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• Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS)

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Last Thursday, the Silverlight Firestarter event took place in Redmond, and was streamed live to a large audience worldwide (around 20’000 people). Approximately 30 if them were in Wallisellen near Zurich, in Microsoft Switzerland’s offices. This was not only a great occasion to learn more about the future of Silverlight and to see great demos, but also it was the very first meeting of the Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS). Having 30 people for a first meeting was a great success, especially if we consider that it was REALLY cold that night, that it had snowed 20 cm the night before! We all had a good time, and 3 lucky winners went back home with a prize: One LG Optimus 7 Windows Phone and two copies of Silverlight 4 Unleashed. Congratulations to the winners! After the keynote (which went in a whirlwind, shortest 90 minutes ever!), we all had pizza and beverages generously sponsored by the Swiss DPE team, of which not less than 5 guys came to the event! Thanks to Stefano, Ronnie, Sascha, Big Mike and Ken for attending! We decided to have meetings every month. Stay tuned for announcements on when and where the events will take place. We are also in the process of creating various groups online where the attendees can find more information. For instance, I created a group on Flickr where the pictures taken at events will be published. The group is public, and the pictures of the first event are already online! We also have the already known page at http://www.slugs.ch/, check it out. A national group Even though the first event was in Zurich, and that 3 of the founding members live nearby, we would like to try and be a national group. That means having events sometimes in other parts of Switzerland, collaborating with other local user groups, etc. Stay tuned for more Join! We want you, we need you If you are doing Silverlight, for a living or as a hobby, if you are interested in user experience, XAML, Expression Blend and many more topics, you should consider joining! This is a great occasion to exchange experiences, to learn from Silverlight experts, to hear sessions about various topics related to Silverlight, etc. If you want to talk about a topic that is of interest to you, If you want to propose a topic of discussion Or if you just want to hang out then go to http://www.slugs.ch and register! Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Is Nick Clegg a man or a mouse?

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  Well we got the hung election so many of us wanted! I believe it really is time for electoral change. Why? Consider: the ConMen under Cameroon have polled 36% of the great British voting public – well those that got to vote!! That means 64% of us don’t want him as PM. So what gives him the right to govern? Well an ancient voting system ideal for two party politics. But for the last 30 years we’ve had multi-party politics and going forward we may see 4 or 5 parties stepping up. We have to set in place a system that makes this work! So what does that mean today: Nick has a golden chance to push forward the case and in fact the absolute right for the change. He needs to keep this in mind when he discusses coalition with both Labour and the ConMen. So the mouse approach: Decides it is only fair to side with the ‘biggest’ vote and team up with the ConMen. Chances of electoral change? Big fat zero. Chance of achieving any of his other targets. Big fat zero. Why? Simple (as the Meer Kat would say). Cameroon needs to become PM by hook or crook. Once PM he holds the whip hand. Labour will dump Brown and head off into Leadership race land, Clegg will be knocking on number 10, having meaningless meetings and seeing no reward. Finally while Labour is at 6‘s and 7’s  the ‘new’ PM will call a new election, gain the majority they need and dump luckless Nick!! So the man approach: Team up with Labour. As one of the conditions – Brown to go. Run referendum for PR. Get PR through then force Labour to have new election under PR. Nick now hero and should be in a much better place following a PR election!! The man bit is standing up to the media attack for supporting Labour. Come Nick – be a man for a better Britain!!

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• Is Nick Clegg a man or a mouse?

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  Well we got the hung election so many of us wanted! I believe it really is time for electoral change. Why? Consider: the ConMen under Cameroon have polled 36% of the great British voting public – well those that got to vote!! That means 64% of us don’t want him as PM. So what gives him the right to govern? Well an ancient voting system ideal for two party politics. But for the last 30 years we’ve had multi-party politics and going forward we may see 4 or 5 parties stepping up. We have to set in place a system that makes this work! So what does that mean today: Nick has a golden chance to push forward the case and in fact the absolute right for the change. He needs to keep this in mind when he discusses coalition with both Labour and the ConMen. So the mouse approach: Decides it is only fair to side with the ‘biggest’ vote and team up with the ConMen. Chances of electoral change? Big fat zero. Chance of achieving any of his other targets. Big fat zero. Why? Simple (as the Meer Kat would say). Cameroon needs to become PM by hook or crook. Once PM he holds the whip hand. Labour will dump Brown and head off into Leadership race land, Glegg will be knocking on number 10, having meaningless meetings and seeing no reward. Finally while Labour is at 6‘s and 7’s  the ‘new’ PM will call a new election, gain the majority they need and dump luckless Nick!! So the man approach: Team up with Labour. As one of the conditions – Brown to go. Run referendum for PR. Get PR through then force Labour to have new election under PR. Nick now hero and should be in a much better place following a PR election!! The man bit is standing up to the media attack for supporting Labour. Come Nick – be a man for a better Britain!!

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• Getting Started With nServiceBus on VAN Mar 31

  - by van

  Topic: nServiceBus is mature and powerful open source framework that enables to design robust, scalable, message-based, service-oriented architectures. Latest improvements in the configuration API enables developers to quickly get started and build a working simple system that uses messaging infrastructure. The goal of this session is to give a jump start with the framework, introduce basic concepts such as message handlers, Sagas, Pub/Sub, Generic Host and also create a working demo application that uses publish/subscribe messaging. The content of the session is addressed to developers that are interested in learning how to get started using nServiceBus in order to design and build distributed systems. Bio: Bernard Kowalski is currently a Software Developer at Microdesk, one of Autodesk's leading partners in providing variety of Geospatial and Computer-Aided Design solutions. Bernard has experience developing .NET framework-based applications utilizing Windows Forms, Windows Services, ASP.NET MVC, and Web services. In a recent project, Bernard architected and implemented a distributed system based on SOA principles using an open source implementation of an Enterprise Service Bus. Bernard develops software with Agile patterns and practices using Domain Driven Design combined with TDD (Test Driven Development). He is familiar with all of the following APIs: Autodesk Vault/Product Stream API, AutoCAD ActiveX/VBA/.NET API, AutoCAD Mechanical API, Autodesk Inventor API, Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise. Prior to joining Microdesk, Bernard worked as a researcher and teacher at the University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland where he was awarded with a PhD in Computer Methods in Materials Science. He also participated in research projects where he developed applications for analysis of hot compression test results using advanced optimization techniques. He also developed Finite Element Method-based programs for thermal and stress analysis using C++ and FORTRAN. Bernard is a member of the Domain Driven Design and ALT.NET user groups in NYC. Virtual ALT.NET (VAN) is the online gathering place of the ALT.NET community. Through conversations, presentations, pair programming and dojos, we strive to improve, explore, and challenge the way we create software. Using net conferencing technology such as Skype and LiveMeeting, we hold regular meetings, open to anyone, usually taking the form of a presentation or an Open Space Technology-style conversation. Please see the Calendar(http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar) to find a VAN group that meets at a time convenient to you, and feel welcome to join a meeting. Past sessions can be found on the Recording page. To stay informed about VAN activities, you can subscribe to the Virtual ALT.NET Google Group and follow the Virtual ALT.NET blog. Times below are Central Standard Time Start Time: Wed, Mar 31, 2010 8:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours End Time: Wed, Mar 31, 2010 10:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours Attendee URL: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/van Zach Young http://www.virtualaltnet.com

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• User Group Meeting Summary - April 2010

