Blog

Introduction

As you probably know, in January 24th, we finally created the WOCommunity Association as a real entity, a non-profit corporation registered in Canada. Starting with the incorporation, we reworked the "products" that we offer, and now you can support the Community by becoming a first-class member of the community. 

Operations expenses

By becoming a first-class member, you help to help pay the expenses for the WOCommunity Association services and tools, and also to make deposits for WOWODC. So you might ask yourself, where's my money is going? Let's drill down:

  • Dedicated server for wocommunity.org. The cost for the server's rental, which is hosted at iWeb in Montreal, is $779.88 every 6 months. You might say: wow, that's expensive! But the server needs to run:
    • Three Project Wonders apps
    • Confluence
    • PostgreSQL
    • Jenkins
    • Atlassian Crowd
    • CommuniGate Pro (mail server + mailing lists)

The server is currently using 6 GB of RAM, 104 GB of disk space and an average of 50 GB of bandwidth each month (it can go as high as 125 GB when we release the WOWODC recordings).

  • FreshBooks. We use FreshBooks for accounting and to create invoices. $31.45/monthly.
  • Shopify. The WOCommunity Store needed some reworking but we (well, Pascal) didn't have the time to work on it. We started using Shopify so that we can have a nice and speedy online store. $61.95/monthly.
  • CrashPlan. We needed a backup service so that we have a backup of important data and configuration outside iWeb. $32.99/annually. 
  • Incorporation of the association. $250 to register it at the Canada government, and $34 to register it at the provincial government. One time fee.
  • PayPal and Stripe (credit card gateway) transaction fees: 2.9%.

So, basic expenses are $2713.55 annually, meaning we need 45 first-class members at $50 each to pay just for the basic expenses.

Expenses

 

Annual total (including taxes)

Dedicated server

1559.76

FreshBooks

377.40

Shopify

743.40

CrashPlan

32.99

Total

$2 713.55

Needed revenues: 56 first class members @ $50 each.

WOWODC 2013 expenses and revenues

Now, let's see the WOWODC 2013 numbers.

  • We hired an event manager who is dealing with the logistics and he will also be on premise at the event, he's the one who will deal with the hotel for any inquiries like special needs, adjusting the heat, etc. We had to pay 50% ($1724.62) of his fees when we signed the contract, and the other 50% ($1724.62) will be paid when the event ends. The first 50% was paid from the revenues of membership from 2012.
  • The estimated cost, before taxes, done by the Hilton is $17 000. We had to make a initial deposit of $1700, which was paid by cheque from the 2013 membership/sponsorship revenues. We also need to do one 25% deposit before April 25 and another 25% deposit on May 22. Our own estimated cost is $27 971.
  • We had to make a 50% deposit for the A/V provider. That deposit was $2,832.70, and was paid by Pascal's credit card. The other 50% must be paid right after the event.
  • Since Andrus is going to do a full training day, we are paying his stay at the hotel + his plane trip from NYC to Montreal. Estimated cost is $1287.22.

 

Total (including taxes)

Hilton banquet service

27 971

Event manager

3 449.24

A/V provider

5 665.40

Andrus' hotel bill and plane ticket

1 287.22

Badges and larnyards

150

Total expenses

$38 522.86

We are expecting the same number (64) of guests as last year and all presenters gets a free pass, bringing the number of people to 75 (including the event manager).

It's a bit hard to estimate the revenues for WOWODC because of the group rebates, but if we have a similar number of groups as last year, revenues should be:

 

Total (including taxes)

Ticket sales

$35 050

Gold Sponsor

$1 127

Silver Sponsors

$1 500

Bronze Sponsors

$600

Total revenue

$38 277

Which gives us a $245 deficit.

Conclusion

As you can see, it's a lot of expenses, and we do not expect a profit.

So please support the WOCommunity Association by becoming a first-class member or by coming to WOWODC. Everyone benefits from the WOWODC material, but to have WOWODC content, we need to actually do the event.

Wonder 6.0.0 release

Release 6.0.0 (aka "The Cleanup Release") have been released in the master branch of Project Wonder! Johann Werner wrote a nice change log on GitHub:

In short, we moved obsolete frameworks and examples to a Archives directory, JasperReport has been updated to v4.7 and all references to WO 5.3.3 have been removed.  

The previous release of Wonder 5.x is available in the "wonder_5" branch. This branch won't have any commit activity in it, unless we need to commit a fix for a major bug (or if people are willing to submit pull requests to maintain it).

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this release!

It's official, WOWODC 2013 will be held on June 22, 23 and 24 in Montreal, at the Hilton Bonaventure

Full details and registrations at the end of January! If you wish to present, please contact info@wocommunity.org

Dear community,

After reviewing comments made at WOWODC 2012 and discussing with active Wonder committers, we have decided we need to move forward. The first step is to cleanup Wonder a bit. Hence, we will release Wonder 6.0 on December 3 2012. 

Wonder 6.0 will be a "cleanup" edition. By cleanup, we mean removing or archiving code or tools that are obsolete and that almost nobody uses, and also introducing changes that might break small things. As it is already the case, Wonder 6.0 will be only for WebObjects 5.4.3 (WebObjects 5.3 users can still use the Legacy branch).

Wonder 6.0 will include the following changes:

- Remove woaFrameworkMerger

- Remove the entity-based ERRest implementation

- Update JasperReport jars to 4.7.0

- Moving old examples and frameworks to a Archives folder

- Remove pre WO 5.4 code

Later in 2013, Wonder 7.0 will be released, and it will require Java 1.6. Starting with Wonder 7.0, we will also start removing deprecated APIs that have equivalents.

