InfoQ Enterprise Software Development Community Unlaunched

Welcome to the "unlaunch" of InfoQ.com, a new community that aims to be your source for keeping up with change and innovation in the enterprise software development community, specifically serving the Java, .NET, Ruby, SOA, and Agile communities.  

We are unlaunching today which means that the community is live and we will be putting up content, but the site is very much still in testing and is not fully ready until our real launch in June. We wanted developers heading to JavaOne to see the latest innovations in community so have pushed live early. We hope you will be patient with any issues and please email bugs@infoq.com if you discover any problems.

InfoQ is a labour of love community managed by a passionate group of 10 software development professionals and an online media venture published by startup C4Media (Community4Media). C4Media founders include the creators of TheServerSide.com, seasoned industry executives, and committers of key open source projects.

InfoQ's mission is to serve you by providing daily news and analysis that is hand-picked and summarized by domain experts. There are two essential ingredients that make InfoQ special: the content and the technology.

Content

InfoQ is driven by an editorial team – as opposed to a computer - that eliminates quality issues created by syndication and non-technical journalism. InfoQ's content offerings also includes articles, case studies, streaming video interviews and conference presentations, and short books. Each of the five communities we serve has a dedicated editorial staff and calendar that publishes new content every week.

InfoQ is not just a content publisher, it is a community whose specialization is to track and foster change and innovation in the communities we serve. Each community also has specific social and content goals, some of which are expressed below:

Ruby, led by Obie Fernandez:

We aim to be an essential source for Ruby's adoption in the enterprise, tracking news and issues important to Ruby professionals and informing decision makers that will guide Ruby to mainstream IT adoption.

SOA, led by Miko Matsumura and Stefan Tilkov:

The SOA industry contains a rapidly emerging collection of architects, business leaders, vendors, analysts and developers who are creating a new conversation about Information Technology. The SOA industry is plagued by a scattered collection of blogs and small conferences, but no place for these personalities to call home. The InfoQ SOA community will be the heart of that conversation creating a source to share perspectives, compare notes, understand best practices and combine the knowledge of hands-on SOA implementation with architectural vision needed to drive adoption.

Java, led by Floyd Marinescu:

The Java community has experienced tremendous change in the last 5 years. The lines between commercial and open source are blurring. The very definition of enterprise Java and what design strategies we should use no longer rests with a standard body but with different visions driven from groups like the JCP, Spring, and others. This combines with an even greater concern: the pace of change in Java is slowing. The InfoQ Java community will provide a lens that focuses the community's attention on the innovation that IS occurring in hopes of sparking a flame that will contribute to the better evolution of Java itself.

Agile, led by Deborah Hartmann and Scott Ambler:

Enterprises, bombarded by change, know they've got to get lean to excel. In response, a vast number of process and tooling innovations are coming out of the the Agile community, but who can keep abreast of it all? The InfoQ Agile community will keep readers up-to-date and help the whole enterprise understand how to collaborate for better outcomes. Agile work is by its very nature creative, and creativity needs input - we will draw attention to a wide variety of valuable and emerging ideas, becoming a catalyst for new growth in teams and businesses.

.NET, led by David Totzke:

The Microsoft .NET world is a rapidly changing one and these are exciting times. Our mission is to provide you with information that will enable you to navigate the flood of emerging technologies and information sources and provide a starting point for community discussions.  The .NET InfoQ community will be a place where people can come together to explore and define the enterprise development techniques of the future.

Technology

InfoQ provides technical innovations around site design and functionality to enable an incredible experience:

• You can personalize which communities you view by selecting check boxes in the communities box on the left. This will work for both registered users and un-registered users. Registered users will gain the ability to filter and exclude sub tags and topics, which every piece of content at InfoQ will be tagged with.
  
• RSS feeds and newsletters are personalized for everyone on InfoQ based upon your community and content tag selections.
  
• Content starts at the top of each page to maximize readability.
  
• The AJAX-tabbed rightbar is a content-type navigator. It replaces traditional site "sections" that promote an inefficient hierarchical organization and navigation. InfoQ is a two-level navigation system, driven by personalization and content tagging, eliminating the need for a messy site map.
  
• Topics and tagging will (in time) make it easy to discover relationships between content.
  
• The discussion threading system is AJAX-ified to let you read an entire thread without clicking or scrolling. Additionally, replies can be posted in-place, avoiding the need to load multiple pages for engaging in a conversation.
  
• InfoQ is staffed by a full-time development organization that will use Agile methodologies and iterative development to provide regular innovations to improve the user experience and create new community enhancements.

Please read our About page for more on our differentiators and our team.

We made some sacrifices to launch earlier however. We are missing some typical things like printer friendly pages, search, a thread rating system, and a proper content archive. We are also working on launching localization features (news and content that can be specific to certain regions) and also internationalization (we will be translating the site into Chinese and Brasilian Portuguese soon). Any other ideas you may have are welcome, please leave them in this thread. ;)

We hope you enjoy the content we have launched with, which besides the news and:

• Java: A technical casestudy of the Brasilian National Healthcare System
• SOA: A history of extended transactions
• Agile: Being Agile without going overboard
• Ruby: Ruby and Rails
• .NET, Java, SOA: Simple Java and .NET REST Interop
• Java: A short book on transaction management strategies in Java and Spring

And finally, if you like our community, please show your support by registering (it’s a good way for us to gauge interest) and help us spread the word in anyway you can. InfoQ is here to stay, so please visit the community in the next few weeks and months as we have a LOT of great content lined up for posting, including:

• over 50 video interviews and video conference presentations
• books on Domain Driven Design, EJB3, SOA, Agile, Scrum, and more
• 20 articles and case studies

We'd love to hear from you! Click reply at the bottom of this message to tell us what you think about InfoQ. :)

Thank you very much,

The InfoQ Team

ps - we'd like to thank our founding sponsors whose support helped a great deal: Compuware, IBM, Terracotta, Symantec, and Cassatt