New LJC Event: The Problem With Women: A Technical Approach – Thurs 1st Nov – #ljcjug Organised by @RecWorks

The London Java Community’s next free event is – The Problem With Women: A Technical Approach on Thursday 1st November at 18:30.

Please see link for details and to sign up – http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/87367172/

Presented by Trisha Gee.

We all know “there are not enough women in technology.” And we all know that this is a Bad Thing. But for years we’ve been seeing attempts to address the balance, and yet nothing seems to make any difference. It’s time to explore the hypothesis that the approaches we’ve been taking are not only not working but even potentially damaging. This session

• Dissects the problem

• Determines the requirements to be met

• Explores the domain

• Designs solutions

• Suggests methods of testing the success of the designs

Bring along a sense of humor and an open mind.

Who should attend:

Trisha has let us know that the session is suitable for everyone to attend, and is NOT aimed at just women.  It’s an interactive session, so you’ll have opportunities to contribute, it is not a slide-heavy presentation of Trisha’s opinions. The session is also open to graduates/under-graduates.

Bio:

Trisha is a developer in London and a leader in the London Java Community. She’s been working in financial markets for the last 6 years or so, but a fear of boredom and healthy amount of job-hopping before then has given her a wide breadth of experience, in a range of industries, over the 10+ years she’s been a professional developer. Trisha is also involved in the Graduate Developer Community, she believes we shouldn’t all have to make the same mistakes again and again.

Please see link for details and to sign up – http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/87367172/

 

 Event organised by RecWorks

The LJC’s position statement for JCP re-election

LJC Election Position Paper

• Openness and Transparency
• Advocacy and Adopt-a-JSR
• Technical gravitas

TLDR Summary: The LJC stands for active developer participation in standards, openness and transparency, promotion of F/OSS implementations and has no direct commercial interests in any proposed standard. We have initiated global programmes (Adopt a JSR, Adopt OpenJDK) directly involving developers in standards, improving them for the entire ecosystem.

History & Detailed Position

The London Java Community is a large (~2750) and rapidly growing group of developers who actively meet, discuss and work on the Java ecosystem.

During the 18 months we’ve been a JCP Executive Committee member, we’ve actively participated in reforming the JCP process itself and eroding the disconnect between developers and decision makers, through practical programmes and advocacy.

Our original goals were based on a few simple ideas:

1. Openness and Transparency are essential for any functioning standards body, and the JCP must be reformed where necessary to achieve this.
2. Better Standards are produced when ordinary end-users are fully engaged in the process of producing standards from start to finish.

As a user group, we have no direct commercial interests in the space.

Open-Source Software reduces barriers to entry for companies and reduces cost for non-commercial projects. We therefore seek to ensure that zero-cost open-source implementations of all standards are possible, and have the maximum possible patent and IP protection.

The LJC has made a major impact on the JCP, and its relations with developers and the Java community since being elected, by:

• Being vocal advocates of reform and transparency in the relevant JSRs (348, 355)
• Ensuring that commitments made by Spec Leads were followed through to completion.
• Investigating JSRs which did not meet accepted standards of openness, and helping them to address any issues.
• Founding the Adopt-a-JSR programme – to give a place for ordinary developers to get more involved in emerging standards and to start concentrating the enthusiasm and energy that exists in the community.

If re-elected we commit to:

• Finishing the JCP reform efforts started in JSR 348 (JCP.next) and JSR 355 (EC Merge) by fixing IP Flow and Licensing issues in JSR 358 (JCP.next.3).
• Taking our Adopt-a-JSR programme to the next level by seeding new Adopt-a-JSR teams in JUGs and organisations around the world.
• Continue to run and promote workshops, talks and global collaboration by developers on JSRs.
• Continuing to always stand up for the interests of developers and community – including promoting open-source implementations and projects.
• Maintain a deep bench of talent in our committee, to ensure that developers are represented with the same time commitment that a major corporation can provide.

