2008-12-30
A student team from Belgium, has written objectives for an HTML and a CSS exam. Xavier Bouquiaux put them on-line.
These exams are not supposed to be basic and they are waiting for your great questions.
2008-12-16
Edit: The survey is over. Links are not available anymore.
We are proceding with phase 2 of our Surveys. After the initial one-to-one interviews, we are now launching a quantitative survey, again related to the same two topics:
- Should the JavaBlackBelt Community be offered the possibility to contribute financially in order to take exams, as an alternative to paying with contribution points?
- Should JavaBlackBelt expand its current services with "Distant Learning" , and how?
We would appreciate your opinion by taking either or both surveys which are available on these URL:
- Direct access to Pay for contribution points survey.
- Direct access to Distant learning survey.
In return you will earn some contribution points (10 points for each survey).
Of course you can take both survey, once only.
We will share the conclusions of this survey in January 2009.
2008-11-28
Thomas, from Sydney, prepared objectives for CVS Exams. Mateusz, from Poland/Australia put them online.
There are currently five new exams available:
Do you have a question that every CVS should now the answer for? Share it: author a question!
2008-11-23
John, from Belgium, has released a little exam about the usage of JavaBlackBelt platform and about the quality of authored questions.
It should help contributors in their quest for quality:
- Voters, to better distinguish good from bad questions
- Exam takers, to report problems more often
- Question authors, to avoid beginner's mistakes
Do you have an example in mind of typical mistake in questions that you see repeated on this site? Share it: author a question in this new exam!
2008-10-21
After just 1 week, we already have enough questions for the Groovy - Basic exam so that it is now in beta! It needs your votes to get questions released. Take a beta test today!
2008-10-10
This new version of JavaBlackBelt includes deep changes in the moderation process and in the user interface for contributing to questions.
The goal of these changes is to improve the exams quality. It's easier to contribute. It's easier to move too hard questions to other exams (or to the freezer). Questions have to be "quickly" accepted/released, else they get frozen (average questions don't remain beta forever anymore). It's easy to report copy/paste/execute style questions and tricky questions, which are bad practices.
These changes are essentially visible from the now highly ajaxified "question listing". You can access it from any exam (by listing the beta questions, for example). Most people will face it a the end of their exam in their result page. It will be an ideal time for them to contribute: improve questions, report problems and vote.
Corporate users benefit these changes as well, because now they can contribute to community exams. Corporate users (admins) can also create their own private (intra-company) exams, to which employees of the company can contribute.
Finally, we have fixed a few bugs and introduced a few others ;-)
You are welcome to discuss and ask questions about this new version on the forum.
2008-09-16
The much-certified Benedikt Sattler has created objectives for an EJB3 Intermediate-level exam. It's now ready to receive contributions, so come display your EJB3 expertise and author some questions!
2008-09-11
As you know we go to Denmark September 28 - Oct 3 to JAOO.
You also know that you get 15% discount.
Now you know that one of you has the possibility to go for free :-)
2008-09-02
September 28 - Oct 3, we goe to Denmark at the JAOO conference where he will run the JavaBlackBelt challenge.
As we write this news, we think it could be interesting to put a free JAOO pass (3.286 EUR), in the auction room... we'll come back with another news if we do that.
And if you plan to go to JAOO this year, JavaBlackBelt can get you 15% off.
Just specify the promo code JBBfriends_JAOO2008 when registering on Jaoo web site.
2008-08-21
JavaBlackBelt will be with UDP at the JavaZone conference, Norway, Sept 17-18.
Our partner in Norway, UDP, kindly invites us to run a JavaBlackBelt challenge at this major European conference.
Be sure to show up in the challenge area, and if you've a yellow belt or better, request a free T-Shirt ;-)
2008-08-11
Join the the next JavaBlackBelt e-meeting Thursday 28th; 14:00 GMT-UTC (7:00 California, 10:00 New York, 15:00 London, 16:00 Brussels, 19:30 India), to share your opinion and get the last news about upcoming activities.
