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Devoxx Morocco 2023

This was the 10th edition of Devoxx Morocco including the three pre-Devoxx-branded editions that were called JMaghreb. For me, it was my sixth visit to the conference, four times in Casablanca, once in Agadir, and this year in Taghazout.

On Friday, I had my talk titled From Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with Java 21 and Jakarta EE. It was well received with good questions afterwards. One cool thing about Devoxx Morocco is that it is one of the few conferences where attendees regularly ask for a selfie with you. Kind of makes us feel like rockstars for a couple of seconds 🙂

Every conference should have a pool at the venue. It quickly turns the hallway track into a pool track, which is not a bad thing at all…

In between the sessions, food, and the pool track we had a couple of morning runs as well. Even spotted a camel on one of these runs. Maybe not a big deal in Morocco, but cool anyway.

Community Over Code 2023

My first time at an Apache Software Foundation event was a very pleasant experience. Community Over Code moves to different locations every year, and this year it was in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I would recommend visiting this lively city if you have the opportunity to it.

Community Over Code 2023 was a four-day conference. My talk titled Why Tomcat Matters for Jakarta EE on the second day was a brand new talk where I talked about the importance of Apache Tomcat for Jakarta EE. It was well received, and I had some good discussions with other attendees afterward.

The organizers had a couple of slots to fill due to unforeseen visa issues for some of the speakers, so I volunteered to fill one of them with my talk about migrating from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3. To make it more palatable to the ASF audience, I modified the title slightly as well as changed the demo to use the Tomcat Migration Tool for Jakarta EE rather than the Eclipse Transformer.

A small group of early risers met in the Lobby of one of the hotels every morning at 7 a.m. for a morning run with the catching slogan Community over Road. The only day we didn’t do the morning run was Sunday due to the remains of a tropical storm causing pretty heavy rain in the morning hours.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #197

Welcome to issue number one hundred and ninety-seven of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

It can be hard to track which day it is when traveling from conference to conference across time zones, so a fixed point like the weekly Hashtag Jakarta EE comes in handy occasionally. I am currently in Halifax, Nova Scotia where I am speaking at Community Over Code after coming directly from Devoxx Belgium in Antwerp.

While Community Over Code is the name of The Apache Software Foundation‘s flagship event, Eclipse Foundation also has the community in its DNA. Check out the new It’s in Our Code video.

More community. Community Day for Java Developers is coming up. If you haven’t registered yet, do so now. It’s only €40 for a full day of great content from amazing speakers. Not to mention the hallway track!

Devoxx Belgium 2023

The 20th edition of Devoxx Belgium is a wrap! As always, an amazing conference with exceptional speakers providing state-of-the-art content. I was so lucky to get two sessions and a BOF into this year’s edition. The first talk was a brand new one about what’s coming in Jakarta EE 11. Check out the slides for this talk below. In the months to come, the deck will be updated according to the progress of the release, as well as more demos will be added to the talk.

Almost directly after this talk, I hosted thethe Jakarta EE Community BOF with Edwin Derks. These late night (after a long day at Devoxx 19:00 feels like late night) are rarely well attended. But the upside is that those that come are really interested and motivated, so the outcome is always great.

The second talk I had at this year’s Devoxx was very well attended. I guess it helps having Spring in the title. The talk I did was the one where I migrate an application based on Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with focus on the namespace change introduced by Jakarta EE 9. Even the slides from this talk is linked below..

On Wednesday morning, a sporty gang of seven met up outside Antwerpen Central at 06:45 to go for a 5K morning run. In the spirit of celebrating Cinnamon Roll Day (October 4), I had planned a run that (with a little imagination) created a GPS track in the form of a cinnamon roll. Looking more closely, it sort of reminds a little of Duke…

Hashtag Jakarta EE #196

Welcome to issue number one hundred and ninety-six of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

The details for a Milestone 1 release (M1) of Jakarta EE 11 were nailed down in this week’s Jakarta EE Platform call. After discussing who the target audience of an M1 is, we concluded that this release is primarily for the Platform Project itself and the vendors implementing Jakarta EE. This doesn’t prevent others from checking it out, but it helps define the scope of the milestone.

Jakarta EE consists of multiple component specifications in addition to the Platform itself. All the specifications that are updated for Jakarta EE 11 are required to participate in M1 by producing the following artifacts:
– Specification Document
– API JAR in Maven Central
– JavaDoc
– XML Schemas (if the specification defines these)

An implementation of the specification and a Test Compatible Kit (TCK) are optional for M1 but will be required for the next milestone release.

The next three weeks will be filled by four conferences back-to-back. First out is Devoxx Belgium in Antwerp. Then I will go across the ocean to Halifax for Community Over Code and back again to Devoxx Morocco in Agadir before ending the trip in Ludwigsburg and EclipseCon. I hope to see as many as possible of you there. Remember that the hallway track is the most important one to attend!

I will be bringing my running gear to each of these conferences, so keep an eye out for messages and posts tagged with #runWithJakartaEE if you would like to join. I’ll bring a limited amount of Jakarta EE running shirts if that is your motivation to join. At EclipseCon, I will let Gesine guide us on a 3K, 5K, or 8K Morning Run around Ludwigsburg. Join us in the Nestor Hotel Lobby on Wednesday, October 18 at 06:30.