Our Committee

The LJC operates a JCP committee. This group is made up of volunteers who have agreed to abide by confidentiality rules, meet their commitments (including time commitments) and to work towards the goals agreed by consensus. The current committee members are: Ben Evans, Martijn Verburg, Trisha Gee, Richard Warburton, James Gough, Somay Nakhal and David Illsley.

This enables the LJC to avoid problems related to key person risk – with 7 members on the team, if one person needs to reduce their level of commitment then others can pick up their workload. We have discovered that running an effective EC seat requires at least 20 hours per week – equivalent to ½ person full-time. Given the LJC’s size, we feel confident that we can continue to staff the committee at the required level to provide a real voice for developers.

Openness and Transparency

We believe strongly in openness and transparency:

• We publish the motivation behind previous voting decisions on the LJC blog in order to ensure complete transparency and open access.
• We also publish the minutes of our committee meetings on the blog.
• We are active promoters of transparency for JSRs. For example, we regularly monitor all JSRs to ensure that they are meeting their obligations in accordance with JCP 2.8 (JSR 348). This means open mailing lists, issue trackers etc.

Advocacy and Adopt-a-JSR

The LJC pioneered the Adopt-a-JSR program, encouraging developers to actively participate in specifications. Involvement includes everything from trialing beta APIs through to helping define the standard and implementing the Reference Implementation (RI). We are actively involved in the standardisation of JSR-310 (Datetime), and have run hackdays for JSR-310, JSR-335 (Lambdas) and JSR-308 (Type Annotations). These hackdays provide feedback on the usability of new features to the expert group and help prepare developers for upcoming changes to the Java language.

Adopt-a-JSR also highlights to developers the relevance of the JCP, and shows how they can impact the language and ecosystem they work with. To achieve this goal, the LJC has run talks, workshops and advocacy via social media such as Twitter and Java conferences such as JavaOne, Devoxx etc.

Technical Gravitas

As a large organisation of technologists we have expertise throughout the Java Platform, from deep dive tech to blue chip enterprise development. This gives us great insight into the technical merits of each JSR. Since we seek to represent a broad cross section of the community, our voting decisions are based not on the opinions of one person, but the consensus of a committee of peers.

In Summary

Eighteen months ago, the London Java Community pledged to improve the openness and transparency of the Java Community Process if elected to the JCP Executive Committee. We promised to help bridge the gap between the decision makers and on-the-ground developers. Our voting record and active participation in the JCP show that we have made real progress towards these goals. In addition, we achieved more than even we imagined by launching and championing Adopt-a-JSR, a program that has both improved feedback to expert groups from developers, and increased involvement from the people who use Java everyday in their professional capacities.

If re-elected, we will continue actively improving the openness and transparency of the JCP, and expand our successful programs to voice the needs of developers and communities worldwide.

Thanks!
The LJC JCP Committee

New LJC Event: JavaOne Circleback Event on Thurs Oct 25th at 18:30 #ljcjug Organised by @Recworks

The London Java Community’s next free event is – JavaOne Circleback Event on Thursday 25th October at 18:30.

Please see link for details and to sign up – http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/87185262/

At JavaOne last week the LJC won two awards – a Duke’s Choice & JCP Member of the Year (with SouJava).

With so many representatives of the LJC present, we were also able to participate in a large number of JCP & community sessions – and itreally brought home to us how much impact our user group is having.

We’d like to bring a little of that energy back to London so will be throwing an event, at the London 10Gen office, which will be a mixture of talk / presentation & panel discussion…. And celebratory drinks.

This will show our members of the global impact that the LJC is having and how you can get involved & participate in a vibrant global community.

Please Note:

The room is kindly being provided by 10gen.

After event informal drinks to be held at: The Fox, 28 Paul Street, Shoreditch, London EC2A 4LB – http://www.thefoxpublichouse.co.uk/

Please see link for details and to sign up – http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/87185262/

 

 Event organised by RecWorks

LJC Partner Events – brought to you by @RecWorks

Hey guys,

I hope you’re all doing good – we have a busy two weeks ahead of us, including both the Developer Session (in conjunction with JAX London) and Meet a Mentor – not to mention events from the London Android and Scala User groups. Here’s what’s going on over the next two weeks:

Tuesday 16th October

The London Developer Sessions in conjunction with JAX London Community Night

This is your chance to get up close and personal with a host of industry rock stars, network with JAX London speakers and other members of the Java community. This will be informal and a great chance for you to get up close and personal with guys not always in the London scene.