To participate this e-meeting, just follow this link on Thursday to start our new conferencing system.
What do you need to prepare ?
- If you plan to speak, a head set with a microphone is better than loudspeakers (to avoid echo).
- For those who don't like to speak in English, the system has a written chat.
- Please have a picture on your JavaBlackBelt account (that will be transferred to the conferencing system).
- You may test your configuration (Java, sound and microphone) with this link.
- Have a look at the recent forum threads, to get an idea of subjects we might discuss
- Don't hesitate to post things you'd like to discuss in this thread.
During this meeting we'll demonstrate some features of our next big great release ;-)
We'll open the meeting 30min before the starting time, to enable everybody test and get used to the conferencing system.
We look forward to meet many of you again.
2008-08-01
Join the the next JavaBlackBelt e-meeting Saturday August 9th; 12:00 GMT-UTC (8:00 New York, 13:00 London, 14:00 Brussels, 17:30 India), to share your opinion and get the last news about upcoming activities.
The previous e-meeting was held in May.
To participate this e-meeting, just follow this link on Saturday to start our new conferencing system.
What do you need to prepare ?
- If you plan to speak, a head set with a microphone is better than loudspeakers (to avoid echo).
- For those who don't like to speak in English, the system has a written chat.
- Please have a picture on your JavaBlackBelt account (that will be transferred to the conferencing system).
- Have a look at the recent forum threads, to get an idea of subjects we might discuss
- Don't hesitate to post things you'd like to discuss in this thread.
We'll open the meeting 30min before the starting time, to enable everybody test and get used to the conferencing system.
We look forward to meet many of you again.
2008-07-03
JavaRebel offers annual licenses to all JavaBlackBelt's brown belts, plus some at conferences and in the auction room.
JavaRebel is a JVM plugin (-javaagent) that enables to reload changes made to Java class files on-the-fly, saving developers the time that it takes to redeploy an application or perform a container restart. It is a generic solution that works for Java EE and Java standalone applications.
If you are a brown belt, send a mail to support --att-- zeroturnaround dot com, with a link to your JavaBlackBelt's profile page, and your full name.
Else you are welcome to visit JavaBlackBelt's booth at JavaZone (Norway, September 17) and JAOO (Denmark, September 28th) conferences, where challenge winners will also get a license.
If you are not a brown belt, and you cannot come to these conferences, please visit the auction room, it contains one license for July, another for August, and a final for September.
Good luck!
2008-06-25
Valentin Crettaz has crafted an excellent set of objectives to test your knowledge of jQuery. Take a look at the exam -- and all you Ajax gurus, crank up your brain and create some questions!
2008-06-19
Jeanne Boyarsky, a developer for a bank in New York City, got her 5000th contribution point today!
She is a volunteer moderator at JavaRanch and JavaBlackBelt. 3 years ago, we were very lucky to be contacted by Jeanne and since, we've been amazed by her expertise and her kindness.
Congratulations, and THANK YOU, Jeanne!
2008-06-17
Finalist invited JavaBlackBelt to hold its JBB Challenge at RubyEnRails.
Random questions were taken from our successful Ruby exam.
We congratulate our top three winners: Obie Fernandez (left on picture) , Jan De Poorter, en Tom-Eric Gerritsen.
More pictures of the event can be seen here.
2008-06-09
JavaBlackBelt goes at RubyEnRails 2008 (NL) for a first Ruby challenge.
2008-04-15
Benedikt Sattler created new Java 3D - basic exam.
The exam covers the basics both mathematical and programmatic of Java 3D. Now we need to fill it with questions. We would appreciate your valuable contribution.
2008-03-30
Benedikt Sattler created new JAX-B exam.
The exam covers JAXB issues like Java-Schema or Schema-Java mapping. Now we need to fill it with questions. We would appreciate your valuable contribution.
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exam objectives.
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2008-03-21
QCon Conference this 12-14 March 2008 was a great opportunity to meet with JBB Community members and JBB Corporate users.
We thank you for your input and feedback.