A patch to find deprecated methods calls in your WOD bindings had been added to the integration branch of WOLips (see https://github.com/wolips/wolips/commit/b6109f148510dc0ceb982ceb2d5a85274f092b78). If you wish to try it out, use the WOLips37Community build available at http://jenkins.wocommunity.org/job/WOLips37Community/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/temp/dist/

At WOWODC 2013, we will discuss the future of Wonder (we will also probably have a couple of Cayenne presentations). 

We will send a reminder a week before the release of Wonder 6.0. The first release will be done in the integration branch of Wonder and on December 15th, it will be done in the master branch. We will also do a Wonder 5.8.2 release before that, so if you have plenty of time to adjust your Jenkins setup or any other tools you use to fetch/build Wonder.

Thank you. 

We are in the planning of WOWODC 2013, and to decide on a date, we would like to know who wants to present at WOWODC next year. If you want to present at WOWODC 2013, please tell us when you are available between June 24 and August 24. You don't have to be 100% certain that you will present, and no need to decide on a subject for now. Send an email to info@wocommunity.org if you wish to present.

Please note that WOWODC will be in Montreal again.

A reminder: early bird pricing for WOWODC 2012 ends on May 14th! If you wish to save $100 on WOWODC 2012 or the Project Wonder Boot Camp, buy your tickets before May 15th!

Check wowodc.com for all info about WOWODC.

We released for free two WOWODC 2011 presentations. The first one is Designing WO applications for remote Sync, from David Aspinall. The other is is ERRest (what's new in ERRest, security, versioning and debugging) from Pascal Robert.

Both recordings are now available in the WOCommunity podcast feed and at http://www.wocommunity.org/webobjects_screencasts.html

ERRest and ERSync will both be talked about again at WOWODC 2012, if you wish to learn more, check out the WOWODC Web site.

All community resources are now hosted on the WOCommunity server!

Wiki:

  http://wiki.wocommunity.org

Jenkins:

  http://jenkins.wocommunity.org

WOLips 3.7 stable: 

  http://wocommunity.org/wolips/3.7/stable

WOLips 3.7 latest: 

  http://wocommunity.org/wolips/3.7/current

Wonder builds: 

  http://jenkins.wocommunity.org/view/Wonder/

Wonder JavaDoc: 

 Wonder stable (master branch):  http://wocommunity.org/documents/javadoc/wonder/stable

 Wonder latest (integration branch):  http://wocommunity.org/documents/javadoc/wonder/latest

 Wonder legacy (for 5.3):  http://wocommunity.org/documents/javadoc/wonder/legacy

WebObjects JavaDoc:

 http://wocommunity.org/documents/javadoc/WebObjects/5.4.2/

 http://wocommunity.org/documents/javadoc/WebObjects/5.3/

JProlifer 6 plugin:

 http://wocommunity.org/documents/tools/jprofiler6/

Jadclipse:

 http://wocommunity.org/documents/tools/jadclipse/

RuleModeler/eomodeldoc.jar/WOInstaller.jar

 http://wocommunity.org/documents/tools/

Apache adaptors:

 http://wocommunity.org/documents/tools/mod_WebObjects/

If you have links to the resources in other locations, please change your links so that Google picks up the changes. If you see anything missing from the list, please say so.

Hello everyone,

Johnny Miller made a nice contribution to Wonder: a MooTools framework that is replicating the features of the Ajax framework. He also contributed a example application (MooToolsExample) along the framework.

So if you want to try it out, get the build from jenkins.wocommunity.org and if you get any problems, please report them on GitHub.

Many thanks to Johnny for his contributions!

WOWODC 2012 dates

Hello everyone,

Mark your calendars, WOWODC 2012 dates are now official! WOWODC 2012 will be held in Montreal (Canada) from June 30 to July 2 2012. 

We will also do a WO Boot Camp on June 28 to June 30. This boot camp will be done by Paul Lynch, one of the few people who do WebObjects development training, and will have a strong focus on EOF.

We don't know yet at which hotel the event will be held, but the last day (July 2) of WOWODC will be held on Notre-Dame Island, in a renovated Expo 67 building just next to the F1 race track (Circuit Gilles Villeneuve).

WOWODC 2012 info

WOWODC 2012 will be held again in Montreal, either on June 29th, June 30th, July 1st, or July 6th, 7th 8th. More details in late September.

WOWODC recordings

We released for free the remaining recordings from WOWODC 2010. The just released recordings are:

  • Developer Tools 
  • D2W Custom Assignments and Component Design
  • Troubleshooting D2W rules
  • Integrating 3rd Party Authentication Services
  • Full text searching with Lucene

Thanks to the presenters for the fantastic presentations they have done at WOWODC 2010! You can find the recordings on wocommunity.org

Lion support

With the release of Lion, we want to assure you that Eclipse and all of the other tools and frameworks works well on Lion. Please be aware that Java is not installed by default on Lion, to install it open any Java application (it could be /usr/bin/java) and the Finder will ask if you want to install Java.

If you are launching wotaskd, be aware that the user in the launchctl script have to be "_appuser", wotaskd won't be started if the user is "appuser".

We just released two recordings from WOWODC 2010 that were previously only available for members who are part of the Community Membership program. The two recordings are:

  • Hello D2W! Building your first D2W application
  • Integrating and using JasperReports in your WebObjects App

You can find those recordings on the Screencasts page on wocommunity.org or in the podcasts feed of the community.

Hello everyone,

Don't forget that early bird pricing for WOWODC 2011 ends on May 16! Buy your tickets before that date if you want to save up to $110 on your ticket. Check all the details on the WOWODC site.

See you in July for 3 days of learning and fun!