Imagine John Gage and a puppet at JavaOne. How could that be related to community and open source? It is an interesting thought. All you need to do is think like John Gage.

I was at the second JavaOne. I would have been at the first, but I was on an airplane flying the other direction (reading Java in a Nutshell). I had had already ported a game called Xiang Qi (A.K.A. Elephant Chess or Chinese Chess) and a shortest path algorithm (for MCI). I was impressed by Java's speed and the wonder of Goslings stack safety, garbage collections, clear errors, and the exceptions. All the things missing from C++ at the time.

But missing the first JavaOne is not that bad. Missing an opportunity to listen to John Gage, I now see as the real loss.

John Gage, is the voice of JavaOne. Scott's key note and Gosling's demo fest are the high points, but John is the thread, the motivation, and the call to arms at JavaOne. John Gage capitalizes on the value of being with other smart people. Better yet, he reminds to make the best with those around us. Without John, we are just drones going to sessions. With John Gage, we are explorers, deal makers, and dare I say it, Brazilians! **

But back to the puppets!

Bruno Souza, The community manager for the JUG community at Java.net, created a mascot for the JUG community. It is a Java Finch. Bruno, with the help of many others has created a character in 2D and 3D and even a puppet. We call it(him?) Juggy.

Juggy 1.0

You may have seen Juggy around JavaOne. He is everywhere. I am almost certain that Juggy's picture has been taken with our fellow Java developers as Duke.

Tuesday night, Juggy met John Gage. John was following the Brazilians track at JavaOne. The Brazilians are quite a story with so many developers and grand success in Healthcare using Java. To quote an audience member at Fabiane Nardon's (Duke award Winner) Birds of a Feather on Brazil's new healthcare system: "Didn't anyone tell you this is impossible to do in only four month's?" You have to follow around these people just to figure out what they are doing right.

But to the puppet. Juggy's incarnation as a puppet is impossible to ignore. John had several conversations with Juggy, as many of us have had this week. Between one of these many deep and hilarious conversations John had with Juggy, he talked about the power of puppets. Simply, puppets are our alter egos.

Throughout the history of man, the puppets do and say the things we would live to do. The puppet is the alter ego, the id set free to be honest, gregarious, suave, overtly honest, and irreverent. The puppet is who we would be if we were unbound and free. In a word, 'open'. Yes, as is community and as in open source.

John's prime example is political puppetry in France. He also included the gambit of puppets, including the shadow puppets we might find on the island of Java in Indonesia. The French puppets, known also as guignol, get a away with saying a lot of hilarious things as they parody day-to-day politics. Looking like French and world leaders they say things we might wish they would 'really' say just so that we could laugh. Sort of comic satire from an obsessed and warped doppelganger. Political humor, no matter your own politics, is funny.

John Gage is the one person in the world that I just love to hear talk. I have met him many times over the past years. Every time he seems to find the profound wisdom from a casual remark, an idea, or a situation. He sees connections and then gives us the connection for us to examine. He does this with ideas and often times with people. If you are looking for a matchmaker of ideas and people, John is the one you want.

John also has a curiosity that is unbounded. He looks beyond the surface of almost everything. As an example, on the way to the W hotel, we happened upon a city worker pulling up a manhole cover. John was right there, bending over and peering into the dark hole, looking for enlightenment from the darkness below the street's of San Francisco. He was even asking the worker for the details to the mysteries. Tonight though the worker only laughed and said, "Jimmy Hoffa."

Remember, we were talking puppets. Or was it the puppet talking? The key connection is to the power of the puppet as a device to free the personnality of the puppeteer. When the puppet asks questions, you get that same openness and willingness too. How many people would cuddle up and kiss your hand and have a polite conversation with wiggling fingers? Put a puppet on your hand and it is all possible. Like open source, we can see people open up and look at their hidden code. We can ask for their ideas, the truth, and find what we would say if we could do it right, in our own terms. The puppet is a metaphor for open source. John Gage meets serendipity once again, or at least a puppet created under a creative commons license by and for Java developers and the open source community. A puppet that is open sourced and causes people to have fun and open their hearts and minds.

Juggy, as a mascot, is our ambassador. As a puppet, he is our comic relief. Juggy is also now a blogger. He will blog here at Java.net and make us laugh. As our own guignol, Juggy will use raw wit, satire and wacky humor to make us laugh, even when we are laughing at ourselves.

Ready for proof? Here is John Gage, Juggy, and Bruno Souza.

** If you have not been to JavaOne, Brazilians are the most vocal during keynotes. And as far as I know, the fastest growing community of Java developers in the world.