JCertif 2011 and JUG-AFRICA honored in Java Magazine

JUG-AFRICA and JCertif 2011 honored in the first Java Magazine Premier Issue (Page 7) and I have published the first of a three part series of technical article in Java Magazine Premier Issue (Page 17) on how to build and deploy RESTful Web Services

Another article about JUG-AFRICA published on Oracle website Oracle.com (http://tinyurl.com/3mf4m6t).

JCertif 2011 is coming ! The bigest Java Community event in Central Africa

As some of you already know. The next edition of JCertif is coming.
This year again the JCertif Conference will bring together developers from across Africa to learn, collaborate, and inspire each other.
This year, we're happy to announce 3 days of Java and Android training and 2 days of great talk, focusing on key areas where Java and open source are driving innovation: Java, Android, HTML5, JavaFX and JavaME.

If you feel like living a bit of an adventure, get acquainted with a different culture and meet great people, during an event other than the “classic” ones, then this is for you!
JCertif 2011 will take place in Brazzaville, Congo :
- JCertif Conference (2 days) : September 3-4, 2011
- JCertif University (3 days) : August 31 to September 2, 2011

We’re expecting 800+ attendees, based upon our previous events and several hundred people who are already registered.
Still hesitating to join JCertif 2011 ? There are a few names of great confirmed and to be confirmed speakers :

- Arun Gupta (Oracle). Yes! Arun will be the keynote speaker !
- Bruno Kinoshita (SysMap - Brazil)
- Douglas Mbiandou (Objis France)
- Horacio Lassey-Assiakoley (Atlantique Telecom TogoJUG)
- Michael Heinrichs (Oracle, Prague)
- Mike Levin (Cambridgeweb, OrlandoJUG)
- Roger Brinkley (Oracle)
- Van Riper (Google)
- ...
- ...
- And more....http://www.jcertif.com !!

The final list of speakers will be published in few weeks !!

BTW : The Congolese beer is KITOKO ! Mike Levin and Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine should agree with me :)
http://blogs.oracle.com/alexismp/entry/back_from_brazza or http://www.jroller.com/sandymountster/


There are links that can help you to know more :

Photos from JCertif 2010:
JCertif 2010 University : https://picasaweb.google.com/bonbhel/JCertifUniversity2010
JCertif 2010 Conference : https://picasaweb.google.com/bonbhel/JCertif2010

Here is the website where you can get more info about call for papers:
PS : We're still looking for one more speaker for HTML5 (contact us : info@jcertif.com).

http://www.jcertif.com

Hope to see you in Brazzaville !

Java 7 Launch events in Africa

The month of July was a global gathering for all Java Communities around the world to say "Hello" to Java 7.
JUG-AFRICA also hosted multiple events to celebrate Java 7 (see the photos below). I have traveled in Africa to give technical Java7 talks and met with hundreds of vibrant Java and Android developers. In Dakar, Senegal (July 7), Brazzaville, Congo (July 9) and Kinshasa, DRC Congo(July 10).
Oracle provided the Java launch kits, which include a Java 7 technical presentation with detailed speaker notes, related technology modules, and T-shirts for JUG members. More than 90 JUGs have also accepted Oracle's offer to supply speakers including four JUGs in Africa (SeneJUG, CongoJUG, EgJUG, KinJUG and RDC-JUG).

The events where held in Dakar, Brazzaville, Kinshasa, Cairo, Abuja, Lagos, Kampala, Lomé, Accra, Ouagadougou and Rabat.

I'm very happy about the progress of Java in Africa and the collaboration between Oracle and the user community there.

Yes, I can agree on : With Java 7 event across the world, Oracle's demonstrated commitment to fostering strong and independent groups worldwide and to ensuring that the groups have a powerful voice.

Here is a list of most Java7 launch events that JUG-AFRICA managed.

