First, watch this movie:
Stephan Janssen, the BEJUG Leader, just sent this announcement for all JUG Leaders, provoking a big surprise on all of us. A very good surprise, actually! Stephan is one of those guys who know how to touch our emotions to love what he does. He always gives for the Java community what every woman loves to receive: surprises! He convinces men, thousands of them, to go to the same place, at the same time and stay there for at least a week: Antwerp, Belgium, December 8 to 12th, 2008.
The new name of JavaPolis is Javoxx and, probably, we will only know the reasons of this change in the openning session at December 8th. If you like this name or not, it doesn't matter. A name is not so powerful like the feelings that surround the conference! It is a question of Essence. In my point of view, the most important aspect is the explicit focus of the conference, which is expressed by its own logo: "Javoxx: The Java Community Conference". They emphasize it on the video with the comment: "Giving a voice to the Java Community". It looks great since I'm a JUG Leader and I will appreciate it very much, giving full support to the success of the event.
They promised the same concept and essence, then the next big surprise will be the conference theme. Watch the video below to remember all previous JavaPolis' themes.
In 2007 it was Star Wars (something else). Let's wait for the next big surprise! Visit www.javoxx.com to get more information.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
A Funny Error Using Windows XP
Definitively, it is not an anti-Microsoft blog, but I did not resist to tell you about a funny experience using Microsoft Windows XP. Take a look at the error dialog below:
I have never seen this before. Have you?. Is it a self-criticism? Why should I be protected from Windows Explorer?
A friend of mine sent to me a picture that proved my theory about Steve Ballmer's Laptop that I commented at the previous post. Take a look:
I have never seen this before. Have you?. Is it a self-criticism? Why should I be protected from Windows Explorer?
A friend of mine sent to me a picture that proved my theory about Steve Ballmer's Laptop that I commented at the previous post. Take a look:
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Day When Steve Ballmer Visited UCL
It's spring in Belgium and the weather looks great! The sun is doing a great job in the sky and flowers are making the UCL campus even more beautiful. This morning, as all of others, thousands of students were going on all directions, from home to class, from class to restaurants, shops, laboratories, etc. Most of the people didn't realize that there was a multimilioner guy giving a speech at Louvain-La-Neuve: Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world.
Everything looked calm. There was no open source activists on the streets and a lot of people moved calmly to the auditoriums. Actually, It's very rare to see any kind of radical behavior in Belgians. They are very polite, keeping their critics in mind to expose them in an appropriate moment. People also understand that Microsoft is very tired with all the successive losses against the European Antitrust Commission, and now it's time to give them another chance to make fair business in the European market. After all, it's also a good moment to start some initiatives with universities, which should prepare more and more professionals to supply a hungry searching for talents on business.
They organized two events in parallel at UCL. The most important one was for guests in the biggest and greatest UCL auditorium. The other one, in an old and hidden auditorium, which was a cinema a long time ago and now it was adapted to receive class sessions, was dedicated for students, the next generation of Belgian entrepreneurs. I didn't receive an invitation for the most important one, but my place was reserved in the old and hidden auditorium.
The student track, the simplest one mentioned above, had three sessions. The first and second sessions were led by local Microsoft speakers. The last session, or the end of the show, was led by Steve Ballmer. The first guy made an excellent speech about Web 2.0. He was very honest, giving great examples about Web 2.0, illustrated with the Google search engine, Youtube videos, and other great web tools. The funny thing is that none of the examples actually use Microsoft technology. Is there no example about the impact of Microsoft technology on the web 2.0? Of course there is. Recently, I saw a Microsoft Office running on the web, doing amazing things within Internet Explorer. Why did they avoid to talk about that? Another funny thing is that I'm sure I heard a Mac OS Leopard sound that means the sound volume changing. I know that because I listen the volume of my wife's mac changing all the time. Or Microsoft put the same sound to change the volume on Vista or the speaker thinks it's better to make a Microsoft presentation using a Mac.
The second speaker was great too. He convinced everybody about what is important when you want to become a leader. It was more motivational than technical. The bad part was when a security guy tried to forbid students to take pictures of the stage! Can you believe that? Are the slides under copyrights too? He acted against at least three students, which was sufficient to keep the whole audience quiet enough to listen to the speaker talking about human limitations imposed by the society. Once again, nothing about Microsoft. All about Mikey, Disney cleaners, John Kennedy, but nothing about Vista, .NET, Silverlight, XBox, which are products oriented to give more productivity and improve the user experience. Why do they want to avoid speaking about such products? Where is "Your Potential. Our Passion"? Come on! I would like to know how Microsoft is going to support the application of my creativity in my future. Will I have an answer? Unfortunately, NO!
