Eclipse Foundation

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.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #159

Welcome to issue number one hundred and fifty-nine of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

As I mentioned in Hashtag Jakarta EE #157, the Steering Committee of the Jakarta EE Working Group has been working on defining high-level guidelines for Jakarta EE 11. The effort, led by Steve Millidge, concluded with the following resolution at the steering committee call this week:

“Resolved, the Steering Committee recommends that the Jakarta EE Working Group begin planning for the next Jakarta EE 11 release as proposed in the Jakarta EE 11 Narrative Presentation, with the following high-level guidelines: 

  • Target Java version 21 
  • Target GA date Q1 2024
  • Priorities 
    • Unified APIs improving Developer Experience
    • New Specifications
    • Build on the Latest Java
    • Enable Community Contribution

These guidelines are provided to encourage a common community direction for Jakarta EE 11.“

It is certainly great news that the Jakarta EE Steering Committee defines these high-level guidelines for Jakarta EE 11. Now, it is up to the Jakarta EE Platform Project to define a plan for how to act on the guidelines. This will certainly be the main topic of the upcoming weekly Jakarta EE Platform calls.

The next Monthly Jakarta EE Platform Architecture call is scheduled for 11:00 AM ET on February 7, 2023. For this call, we are honored to have  Alan Bateman and Ron Pressler from the JDK Team at Oracle give us an update on Project Loom in the context of Jakarta EE. Check the public calendar for details on how to join.

While you are reading this, I am on my way to THAT Conference in Round Rock, Texas. The conference brands itself as “A summer cam pin the Texas winter for software geeks passionate about learning all things mobile, web, cloud, and technology.”.

Those of you that know me, know that I like to go for a morning run before the conference days. At THAT Conference, they have a 5K run on the schedule each morning. All attendees that join me there will get a Jakarta EE running shirt and a surprise swag.

To round off this Hashtag, check out the video Why Choose Jakarta EE.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #158

Welcome to issue number one hundred and fifty-eight of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

2023 is a week old, and my first conference of the year is coming up! I am going to Texas to speak at THAT Conference in Round Rock, Texas. It is my first time attending this conference, so I am looking very much forward to it!

If you want to attend, but haven’t registered yet, check out https://that.us/events/tx/2023/ for ticket options. Use the discount code unspecified at checkout for 80% off the no-food camper ticket.

THAT Conference is happening January 15-19. 2023. In addition to being my first time speaking at this particular conference, I am also trying out a brand new talk. It is titled How to Be a Responsible Open Source Citizen at this conference and will be a more inspirational style talk than my usual technical talks.

Kind of related to the topic of this talk is something that happened during the last days of 2022. Seemingly out of nowhere, Eclipse Krazo received a PR from Maarten Mulders fixing the issue with Krazo running on Open Liberty. And it didn’t stop there. Maarten found some issues with the EE4J pom.xml when building on Maven 4, which he also submitted a PR to fix.

Thank you, Maarten for your contributions! (and bring on those Stroopwafels 😋)

The Jakarta EE Platform project will resume its weekly platform calls in the upcoming week. The first call is on Tuesday, January 10 at 11:00 AM ET. Find the details on the public Jakarta EE Specifications Calendar. Join us if you want to be a part of the discussions and provide input to the work with defining Jakarta EE 11.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #157

Welcome to issue number one hundred and fifty-seven of Hashtag Jakarta EE, the first of many in 2023!

Happy New Year!

Let’s peek into the crystal bowl and check out what we can expect from 2023. The Conference Year 2022 was amazing! European conferences were more or less back at pre-pandemic attendance numbers while US conferences struggled a little with their numbers. This trend will most likely continue in 2023. Conferences in Asia also seem to start up again in 2023. I hope to see as many of you as possible at as many conferences as possible!

Even if you are hesitant, or unable to travel to a conference, there may be very good options in your neighborhood. Check out your local JUG, or other communities to see what’s going on. As an example, if you are located in the US Midwest do check out CodeMash 2023 (Jan 10-13)! I have had the honor of speaking at CodeMash several times, and it is absolutely worth a visit!

One thing that will happen in 2023 is that Java 21 will be released in September. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten that Java 20 will be released in March. But since Java SE 21 is labeled as an LTS release, it will get more attention. I would, however, recommend always using the latest version, LTS or not, if you are able to.