Many participated to the JBB Challenge. Pictures are available
here.
The top 6 JBB Challengers received a Java book donated by O'Reilly - another 18 high scoring challengers won a JBB polo shirt.
2008-03-05
We migrate to a new forum facility: JavaBlackBelt.com/forum.
One month ago, Javalobby changed (in a rush, apparently ;-) their forum to a new system and progressively disabled the ancient forum area where we were located.
We had plans to integrate a forum functionality into the platform (as being able to discuss a belt congratulation, a news, an auction,...), but we had to hurry up and Aymeric did a fast work integrating (minimal integration) JForum that you can use with your JavaBlackBelt login.
Don't hesitate to discuss this news on our new forum ;-)
2008-02-21
QCon is happy to offer a free pass to the conference in the auction room.
As you know, we'll be the official contest of QCon London, March 12-14. One 2.646€ worth conference pass is offered to the JavaBlackBelt community. Place your bids in the auction room.
2008-02-13
JavaBlackBelt will be at QCon London conference March 12-14, 2008.
We'll run the JavaBlackBelt challenge as we do at many conferences, followed by a competition (with winners of the challenge).
If you have a yellow belt or upper on JavaBlackBelt, please come to meet us and be sure to ask for a free T-Shirt.
QCon is an enterprise software development conference to be held in London. It is designed with the technical depth and enterprise focus of interest to technical team leads, architects, and project managers. Some of the speakers include Martin Fowler, Erich Gamma, Kent Beck, eBay Architect Randy Shoup, Neal Gafter, Gregor Hophe, Brian Goetz, and many more.
JavaBlackBelt users get 15% discount on tickets! Just mention "javablackbelt" as promotion code when register on the QCon website.
2008-02-02
Abhijit Akhawe created a brand new JavaScript basic exam.
This new exam is the first one concerning the JavaScript topic. Now we need to fill it with your brilliant questions. We would appreciate your valuable contributions.
2008-01-25
10 new auctions wait for your bids in the auction room. They will appear from now to end of March.
We propose various kind of gifts this time, from the toy to the dvds. Don't hesitate to start a forum thread with your wish list for the next gifts :-)
Good luck !
2008-01-11
Congratulation Amzad Basha, for reaching 10,000 contribution points, and 1,000 questions! You are the first achieving this and it's an energy start for 2008.
This year, the contribution points counting will change, with the introduction of additional contribution measures. More on this on the forum soon.
2008-01-03
The JavaBlackBelt team wishes to thank the numerous visits and support at our JavaPolis events in December. Some pictures are available on our picasa web album, more pictures will follow shortly.
Our congratulations go to the winners of the JBB Championship. Mert Caliskan, Bob MacWhirter, and Marcin Kuthan were our Champions respectively on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week. They won our top price: a PlayStation3, donated jointly with our partners CapGemini and USG Innotiv.
Impressive performance also by the runner-ups: Jan Kovar, Laurent Pireyn, and Xavier Fournet, who could choose their preferred Java book, graciously donated by Pearson Education.
We also wish to thank Sony for sponsoring this event.
Meanwhile, on behalf of your entire JavaBlackbelt team, our very best wishes for a sparkling 2008.
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2008-12-29
JavaBlackBelt will be at QCon London conference March 11-13, 2009.
We can't exactly tell you yet what activity we'll propose. It might be related to some on-going development (more on this in a few weeks).
If you have a yellow belt or upper on JavaBlackBelt, please come to meet us and be sure to ask for a free T-Shirt.
QCon is an enterprise software development conference to be held in London. Some of the speakers include Tony Hoare (quicksort inventor), Joe Armstrong (father of Erlang), Martin Fowler, Rod Johnson (creator of Spring) and many more.
2008-12-01
JavaBlackBelt has requested the Solvay Business School to surveys the views of our Members.
In particular, we are soliciting your views about the 2 topics:
- Should the JavaBlackBelt Community be offered the possibility to contribute financially in order to take exams, as an alternative to paying with contribution points?
