2009: Learn from a NetBeans Platform Trainer!

The NetBeans Platform Certified Training is a tried and tested introduction to the NetBeans Platform. It takes either 2, 3, or 5 days, depending on the preference of the students concerned, preferably in the local language, where possible. The course is particularly useful to (1) students at colleges & universities interested in either Swing application development or in the development of large modular applications and (2) companies developing large Swing applications. To colleges & universities, the course is offered for free, if there is an intention to include it in the standard curriculum of the department in question. To commercial companies, a tailored version of the course is offered as part of Sun Learning Services.

But, who are the people who deliver these courses? I.e., who/where are the trainers? What's their experience? NetBeans Platform trainers are found in many parts of the world and, in each case, come with a lot of experience. A short biography of each is presented below (and more trainers are being added as they qualify for this role).

• Tim Boudreau. Tim Boudreau coauthored "NetBeans: The Definitive Guide" and "Rich Client Programming: Plugging into the NetBeans Platform", served on the team that open-sourced NetBeans, and continues to develop for the NetBeans project.

 

• Anton Epple. Anton Epple works as a Java consultant and trainer at Eppleton in Munich, Germany. He has more than seven years of experience leading the development of Java desktop applications. In the last two years Anton has specialized in NetBeans Platform development and consulting and since 2008 he's a member of the NetBeans Dream Team. As an active member of the Open Source Community he's one of the leaders of the JavaTools Community at java.net where many NetBeans related projects are hosted. Being also an author and blogger, at http://www.eppleton.de/blog, he's currently working on a book about professional Java development using NetBeans.

 

• Fabrizio Giudici. Fabrizio Giudici is a Senior Java Architect running his own company, Tidalwave, operating in northern Italy and surroundings. He's been in the Java business since 1998 and, beyond providing consultancy services on architecture and design, he also serves as a technical trainer for several Java-based classes delivered by Sun Microsystems. Fabrizio's involvement with NetBeans is mainly with the Platform, as he is developing blueMarine, a Platform-based application for media management; he's also one of the founding members of the NetBeans Dream Team and a speaker at conferences such as JavaOne and Devoxx (former JavaPolis). Fabrizio is one of the leaders of JUG Milano.

 

• Jesse Glick. Jesse Glick has worked as a developer on the NetBeans IDE and its platform APIs since 1999. His interests include the Ant-based build system, the module system, module development tooling, and continuous integration. Jesse is an author of the book NetBeans: The Definitive Guide, from O'Reilly and Associates, and has spoken on NetBeans at JavaOne and other conferences.

 

• Karol Harezlak. Karol Harezlak works as a developer and tech lead on the NetBeans IDE and Visual Mobile Designer at Sun Microsystems. His interests include tools, Java, and mobile technologies. Karol is an author of the many articles and tutorials about NetBeans, Java and mobile technologies.

 

• Milos Kleint. Milos Kleint has been a NetBeans IDE/Platform developer since 2000, changed roles and teams, and then developed a NetBeans Platform application for the coloring/apparel industry. Milos participates in projects at apache and codehaus as well. Currently he's focusing on project systems and the Maven project type specifically.

 

• Radko Najman. Radko Najman is a member of the Java ME SDK team responsible for the tools area, which is based on NetBeans Platform. His main focus is on the development environment for rapid development of Java ME applications. Before joining the Java ME SDK team in 2007, he worked on the development of NetBeans IDE for eight years, especially on the database and Java EE modules.

 

• Chris Palmer. Chris Palmer, based in Australia, is an active NetBeans community member and NetBeans Platform Evangelist. Chris brings deep experience delivering NetBeans Platform applications for all size enterprises, from Fortune 500 companies to small research organizations. Chris's integration of the Visual Library into commercial applications won the Duke's Choice Award for 2008. His experience with the NetBeans Platform dates back to Version 3.x.

 

• Aljoscha Rittner. Aljoscha Rittner works as CEO and Java Developer since 1997 in Germany at Sepix. He started Java development with the first Swing pack and has experience with NetBeans IDE since 2001. The last two years he developed Java applications on the NetBeans Platform. Additionally, he creates plugins for Java SE projects and components for the Java ME Visual Designer. Aljoscha co-moderates the German http://netbeans-forum.de and writes on platform and IDE-specific development themes in his blog at http://www.sepix.de/blogs/blogrittner/.

 

• Dafe Simonek. David Simonek is a member of the original NetBeans project, who has been involved in it from the very start. David's activities include work on NetBeans core parts like Window System, general UI/Swing work and Look&Feels, Navigator API and Quick Search infrastructure and UI. Currently he's participating in the Maven support integration effort. David lives in the small town of Mnichovice, near Prague, in the Czech Republic.

 

• David Strupl. David Strupl worked on the core NetBeans Platform in 2000-2003, between 2003-2007 maintained the NetBeans Platform part of a large SW project as an independent contractor. Recently he rejoined Sun to work on NetBeans plugins for the JavaFX language and even more recently started to work in the Java and Editor Technology team. While outside of Sun, David was a member of the NetBeans governance board and the NetBeans Dream Team.

 

• Jaroslav Tulach. Jaroslav Tulach cofounded the NetBeans project and remains a leading guardian of the project's APIs. He coauthored "Rich Client Programming: Plugging into the NetBeans Platform" and is the author of "Practical API Design: Confessions of a Java Framework Architect".

 

• Rich Unger. Rich Unger is a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Salesforce.com, currently working on Apex, a domain specific language for their cloud computing platform. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He first became involved in NetBeans around 2002, while working for Nuance Communications. He was on a team developing modules to facilitate development of VoiceXML-based Java EE applications. This was one of the earlier efforts on the part of a non-Sun entity to develop a large application on the NetBeans Platform. He wrote several tutorials to help people newly approaching the platform, as well as hacking the netbeans.org build scripts to provide a build harness for module development. Later, he proposed and helped implement changes to certain APIs, including the extensibility of project types. Rich has spoken on the topic of NetBeans module development, along with Jaroslav Tulach, Andrei Eickler, and Tim Boudreau several times at JavaOne, and once at OOPSLA. He has also contributed a chapter to the RCP book.

 

• Tom Wheeler. Tom Wheeler is a Principal Software Engineer at Object Computing in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. In addition to software development, he is also an author, instructor and frequent presenter at technical conferences. Tom has been developing with the NetBeans Platform almost daily since 2005 and has spoken at the JavaOne conference about some of the applications he's created with it. He is very active in the NetBeans community, helping to create examples, answer questions and write FAQ entries to help others learn about the NetBeans platform. Additionally, he is a member of the NetBeans Dream Team and serves on the NetBeans governance board.

 

• Geertjan Wielenga. Geertjan Wielenga is the writer on the NetBeans team responsible for the official documentation, such as tutorials, about the NetBeans Platform. He is one of the authors of "Rich Client Programming: Plugging into the NetBeans Platform" and has contributed content to the materials for the NetBeans Platform Certified Training. He is a regular blogger at http://blogs.sun.com/geertjan and lives in Prague, Czech Republic.

Should you be interested in learning from the above trainers, write to users AT edu DOT netbeans DOT org. We look forward to introducing you to the world of the NetBeans Platform!