Sun Campus Ambassador @ University of Southern California Christopher Leung

We had over 80 University of Southern California students at the USC Java User Group launch on April 17th, 2008!  Coming in the door, each person got some Papa John's pizza, a JUG Launch Agenda, and information about how to get signed up on Sun Learning Connection.

I kicked off the meeting asking some fun trivia questions around Sun and Java:

• What does Sun stand for?
• What does Java stand for?
• Sun completely dropped the “2” in “J2SE” by Java Version X.X?
• Java core is Open Source, TRUE or FALSE?
• Who/what is the Java mascot?
• Who/what is the JUG mascot?

See if you can answer these.  :) One of these is a trick question.  People who were able to answer correctly got a prize, which kept things exciting.  I then went on to discuss the mission and goals of the USC Java User Group, future plans, and of course, our home on the web (feel free to visit and get signed up on our "members" discussion list).  Our discussion list is our main point of contact for the group.

I also covered:

• Sun Academic Initiative
• Sun Learning Connection demo
  
• JavaOne Conference and Free Admission for Students
  
• Sun Campus Ambassador Program (we are looking for a new CA for USC!)

Before I closed the meeting, I let everyone know that we need a few people to help lead the JUG.  (I'm very pleased that two people have come back to me since and are very exciting about expanding the JUG.)  I then closed the meeting and had everyone grab a freebie.  Each person had an agenda onto which we embedded a number, which determined in which order they could grab a freebie.

It was a fun demo and we now have over 100 people signed up on our email list!  We have a very wide range of interests in this group.  I would say there are three main groups represented:

• Beginners looking to learn more about Java
• Java experts looking for cool projects to work on
• Students looking for career opportunities in Java/at Sun Microsystems

Many thanks to the Campus Ambassador program and the JUG community for their support of this user group launch.  We are excited about the year ahead, and already have a couple new leaders stepping up to plate!

For more pictures from this demo, visit the Facebook album.