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Thanks to everyone who could make it to what turned out to be an excellent SBUG event.  First some thanks to:  Speakers: Anthony Ross and Elton Stoneman Host: The various people at Hitachi who helped to organise and arrange the venue.   Session 1 - Getting up and running with Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus In this session Anthony discussed some considerations for using Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus from a real-world project which Hitachi have been working on with EasyJet.  Anthony also walked through a simplified demo of the concepts which applied on the project.   In addition to the slides and demo it was also very interesting to discuss with the guys involved on this project to hear about their real experiences developing with the Azure Service Bus and some of the limitations they have had to work around in Windows Mobiles ability to interact with the service bus.   On the back of this session we will look to do some further activities around this topic and the guys offered to share their wish list of features for both Windows Mobile and Windows Azure which we will look to share for user group discussion.   Another interesting point was the cost aspects of using the ISB which were very low.   Session 2 - The Enterprise Cache In the second session Elton used a few slides which are based around one of his customer scenario's where they are looking into the concept of an Enterprise Cache within the organisation.  Elton discusses this concept and also a codeplex project he is putting together which allows you to take advantage of a cache with various providers such as Memcached, AppFabric Caching and Ncache.   Following the presentation it was interesting to hear peoples thoughts on various aspects such as the enterprise cache versus an out of process application cache.  Also there was interesting discussion around how people would like to search the cache in the future.   We will again look to put together some follow-up activity on this   Meeting Summary Following the meeting all slide decks are saved in the skydrive location where we keep content from all meetings: http://cid-40015ea59a1307c8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/SBUG/SBUG%20Meetings/2010%20April   Remember that the details of all previous events are on the following page. http://uksoabpm.org/Events.aspx   Competition We had three copies of the Windows Identity Foundation Patterns and Practices book that were raffles on the night, it would be great to hear any feedback on the book from those who won it.   Recording The user group meeting was recorded and we will look to make this available online sometime soon.   UG Business The following things were discussed as general UG topics:   We will change the name of the user group to the UK Connected Systems User Group to we are more inline with other user groups who cover similar topics and we believe this will help us to attract more members.  The content or focus of the user group is not expected to change.   The next meeting is 26th May and can be registered at the following link: http://sbugmay2010.eventbrite.com/

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• Scrum and Team Consolidation

  - by John K. Hines

  I’m still working my way through one of the more painful team consolidations of my career.  One thing that’s made it hard was my assumption that the use of Agile methods and Scrum would make everything easy.  Take three teams, make all work visible, track it, and presto: An efficient, functioning software development team. What I’ve come to realize is that the primary benefit of Scrum is that Scrum brings teams closer to their customers.  Frequent meetings, short iterations, and phased deployments are all meant to keep the customer in the loop.  It’s true that as teams become proficient with Scrum they tend to become more efficient.  But I don’t think it’s true that Scrum automatically helps people work together. Instead, Scrum can point out when teams aren’t good at working together.   And it really illustrates when teams, especially teams in sustaining mode, are reacting to their customers instead of innovating with them.  At the moment we’ve inherited a huge backlog of tools, processes, and personalities.  It’s up to us to sort them all out.  Unfortunately, after 7 &frac12; months we’re still sorting. What I’d recommend for any blended team is to look at your current product lifecycles and work on a single lifecycle for all work.  If you can’t objectively come up with one process, that’s a good indication that the new team might not be a good fit for being a single unit (which happens all the time in bigger companies).  Go ahead & self-organize into sub-teams.  Then repeat the process. If you can come up with a single process, tackle each piece and standardize all of them.  Do this as soon as possible, as it can be uncomfortable.  Standardize your requirements gathering and tracking, your exploration and technical analysis, your project planning, development standards, validation and sustaining processes.  Standardize all of it.  Make this your top priority, get it out of the way, and get back to work. Lastly, managers of blended teams should realize what I’m suggesting is a disruptive process.  But you’ve just reorganized the team is already disrupted.   Don’t pull the bandage off slowly and force the team through a prolonged transition phase, lowering their productivity over the long term.  You can role model leadership to your team and drive a true consolidation.  Destroy roadblocks, reassure those on your team who are afraid of change, and push forward to create something efficient and beautiful.  Then use Scrum to reengage your customers in a way that they’ll love. Technorati tags: Scrum Scrum Process

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• Introduction to Lean Software Development and Kanban Systems

  - by Ben Griswold

  Last year I took myself through a crash course on Lean Software Development and Kanban Systems in preparation for an in-house presentation.  I learned a bunch.  In this series, I’ll be sharing what I learned with you.   If your career looks anything like mine, you have probably been affiliated with a company or two which pushed requirements gathering and documentation to the nth degree. To add insult to injury, they probably added planning process (documentation, requirements, policies, meetings, committees) to the extent that it possibly retarded any progress. In my opinion, the typical company resembles the quote from Tom DeMarco. It isn’t enough just to do things right – we also had to say in advance exactly what we intended to do and then do exactly that. In the 1980s, Toyota turned the tables and revolutionize the automobile industry with their approach of “Lean Manufacturing.” A massive paradigm shift hit factories throughout the US and Europe. Mass production and scientific management techniques from the early 1900’s were questioned as Japanese manufacturing companies demonstrated that ‘Just-in-Time’ was a better paradigm. The widely adopted Japanese manufacturing concepts came to be known as ‘lean production’. Lean Thinking capitalizes on the intelligence of frontline workers, believing that they are the ones who should determine and continually improve the way they do their jobs. Lean puts main focus on people and communication – if people who produce the software are respected and they communicate efficiently, it is more likely that they will deliver good product and the final customer will be satisfied. In time, the abstractions behind lean production spread to logistics, and from there to the military, to construction, and to the service industry. As it turns out, principles of lean thinking are universal and have been applied successfully across many disciplines. Lean has been adopted by companies including Dell, FedEx, Lens Crafters, LLBean, SW Airlines, Digital River and eBay. Lean thinking got its name from a 1990’s best seller called The Machine That Changed the World : The Story of Lean Production. This book chronicles the movement of automobile manufacturing from craft production to mass production to lean production. Tom and Mary Poppendieck, that is.  Here’s one of their books: Implementing Lean Software Thinking: From Concept to Cash Our in-house presentations are supposed to run no more than 45 minutes.  I really cranked and got through my 87 slides in just under an hour. Of course, I had to cheat a little – I only covered the 7 principles and a single practice. In the next part of the series, we’ll dive into Principle #1: Eliminate Waste. And I am going to be a little obnoxious about listing my Lean and Kanban references with every series post.  The references are great and they deserve this sort of attention. 

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• ODUG lands DotNetNuke guru Nik Kalyani as a speaker

  - by Brian Scarbeau

  If you are in the Orlando, FL area during the first week of May then you should head over to the Orlando DotNetNuke user group meeting. Nik Kalyani will be the speaker and you will learn a great deal from him. DotNetNuke Module Development with the MVP Pattern This session focuses on introducing attendees to the Model-View-Presenter pattern, support for which was recently introduced in the DotNetNuke Core. We'll start with a quick overview of the pattern, compare it to MVC, and then dive right into code. We will start with fundamentals and then develop a full-featured module using this pattern. In order to do justice to the pattern, we will use ASP.NET WebForms controls minimally and implement most of the UI using jQuery plug-ins. Finally, to increase audience participation (both present at the meeting and remote), we will use a hackathon-style model and allow anybody, anywhere to follow along with the presentation and code their own MVP-based solution that they can share online during or after the session. A URL with full instructions for the hackathon will be posted online a few days prior to the meeting. About Our Speaker Nik Kalyani is Co-founder and Strategic Advisor for DotNetNuke Corp., the company that manages the DotNetNuke Open Source project. Kalyani is also Founder and CEO of HyperCrunch. He is a technology entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in the software industry. He is irrationally exuberant about technology, especially if it has anything to do with the Internet. HyperCrunch is his latest startup business that builds on his knowledge and experience from prior startups, two of them venture-funded. Kalyani is a creative tinkerer perpetually interested in looking around the corner and figuring out new and interesting ways to make the world a better place. An experienced web developer, he finds the business strategy and marketing aspects of the software business more exciting than writing code. When he does create software, his primary expertise is in creating products with compelling user experiences. Kalyani is most proficient with Microsoft technologies, but has no religious fanaticism about them. Kalyani has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Western Michigan University. He is a frequent speaker at technology conferences and user group meetings. He lives in Mountain View, California with his wife and daughters. He blogs at http://www.kalyani.com and is @techbubble on Twitter.

