Open Community for Java 2024 was a part of Open Community Experience (OCX), the revamped EclipseCon. EclipseCon has been going on with the same format for years, and it was in need of a brush-up. This was definitely achieved with OCX. The conference venue was fantastic and the recurring feedback was that it felt like a younger edition of EclipseCon. It don’t think that was because of the attendees as there were at least as much grey hair as usual, but more a result of the hipper vibe of the venue. The food options were excellent, and there was always access to water, soft drinks, tea, coffee, and a selection of snacks.

Since EclipseCon never really was a Java conference directed at the larger Java community (don’t get me wrong, there has always been a lot of Java content at EclipseCon, but mostly related to the various Eclipse Foundation projects, the IDE in particular), it was a bit hard to create awareness of Open Community for Java, The number of attendee could definitely have been higher, but all the talks got a decent number of attendees at least. Those that showed up had an excellent selection of high-quality talks to chose from. For those not able to attend, the talks will be available on the Eclipse Foundation YouTube channel shortly.

I did my talk Why Spring Matters to Jakarta EE – And Vice Versa on the first day of the conference. It is a good talk, if I should be so “unscandinavian” and say so. It gives a good overview of Jakarta EE and shows how the specifications overlap with Spring.

Never a conference without a morning run at least one of the days. This year, I got up at 6:30 and went for a run two of the three conference days. On Wednesday, I was joined by Daniel (I think he was motivated by the cool Jakarta EE running shirt), and on Thursday Gesine came along. This year, we had Jakarta EE branded running socks as one of the giveaways. I may have some of them to bring to future conferences if they manage to ship the leftovers to me after the event