My fifth time speaking at GIDS was just as good as the previous ones. The conference has an amazing lineup of high-profile speakers, so it is a great honor to be among them. This year, the conference had 5400 attendees spread over four days with five parallel tracks.

I had a packed room for my talk titled From Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with Java 21 and Jakarta EE. One of the great things about this conference, and maybe the main reason why I keep coming back to it, is that the audience is so engaged. They are not afraid to ask relevant questions during as well as after the talk. I am also very often approached while roaming the exhibition hall by attendees that want to talk about the talk or other topics of interest.

In one of the breaks, I was interviewed by Cassandra Chin for Techstrong TV. We chatted about open source and how getting involved in open source can be a game changer for your career as a developer. The interview should air on their website within a couple of days or so.

Bangalore is known as the Garden City of India with green areas spread around everywhere between the buildings. It can be very hot in Bangalore in April. This year, the temperature was in the high thirties (celsius). Luckily the hotel had a pool to soak in after the conference days.