Janice Campbell's Weblog: Localization & Netbeans

CONGRATULATIONS to all the NetBeans blog contest winners. The exciting news is that submissions were allowed in seven languages in addition to English (Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, French and Polish). In fact, there were even submissions in languages not approved in the contest rules, so it's a good sign that people like discussing NetBeans and technical topics in their own language.

Among the grand prize winners were submissions in Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Polish. That means, of the winners, 50% were NOT IN ENGLISH. So, blog on in your language; you have an audience.

Congratulations to Ding Liang, Diego Silva, Wagner Roberto dos Santos, Junji Takakura, Jacek Laskowski.

DAY ONE: COMMUNITYONE
I'm a few days behind in writing a blog or two about my experience at CommunityOne and JavaOne this year. Due to a dentist appointment, I missed the C1 opening session, and due to a concall, I missed the J1 opening! Thank goodness for webcasts. Oh, I forgot my camera too, so now I have to rely on others to send me the pictures we all posed for. I can't wait to see myself getting cozy with Juggy.

I spent most of the C1 day hanging out in the NetBeans sessions so I could meet colleagues, DreamTeamers, evangelists, and community people. All the what's new and cool stuff I had seen recently at the St. Petersburg Tech Days but it's fun to see the audience's positive reaction.

The Java Posse came by while some of us were at lunch. Love those cool hats! CEO Jonathan Schwartz wandered in and out of sessions and talked to the NetBeans crowd about the importance of community contributions, feedback, requirements and engagement.

In the afternoon, I attended the JUG leads session. They talked about growing their groups and keeping them alive and interesting. How to keep people joining and attending was a major issue for many of them. I spent my time trying to meet and greet the non-English speaking Java champions and leads. I finally got to meet Fabrizio from the NetBeans DreamTeam as well as others from Bulgaria, Brazil, Netherlands, Germany, the Philippines.

I also got to beef up my rusty Spanish by spending time with the "Chilean guys", former Sun Campus Ambassador Rodrigo Andueza and Sun Learning Services Juan Carlos Herrera. Hey! They brought me some fab Chilean wine and lapis lazuli gifts so I had to give them a plug!

Ruth Kusterer from the web team wrote a good article with some photos. Check them out. See if you can find me on this page: http://www.netbeans.org/community/articles/javaone/2008/netbeans-day-report.html.

DAY TWO: JAVAONE
I tried my best to get into any of the JavaFX sessions but they were filled to the gills. Sun employees cannot reserve places, so we had to stand in line for a long while, only to be rejected. I guess JFX was the hot topic this year. As I may be localizing it at some point, I wanted to get in on the scoop.

So, the rest of the day I hung out with the Java Champions and JUG guys at the java.net area. Daniel deOliveira informed me that the DF Brazil JUG had over 28 thousand members! I had NO idea. And, I found out about the project JEDI from the Philippine JUG members Rommel Feria and JP Petines, which creates free courseware for Philippine universities. Manfred Riem of the Utah JUG (and formerly of the NL JUG before relocating to the US) chatted with me again about our favorite topic: how to make the process for community contributed translations a piece of cake. I'll let you know if and when this problem is finally solved.

The C1 beerfest started after 6 pm and lasted until 8. Those of us who stayed behind instead of going to the JUG and Java Champion get-together were rewarded with a bottle of OpenSolaris "reserve champagne".

CommunityONE and JavaONE are next week, May 5-9 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. In the office, excitement is building. Speakers are arriving in town, preparing their presentations. The hallways and cafeteria are more crowded than usual. Emails are arriving in my inbox to learn about Sun's messaging for the events. Town Halls are being held to help us know what to see and do to take the fullest advantage of the sessions.

I am looking forward to meeting some Campus Ambassadors from around the world. As well, some NetBeans DreamTeamers, JUG leads and Java Champions from the Netherlands, Brazil, and other parts of Europe and Asia. And, of course, many developers who use Java, NetBeans, Solaris, Glassfish and all sorts of Sun products. Developers who belong to the communities and who tirelessly and enthusiastically contribute their time and knowledge to the Open Source projects.

Welcome! I look forward to seeing you there.

The FISL event starts tomorrow April 17 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. I was hoping that this year I might get the opportunity to go since it is where FOSS communities come together. And, I'm always on a mission to build community around NetBeans ;-D Or, just visit Brazil, because the people are fun and nice and energetic and the beaches are famous. Well, maybe next year.

The week before FISL, the SouJava Sao Paulo JUG held a meeting at which our esteemed NetBeans Brazil team contributor, Wagner Santos, gave a presentation about how and why to participate in the community. NetBeans Evangelist Gregg Sporar also talked about new features of NetBeans and getting involved in community. Thanks to Wagner's friend for the photos.

CAPTION: Wagner talks about the NetBeans translations into Brazilian Portuguese. The community team is growing and there more than 60 subscribers to the translation team mailing list. As Wagner shows, there is a technical discussion list (nbdiscuss_pt@netbeans.org).
What is being translated? The IDE, web content, documentation, the Weekly Newsletter, tutorials.

CAPTION: Jefferson Prestes takes the stage to help Wagner explain what you can do: download NB 6.0.1 in Portuguese; register on netbeans.org; create tutorials for NetBeans; participate in the forums; write a plug-in; spread information about the community to your friends; subscribe to mailing/discussion lists; and collaborate.

CAPTION: Gregg Sporar shows a map of people around the world using the NetBeans platform to develop applications.

Don't forget that the NetBeans Blogging Contest ends this Friday, April 18. Remember also that you can submit blogs in French, Polish, Spanish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese (in addition to English) as long as you are a permanent or legal resident of one of the approved countries. See the contest rules for details.