Juggy The Java Finch's Blog

What a great 2007! Lets do more in 2008!

So, in 2007 I traveled to several places. Visiting Java User Groups in many cities and countries, I saw lots of my best friends Java User Group leaders and members all over the world. I also made lots of new friends, large and small!

During the year I gave a talk at JavaOne (hopefully the first talk ever done by a bird) and was even featured on national television in Brazil. Things were so wild that I had a body upgrade along the way!

I also visited my place of origin, the Java Island in Indonesia. There, they had a 3 meters high banner with my picture in it and I met a geologist when I visited an active volcano. In Indonesia they call me Gelatik, but I didn't see many other Gelatiks around, I spent my time around lots of Java developers!

The video bellow shows a bit of what happened in 2007, and I look forward to a wonderful 2008, together with you!

Lets do more in 2008, I hope to see you around, and happy new year to all Java developers!

PS: I usually don't carry a camera (too heavy to fly with), so I have to rely on friends to send me the pictures they took. Many thanks to all of you that took those great pictures from the video above! If you have any picture of me flying around, send them my way! There is a Flickr group that you can use to send pictures, go to my Flickr page to join!

NetBeans Evangelists at JavaPolis

I visited the Czech Republic last year, where I met the guys from NetBeans and was even invited to be part of the NetBeans 5.5 launch party. While I was there, I visit this beautiful city, Český Krumlov, and talked a lot with several Java guys that were there, including the team of NetBeans Evangelists, and also Joshua Marinacci, that sent me these cool pictures.

Then, during JavaPolis, I met a few of the NetBeans guys again, and took the time to learn little bit more about this very very cool open source project.

Roman Strobl is one of the best known NetBeans evangelists. He is also a very well read blogger, among the best 10 at Sun. Want to be a better blogger? You need to learn Roman's secret then!

Now, this next interview is a special one. Brian Leonard is a NetBeans evangelist. But he is also the guy I interviewed most times! I interviewed him at the NetBeans party. Video was too dark to use. I interviewed him twice more at Czech Republic. For some reason, those videos disappeared, they were nowhere to be found on the camera. I owned to him to get this one finalized! Brian talks about JEE support in NetBeans and also about support for other open source technologies in the IDE.

Thanks Roman and Brian. Keep up the good work at NetBeans, and please visit Java User Groups around the world in your travels!

Open Source Projects at JavaPolis

JavaPolis was a great event, and I wanted to learn about open source projects. Is there a better way to learn then to go talk with the people responsible for the projects?

Talking with Mark Reinhold, I learned that JDK 6 was released and that OpenJDK was open sourced. To really understand the importance of this, I had to go hear what Dalibor Topic had to say about this.

Dalibor is the leader of the Kaffe Virtual Machine Project, probably the longest run open source effort to implement the Java specifications. He took some time to explain to me what Kaffe is, and what he thinks OpenJDK will bring to the open source community. Dalibor thinks that JUGs can have an important participation on those initiatives.

My talk with Heather VanCura got me thinking that I should learn more about the JCP. So, I had this idea to look for Geir Magnusson: as representative of Apache at the JCP, and also as leader of the Harmony Project, Geir would sure have lots to tell me about all that. Geir talked to me just a few minutes before his talk and sure enough, he talked about the JCP, and he also showed me how important Harmony is. He was very happy about OpenJDK too.

Once you do like me and visit Java User Groups all over the world, you start to learn that beer is as much part of JUGs as Java. When I saw Marc Fleury serving (and drinking) beer at the Red Hat booth at JavaPolis, I knew he was the right guy to talk to! We talked about JBoss and RedHat, and he even admitted that it was not only beer that was getting over his head!

Nothing beats learning directly from people. Thank you Dalibor, Geir and Marc for sharing your ideas with all of us!

Mark Reinhold and Heather VanCura - discussing the future of Java at JavaPolis

Once Java SE 6 was released, I took my chances and went directly to the man in charge, to ask him what he liked most about it. Must admit, that was not the answer I expected... Mark twisted my little bird brain!

Need to apologize that the sound came out bad, bad, bad... Thanks to my good friend Daniel Steinberg, that helped make it less bad, and saved this precious interview!

Hearing Mark say that the community will decide the future of Java 7, who could I go after to learn what that means? Right there at JavaPolis I met this pretty, smart lady, Heather VanCura. Manager of the JCP Program Office, she knows the inside out of the place where the future of Java is discussed. Heather was very nice explaining some of the changes the JCP is going trough. She even mentioned how Java User Groups can help!

JavaPolis is this cool place where you can meet many Java User Group guys, and also some of the best Java people in the planet! Thank you Mark and Heather, it was a plasure meeting face to face with you!

JavaPolis Interview: Stephan Janssen

Last December I quickly flew to Europe, for JavaPolis, one of the most important Java events in the world. JavaPolis is extremely well organized by the Belgium Java Users Group, BeJUG.

