Van Riper's Blog

Community: Java User Groups Archives

Call for Speakers: Silicon Valley Code Camp 11/8-9/2008

For the third year running, the Silicon Valley Code Camp will be held at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. This will be my second year organizing the Java Speaker Track at Code Camp with the help of Kevin Nilson. This year, I am also organizing a Lightning Talk session for each day of the conference.

If you plan on attending, please register early so that we can get a good indication of the interest in code camp for this year. Registration is free and anyone that is registered can submit a technical session. We encourage people that have never presented before to give it a try. There are plans to have a speaker training prior to Code Camp this year for new presenters. Stay tuned for more news on that front.

Community Wonderland

After seeing the latest updates on Project Wonderland during JavaOne combined with the great memories of hanging out recently at the java.net Community Corner in the Pavilion, I keep thinking about a year round virtual Community Corner implemented using Project Wonderland software on Sun hardware. A place where Java User Group (JUG) Leaders, Sun Java Champions and others from the Java developer community can gather virtually anytime.

The funny thing is that the Sun JUGs Program has hardware available that we could use just for this purpose. Kevin Nilson, my Silicon Valley Web JUG Co-Leader, and I have even offered to take the initiative on setting up the Project Wonderland software on this machine. However, the issue at this point is paying for the hosting and making sure that the machine is accessible to those of us that want to help that are not Sun employees. It would cost $$$ to host this on the java.net site and budgets at Sun are tight right now. Even if hosting it on an internal Sun network could be done in such a way that we could still have access, it would require $$$ from somewhere for the IT support costs to install and maintain that system on Sun's internal networks. =(

Rather than waiting for a better time in the fiscal year for Sun, there must be some company out there that would like to provide the rack space and IT support for this initiative *now*. If so, please contact me to get the ball rolling. My contact information is on the home page for the Silicon Valley Web JUG.

Java™ User Groups: Think Globally, Act Locally

This JUG Community panel session I organized was accepted for CommunityOne. Yes! The slides and the resource links are available now for this session.

It is not too late to register for CommunityOne being held on May 5th at Moscone Center. CommunityOne attendees will enjoy free access to the JavaOne Pavilion and General Sessions on Tuesday, May 6th. Registration is free, but space is limited, so save your spot today. Tell them I sent you by entering W0977217 as your referral code when signing up.

Redmonk will again be organizing an unconference track during CommunityOne. So, that session you failed to submit by the deadline could still happen as part of the unconference component of the day. Or that session you were hoping to see that is not listed on the schedule for the day can still be proposed as part of the unconference.

Personally, I'm looking forward to having Lunch with the Java Posse again this year. There are technical sessions planned covering the full gamut from OpenSolaris, Glassfish and OpenJDK on one end of the spectrum to Ruby, Python and PHP at the other end. The day ends with a reception from 6pm until 7:30pm. If you want to say hello, I'll be hangin' with the other JUG Leaders by the bean bag chairs at the foot of the escalators around 7pm.

Java User Groups International Map

With the help of several other JUG Leaders, I have put together a world map of Java User Group (JUG) locations. It is setup as a KML map file that can be loaded into Google Maps or Google Earth. With my help, Aaron Houston put together a similar world map for Java Champion locations. Through the beauty of KML Network Links, we were able to easily combine the two maps with no duplication of map data. Aaron and I made a presentation on these two map projects during a Quickie session at the recent JavaPolis conference. Here is an embedded version of our slides from that session:

Either map works quite well in Google Maps. You can zoom in on them by continent and/or by country using the navigation structure of nested folders defined for each map. For the combined map, I highly recommend loading the main KML file into Google Earth. Last time I checked, Google Maps is still unable to process all the data of the combined map properly. It only partially loads the combined map. Google Earth has no such problems and the interactive support for zooming and viewing overlapping locations works really well in Google Earth. Besides, Google Earth is just way more fun to explore with this data (see 240K full size screen capture)

I'll end with a plea to get more JUGs onto the map. The bulk of the JUGs on the current map represent JUGs with Leaders that are active on the JUG Leaders mailing list. That list has been the main communication vehicle to get the word out about the map and to get the data back for new JUGs to add to the map. Although I highly recommend it, it is not a requirement to participate on the JUG Leaders mailing list in order to get your JUG onto the map. You will find instructions on what to submit and where to submit it on the JUGs wiki.

That's All Folks!

CommunityOne 2008: Call For Participation

If you missed CommunityOne 2007, it was a great/free one day event on the day just prior to the start of JavaOne 2007 in San Francisco. Plus, you could get a free one day exhibition pass to JavaOne just by attending CommunityOne. CommunityOne 2008 should be even bigger and better than the last one and the call for participation has just gone out. The key dates are:

• Conference registration opens in January of 2008
• Session submission deadline is January 31, 2008
• Notification of session acceptance by February 15, 2008
• CommunityOne Conference is held on May 5, 2008

Attendance will be limited to about 2500 attendees and based on the turnout last year, I fully expect the registration limit to be reached well before May of next year. So, please do register in January and please consider submitting a session before the January 31st submission deadline.