FasoJUG (Burkina Faso) : http://netbeans.dzone.com/articles/java-7-launch-celebration
KinJUG and RDC-JUG sync event (DRC Congo) : http://tinyurl.com/3epgspa
SeneJUG (Senegal) : https://picasaweb.google.com/bonbhel/Java7Dakar?authkey=Gv1sRgCNbYsI28sNXRDA
MoroccoJUG (Morocco) : https://picasaweb.google.com/110639374541156761336/Moroccojug
LagosJUG (Nigeria) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/segunakintayo/show/with/5973316065
Coders4Africa (Ghana) : http://coders4africa.org/en/communities/158-kwame-andah/photos/photo?albumid=19#photoid=454
CongoJUG (Congo, Brazzaville) : https://picasaweb.google.com/bonbhel/Java7Brazzaville02?authkey=Gv1sRgCNrTt-X69eCGLg
TogoJUG (Togo) : http://horalass.blogspot.com/2011/07/lancement-de-java-7-au-togo.html
MUFIX JUG (Egypt) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamadazahera/sets/72157627182341847
UgandaJUG (Uganda) : https://picasaweb.google.com/102671662680351546079/Java7Launch
EgJUG (Egypt) : http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.240046432679961.66624.212726112078660

I'd like to thanks Michelle, Cassandra, Ruth, Senja and Yolande from Oracle for the great support (Speaker/T-Shirt/Fund) and thanks for Simon Ritter who present Java 7 in Cairo and provided a very comprehensible technical material to our speakers.

À suivre....

Recall - Android Developer Challenge, Africa!!

App entries close July 1^st, so soon. Would be great to have at least finalists from the JUG event if not a winner and also more submissions from francophone Africa. Any encouraging you can do would be awesome!

Quick Overview (just reminder!):

For those entering, here are a few competition details from worth highlighting.

• The competition is a two round process - semi-finals and finals.
• In the semi-finals, participants compete regionally – East Africa, Southern Africa and West and Central Africa. The top three apps from each category and each region move the finals.
• All entries must be in by July 1st, no exceptions. Submissions open June 1st.
• Semi-finalists be announced July 15th will receive an Android device and be given six weeks to improve their apps.
• At the end of six weeks they will resubmit their app for final review.
• The top apps from each category will receive $25,000 for a total of $75,000.

Africa Mobilizes and Java 7 too!

In JUG-AFRICA we are very excited!
I'll manage several local and regional Java 7 events in Africa.
Mike Levin from OrlandoJUG and Co-leader of SeneJUG just blogged about that.
Please, take a look !
http://www.codetown.us/group/jugafrica/forum/topic/show?id=2197786%3ATopic%3A22487&xg_source=msg

JavaOne11 - The Bad, the Good and the Very Good

As a member of the volunteer JavaOne advisory committee, I got a special invitation for the briefing Call Monday April 25th 8:30am PT before the public announcement by Oracle.
Several Java leaders aroun the world attended the conference such as Bruno Souza (SouJava), Stephan Janssen (Devoxx), Jim Bethancourt (Houston JUG leader)...

There are some key points :

The bad :

• - Yes : This year again JavaOne will happen during Oracle Open World in the same 3 hotels like last year.

The so-so:

• - All JavaOne 2011 sessions, including keynotes, will take place exclusively in "The Zone" at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, the Hotel Nikko and the Parc 55.

The good:

• - JavaOne will be a separate, standalone conference (bye bye Oracle Develop !)
  
• - More sessions, the number of sessions will be increased
• - Bigger room, the size of many session rooms
  
• - Popular sessions wiil be repeated throughout the week.
• - More networking and vendor space, there will be a number of enhancements to The Zone from 2010
• - More maps, signage and onsite staff to answer questions.

The very good :

• - 4 room dedicated to the User Group Sunday
• - Java leaders to participate in planning sections
• - Glassfish and MySQL community will be in the Zone too
• - Some number of passes for Java Leaders

The track :

• - Core Java Platform
• - Java SE, Client-Side Technologies and Rich User Experiences
• - Enterprise Service Architectures and the Cloud
• - Java EE Web Profile and Platform Technologies
• - Java ME, Mobile, Embedded, and Devices
• - The Java Frontier
• - And Emerging Languages, Tools and Techniques.

The call for papers :

• - Open Wednesday, April 27, 2011
  
• - Close : Monday, May 23, 2011

JavaOne 2011 URL: http://www.oracle.com/javaone/index.html
Content tracks listed at http://www.oracle.com/javaone/063296.html

À suivre...

Android Developer Challenge (JUG-AFRICA)

There are the Android events I managed for the JUG-AFRICA. The events was supported by Google under the Android Developer Challenge — Sub-Saharan Africa

• - Lome, Togo by TogoJUG : summary, photos
  
• - Kinshasa, Congo (DRC) by Kin-JUG : summary, photos
  
• - Dakar, Senegal organized by SeneJUG and Coders4Africa : summary, photos
• - Brazzaville, Congo by CongoJUG : summary and photos
• - Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso : photos
  
• - Abuja, Nigeria : photos : photos
  

Other event will be published here.
À suivre....Stay tuned !

