John "jbob" Bobowicz's Blog

Community Archives

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

Community 101: Be visible and easy to find

Do you have a people page in the java.net People Wiki?
I do

Do you even know what I'm talking about?
By that, I mean do you know what the people wiki is?!

Does your people page have enough useful information on it to make it valuable to you and others?
Mine doesn't, but I promise I will do as I say after this blog.... ;)

The java.net people wiki is a member maintained wiki for java.net members to create a page for themselves. There are no hard and fast rules about what you should put there, but there is a lot to consider. First let's look as some common situations where a people wiki page could be helpful.

Have you ever gotten a project role request from someone known only as some obscure ID?
Wouldn't it be great if you could easily learn more about the person requesting the role?

Imagine if we held an election for a post on java.net (i.e. the Fairness Board) and the only information you had about the candidates was their user ID?
Wouldn't it be great if you could easily see their bio?

There's over 100k members on java.net, but how many of them have worked on the kind of application that I have questions about? How can I tell if they are open to being contacted.
Wouldn't it be great if you could easily look up peoples skill sets?

I'm sure there are lots and lots of additional scenarios that hopefully you will contribute as comments to this blog entry, but let's get to the point.

All of these scenarios have one thing in common. They are all born from the fact that the only identity that people really have on java.net is their user ID. For a lot of reasons, we do not collect or capture personal information during registration. We don't even require a real name. This can make some decisions tricky.

The people wiki was created to assist in these situations. It certainly cannot solve these problems because, as a wiki, some of the information (i.e. skills) can be subject to the perceptions of the author. But it can help.

Let's consider some types of information that might make the people wiki more valuable:

• Your full name
• Your location (city, country, time zone, etc)
• Your Bio
• The technical skills you possess (Swing, JDBC, Hibernate, performance tuning, etc)
• Your technical interests (what kind of projects do you like?)
• Are you looking for a job? Full Time? Consultant?
• Do you mind being contacted regarding any of this?

There's lot's of other social things you could add, including a picture (so we can recognize you at Java One!) and what books you're reading. The people wiki page itself also lists a lot of good ideas, but I'm trying to focus on things that might be helpful in getting things done.

Like before, this is by no means an exhaustive list of things you could put on your people page, so please comment on other things or if any of these above are a bad idea.

As more and more members create useful people pages, some of the scenarios become easier to deal with.

• Having a people wiki page with your skills and background might speed up the role request process.
• If you're looking for a specific skill set, you can search the people pages for the right skills and/or experience.
• You can use your people wiki page as an online resume and that might even find you a better job!
• You could more easily find people local to you with the same interests.

Just remember that it's easier to include you and collaborate with you if we all know who you are and something about you. The people wiki is completely voluntary as is the information that you put there.

I hope this was helpful.....now, if you'll excuse me, I need to update my page.

java.net Fairness Board Election Results

Frederic Lavigne (l2fprod) is the winner of the 2004 java.net Fairness Board Election. The current Fairness Board now consists of:

java.net Fairness Board
Ken Arnold
Ron Goldman
Frederic Lavigne (l2fprod)

For a directory of java.net Boards and Board members, go here.

The election was originally held during the week of July 11, 2004 and included 6 candidates. The result was a tie between two of the candidates and forced a tie-break election during the week of July 25, 2004.

The results of both elections are as follows:

TIE-BREAK ELECTION (July 25 - July 31, 2004):

Candidate (java.net ID)               --         % of Votes
Frederic Lavigne (l2fprod)            --         51% (winner)
Alex Winston (thealexwinston)    --         49%

FAIRNESS BOARD ELECTION (July 11 - July 17, 2004):

Thank you to all of the candidates and everyone who participated in this election and congratulations to Frederic.

For more information on the java.net Fairness Board, please see our governance.

java.net members can learn more about this election and voting on java.net by visiting the voting project.

java.net Fairness Board Election Results - We have a tie.

The first java.net Fairness Board Election has resulted in a tie between two of the candidates. Out of the total of 6 candidates in this election both Fred Lavigne (l2fprod) and Alex Winston (thealexwinston) tied for the most amount of votes. As a result, we will be holding a tie-break election online next week from July 25th - July 31st, 2004 to decide which of them will win the election.

