The Java Community Process (JCP) program celebrates success. Members of the community nominate worthy participants, Spec Leads, and Java Specification Requests (JSRs) in order to cheer on the hard work and creativity that produces ground-breaking results for the community and industry in the Java Standard Edition (SE), Java Enterprise Edition (EE), or Java Micro Edition (ME) platforms.

The community gets together every year at the JavaOne conference to applaud in person the winners the JCP Annual Awards. This year we have four award categories: JCP Member/Participant of the Year, Outstanding Spec Lead, Most Significant JSR and Outstanding Adopt-a-JSR Participant. This year's unveiling will occur Monday evening, September 19, at the Annual JCP Community Party held at Hilton San Francisco Union Square.

With great appreciation, now for the 14th year, the community recognizes the award nominees, listed below, with their nomination justifications.

• Arjan Tijms
  
  Expert group member for JSR 372, and highly active committer. Arjan is a serious community contributor that is active in pretty much every Java EE JSR and is helping moving forward the Security JSR and JSF 2.3.

• Christian Kaltepoth
  
  Christian is instrumental in keeping the MVC specification moving forward. He has great work on MVC 1.0 and Ozark.

• Reza Rahman
  
  Excellent leadership and perseverance moving JSRs forward. He's helped to coordinate activities around many JSRs that target next Java EE release.

• Roman Grigoriadi
  
  Roman is a member of JSONB team responsible for the reference implementation. He's done a great job developing the RI from scratch to a functional version what we have now.

• Werner Keil * Winner *
  
  Werner is one of the few JCP EC members consistently vocal about Java EE. He also helps contribute to a number of Java EE JSRs including JSON-P.
  
  

• Antoine Sabot-Durand
  
  Antoine has been driving CDI 2.0 (JSR 365, Contexts and Dependency Injection) steadily towards its ambitious technical goals. He has generated an enthusiastic spirit of collaboration among the members of the CDI Expert Group and members of the community, running this JSR in an exemplarily transparent manner. He hosts weekly meetings with the expert group and interested community members and generates lively discussions in the EG mailing list and JIRA.

• Dmitry Kornilov * Winner *
  
  Besides limited resources and full time commitment to other projects, Dmitry managed to push the JSON-B (JSR-367) spec forward. Dmitry's responsive participation in user / expert mailing list and prompt updates to specification contributed to a fresh feel of project liveness. JSON-B is one of the only Java EE 8 JSRs still on track thanks to Dmitry.

• Martin Scott Nicklous
  
  Scott has been an excellent lead, and has pushed this spec continuously forward, working tirelessly on the TCK, spec, etc. Scott is the Spec Lead of JSR 362 (Portlet 3.0) and has been a strong, consistent, and steady leader since the JSR was started back in 2013. Scott has contributed many of the ideas and features that are found in this new version of the Portlet Specification. In addition, he has carefully and respectfully considered all of the feedback from the EG over the years. He cares deeply about the success and adoption of portlet technology and has been dedicated to his role as Spec Lead.Outstanding effort in leading the Portlet 3.0 Spec (JSR-362). Scott has written the majority of the 3.0, as well as the reference implementation and TCK. Truly an exceptional talent and hard worker!

• Neil Griffin
  
  Neil Griffin is the spec lead for JSR 378: Portlet 3.0 Bridge for JavaServerTM Faces 2.2 Specification. He has been proposing changes and additions to the Portlet Bridge Spec and API on a weekly to bi-weekly basis. He always explains the need for changes in depth and answers the questions of the other experts. He listens to feedback and is willing to consider other points of view. See the mailing list and FACES issues for more details: https://java.net/projects/faces-bridge-spec/lists/jsr378-experts/archive. He is also part of the following expert groups: JSR 362: Portlet Specification 3.0, JSR 372: JavaServer Faces (JSF 2.3) Specification, and JSR 371: Model-View-Controller (MVC 1.0) Specification. He participates actively in the Portlet 3.0 expert group (JSR 362) (https://java.net/projects/portletspec3/lists/jsr362-experts/archive). He is a committer to Pluto 3.0, the Portlet 3.0 reference implementation. He has delivered talks on JSR 378, and also done a talk and a podcast about about Portlet 3.0 with spec lead Scott Nicklous (https://www.google.com/search?q=neil+griffin+jsr+362). Neil also participates actively in the JSF 2.3 (JSR 372) expert group, advocating for portlet compatibility (https://java.net/projects/javaserverfaces-spec-public/lists/jsr372-experts/archive).
  