Thanks to all JUG-AFRICA Leaders..

JUG-AFRICA Android Tour ! Android got a crush on Africa !

Android just fall in love with African developers ? It sound really awesome !
I'm managing the Android events for the Java Users Group across Africa (sub-Saharan). JUG-AFRICA Android Tour is a community event hosted by the local JUG and supported by Google.
We also planned some Sync events with all the Google Technologies User Groups (GTUG) in order to not have two little events in the same place but one bigger one..


Bellow the summary of the planned Android events by the JUG-AFRICA :

• Dakar, Senegal : Will be hosted by the Senegal Java Users Group (SeneJUG) and Corders4Africa
• Lome (TOGO) : Will be host by the Togo Java Users Group (TogoJUG)
• Abuja, Nigeria : Will be host by Abuja Java Users Group (AbujaJUG) and the Abuja-GTUG
• Johannesburg, South Africa : Will be host by the Johannesburg Java User Group (FJUG) and Johannesburg GTUG (to be confirmed)
• Cape Town, South Africa : Hosted by the CAPE Town (CTJUG) and South Africa GTUG
• Brazzaville, Congo : Hosted by the Congo Java Users Group (CongoJUG). Subscribe here
  
• Kinshasa, RDC Congo : Hosted by the Kinshasa Java User Group (KinJUG)
• Douala, Cameroon : Hosted by the Cameroon Java Users Group (CamerJUG) and the Cameroon-GTUG
• Accra Ghana : Hosted by the Ghana-GTUG and Conders4Africa
• Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso : Hosted by the Burkina Java Users Group (FasoJUG)

Let the fun begin!

Thanks to all the JUG-AFRICA Leaders in Africa !

JUG-AFRICA at Googleplex in Mountain View !!

Last January I was invited by Google at Googleplex in Mountain View to meet with managers from Developer Relations Team to discuss about our annual event (JCertif 2011) and possible synergies between JUG-AFRICA and Google G-AFRICA. It was a great meeting with concrete collaboration agenda. Here is a summary :
Google Outreach efforts in Africa

• University courses (we think Google should give this opportunity to local experts);
• Local user groups;
• Technology barcamps;
• Competitions and coding challenges.
  

Working Together Possibilities (JUG-AFRICA - Google AFRICA)

• work together on University talks;
• Professional groups: look at joint meetings on Android, App Engine, GWT.

Concrete Next Steps (started!)

• Share calendar of future JUG-Africa events (JUG-Meeting) with G-AFRICA manager;
  
• Look for ways to collaborate on some of those events;
• Identify key Java community members that we can get more involved;
• Work together on University outreach.
  

We have conclude the day with a lunch that was disrupted a little bit by a fire alrme at the Googleplex' main cafeteria. Miam! miam!
Thanks Van Reper.

JUG Africa's Silicon Valley tour at Oracle Headquarters

A few months back I attended the IOUC 2011 Summit (International Oracle User Group Community Summit) at Oracle Headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. This was my first time in the deep Oracle World.
About 15 Java leaders around the world attended the conference (Stephan Janssen, Daniel deOliveira, Van Riper, Dario Laverde, Bert Breeman, John Yeary.... and Bruno from SouJava who was nominate by Oracle to the JCP Executive Committee... Congratulations Bruno!) vs 140+ Oracle User Groups «President». To be honest, I was a bit suspicious about the Oracle UG communities which is Product oriented vs the JUGs Technology oriented.

But surprise !! The conference was a success on the whole. It was a really great event regarding organization, content and openness and the respect from each user group (Oarcle UG and JUG). I was able to share ideas with some IOUC leaders about running a UG Community and networking as well on what works, and what doesn't. All in a very casual atmosphere. For the JUG Leaders it was also the very valuable quality time to be together in the same place for 3 days VIP Treatment. I can't image how it will be when more JUG Leaders will attend this meeting!

My favorite sessions and unSessions :

• 12- UnConference (a success !)
• Overview of the Java agenda (by Steve Harris)
• Additional contents for JEE 7 (Roberto Chinnici)
• Usability tour in Oracle Headquarters
• The future of JavaOne 2011 and 2011
  

What about JUG-AFRICA ?