Only java.net Members can vote in this election. If you are not a member, you can [join/register] now so that you may participate. Members are instructed to go to the Voting Project for instructions for this election.

I would like to congratulate both both Frederic and Alex for making it this far and wish both of them luck in the tie-break election.

All members are encouraged to get to know these two candidates and contact them if you have any questions about their candidacy. Please turn out and vote for one of them. They both will appreciate your support:

Candidate (java.net ID)

• Frederic Lavigne (l2fprod)
• Alex Winston (thealexwinston)

I would also like to thank the other 4 candidates that were in this election. They all received many votes, but unfortunately not enough. I look forward to seeing them get more involved in java.net in other ways. Members that care enough to get involved are very valuable to the community and we should all show our appreciation to these 4 members for making the effort:

• Guillermo Castro (javageek)
• Rob Clark (robthomasclark)
• Cliff Schmidt (cliff)
• Gregg Wonderly (greggwon)

All 6 candidates in this election would have made an excellent addition to our Fairness Board. However, there is only one open seat and we still have some work to do in order to find out who gets it.

Thanks to the many members who voted online in the last election and hopefully all of them, along with the rest of the java.net membership will take the time to visit our Voting project and vote for either Fred or Alex in this up coming TIE-BREAK election for the Fairness Board.

For more information on the role of the Fairness Board and Voting on java.net, please see our governance.

java.net Fairness Board Election is this week.

The java.net Fairness Board Election is happening this week. Voting is for java.net members only and the voting period ends at 11:59pm Eastern Time on Saturday, July 17, 2004.

The java.net Fairness Board is a 3 member impartial panel that acts as oversight for java.net to ensure the community is run fairly. Elected Fairness Board members serve a term of 2 years.

There is one seat that will be filled by this election and there are 5 candidates that have been nominated:

Candidate Name (java.net ID)

• Guillermo Castro (javageek)
• Rob Clark (robthomasclark)
• Frederic Lavigne (l2fprod)
• Cliff Schmidt (cliff)
• Alex Winston (thealexwinston)
• Gregg Wonderly (gregwon)

This is an online election and java.net members should go to the Voting project page for a list of eligible candidates and voting instructions. You must be registered and logged in to vote and to see the voting project page.

Election results will be announced during the week of July 19, 2004.

Please get involved.

java.net Quarterly Advisory Board Meeting.

The java.net Advisory Board is a group of well-known and well-respected academics and industry experts who advise the communities, projects, and participants of java.net on issues related to Java™ technology and community building. This panel of experts operates in a purely advisory role. They communicate with the java.net community both directly and through the Community Manager.

• Mike Bellissimo
• Dick Gabriel
• Tim O'Reilly
• Jack Serfass
• Ingrid Van Den Hoogen

The java.net Advisory Board meets quarterly to discuss java.net and to provide recommendations to the Community Manager. Meeting notes get published to the file sharing area of the java-net project.

On June 3, 2004, the Advisory Board had their quarterly meeting via concall and the meeting notes have been posted. Some highlights of the discussion include:

• A review of java.net's accomplishments over the last quarter, including a review of the May monthly report.
• A review of a recent java.net planning offsite.
• java.net plans for Java One 2004 and other events that java.net should participate in.
• Whether or not it would be appropriate to allow limited commercial content on java.net

Please read the meeting notes for more information and to read the Boards recommendations.

You can find a complete listing of all members on all java.net boards on our Board Members page. For more information on the Advisory Board, please review our Governance.

Questions and comments for the Advisory Board should be directed to the Advisory Board discussion forum located in the java-net project.

java.net welcomes our 1,000th project.

java.net celebrates another milestone with the approval of our 1,000th project. The javafirmware project became # 1,000 when it was approved for the linux.java.net incubator.

javafirmware is self-described as a specification and reference implementation consisting of the J2ME MIDP/CLC and a subset of the Java Realtime runtime environment. The project owner explains that the framework will be influenced both by JNode and the requirements of the Linux kernel.