By the way, this is the free technical event sponsored by Sun in the San Francisco Bay Area for the year. The traveling Sun Tech Days Tour never stops here because it leads up to JavaOne which is right here in our backyard. In particular, people that can't afford the money and/or the time to attend all of JavaOne can get a lot of the value for free in just one day at this event. I highly recommend it.

Sun Developer Network (SDN): New Home Page

This was much more than just a redesign of the SDN home page. The SDN content team joined with the .SUN organization, and Sun's software marketing organization to create a model that will continue to evolve to meet the needs of both Sun's traditional developer base and new developers moving forward. On the whole, this is a positive development.

However, I was disappointed by the lack of any top level links from this new SDN home page to the existing vibrant JUGs Community and Java Champions Community on java.net today. There are no direct links to either one and only indirect links to the JUGs Community. Even worse, some of the links on the SDN Java User Groups page are sadly out of date. For example, the most actively maintained source of JUG locations around the world today is the JUG Profiles section of the JUGs Community on java.net. This is not the location you get sent to from the SDN Java User Groups page today.

According to Matt Thompson, the Director of Technology Outreach at Sun:

This is only the first step. Over the next 12 months we are planning on integrating more community infrastructure underneath SDN (thus enabling better community engagement, community contributions, discussions, etc.). We know this is just beginning. Any/all comments are welcome... please let us know.

To end on a positive note, I realize this is a work in progress and a good first step. I have already given my feedback. You can give them your own feedback about the new SDN home page here.

That's All Folks

Silicon Valley Java Developers Unite!

See my earlier blog entry about Silicon Valley Code Camp for the background material. At this point, the sessions are finalized down to the times and locations for each talk. I personally made sure that the Java sessions were all scheduled on Saturday, October 27th. Here is a sampling of the free talks you can attend this coming Saturday:

• Drawing Graphics the Groovy Way by Andres Almiray
• Getting Started With XQuery by Ron Hitchens
• Java Grid Computing with AOP by Nikita Ivanov
• Java Web Services and .NET interoperability by Arun Gupta
• Using WS-SecurityPolicy for Web Services Security by Symon Chang
• J2EE Web Services, Quick Basics, Examples in JBoss by Kevin Nilson
• jMaki: Multiple Toolkits, Multiple Languages by Arun Gupta
• Software Failure Happens: Deal With It by Bill Venners
• Test-Driven GUI Development by Alex Ruiz
• Developing Portlets with InfoGlue by Freeman Jackson
• The Lift Web Framework by David Pollak

Almost all of these talks can be attended early in the day on Saturday and none of them are in competition with the Java Posse live podcast episode recording at 3:45pm. So, come on out for one or more of these talks and stick around for the main Java community gathering during the Java Posse session.

One other Saturday session worth special mention is the two part JavaScript Talk by Douglas Crockford starting at 9:45am on Saturday. If you are a Java Web Developer that at times must deal with JavaScript, you won't want to miss Doug's sessions about the good parts of JavaScript. I personally recommend these particular sessions.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up now and let us know which of these great sessions you plan to attend.

That's All Folks!

Seam Presentation by Gavin King on October 16th

Gavin King will be speaking about Web Beans at the Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG meeting on October 16th. This JUG meets at 6:30pm on the third Tuesday of each month at Google in Mountain View, California.

• 18:30-19:00 Arrive & mingle -- Food & drinks provided by Google
• 19:00-20:30 Web Beans Presentation

The goal of JSR 299 (Web Beans) is to enable EJB 3.0 components to be used as JSF managed beans, unifying the two component models and enabling a considerable simplification to the programming model for web-based applications in Java. In particular, this work will provide a programming model suitable for rapid development of simple data-driven applications without sacrificing the full power of the Java EE 5 platform. This is a domain where Java EE has been perceived as overly complex.

Gavin King is the founder of the Hibernate project, the leading persistence solution for Java. He is an active member of the JSR-220 expert group, and contributed heavily to the design of EJB 3.0. With Christian Bauer, he was author of Hibernate in Action. Gavin works for JBoss, Inc, leading the development of Hibernate, implementing EJB 3.0, and providing services to JBoss customers.

These meetings are always free to attend and open to the general public. Please see the October Meeting announcement for the full details. Next month, the November Meeting topic is Enterprise Comet and the speakers will be Jonas Jacobi and John Fallows from Kaazing.

