Our next meeting will be June 25th, 2008 at 6pm at Benefitfocus.

Our speaker will be me, Jason McDonald, and I will be presenting on Grails. This presentation will cover the basics of Grails, what it is, why it is useful, how to use it, and a sample application.

Also on the agenda, we need to discuss a project for the group. People at the inaugural meeting indicated that they were interested in working on a group project but we never got anything moving on this. If you have ideas bring them. We will also be looking for someone to volunteer to head up the initiative.

Here is a modified version of Google maps with directions to us. The address is 100 Benefitfocus Way, Charleston SC, 29492. This link will allow you to enter the address you are coming from. Please note: If you head north on River Landing Drive and miss the turn for Fairchild Street you will find yourself on the interstate and will have to go all the way to the edge of Mt. Pleasant to turn around.

If you are planning on attending please RSVP by visiting our bulletin board and going into the RSVP forum. There will be a post for each meeting so that we can get a head count and list out any volunteers to bring refreshments. We still have some SWAG left over from the first meeting, so be sure and stop by to get yours.

Should you have questions, comments, concerns feel free to call me at 843-849-7476. You will get the receptionist - just as for Jason McDonald.

We had our second users group meeting last night and had a small but great event. We had Chuck Peterson and Mark dos Santos from BEA join us and talk about virtualization, how it affects java applications, and some of their solutions for improving it. While it was a sales presentation, it was a highly technical one, chock full of interesting information about how virtualization works, how it interacts with the JVM, common problems with it, and ways of eeking quite a bit more performance out of it.

I blame myself for the small turnout. There was an event at my work that conflicted that I was unaware of and I didn’t do a great job of championing this meetings due to my new baby and my recent injury. I plan on doing a better job next time.

So along these lines, here’s what I am looking for in the community:

1. Someone to help champion the group and get the word out

2. Someone to help find corporate sponsors to fund meetings.

This can be two different people or the same person and you can devote as much or as little time as you want. If you are interested, contact me.

P.S. Thanks again for coming to speak with us, Chuck and Mark.

Our next meeting will be May 21st, 2008 at 6pm at Benefitfocus.

Our speakers will be Chuck Peterson and Mark DeSantos, from BEA. They will be presenting on Weblogic Virtual Edition and the JRockit JVM. For those of you who work with me (which is most of the attendees so far), this should be an interesting topic as we already rely heavily on BEA products.

Here is a modified version of Google maps with directions to us. The address is 100 Benefitfocus Way, Charleston SC, 29492. This link will allow you to enter the address you are coming from. Please note: If you head north on River Landing Drive and miss the turn for Fairchild Street you will find yourself on the interstate and will have to go all the way to the edge of Mt. Pleasant to turn around.

If you are planning on attending please RSVP by visiting our bulletin board and going into the RSVP forum. There will be a post for each meeting so that we can get a head count and list out any volunteers to bring refreshments. We still have some SWAG left over from the first meeting, so be sure and stop by to get yours.

Should you have questions, comments, concerns feel free to call me at 843-849-7476. You will get the receptionist - just as for Jason McDonald.

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No Fluff Just Stuff has also donated a ticket to their upcoming event in Raleigh, NC, an $800 value! The winner will be chosen from the attendees so make sure you’re there!

View the Flyer

I am having a lot of trouble finding speakers for our next meeting and haven’t had time to prepare something myself. If anyone knows of any speakers that will be available, please contact me.

I will  post again soon with information regarding the next meeting.

I will always try and post the presentations from the meetings when they are available. They will always be posted under the RSVP for that meeting. This meeting’s you can find here.

The first meeting was basically just a meet and greet. We went over what my thoughts are for the format of the group and I got some input from the group as to what they’d like to see. Here is the brief overview:

- Meetings will be monthly
- Meetings will be later in the day - typically 6pm to whenever
- We will try and have some “fun” meetings where we have BBQs or other such events
- The basic format for the meetings will typically be lectures from people who know what they are talking about
- New technologies and intricacies of existing technologies are the main interests of the group
- The group is interested in an open source/for profit project

Thanks for those who showed up!

I’m happy to (finally) announce the first meeting of the Charleston, SC Java Users Group. It will be held April 2, 2008 at 5pm. We will probably actually start the meeting around 5:15 so please try to be at least close to on time. The meeting will be at the Benefitfocus building. The address is 100 Benefitfocus Way, Charleston SC 29492. However, Google maps doesn’t have us on it yet.

Here is a modified version of Google maps with directions to us. This link will allow you to enter the address you are coming from. Please note: If you head north on River Landing Drive and miss the turn for Fairchild Street you will find yourself on the interstate and will have to go all the way to the edge of Mt. Pleasant to turn around.

If you are planning on attending please RSVP by visiting our bulletin board and going into the RSVP forum. There will be a post for each meeting so that we can get a head count and list out any volunteers to bring refreshments. Also, Aaron Houston from Sun sent us a bunch of SWAG. I’ll be giving this all out at the first meeting and the first two people to volunteer to bring refreshments will get a book. First person to sign up gets their choice of book. I won’t reveal what the books are until people sign up though.

Should you have questions, comments, concerns feel free to call me at 843-849-7476. You will get the receptionist - just as for Jason McDonald.

I swear. I am just now getting caught back up from being sick and have communications out to various people to start getting things moving for our first meeting. I am waiting to hear back from our HR department on what I need to do to schedule the meeting after hours with non-employees - I have to follow the security procedures and all. Also, I am waiting to hear back from our media department on whether they would be interested in filming our meetings so that we can podcast them.

If you have experience/knowledge/equipment to podcast in decent quality let me know. I know our media department has a million things on their plate so they may not be able to accommodate this.

Finally, I am beginning to work on a basic presentation to walk through in our first meeting - this won’t be anything spectacular, just an overview of what the plans are for the group that will lead into a discussion about where we want to go with this and what we want to do.

As always, if you are interested in helping, contact me. We also need some traffic on the forums - this will likely pick up later but there are people watching it - just nobody posting. Post away!

So I struggled with a bout of pneumonia last week and am still trying to get caught back up on all my little projects. I am still planning the first meeting but wanted to drop a line out indicating that it is still in the works. I am thinking sometime within the next two to three weeks but am waiting to hear back about who I need to schedule building time through and all the red tape I have to work through to allow visitors in the building after hours.

If you have any interest in helping out, email me.

We are now listed in the JUG directory and on the map: View Map

We will be keeping links to our member’s sites in our blogroll in order to help share your ideas with the world. Want to be added to the blogroll? Send me an email (use the email link at the bottom of the page) with your site and show up to meetings. As long as you can do these two things your site will remain on here.