Van Riper's Blog

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.

JavaOne Day Two - Personal Highlights

Helping a high school student get a Sun SPOT from Sun for his school computer club has to be number one. The Java Champions BOF was pretty interesting. I wonder how many people know you don't have to be a Java Champion to attend this BOF. Bob Brewin, the Sun CTO, was taking questions from the Java Champions for the first half of this session. I was also fortunate to receive an invite to attend the NLJUG meeting with James Gosling at noon. On the party front, The Eclipse party at the Thirsty Bear was my favorite. However, I only attended 3 of the many parties going on that night. =)

If you are a developer working on the part of the system that end users interact with, I highly recommend the talk by Ben Galbraith on creating a compelling user experience (TS-6929). I did a fair amount of interaction design work earlier in my career. I found his content spot on with respect to educating user interface developers on what they should learn themselves and what aspects really benefit from the input of a user experience specialist.

I stumbled onto an interesting company, Pervasive Software, simply because they had a novel pen that clips easily to your badge holder and I had lost my pen. In return for the pen, I spent some time at their small booth and was impressed with what I saw. Without writing any special code, they have a solution (Pervasive DataRush) that will transparently take full advantage of multi-core processors for computation intensive tasks. It was pretty cool.

There is much more to write about, but, I will have to update this entry later. It is time to start drinking from the JavaOne fire hose for yet another day.

JavaOne Day One - Personal Highlights

Seeing JavaFX applications running on Android. Attending the JavaFX overview session by Christopher Oliver. Seeing Neil Young talk about the project to make his vast archive of musical work available using Java and Blue Ray technologies. He had been waiting since the 80's for the right combination of hardware and software technology to do this.

Technically, the three most interesting things for me on Tuesday were:

JavaFX has come a long way since the initial splash at last year's conference. I will have to give it a serious look now.
GlassFish V3 Kernel with a lightweight web profile looks interesting. I would sure like to see this as the basis for a Google App Engine Java Runtime. :-)
Although not a new announcement at JavaOne, I was able to learn more about the SpringSource Application Platform directly from the SpringSource folks and it looks promising.

My last presentation for the week was over just in time for the evening reception in the JavaOne Pavilion. The demo gods were not smiling on me with network connectivity issues again. I should have learned by now to *never* count on network connectivity for a successful demo at a conference. Sigh!

In the evening, I attended the JUG Community BOF where we had a lively discussion. The most interesting thing I learned there was the promise that new infrastructure is coming real soon (sometime this summer) for us to use when hosting JUG projects on java.net. I'm supposed to get a preview demo of the capabilities of this new infrastructure later this week. I am looking forward to that.

JavaOne Day Zero AKA CommunityOne

This year's CommunityOne was definitely an upgrade over last year. I thought it was pretty good last year too. The price/performance (free) was excellent and the turnout was good. My one gripe as a presenter was the lack of internet connectivity for my session.

Speaking of my session, it went well. Sun even surprised us by providing a second Sun SPOT so that there were two lucky JUGs that won in the raffle at the end of the session. We had 40 JUG Leaders easily in the room. Some pictures were taken that I'll post here eventually.

When I went to MIT, they had a saying that getting an education there was like drinking from a firehose. I find the experience at CommunityOne/JavaOne to be similar. There are so many options it is almost overwhelming.

Personally, I wanted to attend the Startup Camp and had to miss a critical part of the startup speedgeeking contest due to overlaps with my own session. I sent this tweet about the winner of the Best Startup contest earlier today.

There was also another unconference going on in addition to Startup Camp. Which is on top of the 10 or so parallel technical tracks running all day long including hands-on labs. The day ended with a nice reception (much better than the one last year).

I'm looking forward to a full day tomorrow. I have heard rumors that there will be some interesting demos at the keynote session in the morning. We shall see. You can find me tomorrow in the CommunityCorner giving my mini-talk on the Java User Groups International Map at 6pm.

Finally, I admit it. I'm the classic geek that collects t-shirts at conferences. I may set a new personal record this year. I wasn't even trying and I came back to my room with four new shirts today. At this rate, I'm going to need to buy an extra piece of luggage to cart them all home. :-)

The Most Amazing Thing Of All

... is I get paid for doing this. I'm not actually paid to run my JUG, but, my company supports my involvement including giving me paid time off to attend the full JavaOne conference each year.

JavaOne is next week and it is going to be so much fun. In particular, I am looking forward to spending time with the other JUG Leaders attending JavaOne from all over the world. I had no idea when I started my own JUG back in 2003 that it would catapult me into such a neat community of intelligent and caring people within the world wide Java User Group Community.

If you ever thought about starting a Java User Group (JUG) of your own, I highly recommend that you attend the JUG Community Panel at CommunityOne on Monday and/or the JUG Community BOF on Tuesday at JavaOne. I don't want to sugar coat it. There is a lot of work involved in running a JUG. For me personally, I am at a point where the rewards greatly surpass the demands of the job.

My advice to anyone considering starting a JUG is to not go it alone. Locally, it is important to find other like-minded individuals to help you build up your local group. Otherwise, it is very easy to burn out. I am so grateful that I found Kevin Nilson to co-lead the Silicon Valley Web JUG. By the way, we are always on the look out for others with energy and passion to join us running our JUG.

