A Java conference in the Dominican Republic sounds too good to be true. Well, I can tell you that it is a thing, and it is awesome! JConf Dominicana, The Caribbean Java Technologies Conference is organized by Java Dominicano, the Dominican Java User Group. It is a one-day conference with a half day of workshops the day before.

I hosted a 4-hour Jakarta EE workshop together with Eudris Cabrera. He provided Spanish translations of all the instructions for the participants and explained in Spanish where my English came short. We had a great time, and it looks like the participants enjoyed it as well if you judge from the happy faces in this photo.

Jakarta EE was very well represented at JConfDominicana this year. In addition to the workshop, Shabnam did a keynote titled Empowering Innovation: The Open Source Odyssey of Contribution and Collaboration with Jakarta EE.

The day before the conference, we went out to explore the city and ended up visiting a cigar factory where they had free tours of the facilities. It is amazing to see how cigars are hand-made this way. Our clothes will need a turn in the washer after the visit as almost everyone in there was smoking cigars while working.

It is always such a great experience to speak at conferences like JConfDominica that are organized by and for the local Java Community. I encourage everyone who employs Java developers anywhere in the world to support the local Java community.