There are going to be a number of tables of experts with whom you can meet and ask questions:

Core Java Table : hosted by Martijn Verburg

Java EE Table: hosted by Arun Gupta

Scala Table : hosted by Heiko Seeberger

Big Data Table : hosted by Uwe Friedrichsen

Architecture Table : hosted by Ted Neward

NoSQL Table : hosted by Ian Robinson

Plenty of room for more guests if you can get along!

RSVP for this The London Developer Sessions in conjunction with JAX London Community Night event: http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/80218252/

 

Tuesday 16th October

Code & Coffee

Morning session (7am – 9am) on Tuesdays every fortnight on Starbucks in Oxford Street.

RSVP for this London Software Craftsman Community event: http://www.meetup.com/london-software-craftsmanship/events/84169382/

 

Thursday 18th October

Scala Coding Dojo

A regular coding dojo session run on every third Thursday of the month.  The dojo is now held regularly at the central London offices of TIM Group.

RSVP for this London Scala Users’ Group event: http://www.meetup.com/london-scala/events/77682922/

 

Monday 22nd October

What Libraries/Tools are you using in Android?

A run down of the libraries in the community, let’s create a big list of the interesting libraries and technologies currently in use. At Facebook London.

RSVP for this London Android Group event: http://www.meetup.com/android/events/82640152/

 

Wednesday 24th October

Arquillian – Integration Testing Made Easy

Davide D’Alto – one of the contributors to Arquillian – will present an Arquillian Overview. Through some usage scenarios he will give an overview over the main features of Arquillian and will show how it integrates to more familiar testing frameworks such as JUnit allowing the tests to be launched from the IDE or from building tools like Maven.

RSVP for this JBoss User Group event: http://www.meetup.com/JBoss-User-Group/events/83325272/

 

Thursday 25th October

JavaOne Circleback Event

At JavaOne last week the LJC won two awards – a Duke’s Choice & JCP Member of the Year (with SouJava). With so many representatives of the LJC present,  we were also able to participate in a large number of JCP & community sessions – and it really brought home to us how much impact our user group is having. We’d like to bring a little of that energy back to London so will be throwing an event, at the London 10Gen office, which will be a mixture of talk / presentation & panel discussion…. And celebratory drinks. This will show our members of the global impact that the LJC is having and how you can get involved & participate in a vibrant global community.

RSVP for this London Java Community event: http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/87185262/

 

Tuesday 30th October

Meet A Mentor – King’s College London

“Graduate only event’

Have you always wondered what you want to do when you graduate?

Are you worried about all the talk of grads finding it hard to find work and what it will mean for you?

Do you want to know the difference between working in a bank, a gaming company or a startup?

What technology should you specialise in? Java, Ruby or any of the other countless programming languages?

Now is the chance to find out. You may well have heard the buzz about the Meet a Mentor events – this is the next in a series of events open to all students.

Also please get in touch if you are interested in becoming a mentor: email Anji at ac@recworks.co.uk

RSVP for this The Graduate Developer Community event: http://www.meetup.com/grad-dc/events/82925052/

 

That’s everything for now – I’ll be back in two weeks to bring you some more partner events.

As previously mentioned in this email, Tomorrow is JAX London and representatives from RecWorks will be around throughout the day to help out – if you want to chat about anything from careers to the industry in general then feel free to come and chat.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Aaron (abrecworks)

LJC Partner Events – brought to you by @RecWorks

Hey guys,

We are back! Apologies for the long hiatus but RecWorks has had a wedding and a whole host of holidays. Events have been a bit slow too but things are definitely starting to pick up again. So without further ado – here’s whats happening over the next two weeks:

Wednesday 3rd October: Meet A Mentor – Queen Mary, University of London – Graduate only event *EVENT CLOSED – JOIN THE GDC FOR NEXT EVENT INFORMATION*

Have you always wondered what you want to do when you graduate?
Are you worried about all the talk of grads finding it hard to find work and what it will mean for you?
Do you want to know the difference between working in a bank, a gaming company or a startup?
What technology should you specialise in? Java, Ruby or any of the other countless programming languages?

