Last month at the 2006 JavaOne Conference, the Java Community Process (JCP) Program was brought into the spotlight repeatedly when Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz and other speakers urged attendees to join the community. The JCP made center stage again on Wednesday night at the JCP Program Community Event when the winners of the 4th JCP Annual Awards were announced. If you're not familiar with the selection process for the JCP Annual Awards, you should know that the JCP Executive Committees' (EC) representatives first select nominees and then cast votes to choose the winners from among them. There are five categories in which contenders vie each year to make the top four or five: Member of the Year, Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java Standard Edition/Enterprise Edition, Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java Micro Edition, Most Innovative JSR for Java Standard Edition/Enterprise Edition, and Most Innovative JSR for Java Micro Edition. This year, after the nominations round, there were about three to four candidates for the winner title in each category - all very strong contenders. This made the task of the EC representatives quite difficult and to better understand how tough it was to decide, go to http://jcp.org/en/press/news/awards/2006award_nominees for a complete list of the nominees and descriptions of the awards categories.

If you missed the opportunity to meet the winners at "the JCP party," as the JavaOne Conference goers have come to dub the JCP Community Event, here's your second chance, minus the excellent food and the fine California wine and a hand shake with Duke. For the whole package, we invite you to next year's at the JavaOne Conference, May 8-11, 2007.

And the Winners Are!
JCP Member of the Year
Sony Ericsson made it to the top this year in the "Member of the Year" category. The JCP Executive Committees (EC) voted the company as one of this year's best examples of how standards development and innovation work together in advancing Java technology. Sony Ericsson has been a JCP member since the company formed in October 2001. Shortly after, it was elected to the EC and reelected in 2005 for a three-year term. Hanz Hager, who accepted the award for Sony Ericsson, represents the company on the Java Micro Edition (ME) EC. He has also served on the Expert Groups for Java Specification Request (JSR) 185 Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JTWI), and JSR 248/249 Mobile Service Architecture (MSA). As Java product manager, Hanz is responsible for the Java technology strategy at Sony Ericsson.

Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java ME
Spec Leads merit special recognition from the community. Key to the JCP Program in that they are the engines behind the development of the Java standards, Spec Leads take on challenging work that often goes beyond what they are paid to do in their day jobs. Asko Komsi of Nokia and Mark Duesner of Vodafone were nominated for their role in co-leading JSR 248 Mobile Service Architecture (MSA). Highly experienced in research, standardization, and strategy development for mobile technologies, Asko joined the JCP program in 2004. Currently director of industry relations at the Nokia Research Center, Asko is responsible for next generation, mobile Java technology standardization and related industry cooperation. Sharing the honors with him at the awards ceremony was Kay Glahn, from Vodafone Group Services Limited, who will tag team with Asko as co-spec lead to take the API to its next development level.

Most Outstanding Spec Lead Java SE/EE
The top honors in the "Most Outstanding Spec Lead Java SE/EE" category went to Linda DeMichiel. She accepted her award with gratitude toward the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) Expert Group, saying "I couldn't have done it without you."

Linda's experience with the JCP program goes back to 1999. She is a veteran Spec Lead, having guided the development of JSR 19 EJB 2.0, JSR 153 EJB 2.1, and JSR 220 EJB 3.0. She is a senior architect in the Java Enterprise Edition (EE) Platform group at Sun Microsystems and Sun's chief architect for Enterprise JavaBeans and the Java Persistence API. If you are about to become a JSR Spec Lead and want to talk to someone who's seen it all, done it all as a Spec Lead, Linda is your go-to expert.

Most Innovative JSR for Java ME
Innovation is the lifeblood of the JCP, and it occurs only because people make it happen. One such instance of innovation is JSR 272 Mobile Broadcast Service API for Handheld Terminals which the ECs' votes sent to the very top of the "Most Innovative JSR for JavaME" category this year. In accepting their award, the folks who made it happen, co-Spec Leads Antti Rantalahti of Nokia and Ivan Wong of Motorola, gratefully acknowledged their Expert Group of 22 members: "It's a group effort. Thanks to all who participated in it." Earlier, Antti had noted, "Because of the complexity of the JSR, the Expert Group members really bring value to the effort. No single company is the best Expert on all areas we have to cover."

The result of their innovative work on JSR 272 Mobile Broadcast Service API for Handheld Terminals is that someday soon, everybody will be able to catch a CNN report, a rerun of "Friends," or the local weather on their mobile devices.

Most Innovative JSR for Java SE/EE
When it's about innovation, the ECs are not shy to take a risk and pick as winner one of the newest submissions. JSR 292 Supporting Dynamically Typed Languages on the Java Platform has got JCP members excited. Spec Lead Gilad Bracha accepted the award, saying, "It's not my idea. It's 30 years old, and its time has come." Even so, it takes innovative effort to turn an idea into technological innovation and Gilad is at it now.

A "computational theologist" according to himself, Gilad is a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems who has been a Spec Lead for a large number of JSRs: 14, 65, 175, 201, 202, 292, and 294. He says that JSR 292 plans to extend sufficient support in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for implementers of dynamically typed languages such as Lisp, Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk to directly target the JVM's object model. This support will allow these languages to leverage the high-end performance capabilities of JVMs.

Congratulations to the winners and the runners-up for their great contributions to the JCP! For details regarding the standards they are developing and input you may want to provide, go to the respective JSR pages on http://jcp.org