You can find javafirmware in the linux.java.net community incubator. Incubators are areas where communities allow new projects to mature and gain momentum. Please visit the linux.java.net community and check out this new project.

The java.net Fairness Board

Nominations begin this Sunday for a seat on the java.net Fairness Board. Here is a description of the Fairness board and how the election process works.

What is the Fairness Board?

java.net's governance defines several Boards to help ensure the community runs smoothly and fairly. One of them is the java.net Fairness Board.

The java.net Fairness Board consists of three (3) members and provides oversight for critical java.net activities to ensure that java.net operates in a fair way and follows the java.net Guiding Principles. Their responsibility and authority includes:

• Settle any dispute between members of java.net regarding the application of the Guiding Principles.

• Review java.net processes and policies to make sure they are consistent with the Guiding Principles.

• Review all changes to java.net Governance.

• Manage an appeals process for members who dispute a decision made by the Community Manager.

One seat on the Fairness Board is appointed by Sun and is currently filled by Ron Goldman. The remaining two seats each have two year terms and are elected by the community. The terms of the elected seats are staggered so that only one of them is up for election each year. Rob Clark and Ken Arnold were invited to fill these seats when java.net launched last June.

As announced in a previous weblog, one of the two elected seats is up for election this year.

How will the election be run?

This is the first election on java.net and here is some important information on how it will run:

• java.net Elections will follow this time line:
  • Week 1: Election Announcement (Week of June 14)
  • Week 2 & 3: Nomination Period (June 20 - July 3)
  • Week 4: Candidates Announced (Week of July 5)
  • Week 5: Election (July 11 - July 17)

• Only java.net members can vote and be nominated. Any java.net member can be nominated and all java.net members are encouraged to vote.

• A voting project has been created to facilitate all elections.

• Nominations will be done by posting the name and java.net ID of the nominee to a specified forum in the voting project during the nomination period.

• java.net Members will vote for candidates by emailing the name and java.net ID of a candidate to the vote mail list.

• The candidate that receives the most votes during the Election period will be declared the winner.

• Election results will be announced the week after the Election period has passed.

  More information on the upcoming election can be found in the voting project. You can also learn more about the Fairness Board in our governance.

  Visit our Voting on java.net page to understand more about voting.
  
  

  java.net Monthly Report - May 2004

  Posted by jbob on June 04, 2004 at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
  
  

  The May monthly report has been posted in the java-net project's file sharing section in the Monthly Reports folder. Here are some highlights:

  • java.net membership rose to over 52,000 members.

  • The project list grew by 66 new projects to 931.

  • The new Java Enterprise Community was launched.

  • The Java Education and Learning Community (JELC) was launched and combines the efforts of the existing java.net Education and Research community along with a community of national Ministers of Education and other senior education decision and policy makers.

  • The first java.net success story was published that features the OFBiz project.

  • Hong Kong JUG and Portal Java were the first two JUGs to graduate from the JUG Community Incubator.

  The May monthly report also includes other statistics, news, events, and a look at the month ahead. Please check it out.
  
  

  java.net Governance 2.0 is posted

  Posted by jbob on April 12, 2004 at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
  
  

  Thanks to everyone who contributed to these updates to the java.net governance. The suggested changes went through several rounds of review by our Advisory Board, Fairness Board, and Community leaders and, with their approval, have finally posted to the site.

  This update provides additional details around existing roles as well as defining some processes.

  Some noteworthy changes and additions include:

  • Additional details around the charter and function of:
    • The Advisory and Fairness Boards
    • The Community Manager
    • The Community Leaders

  • The creation of a voting Management Board

  • The creation of a non-voting Executive Board

  • The voting process and election schedule

  • The Governance Change Process (GCP)

  These updates set the groundwork for increasing community involvement in direction setting for java.net. You are encouraged to review the updated govenance and to get more involved.

  Questions, comments, and suggestions should be posted to our public governance forum.
  
  

  java.net Monthly Report - March 2004

  Posted by jbob on April 01, 2004 at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
  
  

  Starting today you can find monthly reports for java.net in the java-net project's file sharing section in the Monthly Reports folder. Here are some highlights:

  • Membership has been increasing in an ongoing and steady pace. In March java.net membership grew by 4,794 new members for a total of 41,661. That is one of our best monthly increases so far!