The JUG will be taking a break in December. However, we are already working on event speakers for next year. Our available meeting dates for next year are listed in this Upcoming Events Calendar.

That's All Folks!

Silicon Valley CodeCamp on October 27-28

So, you might be wondering, what is a code camp, and what does it cost? Well, it's completely free and completely staffed by volunteers. It's a place you can share your passion for technology with others like yourself, it's a place you can give a presentation on your favorite topic to a receptive audience, as well as go to sessions by others who want to share the knowledge. Typically, there are sessions on all kinds of technologies like Java, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Microsoft's latest stuff, and even more programming technologies. It's basically formatted like a 1 day JavaOne style event where sessions are pre-arranged and you just choose what interests you. Session submissions are closed a week before the event so you know what you'll be in for ahead of time and you can plan.

I'm signed up to make a presentation myself. I will be covering how you can create Google Maps mashups like this Java User Groups International Map. You can see all the currently submitted sessions here.

Foothill College is the local venue for this weekend event. There is still plenty of time for you to signup to give your own Java Technology presentation too. Regardless, please do register to attend this event. Free community events like this one are what you make of it. Help us make this a great event by joining us on October 27-28 and inviting your peers to join us too.

That's All Folks!

2007 Rich Web Experience on September 6-8

The No Fluff Just Stuff symposium series has announced the 2007 Rich Web Experience coming September 6-8 to San Jose, California. RWE 2007 will cover all of the hot areas of interest in the web space today: JavaScript, Ajax, CSS, Flex, Design, etc.... with over 50 technical sessions, panel discussions, keynotes, birds of a feather and open space sessions. RWE 2007 will also include a half day of training in JavaScript, CSS, Ajax, GWT, and Flex.

Special Java User Group Discount of $200 is available! The discount is good thru Monday, August 20th. Use the discount code rwe2007javaug when registering.

2007 Keynote Speakers

• WSI: Crimes Against Web Standards by Molly Holzschlag
• The State of Ajax by Douglas Crockford
• Beyond Ajax by Jesse James Garrett
• The One Web by Eric Miller

What distinguishes RWE 2007 from other Ajax/Web 2.0 Conferences

• 90 Minute Sessions
• Half-Day Workshop Included
• 6 Concurrent Sessions
• Limited Attendance (500 participants)
• All Meals Included
• Unbelievable Swag - Every Attendee gets a Nintendo Wii or iPod Video (30GB)!!

Chance To Win Free Registration

The Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG and the Silicon Valley JUG are co-hosting a talk by Burr Sutter (Sun Java Champion, President of the Atlanta JUG, and a JBoss Engineer) on an open source Enterprise Service Bus for SOA middleware. We will be raffling off a free registration to RWE 2007 at the end of the talk (your odds will be better than 1 in 100). The meeting is coming up on August 21 at VeriSign in Mountain View. Meetings are always free, but, they do require an advance email RSVP for this particular event. Go here for RSVP instructions and further details about the JUG event.

That's All Folks!

BarCampBlock in Palo Alto on August 18-19

BarCampEarth (formerly BarCampWorldwide) is a simultaneous compendium of Barcamps around the world to commemorate the anniversary of the first-ever BarCamp. This year's event will take place Aug 17-19 around the world. In Silicon Valley, the local event is BarCampBlock in Palo Alto on August 18-19. The plan for this year is to have a multi-office party starting at SocialText's offices... and looping in nearby neighbors like IDEO, Edgeio, Intalio and so on. Current sponsors include Socialtext, Strategiclee, Web2.0 Expo, Techcrunch, Google, Yahoo, Lumeno.us, IDEO, Edgeio, and Intalio.

You can register for the event here. However, you should also add yourself to the attendee list on the event wiki. I'll be there and I hope to see many of the Java developers that attend the Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG meetings there too.

San Francisco Bay Area Java Communities

I am one of the leaders of the Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG. This JUG and the Silicon Valley JUG meet regularly at Google in Mountain View on the third Tuesday of the month. It might seem odd that there are two JUGs in Silicon Valley, but, it has worked out nicely now that we hold joint meetings regularly. It helps to distribute the work load of lining up speakers and organizing meetings every month. These meetings are always free and open to the public.

Although the meetings are not free (unless you already have a paid membership to SDForum), the SDForum Java SIG meets on the first Tuesday of the month at the Cubberly Community Center in Palo Alto. Meetings are free for SDForum members and $15 at the door for non-members.

If you are looking for a Java community in the East Bay, there is the eBIG Java SIG that meets on the third Wednesday of the month in Oakland. This group is led by Chris Richardson, the author of POJOs In Action. Meetings are free for eBIG members, $10 for non-members that pre-register, and $15 at the door for non-members.

If I missed any other Java Communities that meet regularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, please let me know about them and I'll update this blog post accordingly. Thanks!

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