Folks,
Many of you are probably already familiar with the official Java EE 7
Hands-on-Lab (
https://glassfish.java.net/hol/). It is an excellent
learning resource initiated Arun Gupta while still at Oracle. I just
finished successfully delivering the lab once again at DevNexus 2015. In
preparation for DevNexus and beyond I made a few updates/changes:
* I tried to make the lab entirely self-directed and self-paced for
attendees by removing as many possible stumbling blocks (however minor)
as possible.
* I updated the lab to use GlassFish 4.1 and NetBeans 8.0.2.
* I polished up the code to make it as realistic as possible within the
scope of a simple lab.
The first bullet point above is what I would really like to bring your
attention to. Every time I have run this lab I've tried to execute it
such that it requires bare minimum or no involvement from me and in fact
I believe I've succeeded in doing just that. The reason this really
matters is that I think this lab material has much greater potential
than just something else our team does at conferences. I believe that
the lab is now in a state such that anyone can go through the lab
entirely on their own, by just using the public HOL page. More
importantly I think it is possible with very little effort for someone
to lead the lab in their user group or company. I highly encourage you
to do so if you have an interest in supporting the Java EE community. If
needed, our team could provide any help that you may need (such as being
present virtually or working with you one-on-one to get you prepared).
I've supplied all the resources that you should need on the public HOL
page.
Do drop me a note off alias if you have any feedback on this, if there's
anything that I can improve with the lab or if you need any help. For
sake of completeness, I should mention that Arun also now has his own
version of the lab (
https://github.com/javaee-samples/javaee7-hol) that
you should also take a look at if time permits.
Cheers,
Reza | Java EE Evangelist
Cell: 267-798-9331
Home Office: 215-736-1208
Google/Skype: m.reza.rahman
Twitter: @reza_rahman
https://blogs.oracle.com/theaquarium/
https://blogs.oracle.com/reza/
https://cargotracker.java.net
P.S.: In this same vein I'd like to point out that I've added detailed
speaker notes to my version of our current flagship Java EE 8 talk:
http://www.slideshare.net/reza_rahman/javaee8 (PowerPoint source
available for download). Making use of this, you could deliver this talk
yourself. As an example, Hanneli Tavante did this at ConFoo and Josh
Juneau will be doing that soon at the Chicago Coder Conference. Of
course talks are highly personal and I don't expect that anyone will
just use my deck as-is (in fact neither Hanneli nor Josh are doing that).