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• Simple tips to design a Customer Journey Map

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  “A model can abstract to a level that is comprehensible to humans, without getting lost in details.” -The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual. Inception using Post-it, StoryBoards, Lego or Mindmaping Techniques The first step in a Customer Experience project is to describe customer interactions creating a customer journey map. Modeling is never easy, so to succeed on this effort, it is very convenient that your CX´s team have some “abstract thinking” skills. Besides is very helpful to consult a Business Service Design offered by an Interactive Agency to lead your inception process. Initially, you may start by a free discussion using post-it cards; storyboards; even lego or any other brainstorming technique you like. This will help you to get your mind into the path followed by the customer to purchase your product or to consume any business service you actually offer to your customers, or plan to offer in the near future. (from www.servicedesigntools.org) Colorful Mind Maps are very useful to document and share meeting ideas. Some Mind Maps software providers as ThinkBuzzan provide trial versions, and you will find more mindmapping options on this post by Mashable. Finally to produce a quick one, I do recommend Wise, an entirely online mindmaping service. On my view the best results in terms of communication will always come for an artistic hand-made drawing. Customer Experience Mind Map Example Making your first Customer Journey Map To add some more formalization to your thoughts, there is a wide offering for designing Customer Journey Maps. A Customer Map can be represented as an oriented graph in which another follows each step. The one below is the most simple Customer Journey you can draw. Nothing more than a couple of pictures, numbers and lines to design the customer steps sequence in the purchase process. Very simple Customer Journey for Social Mobile Shopping There are a lot of Customer Journey templates much more sophisticated available  in the Web using a variety of styles, as per example this one with a focus on underlining emotional experience, or this other worksheet template. Representing different interaction devices on the vertical axis, and touchpoints / requirements and existing gaps horizontally  is today´s most common format for Customer Journeys. From Customer Journey Maps to CX Technology Adoption Plans Once you have your map ready, you can start to identify the IT infrastructure requirements for your CXProject. By analyzing customer problems and improvement opportunities with maps, you will then identify the technology gaps and the new investment requirements in your IT infrastructure. Deeping step by step from the more abstract to the more concrete is the best guarantee to take the right IT investment decisions.  ¡Remember to keep your initial customer journey safe on your pocket in every one of your CX´s project meetings- that´s you map to success!

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• Handling Coding Standards at Work (I'm not the boss)

  - by Josh Johnson

  I work on a small team, around 10 devs. We have no coding standards at all. There are certain things that have become the norm but some ways of doing things are completely disparate. My big one is indentation. Some use tabs, some use spaces, some use a different number of spaces, which creates a huge problem. I often end up with conflicts when I merge because someone used their IDE to auto format and they use a different character to indent than I do. I don't care which we use I just want us all to use the same one. Or else I'll open a file and some lines have curly brackets on the same line as the condition while others have them on the next line. Again, I don't mind which one so long as they are all the same. I've brought up the issue of standards to my direct manager, one on one and in group meetings, and he is not overly concerned about it (there are several others who share the same view as myself). I brought up my specific concern about indentation characters and he thought a better solution would be to, "create some kind of script that could convert all that when we push/pull from the repo." I suspect that he doesn't want to change and this solution seems overly complicated and prone to maintenance issues down the road (also, this addresses only one manifestation of a larger issue). Have any of you run into a similar situation at work? If so, how did you handle it? What would be some good points to help sell my boss on standards? Would starting a grass roots movement to create coding standards, among those of us who are interested, be a good idea? Am I being too particular, should I just let it go? Thank you all for your time. Note: Thanks everyone for the great feedback so far! To be clear, I don't want to dictate One Style To Rule Them All. I'm willing to concede my preferred way of doing something in favor of what suits everyone the best. I want consistency and I want this to be a democracy. I want it to be a group decision that everyone agrees on. True, not everyone will get their way, but I'm hoping that everyone will be mature enough to compromise for the betterment of the group. Note 2: Some people are getting caught up in the two examples I gave above. I'm more after the heart of the matter. It manifests itself with many examples: naming conventions, huge functions that should be broken up, should something go in a util or service, should something be a constant or injected, should we all use different versions of a dependency or the same, should an interface be used for this case, how should unit tests be set up, what should be unit tested, (Java specific) should we use annotations or external config. I could go on.

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• Victor Grazi, Java Champion!

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Congratulations to Victor Grazi, who has been made a Java Champion! He was nominated by his peers and selected as a Java Champion for his experience as a developer, and his work in the Java and Open Source communities. Grazi is a Java evangelist and serves on the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process, representing Credit Suisse - the first non-technology vendor on the JCP. He also arranges the NY Java SIG meetings at Credit Suisse's New York campus each month, and he says it has been a valuable networking opportunity. He also is the spec lead for JSR 354, the Java Money and Currency API. Grazi has been building real time financial systems in Java since JDK version 1.02! In 1996, the internet was just starting to happen, Grazi started a dot com called Supermarkets to Go, that provided an on-line shopping presence to supermarkets and grocers. Grazi wrote most of the code, which was a great opportunity for him to learn Java and UI development, as well as database management. Next, he went to work at Bank of NY building a trading system. He studied for Java certification, and he noted that getting his certification was a game changer because it helped him started to learn the nuances of the Java language. He has held other development positions, "You may have noticed that you don't get as much junk mail from Citibank as you used to - that is thanks to one of my projects!" he told us. Grazi joined Credit Suisse in 2005 and is currently Vice President on the central architecture team. Grazi is proud of his open source project, Java Concurrent Animated, a series of animations that visualize the functionality of the components in the java.util.concurrent library. "It has afforded me the opportunity to speak around the globe" and because of it, has discovered that he really enjoys doing public presentations. He is a fine addition to the Java Champions program. The Java Champions are an exclusive group of passionate Java technology and community leaders who are community-nominated and selected under a project sponsored by Oracle. Nominees are named and selected through a peer review process. Java Champions get the opportunity to provide feedback, ideas, and direction that will help Oracle grow the Java Platform. This interchange may be in the form of technical discussions and/or community-building activities with Oracle's Java Development and Developer Program teams.

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• Oracle and Eloqua Welcome Compendium’s Content Marketing

  - by Mike Stiles

  Yesterday, Oracle announced its acquisition of Compendium, a cloud-based content marketing provider that helps companies plan, produce and deliver engaging content across multiple channels throughout their customers' lifecycle. Why? Because every part of the above paragraph speaks to where modern marketing is and where it’s headed. Customers have now been empowered, thanks to the Internet and particularly social, with access to almost limitless amounts of information about companies and products. This includes the especially influential voices of friends and objective acquaintances that have experience with the product or brand. With mobile, this info is available instantly in the palm of their hand. All of this research and influence mind you, is taking place long before a prospect will ever engage with the brand itself or one of its sales reps. So how does a brand effectively insert itself into these conversations and this flow of the customer journey? Now, more than ever, marketers must deliver relevant and engaging content across multiple channels and throughout the entire customer journey to be useful, helpful, and influential. Compendium has a data-driven content marketing platform that lines up relevant content with customer data and personas so brands can accelerate the conversion of prospects. Now think about combining that with the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud, part of Oracle's comprehensive CX solution. Marketers will be able to automate content delivery across channels by aligning persona-based content with customers' digital body language. Better customer engagement, improved sales lead quality, better return on marketing investment, and higher customer loyalty. Now we’re talking. Does data-driven content marketing have an impact? Compendium customer CVENT is a SaaS company specializing in meetings management tech. They wanted to increase leads & ad performance on their blog and dramatically increase their content. They also wanted to manage the creation, workflow, promotion and distribution of that content. With Compendium, CVENT created over 9,000 content elements, and sales-ready leads grew 325%. So Oracle Eloqua helps you target audiences, know buyers, and automate multi-channel marketing campaigns. Compendium lets you plan, publish, manage and measure content across content types and channels. Now kick it up yet another notch with Oracle’s Analytics, Big Data and Social solutions, and you’re using your marketing dollars to reach the right people in the right place at the right time with the right content. And as if that weren’t enough, your customers will love you for it. @mikestiles

