I’ve started my interaction with Java a long time ago – in 1998 (*), when a friend of mine show me thr good ‘ol Borland JBuilder and how to write Swing applications. I was using a very very old computer that I bought a day before that and my first compilation took 30 min or so.

Couple of months after that I betrayed Java and I’ve start using PHP and other easy to learn web languages, because my employer requires that, but I never forgot my loving Java.

14 years after

14 year after that I had the opportunity to be a part of Java community again. Of course I followed what’s going on with Java during the years and when the Oracle bought it I was shocked. They did the same with MySQL…

What is the future of Java NOW?

Last couple of months I am working with JUG and other Java boys and girls and I see that most of them are not happy, enthusiastic and don’t care about the spirit of Java (if I may use that expression).

I don’t want to start a technology flame war and I am not a Java tech person at all, but I am worried about the community around Java.

The Example
There are JUG’s with 1000 and more members, from which 50 are active online and 10 coming to an offline meeting.

Community?
Most of you can say Java is only about the technology and maybe they are right, but this is not what I think. Java is about the community also – There is no technology that can survive without a community around it and the community plays a big role to make a technology kick-ass.

That’s I want to find the way to scream “WAKE UP” and to push the technology forward.

So, where is the problem?
Is it Oracle politics about Java? Are you afraid of them?
Is it Community Management – most of the JUG lists are used as one way communication. There is no active engagement from the leaders at all. Sad!
Is it the “threat” of other languages? Really?

What do YOU think? How to bring back the passion?

I have my own vision, but I’d love to hear more about yours. Can you share it with me, please?

P.S I’d love to discuss this at FOSDEM and I may buy you a beer
(*) in my 1.0 version the date was wrong, sorry for that.

Take a look at the schedule and plan your visit now. It will be a great time, like every year.

P.S Let’s say “Merci” to Benoît to taking care about Mozilla’s presence at Fosdem.

Don’t try to control your community, try to manage it.

Create the infrastructure

• Get an account in Trello.
• Define your basic iteration period. Let say 2 weeks.
• Define tasks.

Don’t try to find people who want to contribute.

“What? Are you serious?”

Hell yeah. Try to create tasks first. Put anything you think can be doable in the next 2 weeks (This is your main task).

You can start from “we need someone to tweet using our account” , “we need a new wiki” or something more interesting like “we need someone to be responsible for beer giveaways”

Ready?

Invite

Ok, now invite ALL community members to create an account and to look at the task.

Let them:

1. Vote for the tasks.  See how community see the importance of the tasks.
2. Add themselves to a task. It’s a common mistake project manager/leader/the big boss to assign someone to a task. Don’t do that!

Teams

Now you can see which people are willing to work together on a certain task and you can create a new board for them.

Let say you have a task website on the main board:

And there are 10 people that want to contribute to it. Move them to another board and let them create tasks, with a simple workflow:

Todos > Working on > Done:

Meetings

If you have well working community or some kind of core contributors, you can start every iteration with a meeting and to define all the tasks together.

Why?

• This approach will help you a lot to do things faster. Remember define only tasks that can be done in 2 weeks (or 3 weeks). It’s much easier to create a simple skeleton of your website with most, most important functionalities (like who we are and join us) than to plan and create whole website in 2 months.
  
• Step by step
• Build a community and respect your community member’s skills.
• Invite anyone to join and to help. It’s kind of easy to find someone to write a post in a forum or to contact a media representative, because this takes 3-4 minutes.
• Get things done!

Here is an example:

Tool: Trello (trello.com)
Purpose: I am using it for internal project management within the community core
Reason: Easy to use

Thanks!

It doesn’t matter if you are beginner or if you are Mozilla JetPack guru – P2PU course perfect place for you to learn or to share knowledge.

If you are part of Facebook, please join the JetHack group also.

It’s really awesome because most of the CKAN community members are programmers like me and I think we have a lot of common interests.

This project will be probono and will take 1-2 h of my free time per day, but it will be great if I can help the OKFN to spread the Open Data ideas and technologies around the World.

In June a 2 day event will take place in will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, under the title ‘OpenCamp Sofia‘, addressing open government, PSI re-use, Open Web, Free Software and Open Source, Open Knowledge and other important topics.

