The evening on September 29, 2005 started the right way: every registered person received two t-shirts, and this was not the one-size-fits-all giveaway, but everyone picked the size they wear. Sun Microsystems has supplied free copies of Sun Studio Creator 2, and Sys-Con Publications has contributed free magazines. The food was also great, there was a full open bar and live music band. Two great presentations followed the dinner:

Guy Steele, the co-author of Java language specification has introduced a new language he's working on: Fortress. This is a programming language for scientific calculations, and it should do to Fortran what Java did to C.

The second speaker was Jim Waldo, a distinguished engineer from Sun Microsystems. This time he was sharing his thoughts on what computing will be like ten years from now. One of his main predictions was that the future belongs to redundant networks of small and inexpensive computers. If you'll ever see Jim Waldo's name in the list of speakers at any conference, do not miss his presentation: it's always a great show.

After the talks, there was a raffle of fifteen O'Reilly books and a free pass to JavaOne 2006 (worth $2500, sponsored by Sun Microsystems). And finally, the attendees packed with freebies returned to drinking and socializing under the loud sounds of music band.

You may ask, who put together such a great event? And I'll answer: Frank Greco, NY Java SIG Chair. JDJ's Yakov Fain have asked Frank several questions:

Yakov. How the New York Java users group got started?

Frank. I started and ran the NY Sun Local User Group (NYSLUG) for about 8 years. In September 1995, I was asked by Sun's Peter Kestenbaum (now an Executive at IBM) to give the first public Java tutorial (along with local expert Scott Oaks) at Java's coming out party in September 1995. I was told there would be a big audience, so I assumed there would be about 100 people. When I arrived at the Equitable Center, there were 1500 people in the audience!

So that evening we started the Java SIG as a special interest subgroup of the NY Sun User Group. That's where the "SIG" comes from.

Thanks to the Java 'buzz', the Sun User Group meetings were increasingly more and more on Java topics and less and less on topics such as "Tuning your TCP/IP Stack", "NFS performance" or "Running Windows on the Sun 386i". Also, there were other growing NY user groups that discussed system administration topics at the time; so we decided to focus on Java.

Yakov. I try to attend every meeting of this group, and I always see a crowd of about a 100 people. How many members do you have in your group?

Frank. Currently there are 3,500 members in our database. We average 125 members per monthly meeting. When we have popular speakers such as Jim Waldo or Doug Lea, we get a packed house. Unfortunately we're restricted in terms of space; free NY real estate for NY Java SIG meetings is not easy to find. Thanks to the courtesy of Sun Microsystems, for the past 2 years we have been meeting at the Sun office near Grand Central Station. If we had access to a larger meeting room, I wouldn't have to disable meeting registration so quickly. I get many emails requesting to attend after registration is closed unfortunately.

Yakov. I'm a big proponent of the user groups' movement and was writing about it not too long ago (see http://jdj.sys-con.com/read/49087.htm ). Your group is a huge success. Please share your secrets with us: how do you prepare each meeting, how do you select the speakers?

Frank. No huge secrets. We don't accept marketing pitches per se. It has to be technology-centric or a presentation doesn't get accepted. Of course if vendors want to take the last 5-10 minutes on how their product or company implements the technology, that's fine. And the presentations have to lean towards uniqueness and innovation. I want our members to think of different ways of solving problems and creating products. Using the same old tools and techniques to solve modern issues doesn't always cut it. I guess if there's a secret, it's that we are lucky to have a phenomenal NY-based user community. There are some very bright developers and engineers in the NY Java SIG who ask some tough questions of our presenters. It's all about learning new things and having fun.

Yakov. All presentations I've seen during the last year were made by speakers from Sun Microsystems. Many people around the world would be more than happy to see presenters "right from the source", but are you planning to invite speakers from other companies?

Frank. Actually only 50% of the speakers from the past year were from Sun. Aaron Mulder, Geir Magnusson, Nati Shalom, Duncan Johnston-Watt, Wayne Meikle, Steve Ross-Talbot, Henry Wong and Bob Pasker were our non-Sun speakers. We get abstracts from lots of non-Sun sources. But being the bearer of the Java flag, Sun certainly does have some interesting new initiatives and technologies that benefit the Java community. We are currently trying to schedule interesting talks from some very large, very well known web companies for the beginning of next year.

Yakov. I know that one evening a month I do not need to worry about the dinner: I'll eat at Java SIG's meeting. Who pays for the food?

Frank. Hey... By the time I walk over to the food, it's all gone! Every meeting has a sponsor for the food. That sponsor gets to have their logo on our website for that month and gets 5-10 min before the main speaker to talk to the audience (we relax the non-marketing rules for this). The vast majority of the past 2 years, Sun has graciously paid for the food and soda. But I already have a list of 5 other vendors who are willing to cover the next few meetings. The number of vendors offering to pay for food and refreshments seems to be proportional to the health of the economy. Maybe Alan Greenspan should add this index to his list.

Yakov. Networking among the peers is very important in any trade. I know programmers who attend technical conferences for only one reason: get new connections. Do members of your group help each other in solving of some technical issues or in finding new jobs?

Frank. A user community would be soul-less if this was not the case. Scheduling permitting, we try to have the first 15-20 minutes of every meeting dedicated to open Q&A. Someone may have a Swing, JDBC, EJB, RMI issue that will be solved by someone else. Thanks to the recovering economy, there have been many job agencies contacting me to post job requirements to our website and/or nyjavasig mailing list. We are working out the details for this as we speak.

Yakov. Please give an advice to the people who are thinking of creating a Java users group in their local towns.

Frank. As with any other user group, the key is "community". Whether it's a small group getting together at a regular watering hole to discuss recent Java news over a beer or its a large group in an auditorium listening to an industry expert discuss the future of Java technology (perhaps also over some beers),it's all about "community". You need to offer a group of software developers a regularly scheduled opportunity to learn something cool, new or interesting to help them solve problems or foster ideas. My goal 10 years ago was to educate and inspire the New York software community using Java Technology as an engine for innovation, and have fun at the same time. I like to think we're succeeding.

Yakov. Thank you, Frank! I wish New York group (as well as all other JUGs) lots of interesting speakers and filthy rich sponsors.