Conferences

GIDS 2023

This was my third trip to Bangalore and the Great International Developer Summit 2023, or GIDS for short (I also did an online talk in 2020, but I don’t count those any longer…).

GIDS is a well-organized conference over four days with around 1200 attendees every day, some attending one day and others several days. One cool thing about this conference is the posters they set up outside the rooms with pictures of the speaker, title, and time for the talk. These posters offer an excellent opportunity for a selfie as demonstrated here.

My talk titled Modern and Lightweight Cloud Application Development with Java and Jakarta EE filled the room to capacity and then some. I am sorry for those who couldn’t get in, but hopefully, I will be back next year and maybe even get a bigger room.

Even if speaking at conferences is mostly hard work, there are opportunities for some relaxation in between, and India is not a bad place to be for those occasions. I enjoyed the fruit buffet, shopping for spices, and getting in a couple of laps in the pool at the hotel.

Devnexus 2023

Devnexus is one of the absolute highlights of every conference year, and the 2023 edition was no exception. It truly is the place to be for the Java Community.

In addition to the dedicated Jakarta EE track featuring two days packed with amazing talks, we also had a booth where we had conversations about Jakarta EE as well as handed out swag. In addition to the usual stickers and t-shirts, we also had 5-year anniversary branded socks that proved to be extremely popular.

Speaking about the anniversary, at the end of the first conference day, we served 5-year anniversary cake at the booth.

My talk titled Jakarta EE for Spring Developers was well attended. With about sixty percent of the attendees being Spring developers, the topic hit the mark. In addition to pointing out how closely related Spring and Jakarta EE are, the major part of the talk is a demo where I migrate an application from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with a focus on what to think of related to the namespace change from javax.* to jakarta.* and how it impacts Spring and Spring Boot.

And, of course, whenever possible, I invite everyone to join me in a Jakarta EE Community Morning Run before the conference day starts. This time, we did a community run on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

Jakarta EE Community Run at Devnexus 2023

Next week is the week of Devnexus 2023! And the conference this year features a dedicated track to Jakarta EE that is packed with amazing content from world-class speakers. Not only the Jakarta EE Track, the conference has an amazing lineup as always. This is one of the reasons why Devnexus has sailed up to become the biggest and most important Java conference in the US.

Conferences can be exhausting, with long days at the venue. So many people to talk to, and so many talks to attend. I find that the best way to make sure that you are refreshed and recharged for a conference day is a morning run. That’s why I will arrange the first annual Jakarta EE Devnexus Community Run. In fact, while we’re at it, let’s do the second as well. Join me for a run on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings!

When
– 06:30am, Wednesday, April 5, 2023
– 06:30am, Thursday, April 6, 2023

Where
– By the Olympic Rings at the corner of Centennial Olympic Park

JavaLand 2023

This was my ninth JavaLand! Since the conference was canceled in 2020, I have spoken at every JavaLand since it started in 2014, including the online edition of 2021. It is safe to say that it is one of my favorite conferences, and I hope to return again and again!

This year, Eclipse Foundation had a booth where we showcased Jakarta EE and Adoptium. I had a blast talking to all the people that came and visited me at the booth.

My Jakarta EE 10 talk was very well attended. I had the pleasure of presenting in Wintergarten, which is the second-biggest stage at JavaLand. Unfortunately, my development environment acted up on one of the demos, but the rest of the talk went without any issues.

Directly after my regular conference talk, I moderated the Jakarta EE Panel with Ed Burns, Emily Jiang, and Jan Westerkamp as the panelists. We had a couple of topics prepared and got some good questions from the audience as well.

And, last but not least. No conference with Emily without a morning run. At JavaLand, we were both dressed up in our nice Jakarta EE running shirts, as well as the limited Jakarta EE neck warmers.

ConFoo 2023

My third time speaking at ConFoo was as pleasant as the previous two occasions. The three-day conference is packed with great content from a superb speaker lineup. The venue is perfectly scaled for the 720 attendees. And the food…OMG… the three-course lunches remind you that the conference is in Montreal!

Talking about Montreal. It can be cold in February. But even so, the hotel has an outdoor heated pool, hot tub, and sauna. So even if it is below -20 degrees celsius, you can still enjoy an outdoor swim when the sessions are over.

I had two talks at ConFoo 2023. The first one was Jakarta EE 10 – Simplicity for Modern and Lightweight Cloud. The room was full, and I got great feedback from the attendees.

My second talk was a non-technical one titled How to Be a Responsible Open Source Citizen. This is an inspirational talk aimed at getting more people to invest in and contribute to open source projects. This one also received great feedback, and I had some really good conversations afterward.

