Petar Tahchiev's Blog

Community: Java User Groups Archives

CommunityOne Conference Session Accepted

Yesterday I got the acceptance email for our session on this-year's CommunityOne conference. Me(Bulgarian JUG), Michael Van Riper(Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG), Chris Richardson(East Bay JUG, Oakland), Abdel Remani(Chico JUG, CA), Paul Webber(San Diego JUG), Bruno Souza(SouJava JUG, Brazil), Peter Pilgrim (Java Web User Group, UK), Michael Huttermann (Cologne JUG), Fabrizio Gianneschi(JUG Sardegna), Stephan Janssen(Belgian JUG) and last but not least Thor Henning Hetland (javaBin, Norway) proposed a few months ago a session called "Java User Groups: Think Globally, Act Locally". With this session we would like to focus, not only on the best practices of building a JUG, but also some global resources the JUGs support(the JUG Community mailing list, the JUG googleMap, the Footprint project, ...). Along with giving advices to the newly-born JUGs, we are planning each one of the panelists to cover some issues he has discovered, while leading his local JUG, and also the solution he made to resolve it.

I am really thrilled to take part in this session, and, of course once again meet the guys from JavaPolis on a beer :-).

Java User Group Globe-Trotter

Hi guys,

from quite a long time I have been traveling really a lot. And the fact that I have so much traveling involved in my work, is not all bad. I mean, yes, you live in a hotel, away from your family and your friends, but there's also another side of the coin. For the last few months I was able to visit a lot of the Java User Groups in Europe. I was on a JUG meeting in Düsseldorf with Michael Jastram, I visited the Javapolis in Antwerp, I was in Cologne with Michael Hüttermann, in Luxembourg with Arnaud Cormier, and also managed to make to all the meetings of my Java User Group in Bulgaria. I am also planning to join the Düsseldorf JUG on 31st when they have another gathering, and also in March maybe present a talk to them :-). Also in some of my next meetings I am planning a trip to Amsterdam to meet some of the local JUG leaders there, and also when I return to Bulgaria (hopefully at the beginning of March) I plan a weekend in Athens, so hopefully I will meet Paris Apostalopoulos and Panos Konstantinidis :-). Well, I really enjoy myself visiting new countries and making new friends with the local Java User Group Leaders, and I think that the community we have made is indeed unique. For instance last week I wanted to go to Luxembourg and since I didn't know the city at all, I wrote an email to Arnaud Cormier, asking him to meet with me on a lunch and discuss the JUGs. Well, I was really surprised, when he, not only agreed to have lunch with me, but also took out of his time to show me the city. A great "thank you" to you Arnaud ;-), and indeed the community we have made is really unique.

Bulgarian Java User Group On the road

It has been a really long time since my last post. The reason for this is partly because I didn't have much time to write, and partly because I had nothing important to write about. I have been really busy these days, and the main reason is that I was building the Bulgarian Java User Group. But let me start right at the beginning.

It was probably in the middle of January, when I found the page on java.net, about Java User Groups ([3]), and figured out there was no JUG in Bulgaria. So I started building one. Looking for a pure java CMS, I found that the choice was not that rich as I thought. Of course I could have used some of the java wikis, like XWiki(which, by the way is awesome - bravo Vincent), but I thought that adopting a wiki for jug site was not what I was looking for. I needed a java CMS, with a news module (where people can post different java-news), with articles module (for posting articles), a poll module, and, of course, a login module.

Later, I found AtLeap CMS[1], which is developed here, in java.net site, and it suited perfect for my initial needs. It fit perfect, not only it had most of the things I was looking for, but also because it was written with the Struts framework which I am really good at. So I installed it, translated the "resources" files, wrote the poll plugin, the article plugin and the functionality for posting comments under every article or news item.

The next step was to find a decent java forum, where people could discuss, and chat. It tuned out that mvnforum [2] was perfect for what I needed. I installed it and I started the testing and bug-fixing phase. The whole system was made by the mid of June, but of course then I had to study for my exams at the university and work over the Cactus project at the ASF, so the whole idea was suspended till the end of July, where I started to work again.

To summon up, I have to say that I am really proud with what was made. I hope that the community we are going to form([3]) will be strong and health.

P.S. I want to help also the other guys that took part in developing the system: Svetozar Ivanov - for helping me integrate the Single-Sign-On between the CMS and the forum, and Miss Mariyana Kombakova for testing the site, and finding me bugs to fix.

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