  

• JSR 365, Contexts and Dependency Injection 2.0
  
  Since its inception, CDI has facilitated innovation in the Java EE Platform, and simplified application development. CDI 2.0 is a major enhancement in this technology which will bring these benefits to applications that are not dependent on Java EE. The CDI 2.0 Expert Group has been making excellent progress towards its ambitious technical goals.

• JSR 367, Java API for JSON Binding (JSON-B)
  
  JSON-B standardises the way how Java objects are mapped to JSON documents. This is a quite young but very important JSR. This year it's made all the way to the public draft. JSON-B is one of the only Java EE 8 JSRs still on track.

• JSR 364, Broadening JCP Membership * Winner *
  
  This JSR makes contributing to Java a lot easier, even if one isn't working for a company with a strategic interest in Java or self-employed. JSR 364 now allows more individuals to help the Java Community Process in similar ways as the likes of Apache or Eclipse do. With a relatively small Contributor Agreement instead of long and tedious paperwork, often impossible to handle without a legal department willing to help. Thanks to JSR 364 it should be easier to get more JSRs done where resources by even the biggest corporate members can sometimes reach their limits.
  
  

• Faso JUG (Burkina Faso), Constantin Drabo
  
  Faso JUG is one of the youngest African JUGs who enthusiastically leapt onto adopting most of the Java EE JSRs, running several sessions on JSON-B, JMS, Java EE 7 and others.

• Dutch JUG
  
  The Dutch Java User Group held a hackathon for JSR 371 (MVC 1.0). As the result of this hackathon the JUG prepared a large feedback list containing question and ideas for improvement. This feedback was very valuable for the EG and helps to improve the specification.

• Chicago JUG, Josh Juneau and Bob Paulin * Winner *
  
  Josh and Bob have been leading the Chicago Java User Group (CJUG) Adopt-A-JSR efforts. Josh has been advocating our membership to review and adopt the new Java EE 8 specs. Each Adopt-A-JSR meeting at CJUG Josh deep dives into a JSR by providing an overview of the spec, where to get the source, building the source, as well as some code examples. Josh's step by step approach lowers the barrier of entry for developers not used to working on bleeding edge code. Josh has also been an advocate for the JCP through the Java EE Guardians group using a data driven approach to citing his concerns with Java EE 8. Josh has been steadfast in his work to get the community more involved in the JCP and specifically the Adopt-A-JSR program. Bob has also made great contributions towards Adopt-a-JSR program with leading the Chicago JUG efforts around JDK 9.
  
  

Description of the JCP Award Categories JCP Member/Participant of the Year - This award recognizes the corporate or individual member (either Member or Participant) who has made the most significant positive impact on the community in the past year. Leadership, investment in the community, and innovation are some of the qualities that EC Members look for in voting for this award.   Outstanding Spec Lead - The role of Spec Lead is not an easy one, and the person who takes that responsibility must be, among other things, technically savvy, able to build consensus in spite of diverse corporate goals, and focused on efficiency and execution. This award recognizes the person who has brought together these qualities the best in the past year, in leading a JSR for the Java community (Java SE, Java EE or Java ME).   Most Significant JSR - Specification development is key to the success of the JCP program and helps ensure we remain a fresh and vibrant community. This award recognizes the Spec Lead and Expert Group that have contributed (either in progress or final) the most significant JSR for the Java community (Java SE, Java EE or Java ME) in the past year.   Outstanding Adopt-a-JSR Participant - This award recognizes the Java User Group (JUG) that has made the most exemplary contribution through the Adopt-a-JSR program in the past year. The London Java Community and SouJava initiated, and are thereby implicitly recognized, in this effort for JUGs around the world to become more involved in the work of JSRs. Innovation, community engagement and technical impact are some of the characteristics that EC Members look for in voting for this award.