Blogging Roller

About this blog...

I'm Dave Johnson. I'm a software developer, open source advocate, blogger and webgeek from Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm a member of the Apache Software Foundation, PMC chair for Apache Roller and a mentor for Apache Incubator projects JSPWiki and SocialSite.

Blogging Roller is my personal weblog where I write about the things that interest me like open source software development, web development, Java, blog/feed technologies and whatever else comes up that feels bloggable. I may blog about my work at IBM/Rational from time to time, but I do not speak for my employer.

Presentations

I'm also a public speaker with experience speaking at tech conferences such as JavaOne and ApacheCon. Here are links to some of my recent presentations:

• What's up with OpenSocial
  Presented at BarCampRDU 2009, Raleigh, NC
• Shindig for Blogs and Wikis (PDF)
  Presented at ApacheCon EU 2009, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Introducing Project SocialSite (PDF)
  Presented at JavaOne 2008, San Francisco, CA
• Advanced Roller (PDF)
  Presented at ApacheCon EU 2008, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Apache Roller and blogs as a web development platform (PDF)
  Presented at ApacheCon US 2007, Atlanta, GA
• Beyond Blogging: Feeds in Action (PDF)
  Presented at JavaOne 2007, San Francisco, CA
• Understanding feeds and publishing protocols (PDF)
  Preented at Triangle XML Conference 2006, Raleigh, NC
• Roller: an open source Java EE blogging platform (PDF)
  Presented at ApacheCon US 2006, Austin, TX

Projects

BarCampRDU BarCampRDU is an one-day tech-oriented unconference at which anybody can pitch a session idea, the audience helps organize the schedule and then everybody enjoys the resulting conference. Sponsors provide the space, coffee, breakfast, lunch and a pre-party the evening before. I attended the event in 2006 and 2007. In 2008 I got involved, lead the organizing committee and acted as emcee for the event. In 2009, I took the role of sponsor-coordinator, handled the event registration and led a session on OpenSocial (see above).

Project SocialSite At Sun Microsystems, I was architect of Sun's Project SocialSite, an effort to build a Social Graph server that provides Web Services and a set of JavaScript widgets that can be used in any web site or application to add Social Networking features such as personal profile pages, friending, groups, activities and the ability to run OpenSocial Gadgets. SocialSite is now in the process of moving to Apache.

Apache Roller. Apache Roller is an open source Java blog server that's used by thousands of bloggers at Sun, IBM, JRoller.com and N.C. State University (my alma mater). I originally wrote the software back in 2002 as the example application for an article wrote called titled Building a J2EE Weblogger. Since then Roller has grown into a successful open source project with a half-dozen developers and a home at the Apache Software Foundation.

RSS and Atom in Action. My book RSS and Atom In Action was published in August 2006. It covers RSS/Atom formats and publishing protocols in depth, with examples in Java and C#. It's the first book to cover the Atom Publishing Protocol and Windows RSS Platform, which is coming in IE7 and Vista. The book's example code is developed and maintained as an open source project at Java.Net called Blogapps. It includes parsers, an Atom protocol client, a dozen immediately useful blogapps and an easy-to-install blog/wikiserver.