Community Over Code 2024

This was my second time speaking at Community Over Code – The ASF Conference. It is a very community oriented conference that is centered around the Apache Software Foundation’s portfolio of projects. The conference moves around from city to city, and this time the location was Denver, Colorado.

It was my first visit to Denver, and I really enjoyed walking around in the city. It has a pleasant relaxed vibe with lots of options for lunch and dinner. It will be interesting to see if my five days at 1600m altitude will have any effect when I go for a run when I get home at sea level.

I had three talks at the conference this year. The first one Jakarta EE meets AI with the subtitle Integrating AI in Your Enterprise Java Applications is very demo centric and fun to do. It wasn’t directly related to an ASF projects, so it was sort of the odd duck on the program.

My second talk was more tailored to the audience with the title Jakarta EE – As Seen Through the Lens of the ASF. I thought I was being clever when I switched the color of the specifications from Jakarta EE Blue (hex 1B208B) to ASF Red (hex D22128) as I went through them, but discovered toward the end of the talk that it looked a little too much like a map of an upcoming election… In my third talk I switched to using ASF Feather Purple (hex 662F8F).

My third talk was Why I Choose Apache NetBeans for Jakarta EE. In this talk I demoed the amazing tooling that NetBeans offer for Jakarta EE. I even learned about some new ones while researching the talk. The Jeddict AI Assistant is pretty awesome and may be a reason alone to switch to NetBeans. Rather than charging a monthly subscription as most of the other AI assistants do, you just supply your OpenAI API key in the settings. Which means that you only pay for what you actually use.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #249

Welcome to issue number two hundred and forty-nine of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

At the beginning of this week, on October 1st, I celebrated my 5-year anniversary at Eclipse Foundation. It’s been quite a ride and I am looking forward to the next five years, and more. The week was spent in Marrakech where I spoke at Devoxx Morocco for the seventh time. Right now, I am in Denver for The ASFs Community Over Code. I have three talks on the agenda, all with variations around Jakarta EE including AI, tooling, and how much the ASF projects contributes to the Jakarta EE ecosystem with implementations or work on specifications.

In about two weeks, it is time for Open Community for Java in Mainz, Germany. If you haven’t registered yet, do so now to get the best price. In addition to speaking, I will also facilitate a coding lounge, help out at our booths, and be part of the team making sure the speakers have all they need for their talks.

Devoxx Morocco 2024

Including JMaghreb 3.0 in 2014, this was my seventh time speaking at Devoxx Morocco. Four times in Casablanca, twice in Agadir, and this year in Marrakech. This conference has such a great vibe no matter which location they choose to run it. The community is amazing and very engaged by asking lots of questions in the talks and in the hallway between talks.

The venue in Marrakech was great with properly adjusted air-conditioning, a nice pool area, and an excellent buffet lunch restaurant. Before the second day, a group of eager morning runners met for a 5K run before breakfast.

My talk this year was A Journey of Contribution and Collaboration in Open Source. This is a non-technical, inspirational talk for getting more developers to get involved in Open Source. It is a pleasant talk to do and it is pretty timeless, so I will continue submitting it to conferences as long as there is interest in the subject.

Celebrating 5 Years at Eclipse Foundation

I joined the Eclipse Foundation five years ago as the Jakarta EE Developer Advocate. Time flies when you’re having a good time, and I certainly enjoy what I do. Being able to serve the community in the company of great colleagues certainly is a very good place to be.

During the five years, I have traveled nearly half a million miles *) around the world to engage with the community and speak at conferences and Java User Group events.
*) If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, this number would most likely have been a lot higher.

In addition to speaking at conferences and events, I have also produced nearly 500 blog posts during these five years. You can read them all here or on the Eclipse Foundation blog aggregator. I have also authored numerous articles and videos as well as a Jakarta EE Overview course on LinkedIn Learning. Another thing I did as soon as I joined Eclipse Foundation was to establish the weekly Jakarta EE Platform call. Since then I have meticulously been publishing the meeting minutes on the Jakarta EE Platform project’s web page. Check out the entire list.

The first event I spoke at after joining Eclipse Foundation in 2019 was EclipseCon Europe. The conference became EclipseCon after that, and this year it is rebranded to Open Community Experience where I will be speaking as well as helping out with the logistics for the co-located event Open Community for Java. I hope to see as many of you there as possible. The reduced price is still available until October 7, so go ahead an register now if you haven’t done so already.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #248

Welcome to issue number two hundred and forty-eight of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

I have had a little more than a week at home now (8 days to be exact). The next time I will have this many days in my own bed will be in December. I have speaking engagements planned for every week in October and November. Most of them are in Europe, but I will also go to North America a couple of times, as well as Africa and Asia. See the complete list here.

