Welcome to issue number three hundred and eighteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

As I write this, I am in Brussels for FOSDEM’26. Stay tuned for an update from this conference in a separate post shortly. Fun fact is that I am sitting in exactly the same place in the lobby of the same hotel I stayed at for FOSDEM’19 writing this post as I did for Hashtag Jakarta EE #5. I think that it was in that moment that I realised that this would be a weekly blog series.

After FOSDEM, I am headed directly to Stockholm for Jfokus 2026. Whenever I am at Jfokus, I am hosting the Jfokus 2026 Morning Run, and this year is no exception. There is no need to sign up for it. Just show up outside the venue at 7:15 on Wednesday morning.

From the discussions in the Jakarta EE Platform call the last couple of weeks, it looks like we won’t see a release of Jakarta EE 12 on this side of summer (on the Northern Hemisphere at least). The reason is that since Jakarta EE 11 was delayed by a year, most of the vendors are currently working on their implementations. Which does not leave much resources to work on the Jakarta EE 12 specifications. At the same time, we want to play catch-up with the original plan and direction directive from the Steering Committee of the Jakarta EE Working Group to release a major release of Jakarta EE 12 about six to nine months after an LTS release of Java. So a compromise will be to release Jakarta EE 12 by the end of the 2026. The deliberations are still going on, so stay tuned on more updates.

The registration for Open Community Experience 2026 has opened. I will be presenting The Past, Present, and Future of Enterprise Java at the main stage there.

Welcome to issue number three hundred and seventeen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

My first Jakarta EE presentation of 2026 was at Valencia JUG this week. This was the second time the JUG met after the restart after the pandemic. I wasn’t the only one presenting, as I was there with a couple of my colleagues at Eclipse Foundation who gave an overview of some of the areas we have projects in as well as how to get involved in open source.

In one of my demos, I used OmniAI. I really like this library for interacting with AI from Jakarta EE applications. Check out Bauke’s blog post about OmniAI.

Every major release of Jakarta EE has been given a theme, or a slogan characteristic for the release. For Jakarta EE 9, the keywords were “Lower Entry Barriers – Platform for Innovation – Easy Migration“, and for Jakarta EE 10, it was “Modernized – Simplified – Lightweight“. Jakarta EE 11 got the slogan “Developer Productivity and Performance“. When we discussed what we should use for the upcoming Jakarta EE 12 release, the choice fell on “Robust and Flexible“. This is something that fits very well with Jakarta EE, regardless of which release we are talking about, but fits very well with Jakarta EE 12 since it is now even more robust than ever, being the fourth major release since the transfer to Eclipse Foundation.

For the third time, I was among the top three percent of the most active speakers on Sessionize. In addition to an indication of me being fairly active in speaking at conferences, it also shows how Sessionize is more and more established as the preferred platform for CFP.

Welcome to issue number three hundred and sixteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

The conference speaking season is starting up again. My first talk of the year will be at Valencia JUG where I will present The Past, Present, and Future of Enterprise Java. After that, I will be attending FOSDEM in Brussels. These two events conclude my January.

In February, I will be helping out at Jfokus as a stage host before going to Johannesburg to speak at JakartaOne by Jozi-JUG. While I am in South Africa, I am pleased that Bruno Souza will visit Malmö and present at Javaforum Malmö. Then I will speak at DeveloperWeek in San Jose and ConFoo in Montreal.

Use this link for a free OPEN Pass to DevelopeWeek 2026 ($195 value).

The Jakarta EE Platform project is working toward Milestone 2 of Jakarta EE 12. The milestone date is January 27, 2026. Check out the progress here and be sure to check out the minutes from the weekly platform call if you aren’t able to attend.

The videos from JakartaOne Livestream 2025 are published. Check them out at https://jakartaone.jakarta.ee/2025

Welcome to issue number three hundred and fifteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

The 27th of January, the date for Milestone 2 of Jakarta EE 12, is fast approaching. You can check out the status on the Jakarta EE 12 GitHub planning board. As you can see, there is still a lot of work to be done in order to get all the specifications past Milestone 2. My guess is that most of the work will be carried out in the last week before the deadline, as it was done with Milestone 1 last year. If you want to avoid this stress and you have some time over, now is the time to look at what your favorite specification needs to do before January 27 for it to be a part of Milestone 2.

I am happy to announce that Bruno Souza will visit Malmö and speak at Javaforum on February 10 at Foo Café. He will talk about how The Reputation Formula can help you turbocharge your career.

Welcome to issue number three hundred and fourteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

Happy New Year!

My first post of 2026 will be very similar to the last of 2025. I hope everyone has had a wonderful couple of weeks of time during the Holidays. The first Jakarta EE Platform call will be on Tuesday, January 6. All meeting minutes for 2025 have been published. Check them out if you want to update yourself on the discussions. In total, we had 46 meetings last year.

By the way, when I asked Copilot to calculate the number of meetings, it gave me 49. When I pointed out that I got 46, it changed its mind and agreed. Gemini gave me 44 with the same prompt, but when I pointed out that it should be 46, it insisted on it being right and that I was wrong. It turned out that it had ignored the meetings in December. So I guess it was operating on old data, even if it was provided a fresh link. The joy of fact-checking Artificial Intelligence continues in 2026…

Welcome to issue number three hundred and thirteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

This is the last Hashtag Jakarta EE of 2025. It is also a pretty short one since it is in the midst of the Holidays. A fun fact is that 313 (the number of this Hashtag) is the license plate number on Donald Duck’s car.

We will be back with the Jakarta EE Platform call on January 6. Until then, check out this post by Lenny Primak about how he was able to run a 20-year-old application on modern Jakarta EE 11 without much effort.