Globally, there are many resources available to you through the vibrant international JUG community. The best way to get started is to create a user account at java.net and join the JUG Leaders mailing list. You don't need to have a JUG already up and running to join. In fact, you will probably benefit the most from getting connected to the JUG Leaders community before getting started. You will find the mailing list to be a great source of advice and support.

If you are attending JavaOne next week, I strongly recommend that you visit the Community Corner in the JavaOne Pavilion. You will typically find a mix of JUG Leaders and Java Champions hanging out there pretty much anytime during the conference. Check it out!

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.

Google App Engine: Request Java Runtime

I was at the Google Campfire One event on April 7th where Google App Engine was officially launched. The whole thing was recorded. So, you didn't miss anything except for the *cold*. Good thing there were camp fires and hot chocolate. Brrrr! Anyway, it sounds like a real sweet and free web application hosting environment. The problem is the only runtime supported initially is Python. However, you can show some Java love by starring this issue that asks Google to add Java support.

Important Note: Please do *not* add a "+1" comment to this issue like many others have already done. All that is necessary is to star the issue. Comments are intended to provide more information about an issue and everyone that stars an issue sees these comments. So, it ends up generating essentially spam email for everyone that has starred the issue.

For persistent storage, you will have access to the same BigTable data storage used by Google's internal applications. You can query your data using GQL. GQL is a SQL-like language for retrieving data entities from the App Engine scalable datastore. While GQL's features are different from those of a query language for a traditional relational database, the GQL syntax is similar to that of SQL.

My favorite part of the evening launch event was Guido van Rossum discussing why he joined the project. I particularly enjoyed his sense of humor starting around the 3:20 mark on this segment of the recording.

If you would like to be one of the first 10K beta testers, you had better sign up right now. If they are not all taken already, I expect those beta accounts to be gone soon.

Android Talk by Dick Wall in Silicon Valley on February 6th

There is a new user group in Silicon Valley and it is not a JUG. It is a GTUG (Google Technology User Group). The Silicon Valley GTUG meets on the first Wednesday of the month at the GooglePlex in Mountain View, California. The topic of the February meeting is the Android Platform with Dick Wall, Java Champion and Google Developer Advocate, as the main speaker. Android code doesn't run on the JVM. So, why am I posting this on java.net? I think Ed Burnette gets it right in this ZDNet blog post when he says:

“The Open Handset Alliance doesn’t call Android “Java”, but programmers like myself, who don’t care so much for legal hair-splitting, do. I also call facial tissues regardless of who made them “Kleenex”, and I tell people to “Google” things on the internet. So sue me. Um, not really, that’s a joke.”

If you want to get beyond the Android FUD, I recommend reading all the Android articles on Ed's ZDNet blog. If you haven't seen it already, Stefano Mazzocchi’s article on how Dalvik skirts around the Java ME licensing restrictions is also worth a quick read.

In my mind, Android development is Java Development for all practical purposes. So, it makes perfect sense to have a Java Champion and a member of the Java Posse giving this talk. At this point, I should disclose that in addition to leading the Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG, I am also one of the leaders of the recently formed Silicon Valley GTUG. Many of our GTUG meetings will have a major Java component like this upcoming Android talk on February 6th does.

Dick Wall will give an introductory Android Platform talk during the first half of the meeting. In the second half of the meeting, Dick will answer technical questions raised within the Android Platform breakout session. If you plan to attend the Android technical breakout session, it is recommended that you download and spend some time with the Android SDK prior to the meeting. There will be other technical breakout sessions on OpenSocial, Google Web Toolkit, Google Maps/Earth, etc... based upon attendee interest during the second half of this meeting.

Although this is a free event, we will be limiting attendance to the first 200 people to register in advance online.

That's All Folks!

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:

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: Up Close and Personal

There were about 300 people in attendance at this conference. There were about 40 people presenting during this three day event. With the communal meals and an attendee/speaker ratio on the order of 8 to 1, there was ample opportunity for attendees to have in-depth conversations with the speakers that you don't normally see at most other conferences. Plus, these speakers are all top caliber folks in the web development field.

Personally, I was able to have an extended conversation with Keith Donald from Interface21 on Friday evening during a conference social hour. This will hopefully lead to a visit by Rod Johnson to one of our Silicon Valley JUG meetings in the coming months.

I would have *loved* to attend the entire conference. Unfortunately, my work commitments did not allow me to do so. Still, the sessions I attended on Saturday were all uniformly excellent. I definitely learned a few new things to add to my bag of tricks when it comes to writing and debugging AJAX code from Venkat Subramaniam on Saturday morning. Besides being an extremely entertaining presenter, Scott Davis gave us a really deep dive into GIS for Web Developers during a 3 hour workshop on Saturday afternoon too.

I had heard great things from others that had attended previous NoFluffJustStuff conferences. My personal experience on Saturday was consistent with those earlier rave reviews. I was glad to hear of their plans for another Rich Web Experience conference in the fall of 2008 here in Silicon Valley. If you missed this one though and want something sooner than that, there is the Bay Area Software Symposium being held in Sunnyvale next month on October 19-21.