The 2012 Duke's Choice Awards winners and their creative, Java-based technologies and Java community contributions were honored after the Sunday night JavaOne keynotes. Sharat Chander, Group Director for Java Technology Outreach, presented the awards. "Having the community participate directly in both submission and selection truly shows how we are driving exposure of the innovation happening in the Java community," he said. 
    
    
  Apache Software Foundation Hadoop Project
The Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, 
provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across 
clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of 
machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to 
better understand and improve their business. 
  AgroSense Project
Improving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of 
AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in 
Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, 
agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications 
that will easily exchange information through a common underlying 
NetBeans framework. 
  JDuchess
Rather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User 
Groups (JUGs), JDuchess fosters the participation of women in the Java 
community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 
countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with 
each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. 
  Jelastic, Inc.
Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, 
but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java 
platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to 
be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. 
  Liquid Robotics
Robotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave
 Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for 
application in government, science and commercial applications. The 
organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief 
software architect. 
  London Java Community
The second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the 
London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the 
OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the 
global Java community. 
  NATO
The first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated 
Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans
 platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment 
for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. 
  Parleys.com
E-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java
 technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to 
desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted 
more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 
800,000 unique visitors. 
  Student Nokia Developer Group
This year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of
 the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java 
Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, 
while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. 
  United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises 
around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help 
facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a
 light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One 
registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number
 of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in 
the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various 
sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and 
amount of assistance where it is needed. 
  You can read more about the winners in the current issue of Java Magazine.