• Sure, we will present JUG-AFRICA at IOUC Summit 2011 (International Oracle User Group Committee).
• We will volunteer to assist the JavaOne conference team 2011 and 2012
• Oracle Technology Network will be the Platinum Sponsor of JCertif 2011
  (the biggest Java Community Conference in Central Africa)
  
• Oracle will send Speaker at JCertif 2011
  

Thank to Oracle Staff, Jeb Dasteel, Mary Lou Dopart, Justin Kestlyn, Nichole Scott, staff, and executives for hosting this great conference and for arranging my IOUC Summit experience.

2010 : What I did !

This funny blog is just about to recall me what I was able to do.

I made a return to the source in Brazzaville, Congo



I host JCertif 2010 the biggest Java Community Conference in Central Africa. About 400 attendees. This was far from a “classic” event! It was a mix of technical session, life experience and a bit of an adventure. About 400 people from 6 countries (Congo Brazzaville, Congo Kinshasa, Togo, France, Canada and USA) attended the conference and classes.




I gave free Java courses and workshop. Really great !


and I came back to Quebec City (Canada)


I attended JavaOne and Oracle Develop in San Francisco




and I came back at home in Quebec City (Canada)


I went back to Boston enjoy the long-due weekend with my beautiful wife and visiting MIT and Harvard University



few days after Boston, Chrisbel and I attended Devoxx in Antwerp, Belgium. Very great Java community conference !


I got back to Quebec City to gave a talk on the future of Java under Oracle at «Le mois de la technologie» at Fujitsu Canada office of Quebec

À suivre...NEXT YEAR

JUG-AFRICA Open Source Project to manage community annual events

In JUG-AFRICA we started an Open Source project to manage the BIG ANNUAL EVENTS for our JUGs. The first release will be available in the early second half of January.

The application will provide all services bellow via the REST Web services :

- Appointment Manager

- Conference Manager

- Paper reviews and approval Manager
- Profile Manager
- Registration Manager

- Sponsorship Manager

- Conference Center Manager

- Room booking Manager
- Etc...

The code source is available for free on google code. https://code.google.com/p/projet-jcertif-2011/
The current presentation layer is based on Vaadin but anayonve can propose his own UI client.

20+ dev across Africa are working on this app. I will write a post in this blog to provide more details.
PS : Complete the form to join the team http://tinyurl.com/34zdc9x.

JCertif 2011 the biggest Java Community Event in Central Africa ! Save the dates : 3-4 September 2011

Hi All,

I'll like to let you know the dates of JCertif 2011 the biggest Java Community Event in Africa. About 800+ attendees from many countries.

We will be happy to have you as Speaker on Developer Tools, Java, Open Source, Mobile Apps...or Business solutions.

Still hesitating to join JCertif 2011 ? See the past event : JCertif 2010 and this blog post

JCertif 2011 (English and French) :

Where :

• Centre des congrès (venue), Brazzaville, Congo

When :

• JCertif Conf : September 3rd, 2011
• JCertif University : September 4th, 2011
  

Attendees :

• About : 800 to 1000
• Profile : Developers, architects, engineers, students, professors, managers, JUG members, JUG leaders
• From : Togo, Congo (Brazzaville), Senegal, Congo (Kinshasa), France, USA and Canada
  

Registration :

• Open : January 01, 2011
• Close : July 30, 2011
  

The topics :

• Web 2.0 for developers and for small businesses.
  
• Mobile phone application development (Tools and Framework).
• Core Java platform, UI, Tools and Framework
• Programming courses and workshop
  

Papers submission at : info@jcertif.com

• Open : January 01, 2011
• Close : May 01, 2010
• Notifications going out : May 30, 2011
  

Fields :

• Title : Create a title that is clear and concise. Attendees will often select sessions based on the title (maximum 15 words).
• Description : Be clear about the value of this presentation to attendees (750 characters maximum).
• Summary : Describes how you will cover your subject. The focus of your presentation (code, demo, integration, tools etc..)
• Specific needs (if available): Video projector, Phone cell, Internet connection, TV, etc...
  

Speaker :

• Bio : Short description of your back ground.
• Photo : 150x100 (gif, png, jpeg).
  

Thanks,

Devoxx 2010 : The first time for Congo JUG and JUG-AFRICA but not the last

Devoxx 2010 is over since a few days. Here is a quick return on our presence in Belgium. As agreed, our community was well represented by Chrisbel and myself.

We had the opportunity to interact with experts working on the technologies we use every day. Including the developers of Google, SpringSource, JBoss, Hibernate, IBM, Oracle, InteliJ, Vaadin etc. ...

