John "jbob" Bobowicz's Blog

June 2005 Archives

The other 10 year old at Java One

There is another side of Java One that alot of people don't get to see. It's the behind the scenes stuff that goes into the production of the keynotes, presentations, and the overall event. In particular there was a person that we were all supposed to meet and see, named Alissa Anderegg. I got to meet her and work with her and here's what you missed.

There was supposed to be a Jeopardy-style game show on the "History of Java" during Scott's keynote, but it got pre-empted by the late breaking finalization of Sun's acquisition of SeeBeyond. As such, something had to give in the packed agenda of the Keynote, so it was the game.

It's too bad, because in the rehearsals it was pretty funny. Scott was to be the MC and the contestants consisted of James Gosling, a "random developer", and a 10 year old girl played by Alissa Anderegg (pictured on the left, with me in the green room back stage). In normal Jeopardy fashion, Scott would read an answer and contestants would ring in to propose what they thought the question was.

Of course there was a twist.

For many of the answers, the painfully obvious question associated with the answer was not always to the correct one. In many cases, an unexpected and often funnier question was the correct answer. This made for a lot of good one liners for all of the contestants. Here's some examples of some of my favorite questions and answers:

• Answer: 1995.
  Question: - How many times a day does Scott get asked about open sourcing Java?
  
• Answer: $4,000,000,000.
  Question: - The Price Tag for StorageTek? [wrong]
  Question: - How much would Scott have if he got $1 for every time he said "Kick Butt"? [correct!]
  
• Answer: JNLP
  Question: -What is the acronym for "Jonathan Needs Lots of Press"?
  
• Answer: Yes.
  Question: - Is Duke a girl or a boy?
  

Well, it was a very funny in the rehearsal and we all got quite a laugh as some of us heard these for the first time. There were even funnier ones that were deemed "inappropriate", but lets just leave it as they would have been PERFECT for last years Java One!

Alissa is a very cute, very funny, very professional and naturally likable girl that was completely comfortable on stage. This is no small feat when this includes sharing the stage with Icons like Scott and James.

Too bad you had to miss her and I'm glad I didn't, but I thought you should know about the other 10 year old at Java One this year.

Thanks for reading.

-jbob

java.net breaks through 150,000 member mark

As of today, Friday, 6/24/2005 @ 2:32pm EDT (19:32 GMT), java.net celebrated it's 150,000th registration when java.net user alex_lopez became a member. As of this weblog we are up to 150,007. We went from zero to 60,000 in the first year and accelerated our growth by over 150% in the 2nd year. This 150,000 member milestone is significant for several reasons:

REASON 1: Why people register

Unlike other sites that make you sign up and login for downloads or "premium content", java.net is a wide open community when everyone, including visitors, can take/read/download most things on java.net without registering or logging in. This means that people register because they want to participate, contribute, or "put back". Registered members may not reflect active contributors, but it certainly represents people that want to make sure they can contribute.

So, what does registration get you? The ability to:

• Blog and comment on java.net weblogs.
• Write to java.net forums.
• Join java.net projects and request contributing roles.
• Start your own java.net projects
• Create a personal page and profile on our People Wiki
• Leave your mark in the Javapedia
• Join the java.net Partner Network
• More closely track and participate in cool java.net projects like Glassfish, Mustang, and Looking Glass, and JSRs

This is not a complete list, but you get the idea. Registration is free and without obligation, but the benefits keep growing.

REASON 2: Participation breeds participation

The more cool communities, projects, bloggers, articles, discussions, and people that are found on java.net, the more java.net becomes attractive, interesting and valuable to Java developers. Interesting things and people attract other interesting things and people. It's a wonderful cycle when it's growing.

REASON 3: Cool features

Since we launched, two years ago, java.net has strived to provide all of the tools and functionality to enrich the experience of those developing in Java:

• Complete collaborative development tools and personal project spaces that each project enjoys.
• State of the art collaboration tools like weblogs and wikis
• RSS feeds for almost every feature or page on java.net
• Unique creations like the Javapedia, Help Wanted Wiki, and People Wiki
• Integrated Safari Bookshelf
• Upcoming java.net plug-ins for Netbeans
• Upcoming runtime environment for Java Enterprise projects.

REASON 4: Diversity

With Java as the common thread, java.net has an amazingly broad and diversified constituency, including:

• 19 Communities representing many of the places and ways Java is being used.
• Over 115 Java Users Groups host on java.net and from all around the Globe.
• Over 38 Different countries represented.
• Hosted projects in many different (spoken) languages. On java.net, Java is our preferred language!

There are many other reasons, but all of this points to the awesome people that make up this community. A big thanks to all of the members, project owners, community leaders, JUGS, Partners, Bloggers, Board Members, and the entire java.net Management team for making java.net the coolest place in the Java Universe!

See you at Java One!

Thanks for reading.

-jbob

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.