Talking about EclipseCon, I hope you are aware of the Community Day for Java Developers on October 16. You can still register for only €40 which includes lunch and refreshments. Not a bad deal if you ask me…

On the topic of registering, I encourage you to register for JakartaOne Livestream 2023 which will happen on December 5, 2023. We have a great show planned around the celebration of the 5-year anniversary of Jakarta EE.

There is a lot going on in the Open Source Community these days. One of the more disrupting things is the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) by the European Union (EU). 12 organizations, including Eclipse Foundation, have written an Open Letter addressed to policymakers proposing a solution for OSS projects developed under the governance of foundations like the Eclipse Foundation.

Feel free to share this Open Letter for example using the hashtag #ModifyTheCRA.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #195

Welcome to issue number one hundred and ninety-five of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

Home again after a couple of busy weeks on the road. Read all about it in North America JUG Tour 2023. Now, I’ll be home for a week before my next trip which will be Devoxx Belgium. I can’t believe it is almost October already.

I got an article titled Simplifying data access with MySQL and Jakarta Data published in Oracle Java Magazine this week. Check it out, or even better, try it out. It contains a step-by-step guide for how to test out Jakarta Data, which will be included in Jakarta EE 11.

JakartaOne Livestream 2023 is approaching. The event will be on December 5, 2023, and the format will be the same as the previous couple of years. Currently, the program committee is reviewing proposals. I expect the first speakers will be announced shortly. Until then, the registration is open, so I encourage you to get registered and mark your calendar. This year’s edition will be special since we will be celebrating the 5-year anniversary of Jakarta EE. I am pretty sure there will be cake!

North America JUG Tour 2023 – It’s a Wrap!

This was great fun! Five JUGs in five different cities in five days. Organizing such a trip takes a great deal of planning and coordination. Hats off to Gerrit for pulling that off! The JUGs we visited were:

Central Ohio JUG
Garden State JUG
Detroit JUG
Omaha JUG
Montreal JUG

Including IBM TechXchange in Las Vegas and the JCP EC meeting in New York, the short version of my itinerary looks like this:

CPH ✈️ EWR ✈️ LAS ✈️ EWR ✈️ CMH ✈️ EWR ✈️ DTW ✈️ ORD ✈️ OMA ✈️ ORD ✈️ YUL ✈️ EWR ✈️ CPH

Even with a quite busy travel schedule, I managed to get in a run or at least a walk in each city we visited. Check out the photos below. Most of them are tagged with #runWithJakartaEE on social media as well.

North America JUG Tour 2023 – Montreal 🇨🇦

The fifth, and last, step of the North America JUG Tour 2023 was Montreal and Montreal JUG. We were a little worried about having a JUG Meetup on a Friday, but Montreal didn’t let us down. This was the biggest crowd on the tour. May have something with the free beer and pizza, but we like to think that it was because of the speakers…

Gerrit talked about CRaC, which is an OpenJDK project that is about creating a checkpoint when the Java Virtual Machine is optimized, and then restoring from that checkpoint when starting up the application later. Hence reducing the startup- and warmup time of Java applications.

We had plans to do some coding between the sessions on the tour and maybe present Jakarta EE on CRaC at some point. It turned out that moving to a new location every day kind of didn’t leave any time for serious coding, so that is something we will do later. Stay tuned!

That meant that I did the Migrating from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 talk. It is a fun talk to do, and I usually add some small stuff each time. The Java 21 additions are very popular this close to the release. I may have to start using some Java 22 features soon. Check out the slides for the talk on SpeakerDeck.

The tour is done, and tomorrow we will split parts and go home. Gerrit will fly a little backwards going to San Francisco, then Frankfurt and Münster. I will go to Newark and then Copenhagen and Malmö.

North America JUG Tour 2023 – Omaha 🇺🇸

The fourth stop on our North America JUG Tour 2023 was Omaha and Omaha Java User Group. By now, we’re starting to get the hang of it. Gerrit started off with his talk about vulnerabilities in Java and the build chain in general. An important topic that just becomes more and more relevant.

I did the migration talk about how to get from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with a focus on Jakarta EE in that context. The demo with preview features from Java 21 that I introduced yesterday is now a part of the presentation. Check out the slides at my SpeakerDeck.

This meetup closed the US leg of the tour as we will go across the border to Canada tomorrow. We will have a pretty tight connection at O’Hare, but hopefully, we will make it to Montreal in time for the meetup there.

North America JUG Tour 2023 – Detroit 🇺🇸

The third stop on the North America JUG Tour 2023 was Detroit and the Detroit Java User Group.

Gerrit did the Jungle talk about all the available distributions of OpenJDK. It is a talk you really should attend if he is at a conference near you and you are wondering which JDK to choose. Directly after, I did the migration talk from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3. I even spiced up the demo by using Java 21 and demoed how to use preview features in a Spring Boot application. Check out the slides from my talk.

I enjoy being on these trips when you check in to the next flight before you disembark the current one and you have to rely on the hotel app to remember what room number you have this time. I was lucky in New York this time as I got the exact number I had in my hotel in Las Vegas. Easy to remember. Not so lucky thereafter. Both Gerrit and I ended up taking the elevator to the wrong floor in Detroit, which happened to be the floor we stayed at in Newark the day before 🙂