I would also like to thank SpeakerDeck for extending my upload quota so I am able to publish my slide decks there again. Since I reached the limit a couple of months ago, I have been forced to use another service for a while. But now I am back at SpeakerDeck. By the way, they didn’t ask me to write this or anything else in return for extending the quota…

DeveloperWeek 2023

I have visited San Francisco multiple times before, but this is the first time I have been to Oakland which is just across San Francisco Bay. The city, a short ferry ride from its more famous neighbor, has its charm and is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area. It is also my first time speaking at DeveloperWeek at the Oakland Convention Center.

My talk titled Jakarta EE for Spring Developers went well. All the demos worked as expected, which is a good thing since the better part of the talk consisted of live demos. The talk was scheduled as the first talk on the first day of the conference, the so-called workshop day, so the attendance was a little lower than expected. But the attendees seemed happy and I got comments that it was very relevant and helpful for them as they were just about to start their migration from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3.

Another highlight of my DeveloperWeek 2023 experience was receiving the 2023 DEVIES Award for Jakarta EE 10 in the Programming Languages & Frameworks category. The award trophy was handed out during the DEVIES Award ceremony on the first day of the conference.

Jfokus 2023

Jfokus is one of my absolute favorite conferences. This year’s edition was no exception. The organization is excellent, you can tell that they’ve done this before. This was the 17th edition of Jfokus since it started back in 2007.

On Wednesday morning, we continued the tradition that started last year with a Jfokus Morning Run. Which made this year the second annual morning run at Jfokus.

We were 17 runners that met at 07:15 on Wednesday morning for a 5K run, and as far as I know all 17 returned and were able to attend the conference. It is truly an excellent way to start a conference day.

I had a Quickie-talk about responsible Open Source at Jfokus this year. A Quickie talk at Jfokus is a 15-minute talk, so it is pretty fast-paced. A fun experience. And I hope the participants found it interesting as well. The room was almost full, so the topic seems interesting at least.

jChampionsConf 2023

This was the third edition of jChampionsConf. As the name implies, all speakers of this conference are Java Champions. The 100% virtual four-day conference (January 19, 20, 23, and 24) is available on the JChampions Conference YouTube channel.

Don’t worry if you missed a talk when it was LIVE. You can always go back and check it out at any time on YouTube!

Since I didn’t have a talk at this year’s edition, I volunteered as moderator for Has the J2EE vs Spring Infinity War reached an End Game? A short history of Java for the enterprise by Antoine Sabot-Durand. It was a very good talk where Antoine took us through the major events from the 20-year history of Enterprise Java. I highly recommend it!

THAT Conference 2023

It was my first time attending and speaking at THAT Conference. It is a three-day conference at the Kalahari Resorts and Convention Center in Round Rock, Texas. The original conference in Wisconsin has been going on for years, and this was the second time it was organized in Texas. It is an intimate and very well-organized conference. The crew certainly know what they are doing. It doesn’t hurt that it is organized in a waterpark either…

One of the things they do is to organize daily 5K morning runs. Thanks to Josh Gretz for organizing!

My talk was titled How to Be a Responsible Open Source Citizen. This is a brand new talk on a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately. It is different from the talks I usually do in that it didn’t contain a demo. This may sound like a relief for a speaker, but I kind of feel otherwise. Speaking for an hour just being backed by slides is more challenging than being able to lean on a demo to make it engaging. Check out the slides from my talk.

I really enjoyed my visit to Round Rock and THAT Conference, Texas and will certainly put it on my calendar over potential conferences next year as well. Next year’s conference will be January 29 – February 1, 2024.

The Conference Year 2022

I don’t think we will ever experience anything like 2022 regarding conferences. This was the year we all went back to meeting in person after the two dark years of the pandemic. As one of the privileged able to travel to speak at a significant number of conferences, I got to experience firsthand the joy, relief, and happiness from organizers, speakers, and attendees that we were back to meeting again.

As you can see from the heap of badges, it was a busy year. Since I wrote a short write-up after each event, I won’t repeat that here. You can check out the individual reports here:

I always bring my running shoes with me when I travel. That way, I can get out to explore the area while exercising. It is the perfect way to start a conference day. Whenever practical, I invited conference attendees to join me on these Jakarta EE Community Runs. Take a look at the video we showed as a part of JakartaOne Livestream 2022.

I am happy to share that I just received a new batch of the beautiful, and very popular, Jakarta EE lightweight running shirts to bring along to conferences in 2023. And it doesn’t stop there, this batch of shirts includes women’s sizes!
Join me for Jakarta EE Community Runs in 2023 to get one, and get in shape at the same time!