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:
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.
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.
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.
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 🙂
The second stop of the North America JUG Tour 2023 was Garden State JUG in New Jersey.
Gerrit first did a talk about navigating the JVM landscape. Then I did a talk about Jakarta EE 10 where I introduced two brand new demos. One was using preview features of Java 21 which was well timed since Java 21 was released yesterday. The other demo used a beta for the new Jakarta Data specification in Jakarta EE 11. Both went well. I just had to google how to set up compiling with preview features in Maven on the fly since I did a git checkout . right before the talk and had forgotten to commit my new changes. Google to the rescue…
The first stop on the North America JUG Tour 2023 was Columbus where we visited the Central Ohio Java User Group. The meetup was hosted at the office of Manifest Solutions and the turnout was around 30-40 people. I admit I didn’t count, but that’s the feeling. There were also a couple attending online.
Gerrit talked about vulnerabilities in Java and how to secure your build chain. A topic that is extremely relevant and spurred some good discussions. I did a talk on how to migrate from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with a focus on the impact of the namespace change made in Jakarta EE 9. I also showed how to leverage Jakarta EE 10 features in Spring applications. My slides are available on SpeakerDeck.
No rest for the brave! Today we are continuing our journey with a visit to New Jersey and the Garden State Java User Group.
Welcome to issue number one hundred and ninety-four of Hashtag Jakarta EE!
It has been a busy week for me. First, I went to Las Vegas for IBM TechXchange 2023. Less than two hours after my talk ended, my flight took off for New York and the JCP Executive Committee Face-to-Face meeting. Good thing the airport in Las Vegas is very close to the MGM Grand.
And, always time for a morning run, New York no exception. My run this morning went through Battery Park and then the up boardwalk along the Hudson River before heading back to my hotel. Nice views and great to see the city waking up to a new day.
Writing this, I am at Newark International Airport waiting for my flight to Columbus where I will meet up with Gerrit to go on our five JUGs in five days tour of North America.
The work with Jakarta EE 11 moves forward. In the platform call last week, we spent a great deal of time discussing a milestone release of Jakarta EE 11 before the end of the year. We even discussed setting up a release train with milestone releases with a fixed cadence. I really like this approach. The individual component specifications could opt-in to releasing a milestone to any or all of these. Whatever is ready will be released. Of course, the dependencies between some of the specifications would have to be managed somehow, but I think this is achievable.
The inaugural IBM TechXchange occurred at MGM Grand in Las Vegas from September 11 to September 14 with a respectable attendee count of somewhere around 3000.
I was invited to speak there and did a talk with Emily as a co-speaker. It would be an exaggeration to claim that the talk was well attended, but those who showed up got a very interactive session presented with lots of code samples and questions answered. The slides are, as always available on my SpeakerDeck.
Wherever Emily shows up, there will be morning runs, and IBM TechXchange 2023 was no exception. Running in the morning is the key in Las Vegas when the temperatures are at 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit).
The social activity on Tuesday was at Topgolf, where we could enjoy some food and try out our swings. I was happy to hit the ball a couple of times, but it was great fun nevertheless.
Welcome to issue number one hundred and ninety-three of Hashtag Jakarta EE!
Last week’s trip to Amsterdam and the Picnic Java Meetup was a success. Next up is IBM TechXchange in Las Vegas. While I am on the other side of the Atlantic, I am going to have a pretty busy schedule. Directly after IBM TechXchange, I am headed to New York for the second JCP EC face-to-face meeting of 2023.
I hope you will join us if you are anywhere in the area of these JUGs on these dates. It is an excellent opportunity to listen to a couple of great talks, ask questions, discuss, and network with your local community.
Talking about community, don’t forget to register for Community Day for Java Developers at EclipseCon on October 16. Take a look at the program. I am pretty sure you will find some interesting talks. And fall this for only €40. There are still some additional talks that will be added to the program in the following days.
I initiated my Fall 2023 Conference season with a short trip to Amsterdam to speak at Picnic Java Meetup. There were two talks on related topics. I did a talk on how to migrate from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3, focusing on the part Jakarta EE plays in that. The other talk was by Pieter Dirk Soels, and he gave an overview of Picnic’s experiences with the migration. Check out his write-up from the event. The slides from my talk are available on SpeakerDeck.
There were somewhere around 50-60 people who showed up for the event, despite the unsuspected summer temperatures heating up Amsterdam this early September evening. All in all a great turnout, and a great event with good questions and discussions with the attendees. And of course, (Dutch) fries with mayonnaise.
