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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

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.
  
  

  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!
  
  

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

  Posted by jbob on June 16, 2003 at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
  
  

  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

  
  
  

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

  Posted by jbob on June 10, 2003 at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
  
  

  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

  . -jbob
  
  
  
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