Only Devoxx can offer such proximity between the community and Java experts of all stripes. To note, the strong presence of the Java community from France with an imposing team from ParisJUG. We also had the opportunity to discuss with Antonio Goncalves and Zouheir Cadi about the opportunities to collaborate.

Good points:
What is striking, when you go for the first time in the Metropolis cinema complex where Devoxx instals itself every year, is the size of the presentation screens, and the sound quality. Just Amazing! Cinema rooms designed and optimized for better visual and audio experience are definitely a great advantage for an event like this. On this point, Devoxx 1 – 0 JavaOne -:).

Points to improve:
The wireless internet connection was unpredictable and it wasn’t easy for me to configure that. Throughout the conference, I only managed once to connect with my laptop. Under these conditions, taking notes and blogging were a bit difficult. But fortunately there was Twitter and Facebook via my iPhone, which however, had no trouble connecting to the wireless network. Don’t ask me why!

Highlights:
It was very refreshing to see Google in a conference Java from the legal troubles with Oracle. Sign that does not lie on the popularity of Google among the Java community, the Android presentations were always packed. You would have to show up early to expect a good spot.
Oracle for its part has proudly announced the agreement found with Apple on the OpenJDK. It was another sensitive topic among many others that haunted Oracle for the past few months (JCP, Apache, OpenJDK 7...). For sure, Oracle has not had it easy since the acquisition of Sun and Java within the package.
An other good news from Oracle was the announcement, of the decision to go ahead with the JSR 336 for the Java SE 7 and 337 for Java SE 8 despite the boycott of Apache; who by the way is a great contributor and influential member of the JCP (Java Community Process). The release of Java SE and Java SE7 8 are respectively expected for mid-2011 and late 2012

My favorite subjects:
Personally, I had three main points of interest:
1 - Participate to a maximum of Android presentations:
2 - Evaluate Web Frameworks to found the best tool for modern Web applications
3 - Meet and invite experts and businesses to Brazzaville for the JCertif conference 2011.
Most of these objectives have been achieved even though I regret not being able to participate in more sessions on Android. But as a consolation prize, Stephan Janssen, the organizer of Devoxx, introduced me to Romain Guy, one of the leading developers of the UI layer of Android at Google platform. Roman would potentially be interested in making a presentation at JCertif conference 2011. Fingers crossed that it will work!

In my quest for a Web Framework to quickly build Web 2.0 applications in Java, I came across Vaadin. This Open Source Framework which is easy to integrate with main Java development tools is pretty impressive. I had the opportunity to discuss and exchange since with Joonas Lehtinen's, the Vaadin representative, in order to work together on a prototype for the website of Jcertif Conference: JCertif.com. ...

What I missed:
I would want to enjoy again the JEE 6 presentation by Adam Bien although I had seen it at JavaOne 2010 in San Francisco two months earlier. Anyway... This is a pure Java demonstration, no PowerPoint or framwork additional. Just NetBeans and GlassFish JEE6 ... This is art of presentation! I highly recommend it to everyone.

The icing on the cake:
Alexis Moussine a JEE evangelist at Oracle has agreed to grant us an interview. All subjects was cover : Java EE 6, Apache, the cold war between and the comer CDI Framework in JEE6 and the SpringSource, the JCP, Open JDK, the Java 7 and 8 etc ...
The video and transcript will be available online shortly on www.congojug.com.

The community:
An informal meeting (BOF), took place Thursday night (before the last day of the conference) in which several JUGs from around the world were represented. Oracle has marked its presence with such Nichole Schott (Senior Manager) and Jackie Rose (responsible for the EMEA). The discussions mainly tour around the best communications channels to be established between Oracle and the Java community. Several suggestions have emerged among which the creation of regional JUGs and whose leader will interface with Oracle such as the JUG-AFRICA is doing.
The sensitive issue about the integration or not of the JUGs within IOUC (INTERNATIONAL ORACLE USER GROUP COMMUNITY) has also re-surfaced. Unsurprisingly, some JUG Leaders disagree strongly with the notion of integration but no more. In the end, each JUG will decide to join the IOUC or not.
Appointment was arranged for the Users Group Leaders' Summit - 24-26 January 2011 at the Oracle headquarters. Some JUG leaders have already signaled their presence at this event. Of course, I’ll be there!
The CongoJUG received an invitation from Oracle to attend the event. A conference will be followed by two days of training Java / Oracle at Oracle Campus in Redwood Shores, California.

In the end:
Thank you Stephan. We will be back next year!