  • Will Iverson and Michael Champion have agreed to join the Java Web Services and XML community as community leaders. Look for some cool changes and additional activitiy there.

  • O'Reilly and Associates was a finalist in the recent JOLT! awards for the outstanding job they are doing for java.net.

  • Thanks to everyone who has helped revise our initial governace. The revisions are currently being reviewed. The 2.0 release will be posted soon.

  The March monthly report also includes other statistics, news, events, and a look at the month ahead. Please check it out.

  
  
  

  Learn the new handshake!

  Posted by jbob on January 21, 2004 at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
  
  

  Java innovation continues to have many faces and it not always technical. Matt and Rick of JavaLobby recently invented a new handshake for Java developers to greet one another.

  I think it's a cool idea and it will be interesting to see if it takes. Check it out in their forum and send in your picture!

  To Matt and Rick: We love the stuff you are doing over at JavaLobby and would love to see java.net and JavaLobby working closer together.

  To James Gosling: We hope to see you give the handshake during your next Java One keynote!
  
  

  Socializing development tools

  Posted by jbob on September 08, 2003 at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
  
  

  You may not be able to socialize me (just ask my inlaws or come on my next extended family vacation), but at least socialize my development tools.

  Social software is slow to make it's way into development tools. Why is this important? Consider the Java platform. The strength and value of the Java platform is directly derived from collaboration among a community. I would argue that the amount of collaboration is as important as the size of the community, and both are extremely critical.

  Yet, as a developer, I typically need to leave my IDE in order to collaborate and communicate with other developers. Isn't this the same as the pre-telephone days when people had to leave our homes to communicate with others? Once telephones became common place in every home, communication increased dramatically. As a developer, I am "at home" in my IDE, yet the ability to communicate hasn't made it into that home yet.

  I would suggest that the integration of social software, like weblogs, wikis, RSS feeds, Instant Messangers, etc, into the development environment would increase collaboration among developers.

  So, in my ideal world, if I am in my Netbeans IDE and connected to the Internet, and logged into java.net, I should be able to find and collaborate with fellow netbeaners or java.netters without leaving my IDE.

  I should be able to set up a buddy list so I am notified when co-conspirators are online. Instead of inviting them to view my web cam (insert bad visual here) I can invite them to view my code (insert bad code here).

  Imagine, if while in your IDE, you clicked on "help" and actually got real help (read: Online assistance).

  I should be able to set up preferences that will enable people to find me based upon my interests or area of expertise, if I wish. Imagine when clicking on "help", in addition to the normally helpless context sensitive help text, I am also pointed to relevant projects, weblog, forums, projects on java.net. Additionally, if there are members currently online that have advertised relevent experence in their profile, I find out out about them too. It is as that point that when I click on "help", that I actually get help.

  Finally, why doesn't my IDE allow for some "Napster like" peer to peer capability. Why do I need to upload my code to some site just to get it published? I should be able to mark a folder or directory shareable and allow people to download whatever I put there at will. It works for MP3's, why not for JARs? The technology is there. Isn't that what JXTA is all about (p2p)? It's been around. So, how come tool vendors aren't using it?

  Any saavy marketing person or product manager will tell you that "there is no demand" for these capabilities (that they can measure). So, the flaw with this approach is that innovation often spurs demand and not necessarily the other way around. How many people desperately needed Instant Messaging, email, fax machines or personal computers as compared to the number who today can't live without it. The fax machine and the PC are classic examples of where the capability created the demand . The good news is that major corporations, and especially their marketing people, don't innovate; creative individuals do. Now we just need someone to productize it.

  More good news is that all of the technologies needed to accomplish some of the above ideas are available today. As a matter of fact, putting web services, Netbeans, and JXTA in a blender on high speed gets you pretty darn close.

  I guess I am hoping that it becomes less noticeable where my IDE ends and my community starts....

  So, Java developers are already cool. Their tools would be a whole lot cooler if they were socialized.

  -jbob

  
  
  

  The projects are rolling in!

  Posted by jbob on June 11, 2003 at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
  
  

  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

  
  
  
  
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