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.

This year, we are expanding the Community Day concept at EclipseCon with Community for Java Developers. It is a full day filled with talks, demos, and discussions in two tracks with a focus on open-source, vendor-neutral technologies in the Java space.

All this for €40 ONLY!

(If you are attending EclipseCon, you can add the Community Day pass for only €25)

Community Day for Java Developers is scheduled for Monday, October 16 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Take this opportunity to visit this beautiful city, conveniently located just 12 kilometers north of Stuttgart in Southwestern Germany.

GOTO Amsterdam 2023 was a really great experience! It was my first time speaking at a GOTO conference. In addition to Amsterdam, the GOTO conferences are organized in Chicago, Aarhus, and Copenhagen.

The venue, Beurs van Berlage is absolutely stunning. And the food is in the top tier of conference food. Usually, not a very hard list to climb on, but GOTO Amsterdam is definitely among the best.

My talk about Jakarta EE 10 with an additional demo of how to cope with the javax.* to jakarta.* namespace change in Spring was well attended. Check out the slides here.

As always when I go to conferences, I bring my running shoes and invite everyone to join me for a morning run. This time was no exception. Holly and I did a 5K run along the streets of Amsterdam in the light drizzling rain. Holly forgot her socks, so luckily I brought her a pair.

With inspiration and training from Alina, I am becoming quite the Instagrammer. Check out the story from GOTO Amsterdam 2023.

My talk Modern and Lightweight Cloud Application Development with Jakarta EE 10 went well. I had a lot of demos and even added an extra demo right before the talk. Check out the slides on SpeakerDeck.

No conference without #runWithJakartaEE. JPrime was no exception. We had a morning run before each of the two conference days in addition to the day after the conference. The runners were Yarden, Emily, Grace, Heinz, Tagir, and me as you can see in the gallery below.

Devoxx Greece 2023 was the first time Devoxx was arranged in Greece. The conference has been around for a couple of years as Voxxed Days Athens and stepped up to become a part of the Devoxx family this year. The 1200 attendees show that this was the right step to take. About 25 percent of the attendees came from other countries making it a true international conference.

The venue is very flexible and was just about right-scaled for this year’s number of attendees. With the option of taking more and bigger rooms in use, it has the possibility to scale for future events.

I had a packed room with standing room only for my talk titled Develop Modern and Lightweight Cloud Applications with Jakarta EE 10.

Thanks to Donald Raab for taking this photo of me in front of the Acropolis during the walking tour that was organized for the speakers that arrived the day before the conference.

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 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.

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