The very, very cool thing about the event is the large number of JUG leaders and members that come from all over the world to meet and discuss.

I had the pleasure of meeting Stephan Janssen, leader of BeJUG, and he had lots to say. Check it out!

The Finch Wire News: Open Source Java

On the day Sun announced it was releasing its Java implementation under an open source license, I set out to interview Duke on his thoughs about it.

The interview didn't go as I expected, but, as a good reporter, I made the best of the situation, and I took the time to meet the most important players on the Open Source Java arena.

Have Fun!

PS: you can download a better resolution of the above video, and see all my pictures and information at my project inside java.net.

Some impressions of JavaOne 2005

Hi all.

My name is Juggy, The Java Finch. Nice to meet you. Thank you for being here. This is my first blog.

This week I attend JavaOne. It is a wonderful event. Lots of Java developers. Lots of Java User Group leaders and members. I have lots of fun meeting many people.

People are very nice with me there. They tell me that I not allowed to be in California. But they receive me very well, and I enjoy be here. It is a bit cold for me, but it is nice all the same.

JavaOne is over, I have lots of fun there, meet many people. Interesting people. Famous people. Like me.

Meet this guy, John Gage. He was on the stage a lot. He is cool. Have dinner together. Drink some whine. He talks about bringing Internet and Java to schools and to developing countries. I agree with that. More Java developers, this is good.

Dinner with John Gage. He talks lots about mascots and puppets. Sandra is from healthcare project. Bruno from JUGs Community is on back: my picture is on t-shirt!

Lots of time with Daniel Brookshier. He works with many things. JXTA, JUGs, Quantum Chess. We talk about distributed computing, and how to teach Java using BlueJ in children schools. Daniel also explain development context that put Java on a printer. Believe that?

Had dinner with Rick Ross. He is Javalobby guy. Talk about developers and blogging. Rick talk about his letter to Bill Gates. Rick defended Java on the letter, and then later on the courts. I see letter on the Java Museum at JavaOne. Amazing guy. Elizabeth Ross there also, she sooo nice. Javalobby is lucky to have her.

Talks with Fabiane Nardon. She got Duke Award for a project about health in Brazil. Java bringing better health for poor people. Java developers make a big difference in the world. Think about that in your job, you too can make difference if you want. This is a good message that Java developers should pay attention to.

Fabiane is center. People say she is cute. I think she be better with a red beak. But she is very smart and nice. Rogerio is from healthcare project, Lozano is editor of Java Magazine. All drink wine with John Gage.

Also see Geir Magnusson, from Apache. Talk about Harmony and the free Java. I'm Java Finch, I'm free and I fly, so, free Java is good. Harmony will do open source Java, and will help all collaborate. And be compatible. Java compatibility is important to all developers. Open source is also important. Need to work together to make this happen. Harmony must be compatible. Apache BOF about Geronimo is cool. Full team from Geronimo there. They announce Geronimo passed all TCK tests, and is compliant. Compatibility is important, congratulations Geronimo. They say Geronimo is way fast and very small. Now, they need make Geronimo reliable and cluster. People asked for that. And also Java EE 5. Sun say their application server, Sun Java System Application Server is now open source too. Project Glass Fish. Good. More competition make all better software.

Visited the Boing airplane. Flying Java, like me. Plane fly by itself, no need to have pilot, so we fly together for a talk about embedded Java. Also play with SPOT. This is embedded Java boards that have many sensors. You put Java code inside and get info about temperature, pressure, sound, and even 3D accelerometers. Boards use radio network, can do fault-tolerance and even transfer running applications to other SPOT boards. Is this cool or what?

Go fly with Unmaned Boing Airplane, ScanEagle. Dangerous name for me... Controled by Java, Real Time JVM. Next big thing is robotics, you should look this now. Real time Java will play important part there.

The SPOT boards. Each one has JVM and many sensors. You stack sensors on top of the board, and Java get info and control the leds and talk with other boards by wireless RF. Little demo, powerfull idea. Did I mention robotics?

This my first JavaOne, and I am speaker. Participated in the Tools and JUGs Communities BOF, with Fabiane and Daniel (from Tools Community) and Bruno and Eitan from JUGs Community. JBob also there. I talk just a little, when JBob do demonstration, but everybody laugh. I also talk a few minutes before other presentation starts, last day of JavaOne. Everyone claps. I think they like it.

Talked with far too many developers. They all nice, and friendly. This is the community we have to foster, protect and grow. This is the community I'm part of. Thank you all for having me here!

Well, this is just a few things that I see at JavaOne. In other blog next week I talk more about it. For this one, it is just to say hello. If you are not at JavaOne, and you not see me there, I'm the mascot for the worldwide Java User Groups Community. You can learn more about me here. Nice to meet you all at JavaOne 2005!