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.

How to Be a Responsible Open Source Citizen from Ivar Grimstad

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.

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:

• CodeMash
• jChampionsConf
• JavaLand
• Irish JUG Tour
• Umedev
• Devnexus
• Jfokus
• GeeCON
• Java Day Istanbul
• Rockstars IT Meetup
• JNation
• WeAreDevelopers World Congress
• Devoxx Poland
• Developer Week
• JBCNConf
• JavaZone
• jConf – DEEP.DISH.JAVA.
• Devoxx Belgium
• JavaOne
• EclipseCon
• J-Fall
• HACK.COMMIT.PUSH
• Øredev
• JakartaOne Livestream

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!

The fourth annual JakartaOne Livestream is a wrap! And what a show! I think it is safe to say that this was the best JakartaOne Livestream ever as we up our game from year to year. It kind of puts a little pressure on us for next year’s event, but I think we are up to it. Save the date for the fifth edition of JakartaOne Livestream on December 5, 2023.

This was the first year we could all be in the same location during the show. It really helps to have the greenroom for speaker preparations, the production team, and the Studio Jakarta EE co-located. This year Serena and Samantha helped out with the speaker preparations while Shabnam, Tanja, and I could focus on the Studio Jakarta EE sessions. Everything was kept on schedule and controlled by our excellent producer Ian, who also created all the graphics, transitions, and videos for the event.

We all gathered at Tanja’s house at 05:00 and kept on going until the closing session at 19:00. Such an effort requires a lot of energy. As you can see in the picture below, Shabnam and Serena are making sure the 3 meters of pizza are properly documented.

Last year, my flight got delayed due to a winter storm, so I almost missed the opening. So this year, I decided to come over a day earlier to be on the safe side. This in turn made room for a Sunday morning run in Gatineau Park with Paul. We were wearing our Jakarta EE shirts underneath our jackets if anyone were in doubt.

Øredev is a well-established conference that has been around since 2005. As you may see from the beautiful social card created for my talk, the theme for this year was Alice in Wonderland.

The conference was, as always true to its theme. The room I was assigned was called Upstairs and was located upstairs. Next to it, there was a room named Downstairs but was still located upstairs. Confusing? Well, luckily enough the conference website had a locator map and I guess the attendees figured it out since I had an almost full room for my session.

Check out the slides for my talk titled Attention Java Developers – Everything YOU need to Know About Jakarta EE 10.

Attention Java Developers – Everything YOU need to Know About Jakarta EE 10 from Ivar Grimstad

As most of you know, getting decent coffee can be a problem at most conferences. Øredev is an exception. There is a barista in the corner of the exhibition floor that brews the most exquisite coffee. They do charge a little for it, but one of the perks of being a speaker is that you get it for free by showing the speaker badge.

As speakers, we are also invited to a speaker dinner in the splendid Malmö City Hall. A nice way to start the conference week!

Speakers at @oredev 2022 being welcomed by the Chair of the City Council in Malmö City Hall#oredev#EclipseFoundation#JakartaEE pic.twitter.com/Lwk0toDXWA

— Ivar Grimstad (@ivar_grimstad) November 7, 2022

Hack.Commit.Push 2022 in Paris on November 5 was a one-day event where the goal was to help the participants to get started by contributing to an open-source project of their choice.

The goal of the event is that the participants should be able to have contributed something to an open-source project by the end of the day. The projects at this event were:

• Apache Maven
• Eclipse JKube
• Eclipse Starter for Jakarta EE
• JReleaser
• JUnit 5

The Eclipse Starter for Jakarta EE is a source code generator for Jakarta EE projects. The current version is using Maven archetypes to generate a starting point for Jakarta EE application development. The starter can be found at start.jakarta.ee.

At Hack.Commit.Push 2022 in Paris, I worked on the starter together with Clarence Dimitri Charles. During the event, he was able to contribute the Profile selector in the UI, as well as the associated functionality in the archetype for Jakarta EE 10.

Events like Hack.Commit.Push are extremely useful to get community involvement in open-source. It is important that the projects participating have a low entry barrier so it is possible to get enough of an understanding quickly to be able to make a contribution in a couple of hours. The Eclipse Starter for Jakarta EE, with its simple architecture, is a great example of such a project. I hope to be able to participate in lots of events like this in the future. There are lots of projects within the Jakarta EE ecosystem that could fit well in this model.

1800 attendees at a one-day conference is impressive! J-Fall is organised by NLJUG as a truly community oriented event. Conference passes for NLJUG members are free.

