Vote for JBoss Community Recognition Awards !

Voting for the JBoss Community Recognition Awards is now open !

Each year, we ask the JBoss project leads to nominate contributors that they feel have make significant and leading contributions to the JBoss.org Community over the past year. It’s that time again, and those nominations are now complete - so let the voting begin!

We have added a new category this year, “Community Leadership,” so the categories are now:

• Community Leadership
• New features
• Bug fixes
• Issue/JIRA
• Wiki
• Documentation

Several key jBPM community contributors were nominated this year, so your help on giving them the recognition they deserve would really be appreciated !

So please go and vote now !

I would personally like to thank everyone that contributed (in one way or the other) in the last year already.  You all deserve an award ! :-) 

• Bug Fixes:
  
  
• Esteban Aliverti - Esteban has shown tireless commitment to improving the overall quality of the project. From testing edge scenarios to fixing high profile bugs, no part of the code is out of his reach: fixing bugs from the core engine to the web tooling, Esteban has left his mark and helped improve the code for the benefit of the whole community.

•  Community Leadership
  
• Demian Calcaprina - Demian is a very active jBPM Community Member, as he's helping on the forums, reporting issues, etc.  He is also very active testing new releases and reporting back with suggestions and improvements.
  
  He was accepted for Google Summer of Code 2012, where he worked on extending the jBPM human task service with a pluggable life cycle (which a task goes through, from creation through claiming and starting all the way through completing, etc.) using a business process, executed by jBPM core engine. 
  
  Demian is currently working as a Software Engineer at Viridian, but he is also offering freelance consulting services on Drools and jBPM.
     

•  New Features
  
• Mariano de Maio - Mariano is a very active community member who is always helping both in the community channels and on his own blog: http://marianbuenosayres.wordpress.com
  
  He is a Drools & jBPM Consultant who has contributed with the Infinispan and Drools integration and with the jBPM Form Builder. He has also reported and helped fix several bugs in the Drools and jBPM source code, providing comprehensive test suites. Mariano is now helping with the development of several components of the new jBPM Console NG.
  
• Saiful Omar - Saiful has been promoting and using jBPM in his academic research, which focuses on Process Adaptation and Compliance. He has published various papers where he describes an adaptive compliance workflow management system built on top of jBPM. 
  
  Saiful has been contributing to the jBPM Designer (i.e. a web-based process designer) with important features like:
  
  (1) Locking and Unlocking feature - this feature allows users of jBPM Designer to lock certain parts of the business process model in order to foster collaboration during the modelling phase of BPM. Locked parts of the model could be seen as ""feature complete"" and unlocked onces are what needs to be finished. Locked nodes can easily be unlocked as well if needed.
  
  (2) Microsoft Academic Search Service Node - the first community contributed jBPM service node definition and implementation. It allows users to easily add the Microsoft Search feature into their business processes. This contribution has been added to the jBPM community service node repository.

Drools & jBPM Walk in center @ Red Hat Summit (free and open for everyone)

There's a FREE opportunity if you are in the Boston area next week on Thursday.  A lot of us will be there for JUDCon and Red Hat Summit and we want to give you the opportunity to come and ask questions.

We have a dedicated room for community members to come and chat. The room should be open to all, not just those with Summit passes, although you'll need to tell security where you are going.  So whether you're already coming to Summit, or in the vicinity and want to join us, don't hesitate.

Day: Thursday, June 13th, 2013
Location: Boston, Hynes Convention Centre, Hynes Room 110

Time: 09.30 to 17.00

There will be chairs and tables, so you can spend as long as you like.  Mark Proctor, Edson Tirelli, Pedro Zapata and myself will be there all day, with probably other people dropping in as well.  No question too small, no task too big :) We can help you getting everything installed, give some mentoring on your current projects, or help you dive deep into Drools or jBPM code.

Feel free to drop in with quick questions on how to do something, or to check you're doing it right, or generic questions about Drools & jBPM itself, about the roadmap, etc.  There will be chairs and tables, so you can stay longer and hang out and code :)

Preparing for JUDCon + Red Hat Summit in Boston

A yearly visit to Boston has become a tradition it seems, I'll be attending the JUDCon Boston 2013 and the Red Hat Summit 2013 events next week !

JUDCon is the conference by and for developers, and it's an ideal place to get an overview of what's to come in the various projects, have a chat with the core developers or just grab some beers and have some fun ;)

I'll be presenting "What's new in jBPM6" on Tuesday ...

Business Process Management (BPM) is changing, and so is the jBPM project! It's no longer a tool used by developers to implement some low-level business logic, but it has evolved to a service offered to business analysts, developers and even end users to model, manage and monitor their business processes.
jBPM6 has a lot improvements in this area, and in this session we would like to take you through the most important ones. We will demonstrate the new web-based user interface, but also dive deeper into some technical improvements (like for example how we've simplified session and task service management, how to build your processes and how to scale your application).

... but do check out the agenda for a lot more interesting talks !

Red Hat Summit is the yearly Red Hat conference, to showcase the latest and greatest in cloud computing, platform, virtualization, middleware, storage, and systems management technologies.  There's a huge amount of sessions, in a very large spectrum of topics.

I'll be presenting "" on Friday, together with Pedro Zapata ...

Business environments are complex. To run an efficient and effective organization in today’s world, business users need to be able to clearly analyze and understand business activities, model repeatable processes, and have clear visibility into process executions. And to be able to effectively interface with the system, business users need convenient tools. JBoss jBPM 6, a JBoss Community project, is set in that direction, built with sophisticated tools to empower business users.
In this session, Kris Verlaenen and Pedro Zapata Fernandez will discuss the state of these tools in JBoss jBPM and discuss the Polymita tools that are now part of jBPM 6. They will also demonstrate the:

• Improved process modeling, covering process design, form design, and data modeling
• New dashboard builder used to create rich KPI reports and graphs
• Redesigned task management and process monitoring interface
• New process analysis and simulation tools

 ... but there are a lot more BPM-related sessions and workshops to enjoy !

It's not too late to register, so don't miss this opportunity !  I hope to see you all there and discuss whatever is on your mind.