Project Vesuvio

What is Project Vesuvio?

First, the history: In the last night of JavaOne?'2006 a group of people was joined at the Vesuvio Cafe in San Francisco with no special agenda besides talking about Java and life in general. The group was composed by Bruno Souza, the JUGs Community leader who had been successfully running SouJava, one of the biggest Java User Group in the world, Stephan Janssen, the chairman of JavaPolis and the Belgian Java User Group, one of the best and most successful JUGs in the world, Fabrizio Gianneschi, the leader of the Sardegna JUG, who had just won a Duke's Choice Award for his work developing an application to help solve the blood donors problem in Sardegna, Fabiane Bizinella Nardon, the leader of the JavaTools Community and a Duke's Choice Award winner for her work on Healthcare, and Paulo Silveira, a winner of the Netbeans Challenge. Bruno was talking about the Maratona 4 Java, a competition held during a Java conference where several JUGs try to solve the same development problem at the same time and compete against each other to see who offers the best solution. Bruno thinks that this is a good way to integrate different JUGs and proposes that we try to have more JUGs participating on the competition. As the conversation goes on, the group come up with an idea: what if instead of competing against each other, the JUGs around the world worked together to build something useful to the population? If the Java developers could donate one day of work, this would represent many development hours that could be used to build an open source project that could have a positive social impact.

This Wiki page is an attempt to start the discussion about this initiative. Feel free to add your opinion and suggestions to the questions below (or even add more questions).

Who is going to organize this work?

A global project like this will only be successful if a lot of time is used to plan and organize previously all the aspects of the project. The idea is that JUG leaders will be the managers of this project. However, we still need to have well defined roles and people responsible for each assigned role.

So, here is the space to add your suggestions and to volunteer:

How can my Java User Group participate?

If your JUG wants to participate, add it in the table below:

When is this going to happen?

Probably at the same time as a Java conference, but we still have to decide a date. Leave your suggestions here:

What application are you going to build?

It has to be something that has a social impact. Something that will help people. Maybe something that typically no one is willing to invest money on it because it would not bring profit. Something that is not too big that could not be made in a short period of time and at the same time is big enough to justify the involvement of many people.

If you have suggestions for such application and/or organisation, write them here:

What technology/framework/api are you going to use?

Java for sure We have to choose a very simple architecture, using well known frameworks and APIs, so many people can participate. Probably, this will depend on the chosen application.

What development process you are going to use?

The idea is to split the application in several parts. Each part will be well specified before the day of the event. Each part will be developed by a group. We will have to create means to allow different groups to work as independent as possible from the others. Probably, the best option is to create interfaces and stubs for each part. Add your suggestions here:

What if one of the groups give up and we end up with an unfinished application?

This is a risk that we have to avoid. Each of the groups participating on the project will have a backup group. So, if one of the groups is unable to do its part, the backup group will do it.

I'm a not a Java developer, how can I help?

We will need several other skills to make this possible, such as system analysts, web designers, graphic artists, testers, etc. So, if you want to help, just add your name to the table below:

The project ideas

Below you could add any idea to be implement by Vesuvio project.

Bone Morrow donation system: Based in the ideas of project Jug4Avis, a new project to help people who is looking for compatible bone marrow to be transplanted, it's very hard to find someone compatible. It's necessary to make a study of viability, specially to know if after found someone compatible if it's possible to send the bone morrow.

Diabetes Control system: A web based system to help people with diabetes disease to help control their blood`s glucose level. This system can be used to allow the users to input their glucose levels and insulin dosage and it could plot some charts allowing the user to do a better control of the disease.

Diabetes Control system (mobile version): The mobile version of the Diabetes Control System can be a subsystem of the "Diabetes Control System" above allowing the users to input or visualize their data in a mobile device and store it in a central repository using WebServices^? technology.

-- FabianeNardon - 29 May 2006