The J-Fall 2022 speaker lineup was amazing, and I am proud to be a part of it. My session titled Modern and Lightweight Cloud Application Development with Jakarta EE 10 was very well attended and I got a lot of good questions afterwards. Maybe motivated by the t-shirts handed out to the first three attendees to ask a question…

Modern and Lightweight Cloud Application Development with Jakarta EE 10 from Ivar Grimstad

Between the talks I was able to pop by the local store and stock up on Stroopwafels. It should help remind me that Dutch Sushi is not a thing, and I better use Stroopwafels next time I do a demo in the Netherlands

For EclipseCon 2022, we were back in Ludwigsburg again. Since the two previous editions of EclipseCon were virtual, this was the first time since 2019.

On Monday before the main conference, we had the Jakarta EE Community Day. The agenda featured a lot of interesting talks and discussion topics. Thanks to Reza Rahman for putting it together!

The program of EclipseCon 2022 contained lots of Jakarta EE-related content. The Jakarta EE stand was co-located with iJUG, and they did a great job handing out Jakarta EE branded luggage tags, card holders, hoodies, and stickers while answering questions from the attendees.

My talk titled Jakarta EE 10 – Simplicity for Modern and Lightweight Cloud Applications gathered a decent crowd. Check out the slides here.

Jakarta EE 10 – Simplicity for Modern and Lighweight Cloud Applications from Ivar Grimstad

As Justin points out, Java runs anywhere. And so does Emily. So this year we launched the Emily Challenge, which was to run every morning while at EclipseCon. I really enjoy these morning runs as a way to kickstart the conference days. We also had the annual Jakarta EE Community Run on Wednesday were six runners showed up.

Ok @EclipseCon, here's the deal.
-Mon, 0630: Morning run
-Tue, 0630: Morning run
-Wed, 0700: #JakartaEE Run
-Thu: 0630: Morning run

Meet in the Nestor lobby

Join all for the @emilyfhjiang challenge!

Join the @JakartaEE run for swag!#runWithJakartaEE #EclipseCon pic.twitter.com/T1qptqJk5k

— Ivar Grimstad (@ivar_grimstad) October 23, 2022

JavaOne is BACK! Even if the 2022 edition was a bit smaller than we are used to for JavaOne, it still had the good old JavaOne community feeling. It didn’t really matter that it had moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas. The Caesar’s Forum is an excellent venue for JavaOne! And it was only a short walk over to the Venetian Expo for those that wanted to pay Oracle Cloud World a visit.

The only one missing the main character of them all. Somehow, Duke didn’t make the move from San Francisco to Las Vegas. My guess is that he is roaming the streets around the Hilton looking for Duke’s Café. If you see him, please point him in the direction of Las Vegas, so he can join next year’s JavaOne.

Before the conference, a small group of us went for a trip to Red Rock Canyon. You can read all about it in Jakarta EE Social Run – Red Rock Canyon.

There was a lot of Jakarta EE content at JavaOne 2022, as indicated in my post Jakarta EE at JavaOne 2022.

One of my favorite moments was working on the Eclipse Starter for Jakarta EE at the Hackergarten on Wednesday morning together with Josh Juneau and Ivo Woltring. We made great progress, and you will soon be able to generate Jakarta EE projects in the easiest way possible. Stay tuned for more announcements regarding this.

The JCP party is one of the highlights of every JavaOne. No exception this time. Heather knows how to throw a party! Catching up with old and new friends while enjoying great food, drinks, and the Nullpointers band.

Hope to see as many of you as possible at JavaOne in September next year!

Early Sunday morning, a small group of developers got in a car and headed for the Red Rock Canyon. After navigating through the mazes of casinos on the Strip, they made it there.

Among the five, there were three runners, Mattias, Rustam, and Ivar (myself if you were in doubt). The rest of the group was Gerrit and Mads who took care of the photography. They also took care of the car keys, so at least they would make it to JavaOne if the rest of us got lost in the desert…

What an event Devoxx Belgium is! 3200 attendees, more than 200 speakers, and five days packed with awesome content. And, of course, the hallway track! Kinepolis in Antwerp during Devoxx is definitely the place to be if you are a Java developer interested in interacting with the best.

My talk titled Jakarta EE 10 – Simplicity for Modern and Lightweight Cloud Applications was scheduled for Thursday early afternoon. It went well, all the demos worked, and I received a lot of positive feedback after the session.

Jakarta EE 10 – Simplicity for Modern and Lighweight Cloud Applications from Ivar Grimstad

I also did a Jakarta EE BOF with Edwin on Tuesday evening. Even at this late hour, a decent crowd turned up, and we had some interesting discussions. If you’re new to conferences and want to have some informal interaction with the experts within a field, BOFs are a great place. This is exactly what they are for.