A look at how the London Java Community built deep roots

1. Building a free
Java community
with deep roots
Martijn Verburg (@karianna)
Ben Evans (@kittylyst)
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Slide Design by Kerry Kenneally www.kerrykenneally.com

2. A key part to building community in London
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3. An Overview
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4. The London Java Community (LJC)
• Started about 4 years ago
• Now has >2500 members
• Has spun off many other user groups
– Scala,
– Clojure,
– Software Craftsmanship
– JBoss
– and more
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5. The London Java Community (LJC)
• Has close ties with the London tech scene
– Agile
– Graduate Developer Community
– CTOs
– and more
• Has global ties with other Java User Groups (JUGs)
– SouJava in Brazil
– New York in USA
– and more
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6. The London Java Community (LJC)
• Driven/passionate users
• Vibrant mailing list
• Yearly open conference
• Massive variety of events
– Averaging about 2 per week
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7. The London Java Community (LJC)
• Holds an EC seat on the Java Community Process (JCP)
– Java's standards body
• Runs 2 global programs impacting the future of Java itself
• Adopt a JSR
– Java Standards for mobile, enterprise and desktop
• Adopt OpenJDK
– Working on Java the language and the platform
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8. All of this in London....
• Estimates of ~50,000 Java/JVM developers in London
– Yet there was nothing!
• We love our city, but it can be a cold-hearted $%£$%
– It's a city of commerce
– It's a city of cynicism
– It's a fast paced city where time is precious
• So now that we've finished bragging...
– Why is this working?
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9. WHY?
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10. It's about "WHY"
• To inspire a community they need to know about why
• Most organisations say what they do
• Some organisations say how they do it
• Only a very few know why they do it
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11. We have many WHYs...
• Re-ignite the passion that developers have for their craft
• Raise the bar of Java developers in London
• We want developers to have a voice in deciding the future of Java
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12. We have many WHYs...
• To bring the disparate tech scenes together
– So we could learn from each other
• We believe that Java forms a cornerstone of our society today
– We want to protect that for the future
• We want to inspire the next generation of tech leaders
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13. WHAT
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14. It helps to have lots of WHAT
• We have a massive variety of events
– Anytime someone wants to scratch an itch we facilitate that
• A sample of our events:
– Evening presentations
– Regular lightning talks for beginners
– Coffee and code
– Monthly social event
– Code shares, workshops and hackathons
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15. Let people own the WHAT
• Each event is run as the event leader sees fit
– As long as it doesn't break broad community rules
• Provide admin assistance
– We're lucky enough that the founder has part time admin staff
• We recommend that you use a canned community site
– We use meetup.com and it's OK
– Don't reinvent the wheel, it's not your core purpose!
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16. Adopt A JSR
• A JUG program the the LJC has launched
– Now global
• Grassroots participation in Java Standards
• Developers are the end users of standards
– Lets make them better
• http://www.java.net/projects/adoptajsr
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17. Adopt OpenJDK
• An JUG lead program for working on the OpenJDK
• OpenJDK has high barriers to entry
– We want help lower those barriers
– But not so people can just hack on Java itself....
• http://www.java.net/projects/adoptopenjdk
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18. Adopt OpenJDK
• We're helping out with:
– Improving the build
– Fixing bugs
– Cleaning up some technical debt
• Eventually we hope to help add larger features
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19. Adoption - A Success story
• JSR-310 (Date and Time for Java)
– Missed Java 7
– Was likely to miss Java 8
• No resources available to build the TCK
– LJC team put in place to build the TCK
• Date and Time will ship for Java 8
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20. HOW
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21. Make your community accessible
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22. Make your community accessible
• Public Communications Channel
– A Mailing List/Forum should be opened immediately
• Techie Guidelines
– How to communicate with other techies
– FAQ
– Rules of engagement
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23. Set the tone
• Tech communities are very social
– They fall apart if people get personal
• Nip rudeness in the bud
– We moderate the mailing list
• Kathy Sierra's “Creating Passionate Users”
– Javaranch’s “Be Nice” policy
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24. Social and Political infrastructure
• Benevolent Dictators
– Really more of a 'community-approved arbitrator' or 'judge‘
– 2 co-leaders + a respected neutral party
• LJC Associates
– Loose leadership council & cheerleaders
– Most decisions are consensus (polls)
– BD's make decisions if need be
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25. The LJC JCP committee
• We have a JCP committee
– Anyone is welcome to join (effort is required though!)
– We assess and vote on standards
• We do everything out in the open
– e.g. our voting criteria and record
• Does this stop members from disagreeing with us?
– Of course not, we own nobody!
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26. Growing people
• Push people to do stuff
• Have a growth pipeline
• Succession planning
– The Big red bus
– Real Life (RL) screws with people's time
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27. Protecting people
• We're very protective of our members
• Data privacy
• We prefer people donating time and space
– £££$$$ can cause problems.
• Managing sponsors
– Your community is *way* more important than they are
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28. Grow local, think global
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29. Thanks for listening!
• Contact us any time:
• Martijn - @karianna
• Ben - @kittylyst
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