Anyway, I gravitated to all of the graphics, 2D, and 3D sessions (I'm an animation geek......or an animated geek, depending on who you ask!). I was blown away with how far Java had come in this area. It was very impressive. I remember seeing all of the digital scaling, transformation, and rendering technologies. They demonstrated some really cool stuff.

The most interesting part of last years experience was the reaction to what I thought was an intuitive question. "When are we going to see 2D and 3D in J2ME?" To me, it was a natural marriage. Small devices that are form factor challenged could truely benefit from some the 2D and 3D technologies. The more rich devices - Palm Pilots, Pocket PCs - have graphics capabilities that could also leverage these technologies. It was the lack of an answer and almost lack of response that was quite telling. The room was full of game developers. The game developers were not thinking about running their games on devices at that time and the J2ME enthusiasts just didn't see the need. "Why would we want that?"

Well, luckily someone got it. A year later at Java One 2003, J2ME game development is all the rage. J2ME and J2SE seemed to have always grown up in different neighborhoods and gone to different schools. At least they finally met. One of my hopes is that java.net will help java technologies meet each other sooner in life.

-jbob

Would you like a side of giblets to go with that Blackberry?

Java One proves technology can be funny.

The Scott McNealy keynote is always a highlight of Java One. This year, at Java One 2003, it was Salesforce.com that stole the show, and a lot of laughs.

Following the McNealy keynote, Jonathan Schwartz, EVP of Software for Sun Microsystems, took the stage and brought up several partners for demos. I believe we will be talking about the Salesforce.com demo for years to come.

I give the Salesforce.com guy credit, and everyone else who performed demos at Java One, for getting up on stage in the first place. He seemed to try and offset his aparent nervousness by being loud. We're talking Chris Farley loud. Then the fun began.

The point of the demo was that Salesforce.com has some really cool services written in Java that are accessible via a web browser or mobile device. This is worth a gander because the mobile workforce is all the rage. The Salesforce.com offering is to be taken seriously. The person presenting it maybe not so much.

It was obvious that the Saleforce.com person wasn't technical or even that familiar with the demo. He inadvertantly hit the back button which took him completely out of the demo and could not find his way back. He spent about 45 seconds (a long time when your standing in front of thousands of people) hitting the refresh button, the page forward button, etc, to no avail. Of course we were all snickering, because that's what we do. Finally a Sun person came out from behind the stage and with a single click got him back to the demo. The Saleforce.com guy recovered with a joke about free Sun support which I thought was good form, because you have to have fun with these curves that life throws us

Unfortunately, he was far from done. He got back into the demo, but not where he expected. He started hunting for the link he needed with no success. As the pointer drifted over the back button, he stopped and stated "I'm not doing that again...". Asking again for audience assistence, another Salesforce.com person took to the stage. Again, with a single click, the problem was solved.

I think what made it the most funny, at that point, was how simple it was to solve the problems he was running into. It looked like the classic tech support person working with someone who never saw a computer before. At a tech conference, that is way too stereotypical not to find humorous. What happened next, even I wasn't prepared for.

Now the demo was rolling along. He was now showing how the same data was available from a browser and on a wireless device. I believe it was a Blackberry. Jonathan, trying to keep some flow in the demo was asking interesting questions about the underlying technology. At one point Jonathan pointed to the Blackberry and asked if there was a midlet running on the Blackberry. A midlet is kinda like an applet for MIDP. The Saleforce.com guy replied "Yes, we have giblets".

I, along with others, reached the breaking point. I was laughing so hard at that point, I was crying! Yes, I would love a side of giblets with my Blackberry!! Edible web services?! That's brilliant!!

Hat's off to Jonathan Schwartz. He stood up there, completely composed having become the unsuspecting straight man in this act. I don't know how he did it. If I were him I would have been looking around for the hidden camera because this couldn't possible happen in real life.

It got me thinking. Maybe we're onto a new tradition at Java One. Every year we set up a Sun exec by sending a comedian on stage, posing as a partner, to give fake demos. After all, half the fun was watching how Jonathan would react to all of this.

My final thought to the Salesforce.com guy. You gave a demo we will all remember which is the general idea, right? We were all able to follow the value of what you were doing, so don't worry about it. I too had technical issues at my BoF. The projector kept blowing out my X Display. I had a lot of friends and collegues in the audience, which is probably worse than strangers. Friends always laugh louder!

-jbob

The projects are rolling in!

So, we've had over 1,000 people sign up to java.net on the first day it went live. That rocks!

I just noticed 44 new projects that just got created! Some cool stuff. I'll need to highlight a few. Keep them coming!!

Tired, but happy.

-jbob

The birth of an online community.

Obviously, every large project take a lot of time and effort and building java.net was no different. We spent months incubating the idea into reality and like all projects had our share of late nights and last minute twists and curves. It all finally culminated, after some last minute flurries, with a big bang of a launch

I am not going to pretend to know a lot about child birth but a long laborous process (not exactly 9 months) with a lot of ugency and pushing at the end.....sounds like giving birth to me.

So, I can safely say we gave birth to a healthy java technology collaboration site that we named "java.net" I don't know the exact weight of this baby, but being born on June 10th makes it a Gemini, I suppose. Not sure what that means. Gemini's are great communitcators so I guess that's a good sign for it to be born under.

Ironically, my wife, Lisa, and I are expecting our first child.....news that I'm making public for the first time here! So, it looks like I will be learning to raise a child and a community at the same time.

Any advice on either would is welcome!

-jbob

Welcome to java.net.... We did it!

So, here we are, extremely tired at 6:30am on the first day of Java One. The site is live and in ending one journey we begin another.

Building java.net (and rebuilding it, and renaming it, and re....) has been an amazing ride especially over the last several months. I thank God we had such an incredible team who seemed to trade in their sleep cycles for patience and teamwork. There were times and events that made us all look at each other and say "We're going to launch when?"

This project would not have happened without the superhuman dedication and contributions of Chris Cheline, Micheline Nijmeh, Cheryl Uyeda, Judy Gallegos, Laurie Wynn, Ken Oestreich, Ken Lee, Emily Suter, Danese Cooper, Dick Gabriel, Ron Goldman, Daniel Steinberg, Cathy Guthrie, Ingrid Van Den Hoogen, Franz Amand, the entire O'Reilly and CollabNet teams and everyone else that spent hours in conference rooms and on calls with us and making this happen.

If all of us think we are proud now - and we should be - wait until we see what fruit grows from these seeds we've planted!

Finally, it is ultimately the members of a community that make it great, right? Well, we have an amazing group of members, partners, and JUGs that performed some magic themselves to get moved in and set up in time for the launch. God bless all of you for taking the time and making the effort to be part of this launch!

Well, I don't want to miss the keynote. They are announcing us today and I suppose I should hear what they are going to say!

Welcome to Java One and welcome to java.net! The Java technology development community has well earned this site.

Stop by booth# 1213 and say hello and I'll see you all at the Community Meeting tonight @ 7pm over in the Argent Hotel

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