With Java on its steady, predictable release train, can we expect something like that for Jakarta EE as well? The discussions in various projects and forums seem to go in that direction. The Steering Committee of the Jakarta EE Working Group seems to favor a model where Jakarta EE is released 6 months after a Java SE LTS release. A suggestion is that Jakarta EE 11 will be released in Q1 2024 with Java SE 21 as the baseline. Consequently, there will not be a major release of Jakarta EE in 2023. It is expected that a decision around this will be made in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for more updates!

Hashtag Jakarta EE #156

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

I realize that it is Christmas Day and hopefully most of you stay away from your devices for some electronic detox over the Holidays. This is the last Hashtag Jakarta EE in 2022. But don’t despair, I will continue to publish these short news updates in 2023 as well, the first to be published on New Year’s Day.

Since I sort of summarized the year, in terms of conferences in the conference year of 2022, I won’t repeat that here. I hope you are all able to enjoy a couple of well-earned days off to recharge. See you next year!

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!

Hashtag Jakarta EE #155

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

Eclipse GlassFish 7.0.0 was released this week! It has been available as milestone builds for a couple of months, but not the final release is here. Congratulations to everyone involved in the release!

Eclipse GlassFish is one of the compatible implementations of Jakarta EE 10. All currently certified Compatible Implementations of Jakarta EE 10 are:

This list is constantly growing, so make sure you visit the Compatible Products section once in a while to stay up-to-date.

The weekly Jakarta EE Platform calls will take a break until we write 20223
(I wonder how many times, on average, you have to write the date until the new year sticks. I know I need a couple of attempts at least…). The next platform call will be on January 10, 2023, at 11:00 am EST. We will also continue with the monthly Jakarta EE Architecture calls with the first on February 7, 2023, at 11:00 am EST. Stay tuned for updates.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #154

Welcome to issue number one hundred and fifty-four of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

The highlight of this week was obviously the fourth annual JakartaOne Livestream. We had so much fun hosting the event, and hope everyone watching had a great time as well!

One of the videos we ran between the sessions was a recap of some of the Jakarta EE Community Runs we have been doing at conferences around the World. The lightweight Jakarta EE-branded running shirts have been very popular. I will continue bringing these whenever possible at events next year. In addition to these, I have now received a batch of snap-on reflexes to keep runners (and non-runners) safe in low-light conditions.

So, what else is going on in the Community? The last Jakarta EE Platform call of 2022 will happen on Tuesday, December 13 at 11:00 am ET. The level of activity tends to wind down for the holidays, so we will be back in full force in January next year.

The plan review for Jakarta RESTful Web Services 4.0 concluded successfully this week. The main goal for version 4 of this popular API is to provide better alignment with Jakarta Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI). Hopefully, more of the component specifications can state their goals and plans for future versions shortly as this will make it easier for the Jakarta EE Platform project to come up with a plan for Jakarta EE 11.

A couple of times a year, the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee (EC) hosts a public meeting where the community can interact with the EC member. The next public EC Meeting is on December 13, 2022, at 09:00 am PT. Join the call to hear the EC members share their favorite things that happened in the Java Community in 2022.

JakartaOne Livestream 2022

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.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #153

Welcome to issue number one hundred and fifty-three of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

JakartaOne Livestream 2022 is only a couple of days away. Check out the agenda and be prepared for a full day packed with great content! If you haven’t registered yet, this is the time to do so!

Between the sessions, we will return to Studio Jakarta EE where Shabnam, Tanja, and myself will discuss the talks and other topics related to Jakarta EE. And of course, there will be time for some surprises and fun as well. The tradition of having an informal food-related competition continues. The topic for JakartaOne Livestream 2022 is Jakarta EE themed snack. So go wild with your favorite snack and tweet your contribution. Make sure to use the hashtag #JakartaOne and tag the picture with @JakartaEE and @JakartaOneConf.

This year’s JakartaOne is the fourth edition of this online conference, and true to tradition, we create these exclusive collector’s buttons for those participating. Let us know if you have all of them!

As you noticed, this issue of Hashtag Jakarta EE was fully dedicated to JakartaOne Livestream. I’ll be back with more updates on what else is going on in the vibrant Jakarta EE community next week.

We hope to see you on Tuesday!