- Should JavaBlackBelt expand its current services with "Distant Learning" ?
Some of you will be contacted in the coming days to sollicit your views and opinions.
For example, Alexey Filippov, a brown belt and moderator from the Russian Federation has been contacted and blogs about this survey
We do appreciate your participation and will be glad to share the results with you afterwards.
We've open a thread where you are welcome to give us your views.
2008-11-24
Nicolas has posted a blog entry with pictures about the JavaBlackBelt journey at Øredev08.
2008-10-22
We have enough questions for the Struts2 - Basic exam so that it is now in beta! It needs your votes to get questions released. Take a beta test and vote for questions!
2008-10-08
Friday, October 10, we plan to do some sytsem upgrade. JavaBlackBelt community and corporate web sites might be unavailable during some parts of the day.
2008-09-13
Pawel Wrzeszcz and Matthias Merz put their heads together to create the objectives for a Seam exam. Seam fans, come one, come all! Contribute some questions!
2008-09-10
On September 17th 2008, Utrecht (NL), Capgemini’s Java community and his partners organize an exciting evening with several sessions that keep you up-to-date on Java technology.
At this occasion Capgemini will present how JavaBlackBelt is being implemented within the company. JavaBlackBelt is not only used for learning Java related technologies, but also as a means to identify and evaluate trainings.
2008-08-28
The JavaScript-Basic exam, lead by Abhijit Akhawe from United Kingdom and Amzad Basha from India, is stable now.
You have 30 minutes to answer 20 questions related to the JavaScript programming.
2008-08-18
Our Design Patterns (GoF) exam, lead by Evgeniy Platonov, is stable now.
You have 42 minutes to answer 28 questions related to different Design Patterns (GoF mainly).
We also announce a competition for the best DP exam logo. The winner will be awarded a book. Look for details here
2008-08-05
JavaBlackBelt will be at QCon San Francisco conference Nov 17-21, 2008.
Nicolas Brasseur will animate the hibernate tutorial Tuesday AM.
Then, during the conference part, we'll run the JavaBlackBelt challenge as we do at many conferences.
If you have a yellow belt or upper on JavaBlackBelt, please come to meet us and be sure to ask for a free T-Shirt.
About QCon:
This second annual San Francisco enterprise software development conference designed for team leads, architects and project management is back!
There is no other event in the US with similar opportunities for learning, networking, and tracking innovation occurring in the Java, .NET, Ruby, SOA, Agile, and architecture communities.
Speakers include: Rod Johnson, Martin Fowler, Kent Beck and many more.
JavaBlackBelt users get $50 additional discount on tickets! Just mention "javablackbelt_50off" as promotion code when register on the QCon website.
2008-07-14
Sylvain Benoist and Steve Turner, two XML specialists from London, created objectives for an XPath v1 exam.
The exam covers XPath version 1. Now we need to fill it with questions. We would appreciate your valuable contribution.
2008-06-17
Capgemini invited JavaBlackBelt to hold its JBB Challenge at SpringOne.
Many participants queued to take 5 questions from our Spring Basic exam
We congratulate our top three winners on June 11th : Alexey Gopachenko, Nicolas De Loof, and Maarten Bosteels, and on June 12th: (see picture) Dominique Devriese (middle), Rune Flobakk (right), and Bruno Colin (left).
Thanks also to our sponsor Pearson Education Benelux
2008-06-09
This week, we'll also be at SpringOne, for a Spring challenge ;-)
2008-06-02
June 12, John Rizzo, from JavaBlackBelt, will present a seminar " Better Developers" for the Paris JUG.
We'll talk about smart developers, retention, recruitment, education,... competency management.
It's free and (this time,) it's in French.
2008-05-20
Hi, Dear JavaBlackBelt administrators, moderators and contributors.
Our community has made it's way nicely these last couple of years.
You have your big part of responsibility in this great success.
JBB is based on the concept of contributor (every user is a potential contributor to the content).
Very quickly in the history of JBB we introduced the concept of moderators.