Now is the chance to find out. You may well have heard the buzz about the Meet a Mentor event – this is the next in a series of events open to all students. Also please get in touch if you are interested in becoming a mentor: email Anji at ac at recworks.co.uk

RSVP for this Graduate Developer Community event: http://www.meetup.com/grad-dc/events/82201742/

Wednesday 3rd October: Code & Beer (EVENT CLOSED – SEE LINK FOR NEXT EVENT DETAILS)

This is a social / hands-on event at Shooting Star every first Wednesday of the Month.

RSVP for this London Software Craftsman Community event: http://www.meetup.com/london-software-craftsmanship/events/65916112/

Tuesday 9th October: In The Brain of Rob Harrop: Effective REST Security

If you’re designing a REST API that requires user identification, then this talk will give you the insights you need to be effective.

RSVP for this Skills Matter event: http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/effective-rest-security

Wednesday 10th October: Getting there from here: Java, Scala and Service Orientation at the Guardian

Technical leaders within the Guardian will provide a snapshot in thelife of the codebase of one of the UK’s most popular news websites. Each day www.guardian.co.uk produces hundreds of articles, pictures, videos and podcasts that are read and enjoyed by millions of people. Currently we are in the unique place of having a hybrid Scala and Java codebase and being in the middle of a migration from a monolith architecture to one that is more service-orientated..

RSVP for this London Java Community event: http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/82745852/

That’s everything for now – I’ll be back in two weeks to bring you some more partner events.

If you would like to add your group/events to this list then please get in touch with myself or Barry – we’re always happy to help 🙂

Also to receive the mail out fortnightly please join the LJC – http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/

See you in a couple of weeks!

Aaron (#abrecworks)

New LJC Event: The London Developer Sessions in conjunction with JAX London Community Night on Tues Oct 16th 17:45 #ljcjug Organised by @Recworks

The London Java Community’s next free event is – The London Developer Sessions in conjunction with JAX London Community Night on Tuesday 16th October at 17:45 onwards.

Please see link for details and to sign up – http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/80218252/

This is our monthly social gathering, which incorporates members of The London Java Community and Graduate Developer Communities. This is an informal social evening most of the evening will be spent having ad-hoc informal discussions in small groups. For this month only we are holding the Developer Session in conjunction with the JAX London community night.

Details:

JAX London opens its doors for a Community Night on Tuesday, October 16th. If you missed out on the full conference, we’d still love to see you at the Community Night, we is completely FREE to attend!

Join us from 5.45pm for a drinks reception before we commence evening with an evening Keynote presentation from Martijn Verburg and Kirk Pepperdine. After the evening Keynote, the bar will be re-opened and attendees can choose to join experts from across the Java ecosystem as they host tables to informally discuss key topics in the sector.

This is your chance to get up close and personal with a host of industry rock stars, network with JAX London speakers and other members of the Java community. This will be informal and a great chance for you to get up close and personal with guys not always in the London scene.

So far we have the following table hosts confirmed:

Core Java Table : hosted by Martijn Verburg

Java EE Table: hosted by Arun Gupta

Scala Table : hosted by Heiko Seeberger

Big Data Table : hosted by Uwe Friedrichsen

Architecture Table : hosted by Ted Neward

NoSQL Table : host ed by Ian Robinson

Hadoop Table : host to be announced soon

Agile Table : host to be announced soon

Pre-registration is a must!

http://www.amiando.com/jaxcommunitynight.html

We usually attract 50 – 70 members so it is a lively event in which members, both junior and senior, can connect in a relaxed atmosphere and set the development world to rights.

Barry or another RecWorks team member will be onsite so if anyone is looking for free recruitment advice it’s a great chance to come along for a chat.

Please see link for details and to sign up – http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/80218252/

 

Organised by: