JavaBlackBelt's News

We've started a blog! It's called Inside JavaBlackBelt and we'll use it to talk about our daily programming joys, ideas, hopes and fears, the weird bugs we face and share some platform tips 'n' tricks.

At the moment, we have posts about a mysterious Tomcat memory leak and a collision between JUnit and auto-boxing. Please have a look, comment and suggest ideas!

Benedikt Sattler created new Java 3D - basic exam.

The exam covers the basics both mathematical and programmatic of Java 3D. Now we need to fill it with questions. We would appreciate your valuable contribution.

View Java 3D - basic exam objectives.

Benedikt Sattler created new JAX-B exam.

The exam covers JAXB issues like Java-Schema or Schema-Java mapping. Now we need to fill it with questions. We would appreciate your valuable contribution.

View JAXB exam objectives.

QCon Conference this 12-14 March 2008 was a great opportunity to meet with JBB Community members and JBB Corporate users.

We thank you for your input and feedback.

Many participated to the JBB Challenge. Pictures are available here.

The top 6 JBB Challengers received a Java book donated by O'Reilly - another 18 high scoring challengers won a JBB polo shirt.

We migrate to a new forum facility: JavaBlackBelt.com/forum.

One month ago, Javalobby changed (in a rush, apparently ;-) their forum to a new system and progressively disabled the ancient forum area where we were located.

We had plans to integrate a forum functionality into the platform (as being able to discuss a belt congratulation, a news, an auction,...), but we had to hurry up and Aymeric did a fast work integrating (minimal integration) JForum that you can use with your JavaBlackBelt login.

Don't hesitate to discuss this news on our new forum ;-)

QCon is happy to offer a free pass to the conference in the auction room.

As you know, we'll be the official contest of QCon London, March 12-14. One 2.646€ worth conference pass is offered to the JavaBlackBelt community. Place your bids in the auction room.

JavaBlackBelt will be at QCon London conference March 12-14, 2008.

We'll run the JavaBlackBelt challenge as we do at many conferences, followed by a competition (with winners of the challenge).

If you have a yellow belt or upper on JavaBlackBelt, please come to meet us and be sure to ask for a free T-Shirt.

QCon is an enterprise software development conference to be held in London. It is designed with the technical depth and enterprise focus of interest to technical team leads, architects, and project managers. Some of the speakers include Martin Fowler, Erich Gamma, Kent Beck, eBay Architect Randy Shoup, Neal Gafter, Gregor Hophe, Brian Goetz, and many more.

JavaBlackBelt users get 15% discount on tickets! Just mention "javablackbelt" as promotion code when register on the QCon website.

Abhijit Akhawe created a brand new JavaScript basic exam.

This new exam is the first one concerning the JavaScript topic. Now we need to fill it with your brilliant questions. We would appreciate your valuable contributions.

View JavaScript basic exam objectives.

10 new auctions wait for your bids in the auction room. They will appear from now to end of March.

We propose various kind of gifts this time, from the toy to the dvds. Don't hesitate to start a forum thread with your wish list for the next gifts :-)

Good luck !

Congratulation Amzad Basha, for reaching 10,000 contribution points, and 1,000 questions! You are the first achieving this and it's an energy start for 2008.

This year, the contribution points counting will change, with the introduction of additional contribution measures. More on this on the forum soon.

The JavaBlackBelt team wishes to thank the numerous visits and support at our JavaPolis events in December. Some pictures are available on our picasa web album, more pictures will follow shortly.

Our congratulations go to the winners of the JBB Championship. Mert Caliskan, Bob MacWhirter, and Marcin Kuthan were our Champions respectively on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week. They won our top price: a PlayStation3, donated jointly with our partners CapGemini and USG Innotiv.

Impressive performance also by the runner-ups: Jan Kovar, Laurent Pireyn, and Xavier Fournet, who could choose their preferred Java book, graciously donated by Pearson Education.

We also wish to thank Sony for sponsoring this event.

Meanwhile, on behalf of your entire JavaBlackbelt team, our very best wishes for a sparkling 2008.

Morten Lauritsen Khodabocus, a blue belt from Switzerland created XML W3C Schema exam.

New exam includes 20 questions concerning the XML Schema issues. Now we need your contribution in order to traverse the exam into the beta state.

View XML Schema exam objectives.

Join John Rizzo, the founder of JavaBlackBelt as he explains the internals of the JavaBlackBelt.com platform, including the strategic technical choices made and their evolutions from inception to v3 and the main technical problems faced in making these choices.

For further info & registration click here

Our UML exam, lead by Amzad Basha and Piotr Kowalski, is stable now.

You have got almost 25 minutes to answer 16 questions related to the fundamentals of the Unified Modeling Language.

View UML for Java - Basic exam objectives.

Morten Lauritsen Khodabocus, a blue belt from Switzerland released XML DTD exam.

New exam includes 15 questions concerning the XML DTD issues.

View XML DTD exam objectives.

John Rizzo JavaBlackBelt founder will explain the strategic technical choices made and their evolution, from inception to v3 and the main technical problems faced.
This presentation is very specific about product experience and problems/solutions. It contains deep technical insights and aspects of architecture and project life/management. You will be able to apply their experience in your current or future Java project.
For further info & registration: Click here ...

Javablackbelt was at J-Fall in the Netherlands this October 11th '07.

Several contenders participated to the JBB Challenge, with exciting prices for the winners.
A prototype of our upcoming V.3 was very well received by our community members. We thank our Dutch partner Finalist for coordinating this successful NL-JUG event.

Julio Cesar Damasceno from Brazil and Jeanne Boyarsky from the United States released JUnit 4 exam.

The new exam focuses on changes between JUnit 3.8 and 4.X.

View JUnit 4 exam objectives.

I've hit JAOO in Denmark, last week.

We’ve run the JavaBlackBelt Challenge. Participants sit down, click, and get 5 random questions that they answer as fast as possible. In fact, this challenge runs alone now... as more and more people know it. This gave me more time for attending the sessions, and I’ve been quite happy with what I heard.

JAOO is one of my favorite conferences because it does not focus on technology only. It focuses on developers, on people, on teams.

One of the main messages I’ve heard from big guys like Martin Fowler, Erik Meijer (Microsoft :-) and Robert Martin is: focus on simplicity and quality.

Focus on simplicity: don’t over-architect. Silver bullets usually fail. Do the simplest (elegant) thing that works. It doesn’t matter if you’ve to change it later when more needs come (in a further iteration).

Focus on quality: look at and think about your code twice. Use test driven development or other activity if it can help you to focus on that. Are your proud of it? If your are proud of it because it’s a complex thing that only a genius (you) can understand, then throw it away.

Robert Martin gave a wise definition of "good" code: the code reads such a way that every line of code is what you expected to be.

Really, clever guys are the ones who make it simple!

John Rizzo.

Picture: Christian Gasser (right), our Danish JavaBlackBelt member having won a free pass to the conference through the auction system, with me (left).
See the web Album.

JavaBlackBelt V3 is available for preview on our test server.

The V3 includes new features such as ...

• New Design (xhtml compliant)
• Ajax features (Question pre-loading in exams, instant question rating and comments,...)
• Improved usability
• ...

Some functionalities are still under development and the design revamp as not been done on every page yet.

But we'd appreciate feed backs on completed features such as the home page, the exam pages, the forms in general, the whole functional behavior (we did a tremendous back-end refactoring) and mainly the AJAXED questionnaires.
I would really like to have a feedback from Safari (We did test on Safari, but just on windows) and Opera users.
Please report any stuffs related to this preview at aymeric [a.t> javablackbelt / dot / com (not on JIRA please)

The final version is coming soon...

We've created a page to gather testimonials from the Community about JavaBlackBelt.

It's rudimentary for the moment, but it's a start.

You may send your testimonial to javablackbelt dot admin at sign gmail then dot com and we'll bring them to the page.
Moderators can edit the page and add their words directly.

New 'Spring - Velocity integration' exam has been released by brown belt Henryk Konsek (from Poland).

New exam includes questions connected with the topic of Spring integration with the Velocity template engine as an alternative view layer for the Spring MVC technology. Now exam needs to be filled with the questions - we will appreciate your valuable contribution.

View Spring - Velocity integration exam objectives.

We've participated to a few conferences now (usually invited, thank to all these conferences organizers!): JavaPolis 2004, TheServerSide 2005, JAOO 2006, J-Fall 2006, JavaPolis 2006, Q-Con 2007, Sun Tech Days 2007, J-Spring 2007, Jazoon 2007, TheServerSide 2007.

If you organize a conference and would like JavaBlackBelt to join, drop us a mail.

View JavaBlackBelt Picasa web albums

Thomas Schroeder, from Australia released Java 5 New Base Library Features exam.

New exam includes 20 questions concerning such Tiger's issues as JMX, enhanced concurrency utilities, new security features and many others.

View Java 5 New Base Library Features exam objectives.

Java SE Core - Intermed - Programming exam has been created. This exam is required to get a black belt. Once the exam will be released, the black belt will be available (yes, we plan to unlock the black belt in near future).

This Java SE exam is no multiple choice test. You didn't think about becoming a black belt without programming, did you ?

Your valuable contribution is welcome - we need to fill the exam with quality tasks.

View Java SE Core - Intermed - Programming exam objectives.

Henryk Konsek refactored the Spring MVC exam.

View the new Spring MVC

Amzad Basha from India reached 8.000 contribution points last month!

When we created JavaBlackBelt, we couldn't even imagine that people would get much more than 1.000. You are incredible.

We asked Amzad, who is one of our administrators now, a little text about his path:

How much time does it took to bag 8000+ contribution points?
Well, I joined JBB community in June 2006. The toppers that time were with 1000+ (Jeanne) only. I just thought of to cross that number and becoming top 1 contributor, and I could succeed it in Dec 2006 or Jan 2007 (Couldn't remember exactly. :)). It is really happy that still I am on top 3 list. I am very thankful to John Rizzo, founder of JavaBlackBelt, for providing such a beautiful platform, and also my heartful thanks to Jeanne Boyarsky, Administrator, for all her guidance during the initial days at JBB.
Did you expect to accumulate so many points when you started?
To be honest, NO. I just aimed at one of the top 3 contributors. Apart from simply posting the new questions, I was involved in repairing the questions, which were pushed in repair zone. Also, I cleaned up Java SE - Basic and Intermediate exams, so that we are able to have more Yellow beltees in the community, for which John granted me 1000+ points manually and sent JBB logoed jacket as a gift. :)
What you like most/less when contributing?
I like to see more and more code snippets, which are tricky enough, and conceptual based questions, which test the knowledge and exposure on specific areas. As of today I posted 864 questions, there may be some questions extracted based on the text from some reference books / URLs, but I tried my best to fine tune the text and frame it as a valuable question. I suggest the people to post genuinely framed questions, which really worth enough, but not the direct extracts from the references.
What areas you contributed the most?
My major contribution is in Java SE - Basic, Java SE - Intermediate, Java 5 Features, JSP - Basic, JSP - Intermediate, JDBC and also Struts exams.
What is your next goal in JavaBlackBelt?
I would like to bag 10000+ contribution points. Hope I will reach the mark by the end of Oct 2007.
Wow!!! Congrats for the effort!! And Goodluck for your new target!
Thank you very much!

Welcome to our Admin Team! When you need an admin e-mail javablackbelt.admin AT gmail DOT com and one of us will get back to you. The team is Ahmed, Arpan, HenryK, Amzad and Jeanne.

Henryk Konsek published objectives for a Spring Transactions exam.

It's waiting for your questions...

View Spring Transactions exam objectives.

John Rizzo and Daniel Oliva Bianco published objectives for an Algorithms - Basic exam.

Start adding questions...

View Algorithms - Basic exam objectives.

Our UML exam, lead by Amzad Basha, quickly got many questions.

It's beta now. Special thanks to the brown belt Henryk Konsek (left picture) and the green belt Andrea Vega (right picture), the most prolific contributors on this exam.

View UML for Java - Basic exam objectives.

Wanna develop the JavaBlackBelt platform with us?

Get the privilege to work closely with Aymeric and Nicolas, on a growing world-class project (Belgium - Brussels).

Much agility, technology and visibility guaranteed.

You need some of these skills: Html/CSS, Servlet/JSP/Struts2, Spring2, Hibernate3, Linux/Tomcat/Postgres admin, Ajax,...

But most of all, you'll need to be passionate and smart.

English or French speaking. This is a full-time position.

Don't be shy; just drop a mail to Aymeric and to Nicolas (at JavaBlackBelt dot com).

See full annonce.

Tuesday, June 12th, at 16:00 (Barcelona time, 14:00 GMT), we run the conference on-line competition.
Any JavaBlackBelt user (site registration is free) can register to that competition (competition is free).

1st prize: 1.895€ worth conference pass.

Travel costs (plane, hotel) will not be reimbursed by JavaBlackBelt or The Server Side.

We'll be happy to see you there and give you some T-Shirts.

Good luck !

We've reached a milestone in the effort of building and distributing courses through the JavaBlackBelt portal. A huge "Thanks!" to the development team for their committment to achieving this.
The Beta version of the wikiCourse part is now available. (The first courses is under construction.) Basically we tried to apply the same principle as we have done with exams but as a course. that means anybody can propose enhancements to the course content.
In the coming months we'll enhance this platform to integrate features focused on interaction between course attendees and instructors: forum, chat, videoconf, ...

We need your feedback!
The first (available) course can be accessed here: http://www.javablackbelt.com/CourseDisplay.wwa?courseId=3997151

You can try these 2 chapters:

• 2 - First Mapping Example
• 4 - Mapping Types

We would greatly appreciate your comments, from the layout to the content.
You may also contact Nicolas Brasseur, the course creator, directly: {nicolas {at} javablackbelt dot com} or Skype (nicolasbrasseur).

JavaBlackBelt will be at the 2nd annual ServerSide Java Symposium-Europe held in Barcelona, June 27-29.
We'll offer the JavaBlackBelt Challenge.
If you're at the conference, be sure to stop by our stand (and take the Challenge!) We look forward to meeting you.

At the Sun Tech Days in London, (March 2007), we met Java Champion, Heinz Kabutz. We really appreciate his contributions to the Java community, particularly his Java Specialists Newsletter, with over 30,000 subscribers worldwide. It provides relevant, concise information for developers, clarifying various (and sometimes "puzzling") aspects of Java. During Sun Tech Days, we (Trish) got him to take the JavaBlackBelt Challenge. (Sorry if you felt "suckered," Heinz ;-)) He was kind enough to mention us in the latest newsletter.

John Rizzo (JavaBlackBelt co-founder) will present his unique pedagogies: TechMaps (Flash-animated with voiceovers) to explain various Spring topics. The crew will also be at JSpring to offer the JavaBlackBelt Challenge.
Be sure to stop by and say "Hi!" if you're there:
13 June 2007
Het Spant
Dr Abraham Kuyperlaan 3
1402 Bussum, Netherlands

Give a try to these two newly released Hibernate 3 exams

• Entity Associations and Relationships
• 1st, 2nd Level & Query Caching

Almost free ... for a limited period only.

Apress, "Books for Professionals by Professionals," has kindly agreed to sponsor our auction prizes. They have an array of titles spanning the many Java technologies you use. Visit Apress.com

... with the Hibernate Core - Basic exam. The competition starts 27 April at 20:00 GMT. (Registrations open soon...) Take the exam and prepare to win!
And, don't forget to check out the auction room, there could a book in there that you want!

We'll be there with USG Innotiv to meet developers (and offer a little challenge):
25 April 2007
11:00 - 20:00
Tour & Taxis (Avenue du Port 86C, 1000 Brussels)
Booth: USG Innotiv
NOTE: if you're registered for the event, parking is free!

We've been invited to this one-day technology conference to offer the JavaBlackBelt Challenge to attendees.

JavaBlackBelt's founders, John and Nicolas, will give technical talks on Spring as well as Hibernate using their unprecedented pedagogical materials: TechAnims.

IT professionals and specialists hailing from many EU countries will get together at WebTech to share valuable information and ideas.

WebTech Congress 2007 offers a range of lectures, workshops and exhibitions centered on new trends and technological revolutions. During the breaks attendees will have the opportunity to network.

Topics range from Webservices, Ajax Ruby and Flex to Java, .Net and mashup techniques.

WebTech 2007
25 April
De Montil, Affligem
Belgium
Get more info about WebTech...

... with the Java 5 Base Library Features exam. The competition starts on 20 April, 17h00 GMT. Registration opens soon... Take the exam to gear up and win! And don't forget to check out the auction room, there could a book in there that you want!

It starts 13 April, 14:00 GMT
Registration is now OPEN...
And don't forget: it you sign up but don't show up, you'll lose your points.

Manning Publications Co., the publisher that brings you the "In Action" books, has kindly agreed to sponsor our auction prizes with titles like Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action and EJB3 in Action among many others.
Visit the Manning website

We really appreciate that some of you mention the community, like exams you passed and belts you earned on your blogs and websites. (We know who you are from our site stats ;-)) Did you know that you could add a "Congratulations" box too? With it you can show your appreciation to fellow users or those in your country. It's super EZ: just a few lines of Javascript.
All of the details are HERE...

Find out! Start by training with the XML Core Basic exam...
The competition starts Friday, 30 March, 09:00 GMT.
Registration for the XML Core Basic competition is open, so sign up!
Don't forget to check out the auctions, there's probably a book in there that you may want!

Last week we went to the UK to offer the JavaBlackBelt Challenge at QCon and Sun Tech Days. We're proud to say that we had over 200 challengers. We kindly thank the organizers for inviting us to be there and for making us feel extra welcome: Mai Skou NIELSEN (EOS / JAOO), Floyd MARINESCU (InfoQ) and Michael LONNON of Sun Microsystems UK. A special shout out to Antje KING of Pearson UK for sponsoring our book prizes at both conferences.

Top challengers:

• Jakob Avlund, Lund & Bendsen (DK), was the only challenger to get 5/5
  
• Roland Nelson of the European Patent Office got 4/5 more than any other challenger. He's responsible for THIS portal among others...
  
• Signe Kongsgaard Kyster, Lund & Bendsen (DK). One of the few female challengers, came in 1st place once and 2nd place twice

This exam covers the new features from the java.util.concurrent package in Java 5. Ever wonder what a CountDownLatch is?
Check out the exam!
  
Thanks to Chris Cooper, a brown belt from the UK and Jimmy Persson, a brown belt from Sweden, for leading our Java SE Concurrency High-Level exam, which gets you 3 knowledge points.

Why is this important news?
Because that's the topic of the next competition. Registration opens soon...
A great way to prepare for the upcoming competition is to take the exam. (And PLEASE, don't forget to vote on the questions!)
What's more is there's a new auction (opening shortly) for the Java Concurrency book by Brian Goetz.

We really appreciate that users give us their free time; moderators and admins have been very dedicated to the application. Recently we asked some of the moderators to take on special missions. In particular, to help us get some outstanding tasks done like moving questions. For example, too difficult questions from the Java SE Basic exam to more appropriate exams.

Over the past few weeks we've seen a significant increase of new yellow belts because of this effort. For this we shout out a huge "Thanks!" to Amzad Basha.

Brown Belt Gonzalo Herreros and Green Belt Graeme Dunlop (pictured), released the JMS exam, which gives you 3 knowledge points.

View the JMS objectives.

Our website reached a truly significant milestone: a tally of one million answers (to the multiple choice questions) in the database. We're very proud of this because it shows you are a really (really) active community, sharing your precious time for the JavaBlackBelt exams. In particular, this tally means one million times (that's A LOT of activity) you read through, understood and then answered a question.
And for that, we'd like to thank you for your continued efforts, interest and dedication.

I met Pietro Polsinelli, one of the TeamWork creators, at JAOO (Danish Java/methodo/.Net) conference, where he demonstrated their brain child. We were very impressed by the detailed user interface of this web application, which looks more like a desktop application.

Since JAOO (September '06), I randomly looked at the TeamWork on-line demos, though I couldn't (then) clearly figure out what to do with the application.

Between Christmas and new year, I had a look at BaseCamp (one of TeamWork's competitors) which is a beautiful application for managing tasks. I immediately saw how we could benefit from it. While it is very easy to use, it's just wasn't powerful enough for our needs.

So, I tried Teamwork again and could realize why (in the heck) it had so many features. I finally realized that TeamWork was exactly what I needed for part of our team.

Our JavaBlackBelt development team uses a bug/request tracker (JavaForge.com).
Our commercial team uses a CRM (SalesForce.com).
And now, the rest of our team (management, back office/admin, PR/media, marketing) uses TeamWork.

We started 10 days ago and we have more than 200 tasks in it. These tasks come from individual to-do lists and now they are in a team repository :-)

Many thanks to Pietro Polsinelli and his team!

Pietro, you must be one darn brilliant Java web developer to have made that! We hope to see you (soon) with a black belt.

John Rizzo
Co-creator of JavaBlackBelt

We have had much to be pleased about, particularly because of your energetic and inventive dedication for improving JavaBlackBelt over the past year.

This time last year we had a few exams. Soon after we announced the yellow belt. By the end of 2006, we had announced other belts -- up to the brown belt -- and had many more exams to offer.

Because of you, JavaBlackBelt now has 28 exams, 16 more in Beta and 17 under construction. Plus, there are 14000 questions in the DB -- that's 8000 more in only one year.

In 2007, around March, we will roll out the long-awaited black belt exam; other certifications will follow.

An extra special "Thank you!" to our most dedicated volunteer technical administrator, Jeanne "Brown Belt" Boyarsky, who helped our moderators in myriad ways.

We also thank the Top 10 contributors (per points) ever:

1. Amzad Basha, 3767 points
2. Jeanne Boyarsky, 3377 points
3. Guillermo Schwarz, 2553 points
4. Mohammed Yousuff, 2048 points
5. Pravin Jain, 1992 points
6. Alwin Ibba, 1388 points
7. Ankur Gupta, 1169 points
8. Nicolas Duran, 855 points
9. Thomas Schroeder, 826 points
10. Sunil Parmar, 815 points
And 11. Chris Cooper, 743 points, who gave his support whenever we asked for it.

Y'know what else? There's more fun stuff to bid on THIS WEEK with 10 new auctions -- 3 with Think Geek gift certificates!

Stay tuned for more news about what's coming up in 2007.

~ The JavaBlackBelt Team

London-based Skills Matter partners with JavaBlackBelt. The partnership delivers a unique blended-learning solution to UK software architects and developers across the UK.

Read the press release ...

Brown Belt Eric Wendelin, released the Java SE Networking exam, which gives you 3 knowledge points.

View the Java SE Networking objectives.

The procedure is to send an auction item using the delivery address provided by the user. The publisher or distributor handles delivery. The only tracking we have is an email stating the date it was sent. In particular countries we don't have access to additional information even when we send it personally.

We know this is frustrating. It is for us too: we have to pay for packages that never reach their destination. What's more, Café Press told us, "We don't guarantee shipping fulfillment."

Starting today there will be concurrent auctions: electronic Amazon gift certificates (Amazon guarantees orders) and books/T-shirts (fulfilled by publishers/Café Press.)

If you live in a place where the postal service isn't reliable, bidding for a book/T-shirt is at your own (points) risk. If you would like to suggest other types of gift certificates that can be used in your home country, please let us know.

For users who have won a recent T-shirt auction that live in countries that have delivery issues your points will be returned.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

A new feature is active on JavaBlackBelt, to help focus contributions.

You probably noticed that when adding a question to the Java SE - Basic exam, you get a discouraging message. This exam contains too many hard questions and we need to slow down the contributions there to ease the manual filtering (question moving).

We also bring a motivating way to focus question authors where it's the most useful: a bonus factor associated with some exams.
For example, most Hibernate exams now have a x2.0 factor to double your contribution points.

Check the last column in the exam list.

Last week we gave a talk at J-Fall, organised by the Netherlands Java User Group.

Our contact with the group was Bert Ertman. (Thanks for getting us involved, Bert!)

We are pleased to report it was a great conference - and experience.

More than 600 Java developers attended the event.

Our Hibernate 3 session was a big success. Nicolas, who led the session using his TechAnims, delivered the presentation to a room filled with attentive, enthusiastic developers -- who were mainly Dutch nationals. (Our talk was given in English, but there were several sessions available in Dutch.)

We set up a booth with our Netherlands partner Finalist to present the community and our services.

We organised a contest promoted by our Black-Belted Bella who "Hai yah'd" attendees into taking the exam challenge.

The winning challenger was Peter Doornbosch who received two books for passing the exam first.

We got to meet JavaBlackBelt community member and brown belt Mario Klaver. We heard another community member was there, blue belt, Jettro Coenradie. Unfortunately, we didn't end up meeting him. (We'll catch you next time, Jettro! ;-))

Nicolas and I were given the opportunity to speak at the JAOO conference in Denmark. It was the first time we attended this conference - a memorable experience for us that went beyond that "newcomer" sensation.

The organizers impressed us. JAOO, created ten years ago by Danish company EOS, is a popular conference. Its success goes beyond its employees. An entire community is centered on JAOO. The feeling this gives is difficult to put into words - to experience it is really incredible.

The company and community dedicated to the conference amazed us. It was evident that everyone involved put forth a great deal of leisure time into it. The commitment of students from Danish universities, a.k.a. "The Crew" volunteered every type of assistance wherever they could. It was inspiring to see every person involved in the conference was also integrated into their city and their national culture: health. Each year the JAOO-IT Run, a sporting event, is organized around the conference to encourage attendees to get more exercise.

The level of dedication and community efforts made me think of this group as a Small Giant, which refers to a book I am reading. A Small Giant is a company (or organization) that has opportunities to grow but chooses deliberately to remain small (in the numbers sense) with the goal to maintain excellence. The main principle is harmonious integration of a community centered on a company.

Our own sessions at the JAOO were successful - another reason we had a memorable experience. Every seat in our sessions was filled. We presented a dozen TechAnims about Spring and Hibernate technologies called Extreme Visual Learning. (A similar example, the Jasper Reports TechAnim was published recently on the web in cooperation with TheServerSide.com.) Feedback from the attendees was very positive. Talking about Spring with .NET developers is refreshing and rare - an experience that is difficult to find at many conferences.

That leads to the last point: JAOO is about developers as a community. It's not only for Java developers (like us), for .NET developers, and the rest. We are developers — FIRST. Sure, some topics and technologies will attract more interest from Java-focused programmers. But, many topics go beyond technologies (concurrency, DSL, methodology...)

Next up for Nicolas and I:
The J-Fall conference in the Netherlands.

John Rizzo

Co-founder of JavaBlackBelt

October 9, 2006

Brussels

Chris Cooper -- one of our very serious moderators and part-time Fortune Teller -- has written the objectives for 2 concurrency exams. They are ready to accept your questions:

	Java SE Concurrency - High-Level
	Java SE Concurrency - Low-Level

These exam objectives were been kindly reviewed/improved by a well-known author of programming books (eg, Concurrency) and a member of the concerned JSR.

We've added intro text to the wiki page How to Write A Quality Question. It was time to point out that our high-quality collaborative content should be written by the community itself. Please take a moment to read the updated page.

Take a look at the testimonial by Vikram Goyal, author of Pro Java ME MMAPI. Firstly, Vikram was kind enough to review the objectives by exam leader, Jim McLachlan, a green belt from the UK. When that was done Vikram offered us a few copies of his book for the auctions from his personal stash. (We decided to offer the books to let Vikram keep his copies.) Then Vikram graced us with a testimonial that is snappy and adept. Go here to read more about Vikram Goyal.

Amzad Basha, a Green Belt based in India, is a Top Contributor with well over 1400 contribution points.

Amzad has authored over 240 exam questions that average 4.2 stars each. He holds second place as Top Contributor - ever. He's got plenty of points left to spend - particularly in the auction room!
To all you contenders: contributing = points = Top of the List.

We've noticed that many of you have been steadily earning more belts. We are looking for exam leaders to build an all new "EJB 3 Basic" exam. So, anyone who is up for the challenge to build this exam, we'd like to hear from you! Go here How to Moderate for all of the details. Or e-mail us ( trish [at> javablackbelt |dot| com ) !

Morten Lauritsen, from Switzerland, proposes the PMD Basic exam.

Feel free to add your questions.
Thanks for your efforts, Morten!

View the PMD Basic exam objectives.

Amzad Basha, from India, proposes a Struts Intermediate exam.
Feel free to add new questions.

Guillermo Schwarz, from Chile, is now one of the Top 3 Contributors (EVER) with 1000 contribution points (which increased to 1006 points, only 1 day after we posted this.)

He's also one of the Top Contributor of the past 7 days. Thing is, Guillermo spends a lot of his points in the auction room. Currently, he's running low.
So step up contenders!

Moderate exam questions, get your contribution points and take your place at the Top - of the Contributor's List.

Thomas Schroeder, from Australia released the Java 5 New Language Features exam.

This is the first exam using YAMP for questions selection. With its 3 knowledge points, this exam should enable more people to get their brown belt.
Thank you Thomas for this effort.

View the Java 5 New Language Features exam objectives.

Wiley publishers cover JavaBlackBelt contributors with great Java books for the summer !

They will ship you one book a week. Let's start with a book about trains.

Javier Diaz, from Spain released the Swing - Basic exam.

This exam required to add image support to the questions.

Thank you Javier for this effort.
Special thanks to Romain Guy who reviewed the objectives.

View the Swing - basic exam objectives.

We've been to JavaOne, San Francisco.

We've seen very few sessions, met plenty of people and slept few. Interesting things will soon come up from this, on JavaBlackBelt.

John (left) and Nicolas (right).

Ronald Wildenberg, from the Netherlands, finalized objectives for the JSF - 1.1 basic exam.

Your new questions are welcome. You can also take the beta and vote for the existing questions to make them move to the exam zone (or to the feezer).

View the JSF 1.1 - basic exam objectives.

The splitting of the Java SE - Intermed exam is underway.

The old exam will be set back in writing objectives stage during the construction of the new exams, corresponding categories and the transfer of questions.

	View the new exam structure proposal.
	Discuss it in the forum thread.

Guillermo Schwarz, from Chile released the OO - Intermed exam.

Thank you Guillermo, for letting us to get a green (and then blue) belt.

View the OO - intermed exam objectives.

Premanand Chandrasekaran from the United States has written objectives for a JUnit - Intermed exam.

You are welcome to add questions!

View the JUnit - Intermed exam objectives.

Serkan Guler from the United Kingdom has written objectives for a JDBC - Intermed exam.

There are already beta questions and you are invited to add yours.

View the JDBC - Intermed exam objectives.

Moandji Ezana from Belgium, has written objectives for the Tiles (Struts) exam.

Your "Tiles" questions are welcome.

View the Struts Tiles exam objectives.

The auction room is a success and the bids let me think that you like the stuff we put there. We asked Chris Richardson from California, to offer his book POJOs in Action to JavaBlackBelt's contributors.

The publisher of Chris's book, Manning Publications will ship 5 copies (1 for each auction winner).

Thank you both for this concrete contribution to JavaBlackBelt community :-)