Later, some administrators came to help the moderators.
Today, I'd like to organize our activities a more "project oriented way".
By activities, I mostly mean producing quality content and helping others doing so.
By project oriented way, I suggest iterations with a scrum board and regular meetings. I also propose to work less on a "role" basis (an administrator assigned to a role, for example), and more on a "story/task" basis. That way you can switch from one kind of activity to another, and also slow down / speed up as your available volunteer time changes.
I'd like to organize our first on-line meeting next Monday, May 26, at 19h - Brussels time (it should be 9h AM in California and 22h30 in India; check timezones on ZebraMap.com).
Should you want to participate, I propose you to send a mail to JavaBlackBelt dot admin at gmail dot com with your skype ID (you'll need skype installed).
For those not being able to take part to the meeting but wanting to contribute or just being curious, I'll post a some notes after the meeting.
See you!
John Rizzo.
Skype: johnrizzo-jbb
2008-05-16
At JavaOne last week, when we've met our friends from TheServerSide.com, we asked: "may we have a free pass to your conference in Prague, for one of our community member?".
Yes!
TheServerSide / TechTarget is happy to offer a free ($1.895 worth) pass to the conference in the auction room.
2008-03-26
Hell, C# exams ( basic and intermed) on JavaBlackBelt!?
Bah, we are IT developers before being Java technologists, aren't we ? Most of us have programmed in more than one language. Personally, I started with "Basic", on my vintage Atari 800 XL and went through many others since. Couldn't we consider SQL or Ant, which are on JavaBlackBelt, as "languages" too ? We introduced a Ruby exam last year.
Let's welcome these two C# exams and help them grow. If .Net exams multiply and invade JavaBlackBelt, we promise to capture them and transfer them to a place where they can happily prosper.
2008-02-28
Capgemini held its first Pizza Meeting to launch JavaBlackBelt Corporate Edition. The Core Team of 12 developers took exams in a plenum session on February 21st. The session was introduced by JBB co-founder Nicolas Brasseur.
Some core members were JBB community members who had already achieved belts before the session, others took their first JBB exam that evening.
I like the JBB web site: It is fun, it allows developers to improve knowledge, and the possibility to gain a result quickly is a motivation to go further” says the first Capgemini brown belt, who received a bottle of champain for his achievement.
JBB allows Capgemini to improve the hard skills of our java developers and architects. We decided to implement JBB because it offers plenty of possibilities for e-learning and skills assessment." Steven Eggenstein, Java Competence Manager, Capgemini
2008-02-17
Our Algo - basic exam, lead by John Rizzo, is stable now.
You have more than half an hour to answer 24 questions related to the fundamentals of Algorithms.
And seriously, shouldn't every blue belt have it in its succeed exams list?
2008-02-06
Toni Menzel created new OSGI basic exam.
The latter exam covers basic OSGI-related issues. No advanced topics - an ideal point to start your adventure with this OSGI. Now we need to fill it with questions. We would appreciate your valuable contribution.
2008-01-28
Exam Leader Rotation
We welcome moderators to (re)select the exams they want to lead.
The idea is to allow people to switch exams and minimize the number of inactive moderators. If you are busy for a while, you can ask for exams later in the cycle or in the next cycle. The idea is to make sure we have active moderators and solicit other moderators for exams that need more.
We believe in giving equal opportunity to all the moderators for selection of the exams according to their time availability and likings.
If you think you have guts, knowledge and can can lead the exam please do not hesitate to request for becoming exam leader.
Please visit Exam Leader Rotation thread for more information.
2008-01-23
We've created a JavaBlackBelt group at LinkedIn.com for blue, brown and soon black belts.
From LinkedIn group page, press the join button to be invited joining this group. In the message, put a link to your JavaBlackBelt profile (on JavaBlackBelt.com), so we can check your belt color.
2008-01-07
Benedikt Sattler, a brown belt from Austria created JDO exam.
New exam includes questions concerning the JDO persistance framework issues. Now we need your contribution in order to shift the exam into the beta state.
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