Steve Ballmer entered on the stage to say how was boring to have college classes and how was great to lead smart guys. I agree with the last part, but I'm trying to understand why he said something so bad about colleges inside one of them (UCL). Anyway, I think he achieved his intention, motivating the audience. He was also the only guy to talk about Microsoft, even if most of the subjects were about the past of Microsoft instead of the present and future. Well, everything was going almost 100% great when he decided to answer a question criticizing IBM saying that it isn't so much concerned with personal users. In my opinion, he continued looking back, because everybody knows IBM's focus nowadays is on corporate users, who are happy with their systems running 24/7 without blue screens, anti virus overhead and legacy incompatibilities. Right? ;-)
Everything looked calm. There was no open source activists on the streets and a lot of people moved calmly to the auditoriums. Actually, It's very rare to see any kind of radical behavior in Belgians. They are very polite, keeping their critics in mind to expose them in an appropriate moment. People also understand that Microsoft is very tired with all the successive losses against the European Antitrust Commission, and now it's time to give them another chance to make fair business in the European market. After all, it's also a good moment to start some initiatives with universities, which should prepare more and more professionals to supply a hungry searching for talents on business.
They organized two events in parallel at UCL. The most important one was for guests in the biggest and greatest UCL auditorium. The other one, in an old and hidden auditorium, which was a cinema a long time ago and now it was adapted to receive class sessions, was dedicated for students, the next generation of Belgian entrepreneurs. I didn't receive an invitation for the most important one, but my place was reserved in the old and hidden auditorium.
The student track, the simplest one mentioned above, had three sessions. The first and second sessions were led by local Microsoft speakers. The last session, or the end of the show, was led by Steve Ballmer. The first guy made an excellent speech about Web 2.0. He was very honest, giving great examples about Web 2.0, illustrated with the Google search engine, Youtube videos, and other great web tools. The funny thing is that none of the examples actually use Microsoft technology. Is there no example about the impact of Microsoft technology on the web 2.0? Of course there is. Recently, I saw a Microsoft Office running on the web, doing amazing things within Internet Explorer. Why did they avoid to talk about that? Another funny thing is that I'm sure I heard a Mac OS Leopard sound that means the sound volume changing. I know that because I listen the volume of my wife's mac changing all the time. Or Microsoft put the same sound to change the volume on Vista or the speaker thinks it's better to make a Microsoft presentation using a Mac.
The second speaker was great too. He convinced everybody about what is important when you want to become a leader. It was more motivational than technical. The bad part was when a security guy tried to forbid students to take pictures of the stage! Can you believe that? Are the slides under copyrights too? He acted against at least three students, which was sufficient to keep the whole audience quiet enough to listen to the speaker talking about human limitations imposed by the society. Once again, nothing about Microsoft. All about Mikey, Disney cleaners, John Kennedy, but nothing about Vista, .NET, Silverlight, XBox, which are products oriented to give more productivity and improve the user experience. Why do they want to avoid speaking about such products? Where is "Your Potential. Our Passion"? Come on! I would like to know how Microsoft is going to support the application of my creativity in my future. Will I have an answer? Unfortunately, NO!
Steve Ballmer entered on the stage to say how was boring to have college classes and how was great to lead smart guys. I agree with the last part, but I'm trying to understand why he said something so bad about colleges inside one of them (UCL). Anyway, I think he achieved his intention, motivating the audience. He was also the only guy to talk about Microsoft, even if most of the subjects were about the past of Microsoft instead of the present and future. Well, everything was going almost 100% great when he decided to answer a question criticizing IBM saying that it isn't so much concerned with personal users. In my opinion, he continued looking back, because everybody knows IBM's focus nowadays is on corporate users, who are happy with their systems running 24/7 without blue screens, anti virus overhead and legacy incompatibilities. Right? ;-)
Friday, April 18, 2008
Outsourcing x Offshoring x Offshore Outsourcing
I went to my city last month, Fortaleza, Ceará, Northeast of Brazil, and I visited some software companies there, mainly to meet old friends and also to see how they are doing on this competitive market nowadays. Ivia was the one that impressed me a lot. They started with less than 10 people in the 90's, and now they have more than 300 professionals, and they are looking for more to fulfill a growing and hard demand.
