Why bother nominating a peer, yourself or your company for a Duke's Choice Award? I asked Duke's Choice Award winner Fabiane Nardon, whose team won in 2005 for the Healthcare Information System they created for the Brazilian government, what it was like winning the award and if it had any impact on her career. Here's what she told me:
1) What was it like to win a Duke's Choice Award?
For me it was like winning an Oscar or a Grammy :-) I think that for
a Java developer, a Duke's Choice Award is probably the highest
award you can get, so it was really an honor. We had an amazing team
working on that project and the team really deserved it. We were all
very happy when we got that email with the announcement. That moment
was one of the most important moments of my career.
2) What benefits have you gotten from being a "Duke's Choice Award
Winner?"
I think the most important benefit you get from winning a Duke is
the fact that you become known by your peers. This opens many doors,
since you are approached by more people, get invitations to speak in
more conferences, you meet people with the same technical interests
you have and so on. I certainly benefited a lot from it. We were
lucky that in 2005, when we got our award, the winners were featured
in the JavaOne keynote, with short documentaries produced about each
one. So, we could be on the stage and talk a little about the
project. We got lots of press at the time. We see today's winners benefiting a lot from the press coverage.
3)
How is the the Brazilian Healthcare Information System project
doing today?
Still running and getting new features every year. I'm not involved
on the project anymore, but there are good people taking care of it.
We opened the code since the beginning, so different cities could
use and add features to it. There are many new developers working on
that code base right now and I hope they can take the whole system
to a new level.
4)
What are you up to these days?
I worked in the healthcare field for many years and a few years ago
I decided that it was time to move on and take the experience I got
designing large scale and mission critical systems to other fields.
Since then I have been working with high access internet
applications. I also co-founded ToolsCloud, a company that provides
a development environment with open source tools in the cloud. We
just launched ToolsCloud in USA, so other companies can get the same
bundle of tools, hassle free, that several companies are
successfully using in Brazil. Besides that, right now I'm personally
working on the coolest project I ever worked on. It combines several
technical challenges with a good dose of social impact. We should
launch it in the second semester and I should keep it as a secret
for now. Hopefully it will be useful to many people and disruptive
enough to maybe get us a new Duke's Choice Award. Who knows?
Read more about Fabiane in the "Heroes of Java" series by Markus Eisele. Her Twitter handle is @FabianeNardon.
The Duke's Choice Awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of
Java technology. Nominate an individual, a group or company who show the
best in Java innovation. Nominate via the easy online form at www.Java.net/dukeschoice. Nominations are open until June 15, 2012.