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• Language Club

  - by Ben Griswold

  We started a language club at work this week.  Thus far, we have a collective interest in a number of languages: Python, Ruby, F#, Erlang, Objective-C, Scala, Clojure, Haskell and Go. There are more but these 9 received the most votes. During the first few meetings we are going to determine which language we should tackle first. To help make our selection, each member will provide a quick overview of their favored language by answering the following set of questions: Why are you interested in learning “your” language(s). (There’s lots of work, I’m an MS shill, It’s hip and  fun, etc) What type of language is it?  (OO, dynamic, functional, procedural, declarative, etc) What types of problems is your language best suited to solve?  (Algorithms over big data, rapid application development, modeling, merely academic, etc) Can you provide examples of where/how it is being used?  If it isn’t being used, why not?  (Erlang was invented at Ericsson to provide an extremely fault tolerant, concurrent system.) Quick history – Who created/sponsored the language?  When was it created?  Is it currently active? Does the language have hardware support (an attempt was made at one point to create processor instruction sets specific to Prolog), or can it run as an interpreted language inside another language (like Ruby in the JVM)? Are there facilities for programs written in this language to communicate with other languages?  How does this affect its utility? Does the language have a IDE tool support?  (Think Eclipse or Visual Studio) How well is the language supported in terms of books, community and documentation? What’s the number one things which differentiates the language from others?  (i.e. Why is it cool?) How is the language applicability to us as consultants?  What would the impact be of using the language in terms of cost, maintainability, personnel costs, etc.? What’s the number one things which differentiates the language from others?  (i.e. Why is it cool?) This should provide an decent introduction into nearly a dozen languages and give us enough context to decide which single language deserves our undivided attention for the weeks to come.  Stay tuned for the winner…

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• Oracle User Productivity Kit Translation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Oracle's customers just love the User Productivity Kit (UPK). I hear only great things about it from our international customers at the Oracle Usability Advisory Board meetings too. The UPK is the perfect solution for enterprise applications training needs (I previously reviewed a fine book about UPK btw). One question I am often asked is how source content created using the UPK can be translated into another language. I spoke with Peter Maravelias, Principal Product Strategy Manager for UPK about this recently. UPK is already optimized for easy source-target translation already. There is even a solution for re-recording demos. Here's what you can do to get your source content into another language: Use UPK's ability to automatically translate events and actions. UPK comes with XML templates that allow you to accomplish this in 21 languages with a simple publishing action switch. These templates even deal with the tricky business of using gender-based translations. Spanish localization template sample Japanese localization template sample Use the Import and Export localization features to export additional custom content in a format like XLIFF, easily handled by translation tools. You could also export and import in Word format. Re-record the sound (audio) files that go with the recordings, one per screen. UPK's granular approach to the sound files means that timing isn't an option. Retiming demos isn't required. A tip here with sound files and XLFF-exported custom content is to facilitate translation context by avoiding explicit references to actions going on in the screen recordings. A text based storyboard with screenshots accompanying the sound files should also be provided to the translators. Provide a glossary of terms too. Use the re-record option in UPK to record any demo from a translated application. This will allow all the translated UI labels to be automatically captured. You may be required to resize any action events here due to text expansion issues. Of course, you will need translated data in the translated application too, so plan for this in advance. However, source-target language skills aren't required for the re-recording. The UPK Player itself, of course, is also available from Oracle along with content and doc in 21 languages. The Developer and Setup is also translated in a smaller number of languages. Check the Oracle UPK website for latest details. UPK is a super solution for global enterprise applications training deployments allowing source content to be translated into multiple languages easily. See this post on the UPK blog for more insight too!

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• The best Bar on the globe is ... in Seoul/Korea

  - by Mike Dietrich

  As you know already sometimes I write about things which really don't have to do anything with a database upgrade. So if you are looking for tips and tricks and articles about that topic please stop reading now Actually I'm not a lets-go-to-a-bar person. I enjoy good food and a fine dessert wine afterwards. But last week in Seoul/Korea Ryan, our local host, did ask us after a wonderful dinner at a Korean Barbecue place if we'd like to visit a bar. I was really tired as I flew into Seoul overnight from Sunday to Monday arriving Monday early morning, getting shower, breakfast - and then a full day of very good and productive customer meetings. But one thing Ryan mentioned catched my immediate attention: The owner of the bar collects records and has a huge tube amp stereo system - and you can ask him to play your favorite songs. The bar is called "Peter, Paul and Mary" - honestly not my favorite style of music. And I even coulnd't find a webpage or an address - only that little piece of information on Facebook. But after stepping down the stairs to the cellar my eyes almost poped out of my head. This is the audio system: Enourmus huge corner horn loudspeakers from Western Electric. Pretty old I'd suppose but delivering an incredible present dynamics into the room. And plenty of tube equipment from Jadis, NSA Labs and Shindo Laboratories Western Electric 300B Limited amps from Tokyo. And the owner (I was so amazed I had simply forgotten to ask for his name) collects records since 40 years. And we had many wishes that night. Actually when we did enter Peter, Paul and Mary he played an old Helloween song. That must have been destiny. A German entering a bar in Korea and the owner is playing an old song by one of Germany's best heavy metal bands ever. And it went on with the Doors, Rainbow's Stargazer, Scorpions, later Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers, a bit of Santana, Carly Simon, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie ...Ronnie James Dio's Holy Diver, Gary Moore, Peter Gabriel's San Jacinto ... and many many more great songs ... Of course we were the last guests leaving the place at 2am in the morning - and I've never ever had a better night in a bar before ... I could have stayed days listening to so many records  ... Thanks Ryan, that was a phantastic night! -Mike

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• Issue 15: Oracle Exadata Marketing Campaigns