I visited other companies, but moments at Ivia were very nice because I started my professional life there and I was one of those ten professionals at the beginning. I explained what I'm doing in my research projects and they talked about their market today, which has a strong emphasis in outsourcing.
Outsourcing is considered a big strategy nowadays. It was the main reason of the Indian transformation, from a completely poor country to an emergent world power. It means that companies, mainly from the United States, decide to give part of their processes to be executed in India, by Indian companies.
Ivia does outsourcing internally and now for Europe and the United States as well. When doing services for foreign companies, Ivia calls it Offshore, or Offshore Outsourcing, which means processes of a company are executed by other companies in other countries. It is also a practice of Secrel International, a software industry located in Fortaleza, producing software for the United States and Europe too. Ivia and Secrel International are leading IT foreign relationships in Ceará. It is a direct impact of the CMMi certification achieved by both in the last years. CMMi is a kind of guarantee that IT services will be done in a high quality independent of the place in the world.
Nowadays, Ceará is not strong in Offshoring, another concept that means a company creates an infrastructure in a foreign country because of the availability of resources in a lower cost or in a higher quality. In IT, humans are the main resources, and the human resource in Ceará is more about high quality than low cost, but not in enough volume. Companies already installed in the state need, at least, 1000 professionals to fulfill the demand.
Great initiatives are helping to solve the problem in a long term. An undergraduate course was created just to prepare professionals on technologies demanded by local companies. In addition, three universities and many faculties are graduating hundreds of professionals every year. In parallel, CEJUG is doing a great job, reinforcing the knowledge of Java developers and promoting new technologies to increase the sort of current capabilities. However, it is not enough yet and a lot of work should be done.
I visited other companies, but moments at Ivia were very nice because I started my professional life there and I was one of those ten professionals at the beginning. I explained what I'm doing in my research projects and they talked about their market today, which has a strong emphasis in outsourcing.
Outsourcing is considered a big strategy nowadays. It was the main reason of the Indian transformation, from a completely poor country to an emergent world power. It means that companies, mainly from the United States, decide to give part of their processes to be executed in India, by Indian companies.
Ivia does outsourcing internally and now for Europe and the United States as well. When doing services for foreign companies, Ivia calls it Offshore, or Offshore Outsourcing, which means processes of a company are executed by other companies in other countries. It is also a practice of Secrel International, a software industry located in Fortaleza, producing software for the United States and Europe too. Ivia and Secrel International are leading IT foreign relationships in Ceará. It is a direct impact of the CMMi certification achieved by both in the last years. CMMi is a kind of guarantee that IT services will be done in a high quality independent of the place in the world.
Nowadays, Ceará is not strong in Offshoring, another concept that means a company creates an infrastructure in a foreign country because of the availability of resources in a lower cost or in a higher quality. In IT, humans are the main resources, and the human resource in Ceará is more about high quality than low cost, but not in enough volume. Companies already installed in the state need, at least, 1000 professionals to fulfill the demand.
Great initiatives are helping to solve the problem in a long term. An undergraduate course was created just to prepare professionals on technologies demanded by local companies. In addition, three universities and many faculties are graduating hundreds of professionals every year. In parallel, CEJUG is doing a great job, reinforcing the knowledge of Java developers and promoting new technologies to increase the sort of current capabilities. However, it is not enough yet and a lot of work should be done.
Friday, April 11, 2008
5/3 things that make me happy/crazy using Netbeans
As reported before, I decide to adopt Netbeans for all my Java projects. Definitively, it was a better decision than to continue using Eclipse. However, the world is not perfect and I have been having some problems with Netbeans too. First, I have to say that I don't want to pay for a tool because I would be even more stressed if something, that I paid for, starts to break! So, don't suggest creatures like MyEclipse, IntelliJ IDEA or developer studios out there. I know some Netbeans gurus, we drunk some beers before and I like them. So, don't ask me to move to the Eclipse 3.3 version because I won't!
I listed below five things that make me happy and 3 things that make me crazy when using Netbeans. To be able to do that, I installed Netbeans 6.1 release candidate (the last version possible nowadays), just because somebody can say "Just move to 6.1 version to remove all bad things". First, let's go to the good points:
I listed below five things that make me happy and 3 things that make me crazy when using Netbeans. To be able to do that, I installed Netbeans 6.1 release candidate (the last version possible nowadays), just because somebody can say "Just move to 6.1 version to remove all bad things". First, let's go to the good points:
- Netbeans is easy to use and its user interface clarifies many concepts about Java, which makes this IDE the best one to learn Java and develop applications following the specification.
