What's for Java in 2013?

Hi all. I just wanted to share some information about what's for the Java technology in 2013, this is from my point of view and from the conferences I've attended this year, but as the Oracle safe harbor statement says: "... While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially ..."

• A new Java User Group will be born in Cali, Colombia. So if you are around stay tuned. This is my contribution to the community, hopefully we'll get many active members and lots of hackathons, meetings and information sharing.
• Java SE 6 End-Of-Life (EOL) is estimated for February 2013. It means that you won't get any other update for your Java SE 6 (unless you buy the Java SE Support), but it doesn't mean that Java SE 6 will disappear, you can still download this version in the Java Archive, but you are encouraged to update to Java SE 7, which has been around since July 2011.
• Oracle will be promoting the Oracle Java Embedded Suite: a full suite for embedded devices which consists of Java SE Embedded 7 runtime, Java DB, Glassfish Server and Jersey WS Framework. You can install this suite on the Raspberry Pi for your projects... nice!
• JavaFx will continue its development. There's lot of documentation online to learn this technology and you can even install JavaFx apps on embedded systems like the RaspberryPi, check this post by Stephen Chin.
• Java EE 7 will be released on the first quarter of 2013, around April. Great new features, check them out!
• Java 8 will be here! The new release of the Java SE will be announced during the second semester of the year, so you better start using Java SE 7 before you get outdated... 
• Java One 2013 Save the Date: now we have dates for the conferences around the globe, I guess Java One LAD (Brazil) will be held on December at São Paulo.

A lot to come! I hope you can join or create a Java User Group in your area, or blog about the Java technology, or attend to the conferences... anything would be great for the community.


Happy new year!