  - by rituchhibber

       PARTNER FOCUS Oracle ExadataMarketing Campaign Steve McNickleVP Europe, cVidya Steve McNickle is VP Europe for cVidya, an innovative provider of revenue intelligence solutions for telecom, media and entertainment service providers including AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telecom and Vodafone. The company's product portfolio helps operators and service providers maximise margins, improve customer experience and optimise ecosystem relationships through revenue assurance, fraud and security management, sales performance management, pricing analytics, and inter-carrier services. cVidya has partnered with Oracle for more than a decade. RESOURCES -- Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Oracle Exastack Program Oracle Exastack Optimized Oracle Exastack Labs and Enablement Resources Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Communications cVidya SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES Are you ready for Oracle OpenWorld this October? -- -- Please could you tell us a little about cVidya's partnering history with Oracle, and expand on your Oracle Exastack accreditations? "cVidya was established just over ten years ago and we've had a strong relationship with Oracle almost since the very beginning. Through our Revenue Intelligence work with some of the world's largest service providers we collect tremendous amounts of information, amounting to billions of records per day. We help our clients to collect, store and analyse that data to ensure that their end customers are getting the best levels of service, are billed correctly, and are happy that they are on the correct price plan. We have been an Oracle Gold level partner for seven years, and crucially just two months ago we were also accredited as Oracle Exastack Optimized for MoneyMap, our core Revenue Assurance solution. Very soon we also expect to be Oracle Exastack Optimized DRMap, our Data Retention solution." What unique capabilities and customer benefits does Oracle Exastack add to your applications? "Oracle Exastack enables us to deliver radical benefits to our customers. A typical mobile operator in the UK might handle between 500 million and two billion call data record details daily. Each transaction needs to be validated, billed correctly and fraud checked. Because of the enormous volumes involved, our clients demand scalable infrastructure that allows them to efficiently acquire, store and process all that data within controlled cost, space and environmental constraints. We have proved that the Oracle Exadata system can process data up to seven times faster and load it as much as 20 times faster than other standard best-of-breed server approaches. With the Oracle Exadata Database Machine they can reduce their datacentre equipment from say, the six or seven cabinets that they needed in the past, down to just one. This dramatic simplification delivers incredible value to the customer by cutting down enormously on all of their significant cost, space, energy, cooling and maintenance overheads." "The Oracle Exastack Program has given our clients the ability to switch their focus from reactive to proactive. Traditionally they may have spent 80 percent of their day processing, and just 20 percent enabling end customers to see advanced analytics, and avoiding issues before they occur. With our solutions and Oracle Exadata they can now switch that balance around entirely, resulting not only in reduced revenue leakage, but a far higher focus on proactive leakage prevention. How has the Oracle Exastack Program transformed your customer business? "We can already see the impact. Oracle solutions allow our delivery teams to achieve successful deployments, happy customers and self-satisfaction, and the power of Oracle's Exa solutions is easy to measure in terms of their transformational ability. We gained our first sale into a major European telco by demonstrating the major performance gains that would transform their business. Clients can measure the ease of organisational change, the early prevention of business issues, the reduction in manpower required to provide protection and coverage across all their products and services, plus of course end customer satisfaction. If customers know that that service is provided accurately and that their bills are calculated correctly, then over time this satisfaction can be attributed to revenue intelligence and the underlying systems which provide it. Combine this with the further integration we have with the other layers of the Oracle stack, including the telecommunications offerings such as NCC, OCDM and BRM, and the result is even greater customer value—not to mention the increased speed to market and the reduced project risk." What does the Oracle Exastack community bring to cVidya, both in terms of general benefits, and also tangible new opportunities and partnerships? "A great deal. We have participated in the Oracle Exastack community heavily over the past year, and have had lots of meetings with Oracle and our peers around the globe. It brings us into contact with like-minded, innovative partners, who like us are not happy to just stand still and want to take fresh technology to their customer base in order to gain enhanced value. We identified three new partnerships in each of two recent meetings, and hope these will open up new opportunities, not only in areas that exactly match where we operate today, but also in some new associative areas that will expand our reach into new business sectors. Notably, thanks to the Exastack community we were invited on stage at last year's Oracle OpenWorld conference. Appearing so publically with Oracle senior VP Judson Althoff elevated awareness and visibility of cVidya and has enabled us to participate in a number of other events with Oracle over the past eight months. We've been involved in speaking opportunities, forums and exhibitions, providing us with invaluable opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have got close to." How has Exastack differentiated cVidya as an ISV, and helped you to evolve your business to the next level? "When we are selling to our core customer base of Tier 1 telecommunications providers, we know that they want more than just software. They want an enduring partnership that will last many years, they want innovation, and a forward thinking partner who knows how to guide them on where they need to be to meet market demand three, five or seven years down the line. Membership of respected global bodies, such as the Telemanagement Forum enables us to lead standard adherence in our area of business, giving us a lot of credibility, but Oracle is also involved in this forum with its own telecommunications portfolio, strengthening our position still further. When we approach CEOs, CTOs and CIOs at the very largest Tier 1 operators, not only can we easily show them that our technology is fantastic, we can also talk about our strong partnership with Oracle, and our joint embracing of today's standards and tomorrow's innovation." Where would you like cVidya to be in one year's time? "We want to get all of our relevant products Oracle Exastack Optimized. Our MoneyMap Revenue Assurance solution is already Exastack Optimised, our DRMAP Data Retention Solution should be Exastack Optimised within the next month, and our FraudView Fraud Management solution within the next two to three months. We'd then like to extend our Oracle accreditation out to include other members of the Oracle Engineered Systems family. We are moving into the 'Big Data' space, and so we're obviously very keen to work closely with Oracle to conduct pilots, map new technologies onto Oracle Big Data platforms, and embrace and measure the benefits of other Oracle systems, namely Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine and the Oracle SPARC SuperCluster. We would also like to examine how the Oracle Database Appliance might benefit our Tier 2 service provider customers. Finally, we'd also like to continue working with the Oracle Communications Global Business Unit (CGBU), furthering our integration with Oracle billing products so that we are able to quickly deploy fraud solutions into Oracle's Engineered System stack, give operational benefits to our clients that are pre-integrated, more cost-effective, and can be rapidly deployed rapidly and producing benefits in three months, not nine months." Chris Baker ,Senior Vice President, Oracle Worldwide ISV-OEM-Java Sales Chris Baker is the Global Head of ISV/OEM Sales responsible for working with ISV/OEM partners to maximise Oracle's business through those partners, whilst maximising those partners' business to their end users. Chris works with partners, customers, innovators, investors and employees to develop innovative business solutions using Oracle products, services and skills. Firstly, could you please explain Oracle's current strategy for ISV partners, globally and in EMEA? "Oracle customers use independent software vendor (ISV) applications to run their businesses. They use them to generate revenue and to fulfil obligations to their own customers. Our strategy is very straight-forward. We want all of our ISV partners and OEMs to concentrate on the things that they do the best – building applications to meet the unique industry and functional requirements of their customer. We want to ensure that we deliver a best in class application platform so the ISV is free to concentrate their effort on their application functionality and user experience We invest over four billion dollars in research and development every year, and we want our ISVs to benefit from all of that investment in operating systems, virtualisation, databases, middleware, engineered systems, and other hardware. By doing this, we help them to reduce their costs, gain more consistency and agility for quicker implementations, and also rapidly differentiate themselves from other application vendors. It's all about simplification because we believe that around 25 to 30 percent of the development costs incurred by many ISVs are caused by customising infrastructure and have nothing to do with their applications. Our strategy is to enable our ISV partners to standardise their application platform using engineered architecture, so they can write once to the Oracle stack and deploy seamlessly in the cloud, on-premise, or in hybrid deployments. It's really important that architecture is the same in order to keep cost and time overheads at a minimum, so we provide standardisation and an environment that enables our ISVs to concentrate on the core business that makes them the most money and brings them success." How do you believe this strategy is helping the ISVs to work hand-in-hand with Oracle to ensure that end customers get the industry-leading solutions that they need? "We work with our ISVs not just to help them be successful, but also to help them market themselves. We have something called the 'Oracle Exastack Ready Program', which enables ISVs to publicise themselves as 'Ready' to run the core software platforms that run on Oracle's engineered systems including Exadata and Exalogic. So, for example, they can become 'Database Ready' which means that they use the latest version of Oracle Database and therefore can run their application without modification on Exadata or the Oracle Database Appliance. Alternatively, they can become WebLogic Ready, Oracle Linux Ready and Oracle Solaris Ready which means they run on the latest release and therefore can run their application, with no new porting work, on Oracle Exalogic. Those 'Ready' logos are important in helping ISVs advertise to their customers that they are using the latest technologies which have been fully tested. We now also have Exadata Ready and Exalogic Ready programmes which allow ISVs to promote the certification of their applications on these platforms. This highlights these partners to Oracle customers as having solutions that run fluently on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud or one of our other engineered systems. This makes it easy for customers to identify solutions and provides ISVs with an avenue to connect with Oracle customers who are rapidly adopting engineered systems. We have also taken this programme to the next level in the shape of 'Oracle Exastack Optimized' for partners whose applications run best on the Oracle stack and have invested the time to fully optimise application performance. We ensure that Exastack Optimized partner status is promoted and supported by press releases, and we help our ISVs go to market and differentiate themselves through the use our technology and the standardisation it delivers. To date we have had several hundred organisations successfully work through our Exastack Optimized programme." How does Oracle's strategy of offering pre-integrated open platform software and hardware allow ISVs to bring their products to market more quickly? "One of the problems for many ISVs is that they have to think very carefully about the technology on which their solutions will be deployed, particularly in the cloud or hosted environments. They have to think hard about how they secure these environments, whether the concern is, for example, middleware, identity management, or securing personal data. If they don't use the technology that we build-in to our products to help them to fulfil these roles, they then have to build it themselves. This takes time, requires testing, and must be maintained. By taking advantage of our technology, partners will now know that they have a standard platform. They will know that they can confidently talk about implementation being the same every time they do it. Very large ISV applications could once take a year or two to be implemented at an on-premise environment. But it wasn't just the configuration of the application that took the time, it was actually the infrastructure - the different hardware configurations, operating systems and configurations of databases and middleware. Now we strongly believe that it's all about standardisation and repeatability. It's about making sure that our partners can do it once and are then able to roll it out many different times using standard componentry." What actions would you recommend for existing ISV partners that are looking to do more business with Oracle and its customer base, not only to maximise benefits, but also to maximise partner relationships? "My team, around the world and in the EMEA region, is available and ready to talk to any of our ISVs and to explore the possibilities together. We run programmes like 'Excite' and 'Insight' to help us to understand how we can help ISVs with architecture and widen their environments. But we also want to work with, and look at, new opportunities - for example, the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market or 'The Internet of Things'. Over the next few years, many millions, indeed billions of devices will be collecting massive amounts of data and communicating it back to the central systems where ISVs will be running their applications. The only way that our partners will be able to provide a single vendor 'end-to-end' solution is to use Oracle integrated systems at the back end and Java on the 'smart' devices collecting the data – a complete solution from device to data centre. So there are huge opportunities to work closely with our ISVs, using Oracle's complete M2M platform, to provide the infrastructure that enables them to extract maximum value from the data collected. If any partners don't know where to start or who to contact, then they can contact me directly at [email protected] or indeed any of our teams across the EMEA region. We want to work with ISVs to help them to be as successful as they possibly can through simplification and speed to market, and we also want all of the top ISVs in the world based on Oracle." What opportunities are immediately opened to new ISV partners joining the OPN? "As you know OPN is very, very important. New members will discover a huge amount of content that instantly becomes accessible to them. They can access a wealth of no-cost training and enablement materials to build their expertise in Oracle technology. They can download Oracle software and use it for development projects. They can help themselves become more competent by becoming part of a true community and uncovering new opportunities by working with Oracle and their peers in the Oracle Partner Network. As well as publishing massive amounts of information on OPN, we also hold our global Oracle OpenWorld event, at which partners play a huge role. This takes place at the end of September and the beginning of October in San Francisco. Attending ISV partners have an unrivalled opportunity to contribute to elements such as the OpenWorld / OPN Exchange, at which they can talk to other partners and really begin thinking about how they can move their businesses on and play key roles in a very large ecosystem which revolves around technology and standardisation." Finally, are there any other messages that you would like to share with the Oracle ISV community? "The crucial message that I always like to reinforce is architecture, architecture and architecture! The key opportunities that ISVs have today revolve around standardising their architectures so that they can confidently think: “I will I be able to do exactly the same thing whenever a customer is looking to deploy on-premise, hosted or in the cloud”. The right architecture is critical to being competitive and to really start changing the game. We want to help our ISV partners to do just that; to establish standard architecture and to seize the opportunities it opens up for them. New market opportunities like M2M are enormous - just look at how many devices are all around you right now. We can help our partners to interface with these devices more effectively while thinking about their entire ecosystem, rather than just the piece that they have traditionally focused upon. With standardised architecture, we can help people dramatically improve their speed, reach, agility and delivery of enhanced customer satisfaction and value all the way from the Java side to their centralised systems. All Oracle ISV partners must take advantage of these opportunities, which is why Oracle will continue to invest in and support them." -- Gergely Strbik is Oracle Hardware and Software Product Manager for Avnet in Hungary. Avnet Technology Solutions is an OracleValue Added Distributor focused on the development of the existing Oracle channel. This includes the recruitment and enablement of Oracle partners as well as driving deeper adoption of Oracle's technology and application products within the IT channel. "The main business benefits of ODA for our customers and partners are scalability, flexibility, a great price point for the high performance delivered, and the easily configurable embedded Linux operating system. People welcome a lower point of entry and the ability to grow capacity on demand as their business expands." "Marketing and selling the ODA requires another way of thinking because it is an appliance. We have to transform the ways in which our partners and customers think from buying hardware and software independently to buying complete solutions. Successful early adopters and satisfied customer reactions will certainly help us to sell the ODA. We will have more experience with the product after the first deliveries and installations—end users need to see the power and benefits for themselves." "Our typical ODA customers will be those looking for complete solutions from a single reseller partner who is also able to manage the appliance. They will have enjoyed using Oracle Database but now want a new product that is able to unlock new levels of performance. A higher proportion of potential customers will come from our existing Oracle base, with around 30% from new business, but we intend to evangelise the ODA on the market to see how we can change this balance as all our customers adjust to the concept of 'Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together'. -- Back to the welcome page