- Netbeans is complete enough to allow you to develop a large variety of applications, from simple to complex solutions, desktop, web, mobile, using different frameworks and even different languages.
- Netbeans looks great and allows you to modify colors and styles of the source editor easily. You don't need to configure each color individually, but just use some predefined styles or create your own.
- Netbeans is receiving more investments from SUN Microsystems and more contribution from the community. Then, you don't need to worry so much about the evolution of other tools, since the probability to migrate to another tool is decreasing. If you already are a Netbeans user, you will notice that most of the bugs found in the previous versions were solved in the last version (6.1) and, of course, you don't need to pay to get those corrections.
- And, finally, I don't know if I am lucky, but I work, at least, 10 hours/day with Netbeans without any memory crash on Windows, Ubuntu and Open Solaris.
- There are very complex Ant scripts doing almost everything behind the scene and you are aware of it, when it should be the most transparent possible. When something goes wrong with those scripts (usually when you share them in a version control system) you will spend a lot of time to identify and solve the problem.
- I still lose time pressing "build", "clean" and "build and clean". Eclipse proved that it 's possible to keep it transparent without any loss for the programmer. I don't know if we have to wait for this feature in a later version or if we don't have to wait for it at all.
- The community behind Netbeans is still small comparing with the Eclipse one. Some initiatives were taken by Sun Microsystems through innovative ideas (offering money for direct contributions), but I think they need more involvement from the academy (innovation) and more study cases about software companies migrating from Eclipse or other tools to Netbeans (consolidation). What are the risks and where are the respective solutions?
Thursday, April 10, 2008
SpringOne: What does it mean for you?
The spring season started in Belgium, but the weather is still cold with some sun's rays appearing casually. The temperature is around 5 degrees, which is not so easy for those who came from Brazil (30 degrees most of the time). So, why would someone open his/her arms and cry out saying: "THIS IS THE SPRING ONE!" ? Well, I had no idea until I visited this website: www.springone.com. Yes! This is not about the most romantic season. It is about a conference totally dedicated to the Spring Framework, which is hosted in Antwerp, Belgium. Now, it makes sense because Spring is definitively "The One" in terms of Java framework.
Last year, SpringOne had 400 attendees from 25 countries. It is a great number, considering a conference with a very specific focus, which is not the case of JavaPolis, JavaOne or Jazoon, with an extensive menu of technologies around the Java's gravity. Attending SpringOne 2008, you will be able to watch 30 sessions over three parallel tracks split in two days (June 11 - 12), plus several keynote speakers including "the Father of Spring" Rod Johnson.
They created a nice video, showing images of the last edition. You can watch it below:
This year, maybe for the first time (I will check) a Brazilian guy will attend SpringOne: Me! I'm going to represent my Java User Group, CEJUG. They offer free voucher for JUG Leaders, which is my case. A very good strategy to promote the conference without spending a lot of money. And we do it with a great pleasure! I will do the same what I did in JavaPolis 2007 and Jazoon 2007: Send daily news for all CEJUG members and promote it afterwards, with SpringOne 2009 in mind.
I hope to see you there, or at least, following my posts about the conference.
Last year, SpringOne had 400 attendees from 25 countries. It is a great number, considering a conference with a very specific focus, which is not the case of JavaPolis, JavaOne or Jazoon, with an extensive menu of technologies around the Java's gravity. Attending SpringOne 2008, you will be able to watch 30 sessions over three parallel tracks split in two days (June 11 - 12), plus several keynote speakers including "the Father of Spring" Rod Johnson.
They created a nice video, showing images of the last edition. You can watch it below:
This year, maybe for the first time (I will check) a Brazilian guy will attend SpringOne: Me! I'm going to represent my Java User Group, CEJUG. They offer free voucher for JUG Leaders, which is my case. A very good strategy to promote the conference without spending a lot of money. And we do it with a great pleasure! I will do the same what I did in JavaPolis 2007 and Jazoon 2007: Send daily news for all CEJUG members and promote it afterwards, with SpringOne 2009 in mind.
I hope to see you there, or at least, following my posts about the conference.
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