As I am sure that most of you have heard about JavaFX (the shiny new platform from Sun for creating rich internet applications), you'll be glad to know that Stephen Chin has offered to do a presentation on WidgetFX and along the way introduce us to the wonders of JavaFX!

This is what Stephen has to say about the framework he founded:
WidgetFX is a new open-source framework for deploying JavaFX applications to users' desktops with the simplicity of one click installation. WidgetFX ships with several configurable and skinnable widgets and has a growing repository of user created widgets from Performance Monitors to Streaming Video.

Join the community today and start writing desktop widgets for the JavaFX language!

This session is intended for Java developers who are interested in learning how to create desktop widgets and will include a hands-on lab (so bring your laptop if you'd like to test-drive this cool tech). No prior knowledge of JavaFX is required.

The venue and drinks for this event will be provided by Marakana, where as the food will be sponsored by TEKsystems.

We'll also be giving away books and other interesting goodies from Sun and O'Reilly (our newest sponsor!), as well as a copy of IntelliJ IDEA from JetBrains.

If you intend to attend this event, I suggest you RSVP sooner, rather than later as the seating is limited (we are still searching for a larger venue).

Update:
Wen Huang and Doris Chen, from Sun's JavaFX team will be joining us for Stephen's presentation. They will do an intro on JavaFX as well as answer any questions on Sun's plans for this cool new platform. It should be very interesting to hear what they have to say!
In addition to Wen and Doris, we are also fortunate to be able to extend our hospitality to Aaron Houston who is the JUG Program Coordinator for Sun, and is directly responsible for Sun's sponsorship and support of our group!

See you on Monday, Feb 9th (6:30pm) at 1071 Mississippi St, San Francisco, CA!

Open-Source Developer and Agile Manager, Stephen Chin is founder of numerous open-source projects including WidgetFX and JFXtras. He has been working with Java desktop and enterprise technologies for over a decade, and has a passion for improving development technologies and process. Stephen's interest in Java technologies has lead him to start a Java and JavaFX focused blog and coauthor the upcoming Pro JavaFX Platform book together with Jim Weaver and Weiqi Gao.

Dr. Doris Chen, a staff engineer and Java Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems with over 10 years industry experience, her expertise includes Web 2.0/Ajax/Comet, JavaServer Faces, Java FX, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) technologies, web services/SOA, Java ME platform wireless programming, Java technology performance tuning, grid computing, and web-based distributed computing. She speaks at major industry international conferences: JavaOne, Sun Network Conference, SD West Software Development, etc.

Doris received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in computer engineering, specializing in medical informatics. Before coming to Sun, Doris developed medical image compression applications and web-based network management products.