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• Mexico leading in Business Transformation Strategies:

  - by [email protected]

  By John Burke Group Vice President Oracle Applications Business Unit     I recently completed a business tour in Mexico, and was surprised by both the economic vibrancy of the country and the thought leadership expressed by many of the customers I met.  An example of the economic vibrancy of the country: across the street from my hotel was the local Bentley dealership, Coach Store, Yves Saint Laurent and of course a Starbucks.  I only made it to Starbucks.  Both the Coach Store and YSL had a line of folks waiting to get in... As for thought leadership, there were several illustrations only on the first day. I had the opportunity to meet with a branch of the Mexican Federal Government. Their questions were not about clerical task automation, far from it! We discussed citizen on-line access to fees and services - for example looking up the duty on an international goods shipment, or tracking that my taxes have been received, or the status of my request for a certain service.  Eligibility, policies and status.  Having an integrated rules or policy automation system that would allow businesses and citizens to access accurate information and ensure the proper collection of fees and payment for 3rd party provided services.    Then in the afternoon, I met with the owner of a roofing company (note: most roofs in Mexico are flat and made of cement).  This CEO started discussing how he wanted to transform his business from a cement products company to a service company and market 5-10-15 year service contracts which would guarantee the structural integrity of the roof and of course that the roof would remain waterproof.  Although his products were guaranteed, they required an annual inspection and most home owners never schedule that inspection until it is too late and water damage has occurred.  These emergency calls reduce his margin and reduce customer satisfaction.  This lead to a discussion of business models in general and why long term differentiation can only come from service, not just for the music or news industries, but also for roofing companies!    I completely agreed with the transformational concepts described in both meetings and quickly understood why there is a Bentley dealership near my hotel.    

