Last month at the 2005 JavaOne Conference, members of the Java Community Process (JCP) program got together with the other Java communities for our traditional annual Java Communities in Action event. We mixed, mingled, and celebrated our ongoing efforts to extend Java technology on all fronts. On behalf of the JCP Executive Committees I handed out awards for JCP program achievements over the past year. The Executive Committees (ECs) had selected the honorees, which were easier to pick out since last year's migration to JCP version 2.6 encouraged the Expert Groups to work more transparently.

And the 2005 winners of the JCP Annual Awards are...

JCP Member of the Year
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) was recognized as the JCP Member of the Year for having made the most significant positive impact on the community, in terms of leadership, investment in the community, and innovation. The ASF is a membership-based, nonprofit corporation that provides organizational, legal, and financial support for a large number of Java-based, open source software projects such as Apache Tomcat, Apache Maven, and Apache Ant. From the beginning, the organization has been an active member of the JCP program and the EC, and many Apache representatives work in the Expert Groups.

Geir Magnusson Jr., the ASF's representative on the EC, accepted the award on behalf of the ASF. Earlier he had said, "We focused on bringing the principles and benefits of community-based, collaborative open source to the JCP, helping put the 'Community' in Java Community Process." The ASF was instrumental in bringing about the changes that allowed for open source Reference Implementations (RIs) and Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs), as well as the creation of a scholarship program to provide free TCK licenses and support for qualified nonprofits, individuals, and scholars.

Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java ME
Ekaterina Chtcherbina and Eric Overtoom accepted the Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) award for their work as co-Spec Leads on Java Specification Request (JSR) 253 Mobile Telephony API (MTA). Eric is a distinguished member of the technical staff at Motorola and a member of the Java-Linux software platform architecture team for the mobile devices business. Ekaterina is a senior software architect at Siemens Corporate Technology. She learned effective spec leadership skills by observing her Siemens colleague and mentor, Jan Eichholz, while participating in his JSR 205 Wireless Messaging API 2.0 Expert Group. Eric began his involvement in the JCP program by co-leading JSR 253, drawing on his API development experience at Motorola. Ekaterina said earlier that with two Spec Leads working together, "the task of supporting effective communication can be fulfilled with a doubled energy."

Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java SE/EE
Bill Shannon accepted the award for Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java SE/EE. Bill is a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he is one of the architects of Java EE. He has led several JSRs and is currently the Spec Lead for JSR 244 - Java EE 5, which aims to significantly improve ease of development for Java EE developers, especially in the area of Web service applications. The demand for this version compels Bill to keep the feature set tightly focused in order to ship before the end of 2005. Maintaining a schedule is tricky because at least six other JSRs directly support the goals of Java EE 5, so Bill keeps tabs on the progress of those JSRs. Bill has been with Sun since 1982 and previously worked on the JavaMail API, HotJava Views product, the Solaris operating system, and all versions of SunOS.

Most Innovative JSR for Java ME
JSR 271 Mobile Information Device Profile 3 (MIDP3) earned the Most Innovative JSR for J2ME award. Spec Lead Jim Van Peursem of Motorola accepted the award. MIDP3 builds on the success of MIDP2 by enhancing the profile with features that include over-the-air deliverable-shared libraries for MIDP. This enables a new market for MIDP middleware developers; the ability to run multiple concurrent MIDlet suites simultaneously within a single VM; and the ability to run MIDlets on CLDC, CDC, or OSGi environments. All of this is being added while maintaining the important goal of backward compatibility with MIDP2 content.

Most Innovative JSR for Java SE/EE
JSR 175 - A Metadata Facility for the Java Programming Language was awarded Most Innovative JSR for Java SE/EE. Bill accepted the award on behalf of Sun Microsystems. This JSR enables a new declarative style of programming that will simplify many programming tasks by allowing classes, interfaces, fields, and methods to be marked as having particular attributes.

The 2005 winners join the JCP Hall of Fame of previous years' winners. Last year's winners can be viewed at www.jcp.org/en/press/news/2004JavaOne/awards2004.