On the first day a workshop/camp will be held. Both presentations (a growing list of presenters is on the site) and discussions are planned on topics such as Open Web, Open Government, Open Knowledge, and Open source software. In that context PSI re-use is sure to be part of the discussion as well.

On the second day a Mozilla-related event will be held. At the same time in Sofia will be next Balkan’s Meeting of Mozilla Communities.

website: http://opencamp.talkweb.eu

hashtag: #opensofia

Let’s do it.
I decided to be a facilitator and co-author for this project and I am searching for co-authors && contributors.

If you have experience leading (or being part of a great community) and/or creating communities, please drop me a note here and let’s start thinking what is the better way to do that. You can send me an email as well: shopov.bogomil at gmail got com or via twitter @bogomep

Why?
I know there are many books on community management, but they are mostly theoretical or encompass only a little of what is going on in the field, because the things in the Internet change with every second. Let’s create something open (as in Open Web) and Together (as in Sharing is Caring).

Love,
Bogo

So my next birthday is approaching. Do you want to make me happy? Here is my birthday wish. Please donate 10$ (or any other amount) to Mozilla from here.

Mozilla is a non-profit organization with a mission to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web.We are focused on building communities and enriching people’s lives rather than financial gain.

Get a gift from me.
Please let me know your postal address and I will send you something cool via snail mail. You can send me your address to shopov.bogomil at gmail.com

Thank you and Happy Holidays !

I am starting this weekend. I will share my ideas about how to make money using your hacking skills at Wordcamp Romania. The exact topic is (if you are from North America, don’t read this – warning) Fuck the cola, Fuck the whiskey, all we need is more hackers

Next one will be in November 12th in Sofia. I will explain why “Only Chuck Norris can CLOSE the open web“.

One week after this event I will be speaking at very very popular OpenFest conference, and the topic wil be, well …. ” Only Chuck Norris can CLOSE the open source.”

The final talk will be at November 26th, during Freelance Con in Sofia and will be about “Effective Telework, Online Project and Team Collaboration”.

It will be very interesting month full of emotions and freedom

This is just a friendly reminder about our meeting tomorrow.

Sharing is caring
I will be more than happy if you fill some ideas for sharing on our meeting page or just drop it here and I will update the wiki. It will be great if all of you find information about Firefox market share in your country and share it with others. I will give a BOTTLE of red wine to the winner

If you are from Albania,Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia,Romania.Serbia,Slovenia, Kosovo or you feel the Balkan spirit, please feel free to join us.

Also, everyone will be able to vote through this website, which lectures to be included in the agenda and which not.

When and Where

9th and 10th April 2011- Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

BACKGROUND

Bulgaria Web Summit is the new name of the conference, which started back in 2004 under the name WebTech and then was renamed to P2P Conference.

We started WebTech in 2004. The aim was to provide a forum, where people, interested in web programming, development, Internet entrepreneurship and so on, could meet and exchange ideas.

Our main purpose is to show the innovations, to promote technology and to find a way to cooperate. So far our guests include Richard Stallman, Derik Rethans, Landon Bradshaw, Marko Hassinen, Kai Arno, Michael Widenius, Robert Niman, Patrick Finch and many other foreign and Bulgarian experts.

Some facts:

• So far the conferences have been visited by more than 6000 people, a fact in big favour of the quality; The conferences have been held in 3 majour Bulgarian cities: Sofia, Varna and Veliko Tarnovo;
• Several business deals for Web 2.0 projects were concluded at the conferences, which demonstrates that our events are a useful meeting ground for investors, starting enterprises and people with ideas;
• We have been supported by many sponsors through the years, which shows another useful aspect of the conference;
• Many famous names from Bulgaria and abroad have spoken at our conferences – we are very serious and we help our audience;
• We provide a forum for visionaries – we are the first place where their concepts are presented;
• The events are visited by whole corporate teams, which apart from the conference agenda, can have a great team building;
• All the web and IT people know our events and have positive opinion about them. This is evident and from the fact that more than 20% of the participants have come more than 3 times to our events;
• The organizing team has held more than 20 events in Bulgaria and on the Balkans, another factor contributing to the comfort during the event.

JOIN US

Join us @LanYrd