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• JCP EC Nomination Materials for 2012

  - by heathervc

  The nomination period of the 2012 Annual JCP EC Elections will begin at the end of September 2012.  The JCP will be accept self-nominations for 2 seats on what will become the merged JCP EC, starting 28 September, with the nomination period ending on Thursday, 11 October. JCP Members (JSPA 2 primary contacts) will receive messages with instructions for nominating and their login credentials via email.  You will need this credential information to login and complete the nomination.The JCP EC Special Election schedule is posted online in the JCP calendar, highlights are below:Nominations for elected seats: 28 September-11 OctoberBallot (ratified and elected): 16-29 OctoberNew members take office: 13 November The ballot with nominees for ratified and nominated seats begins on 16 October. The results will also be available on jcp.org on 30 October. If you are attending JavaOne 2012 in San Francisco, there are several events happening that you may be interested in attending, in particular the following BOF session.Meet the JCP Executive Committee CandidatesSession ID: BOF6307Location: Hilton San Francisco - Golden Gate 3/4/5Date and Time: 10/2/12, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PM We will also be hosting a call for all of the candidates following the nomination period.  The following information is required for self-nomination.1) Contact information/Biography Each EC seat is represented by two people - a primary and alternate representative. Provide the following information for each representative: - Name - Title - Email Address - Mailing Address - Phone Number - Fax - A brief biography (3-5 sentences/~100-200 words) for primary contact - Photograph (prefer jpg format, head only shot) for primary contactBios and photos for the EC members are posted here:http://jcp.org/en/press/news/ec-feature_MEhttp://jcp.org/en/press/news/ec-feature_SE2) Qualification StatementA brief (2-3 paragraph) description of your qualifications for an EC seat; this is a Qualification Statement for the organization you represent. It should include the value and perspective you bring to the EC, your interests in the JCP program, as well as a summary of your current participation or planned participation in the JCP program (your entire organization)--JSRs, participation on Expert Groups, meetings/events attended, etc.  This statement will appear on the ballot and will convince community members that they should vote for you, so please include relevant information about your experience within the JCP program and your investments in Java technology.A few sample qualification statements are available here.3) Position PaperOne of the pieces of information we make available to the JCP membership for voting purposes is a position paper.  If you would like to provide this type of information for the ballot, please prepare in pdf format for posting.  This would be more detail on areas that you would put focus into during your tenure on the JCP EC.You can read more about some of the topics under discussion in the EC here, including links to JCP.Next materials. If you have an interest in participating in the JCP EC, please start preparing these materials now.  We look forward to a successful election process.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for July 3, 2013

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Industrial SOA Chapter 5: Enterprise Service Bus Enterprise Service Bus, the fifth and latest addition to the Industrial SOA article series, answers some of the most important questions surrounding the use of an ESB. Industrial SOA Chapter 4: SOA Maturity The fourth article in the Industrial SOA series, SOA Maturity offers "an exploration of the fundamentals of applying a factory approach to modern service-oriented software development." Using the Exalytics Summary Advisor and Oracle BI Apps 7.9.6.4 | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman's post revisits "the use of the Summary Advisor, with my BI Apps installation bumped-up to version 7.9.6.4, and the Exalytics environment patched up to 11.1.1.6.9, the latest patch release we’ve applied to that environment." Part 1 - 12c Database and WLS - Overview | Steve Felts Steve Felts shares a handy table that "maps the Oracle 12c Database features supported with various combinations of currently available WLS releases, 11g and 12c Drivers, and 11g and 12c Databases." Developers WebCast: Deploy Highly-Available Custom Services on Your Data Grid Products - July 11 Oracle Coherence Sr. Architect Brian Oliver hosts this free July 11 webcast for developers to show you how to "create and deploy customized, highly-available services for your data grid, and how real-time data processing will allow you to provide unmatched end-user experiences." A checklist for OIM go live | Daniel Gralewski FMW A-Team solution architect Daniel Gralewski's list is intended to complement Oracle Identity Manager. His post "provides tips on a few topics that are not part of the documentation." How Many ODI Master Repositories Should We Have? | Christophe Dupupet FMW solution architect Christophe Dupupet provides a simple along with best practices for the architecture of ODI repositories in a corporate environment. Distinguish EA from enterprise wide solution architecture | John Wu My buddy Tony Meyer, who did a great presentation recently at the Cleveland-area Enterprise Architect / Solution Architect Meet-up, recommends this Toolbox article by John Wu. YouTube: Oracle Fusion Applications Developer Tips If you work with Fusion Applications you'll want to check out the tips and tricks for building extensions, customizations, and integrations now available on the new Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer Relations YouTube channel. The CX Factor: Wooing and wowing customers in the digital age "There was a time when 'customer experience' was limited to what happened to you when you walked into a store, restaurant, or other place of business or when you called a business on the telephone. But that was back when you could still smoke on airplanes." Thought for the Day "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.' " — Dave Barry (Born July 3, 1947) Source: brainyquote.com

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• The Diabolical Developer: What You Need to Do to Become Awesome

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Wearing sunglasses and quite possibly hungover, Martijn Verburg's evil persona provided key tips on how to be a Diabolical Developer. His presentation at TheServerSide Java Symposium was heavy on the sarcasm and provided lots of laughter. Martijn insisted that developers take their power back and get rid of all the "modern fluff" that distract developers.He provided several key tips to become a Diabolical Developer:*Learn only from yourself. Don't read blogs or books, and don't attend conferences. If you must go on forums, only do it display your superiority, answer as obscurely as possible.*Work aloneBest coding happens when you alone in your room, lock yourself in for days. Make sure you have a gaming machine in with you.*Keep information to yourselfKnowledge is power. Think job security. Never provide documentation. *Make sure only you can read your code.Don't put comments in your code. Name your variables A,B,C....A1,B1, etc.If someone insists you format your in a standard way, change a small section and revert it back as soon as they walk away from your screen. *Stick to what you knowStay on Java 1.3. Don't bother learning abstractions. Write your application in a single file. Stuff as much code into one class as possible, a 30,000-line class is fine. Makes it easier for you to read and maintain.*Use Real ToolsNo "fancy-pancy" IDEs. Real developers only use vi.*Ignore FadsThe cloud is massively overhyped. Mobile is a big fad for young kids.The big, clunky desktop computer (with a real keyboard) will return.Learn new stuff only to pad your resume. Ajax is great for that. *Skip TestingTest-driven development is a complete waste of time. They sent men to the moon without unit tests.Just write your code properly in the first place and you don't need tests.*Compiled = Ship ItUser acceptance testing is an absolute waste of time. *Use a Single ThreadDon't use multithreading. All you need to do is throw more hardware at the problem.*Don't waste time on SEO.If you've written the contract correctly, you are paid for writing code, not attracting users.You don't want a lot of users, they only report problems. *Avoid meetingsFake being sick to avoid meetings. If you are forced into a meeting, play corporate bingo.Once you stand up and shout "bingo" you will kicked out of the meeting. Job done.Follow these tips and you'll be well on your way to being a Diabolical Developer!

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• Hello From South Florida

  - by Sam Abraham

  Fellow Blog Readers: I figured I use my first blog post on GeeksWithBlogs to introduce myself.   I recently relocated from Long Island, NY to South Florida where I joined a local company as Software Engineer specializing in technologies such as C#, ASP.Net 3.5, WCF, Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 and LINQ, to name a few. I am an MCP and MCTS ASP.Net 3.5, looking to get my .Net 4.0 certification soon.   Having been in industry for a few years so far, I figured I would share with you my take on the importance of being involved(at least attending) in local user groups.   I am a firm believer that besides using a certain technology, the best way to expand one’s knowledge is by sharing it with others and being equally open to learn from others just as much as you are willing to share what you know.   In my opinion, an important factor that makes a good developer stand-out is his/her ability to keep abreast with the latest and greatest even in areas outside his/her direct expertise.   Additionally, having spoken to various recruiters, technical user group attendees are always favorably looked upon as genuinely interested in their field and willing to take the initiative to expand their knowledge which offers job candidates good leverage when competing for jobs.   I believe I am very blessed to be in an area with a very strong and vibrant developer community. I found in the local .Net community leadership a genuine interest in constantly extending the opportunity to all developers to get more involved and encouraging those who are willing to take that initiative achieve their goal: Speak in meetings, volunteer at events or write and publish articles/blogs about latest and greatest technologies.   With Vishal Shukla (Site director for the West Palm Beach .Net User Group) traveling overseas, I have been extended the opportunity to come on board as site coordinator for FladotNet's WPB .Net User Group along with Venkata Subramanian, an opportunity which I gratefully accepted.   Being involved in running a .Net User Group will surely help me personally and professionally, but my real hope is to use this opportunity to assist in delivering the ultimate common-goal: spread the word about new .Net Technologies, help everybody get more involved and simply have fun learning new things.   With my introduction out of the way, in the next few days I will be posting some notes on an upcoming talk I will be giving about MVC2 and VS2010 in mid-April.   Environment.Exit(0); --Sam

