Java is throwing a party—and Max Bonbhel, president of Java User Group (JUG) Africa, couldn't be happier. This month, Bonbhel is joining JUG members worldwide to celebrate an important milestone—the release of Java 7—through an Oracle Webcast and multiple local JUG events on July 7, 2011.

JUG Africa has come a long way in the two years since Bonbhel started the group. Today, JUG Africa includes 5,000 developers in 15 countries, and the community is planning more than a dozen events to celebrate Java 7. Theirs will be among hundreds of Java 7 events held from July through September in 52 countries around the world. More than 200 of these JUGs are taking advantage of Java launch kits offered by Oracle, which include a Java 7 technical presentation with detailed speaker notes, related technology modules, and T-shirts for JUG members. More than 90 JUGs have also accepted Oracle's offer to supply speakers.

Oracle launched its extensive JUG outreach program to provide support to the user groups, recognizing that their contributions and involvement are key to moving Java forward. In fact, members of the Java community collaborated with Oracle to develop Java 7 and provided support through the OpenJDK project.

"The JUG community was instrumental in the development of Java 7, and JUG members contributed great ideas for new features and helped us build the platform. It's only fitting that we celebrate this important Java milestone together," said Jeb Dasteel, Oracle senior vice president and chief customer officer of Global Customer Programs.

But Oracle's support of JUGs goes beyond events. Oracle recently nominated SouJava, one of Brazil's largest JUG groups with 20,000 members, to a seat on the Java Platform, Standard Edition/Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java SE/EE) Executive Committee. SouJava's representative is Bruno Souza, one of SouJava's founders, a recent president, and a member of the Java Community Process (JCP). SouJava and the London Java Community (LJC) were recently elected to the executive committee; LJC is represented by Ben Evans. This marks the first time that JUGs are represented on this leadership committee.

This is all good news for Bonbhel, who says that JUG Africa members are excited by Oracle's demonstrated commitment to fostering strong and independent groups worldwide and to ensuring that the groups have a powerful voice. With the release of Java 7 and the JUGs' unprecedented leadership role in the JCP, Bonbhel is happy about the progress of Java and the collaboration between Oracle and the user community.

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