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• Justification for learning/implementing newer Microsoft technologies

  - by Darren

  I work at a large healthcare organization as a mid-level software developer. I have over 10 years experience in the IT industry using Microsoft technologies (ASP.NET & SQL Server). When I go to conferences, code camps, .net user group meetings, I hear of all kinds of new tools and technologies: MVC, LINQ, Entity Framework, WCF Web Services, etc. I guess you could say I'm in my comfort zone using the same old stuff from asp.net 2.0. I use typed datasets for my data access layer. I use web forms and feature rich server controls with master pages. I know how to use plain old SQL and create queries in my typed datasets to get at data my applications need. Throughout my career, I'm always sensitive to not become obsolete with my skill set. What I currently use works fine and my development time is fast. But I'm concerned that if I were to be laid off, I would be asked in interviews how many MVC apps I've written. Or how I am with LINQ or WCF web services. I know that it doesn't matter how many conferences, books, or videos I watch on some new technology...I have to implement/use it or it simply won't sink in. Also, managers who interview don't care how much someone reads up on something, only real use and experience with a technology. I have a new project to write. I've gone to my manager and have asked for additional time for the project for learning/implementing technology I may not be familiar with. Our organization encourages its employees to "learn and grow" and to continue are education. But I always get resistance when I ask for more time to ramp up on something new to implement. My manager is asking for concrete business reasons for implementing these new technologies. I don't have business reasons. My reasons are because I don't want to become obsolete. I could say it would make the project more maintainable in the future by other developers since at some point people could stop using these older technologies, but that' about all I can think of. Does Linq/Entity Framework/MCV apps perform better? So much so that the customers (users in departments I'm creating this app for) need? I doubt it. I'm interested in you guy's thoughts on this. Do many of you have similar plights with trying to use newer upcoming technologies? I doubt I'm on the bleeding edge of technology, either. Are there "business reasons" that you would bring to light for using these technologies? Thanks in advance! Sorry for the long wall of text.

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• Why wearing Jeans is considered unprofessional?

  - by Gopinath

  When I started my career 9 years ago I use to wear casual wear to office – Jeans & T-Shirts all the 5 days. The environment at workplace during those days encouraged me to be casual and many of my colleagues use to come in Jeans. We just started our career those days it was perfectly fine to be in casual. As I grow up in the ladder, I started feeling the discomfort of wearing Jeans at work. During clients visits, senior managers meetings and consultations I was an odd man in the crowd as the rest of them are in formals. In order to be one among the professionals I’m forced change my dressing style and start wearing formals. But  the question of “Why wearing jeans to workplace is considered as unprofessional?” use in linger in my mind till today. I got the answer to my question from a discussion thread on Quora When they were invented, jeans were associated with blue-collar work. They were meant to get muddy and gross and take lots of abuse without falling apart, even if you wore the same pair every day. The people who bought them were the ones whose lives required durable clothing. And another commenter says… A professional image is critical to cementing business relationships, and part of that is, for right or wrong, how you dress. Jeans are typically associated with "kicking back", relaxation, leisure, informality,  and even a slightly rebellious flavor. The style and condition of the jeans are a consideration, as we often wear jeans into advanced states of being worn down, with tearing, etc.. that we generally do not do with other clothing items. I agree with this theory even though it may be centuries old. If you want to look like a professional and treated like a professional it’s better to be dress up in formals. These days I make a point to be in formals at workplace. Not everyone is Steve Jobs to wear a Jean & Turtle Neck T-shirt  right? CC Image credit flickr/exey

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• What if you could work on anything you wanted?

  - by red@work

  This week we've downed our tools and organised ourselves into small project teams or struck out alone. We're working on whatever we like, with whoever we like, wherever we like. We've called it Down Tools week and so far it's a blast. It all started a few months ago with an idea from Neil, our CEO. Neil wanted to capture the excitement, innovation, and productivity of Coding by the Sea and extend this to all Red Gaters working in Product Development. A brainstorm is always a good place to start for an "anything goes" project. Half of Red Gate piled into our largest meeting room (it's pretty big) armed with flip charts, post its and a heightened sense of possibility. An hour or so later our SQL Servery walls were covered in project ideas. So what would you do, if you could work on anything you wanted? Many projects are related to tools we already make, others are for internal product development use and some are, well, just something completely different. Someone suggested we point a web cam at the SQL Servery lunch queue so we can check it before heading to lunch. That one couldn't wait for Down Tools Week. It was up and running within a few days and even better, it captures the table tennis table too. Thursday is the Show and Tell - I am looking forward to seeing what everyone has come up with. Some of the projects will turn into new products or features so this probably isn't the time or place to go into detail of what is being worked on. Rest assured, you'll hear all about it! We're making a video as we go along too which will be up on our website as soon. In the meantime, all meetings are cancelled, we've got plenty of food in and people are being very creative with the £500 expenses budget (Richard, do you really need an iPad?). It's brilliant to see it all coming together from the idea stage to reality. Catch up with our progress by following #downtoolsweek on Twitter. Who knows, maybe a future Red Gate flagship tool is coming to life right now? By the way, it's business as usual for our customer facing and internal operations teams. Hmm, maybe we can all down tools for a week and ask Product Development to hold the fort? Post by: Alice Chapman

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• Oracle SOA Partner Community Forum Lisbon, Portugal &ndash; April 21st 2010

  - by Jürgen Kress

  We would like to invite you to attend our SOA Partner Community Forum that will be in held in Lisbon, April 21, 2010 The Oracle SOA Partner Community Forum is a wonderful opportunity to: Meet with Oracle SOA and BPM Product management Exchange thoughts and knowledge with SOA and BPM experts Learn from successful SOA implementation Network within the Oracle SOA Partner Community During this highly informative event you can learn about partner success stories, participate in an array of breakout sessions, exchange information with other partners and enjoy a vibrant panel discussion. Places are limited, so register today. Registration only takes a few minutes and it is free of charge. By registration you will confirm that you will attend to the event. Seminar is free. In the event that you cancel your registration after April 16th 2010 Oracle may request that you will pay late cancellation fee of € 150. Please visit our website for further information. Alternatively, if you require assistance or have any queries please contact Jürgen Kress. Agenda 10:00     Welcome & Introduction 10:15     SOA Cloud presentation 11:15     SOA Partner Sales Campaign 12:30     Lunch break 13:15     Partner Reference Case 14:15     BPMN 2.0 15:00     Cocktail reception   Location: Lagoas Park Hotel 2740-245, Porto Salvo, Oeiras For partners with BPM 11g opportunities we will offer an advanced workshop on Thursday April 22nd and Friday April 23rd hosted by Clemens Utschig-Utschig. If you are interested please contact Jürgen Kress.   Quotes from previous SOA Partner Community Forums "The SOA Partner Community Forum was a first-rate event that provided a balanced agenda of vendor-specific and vendor-neutral content pertaining to modern-day service-oriented computing technologies and practices. I enjoyed the opportunity to provide an objective voice on the topics I consider most important for today's IT practitioners to fully leverage the many patterns, principles, and service technology innovations that comprise the next-generation SOA platform." Thomas Erl, SOA Systems Inc., SOASchool.com “The Community is an excellent forum for Partners to hear about each others success stories on SOA, especially BPEL and ODI” Jørn F. Schurink, Competence Expert Oracle Technologies Logica “The Community is the best source for information around Oracle SOA a wonderful platform with many interesting contacts and discussions”. Torsten Winterberg, Opitz Consulting “The regular meetings of the SOA Partner Community are a perfectly organized platform for learning the latest in Oracle SOA tooling by extraordinary speakers and for vivid discussions with practitioners about SOA challenges and design solutions. This is the best opportunity to build and deepen a network with the brightest and most passionate protagonists in Oracle SOA world in EMEA.” Hajo Normann, HP Services Technorati Tags: soa partner community forum,soa,event

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