The Jakarta EE Core Profile TCK is significantly smaller than the Platform and Web Profile, and all parts of it are already refactored. As soon as there is an implementation that passes the TCK and files a certification request, the Jakarta EE Platform project will initiate the release process with this implementation as the ratifying one. Currently, it looks like both Open Liberty and WildFly will be able to do this shortly.

Check out the Project Board for the refactoring of the Jakarta EE Platform TCK for details. And sign up for an issue if you’re able to help out.

The JCP Newsletter is back after 15 years. Check out the September edition to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in the Java Community Process. This month’s newsletter also contains links to information about the upcoming elections for the JCP Executive Committee.

If you haven’t registered for Open Community for Java yet, click here to do it right away. The early bird has been extended to October 7, but don’t wait until the last minute. Secure your spot today!

Hashtag Jakarta EE #247

Welcome to issue number two hundred and forty-seven of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

A lot of CFPs for conferences are closing around these days, so make sure you submit to have a chance to speak at these events. Here are a couple of them that come to mind: JavaLand – September 25, JakartaOne Livestream – September 25, Jfokus – September 30, GIDS – September 30, JavaOne – October 10. Also, check out https://javaconferences.org/ for a more exhaustive list.

If you’re not prone to speaking, you can of course attend a conference, or more. One that I would recommend you to check out is Open Community for Java in Mainz, Germany from October 22 to October 24. I will be speaking there!

The refactoring efforts of the Jakarta EE Platform TCK are moving along. There is not a final date yet, but it looks like sometime in the mid-to-end of November is realistic. There could potentially be a big release party at JakartaOne Livestream.

A DRAFT of the plan for Jakarta EE 12 is in the works. The plan is to aim for a release of Jakarta EE 12 in the first half of 2026. Worth noticing is that implementations of Jakarta EE 12 must be certified on either Java 21 or Java 25, or both. Targeting two Java versions like this is consistent with the way it has been done since Jakarta EE 9.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #246

Welcome to issue number two hundred and forty-six of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

This week was all about visiting Java User Groups for me. Speaking at four JUGs in four different cities, in four different states in four days involves a lot of travel. And a lot of pizza. The standard menu for JUG meetings is pizza, so that meant pizza for dinner the whole week. After the four JUGs, I ended the week at the first edition of Jalapeño in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. My itinerary for the week looked like this:

CPH ✈️ ATL, ATL ✈️ RDU, RDU ✈️ ATL ✈️ JAX, JAX ✈️ ATL ✈️ DAL, DAL ✈️ ATL ✈️ STL, STL ✈️ ATL ✈️ PVR

For each of the events, I wrote a short blog post that you can find here:

Triangle JUG
Jax JUG
JavaMUG
St Louis JUG

Due to traveling, I was not able to join the Jakarta EE Platform call this week. But from what I can see in the meeting minutes, it was a productive call. I will be back next week with more details as well as a travel report from Jalapeño.

Gateway JUG 2024

The fourth stop on the US South JUG Tour 2024 with Jakarta EE as at the event at the St. Louis Java User Group. I did the Jakarta EE 11 presentation sprinkled with a couple of AI demos here as well. The St. Louis JUG currently runs their events as hybrid events with about 70 percent of the participants present and the rest online. All talks are recorded and published shortly after the event.

The St. Louis Java User Group have events every second Thursday of the Month. There is always a half hour with pizza and mingle before the talks. If you are a Java developer in the St. Louis area, you should definitely connect with this group and attend the events.

JavaMUG 2024

Third stop on the US South JUG Tour 2024 with Jakarta EE was Dallas and JavaMUG. This time I had chosen a hotel within walking distance from the venue. At least for a Norwegian. I am not so sure if 30 min walk is considered walking distance in Texas, but you never know so I decided walking. The distance is certainly not a problem, but it turned out that there were no sidewalks so I ended out walking partly in the street and partly on the grass next to it. Going back to the hotel after the event, I ended up getting an Uber.

At the JavaMUG event, I did the talk where I go through everything new in Jakarta EE 11 to show how you can boost your performance and developer productivity with this release. I even added a couple of the AI demos from the previous two days as well.

The crowd at the JavaMUG event was very friendly, asked a lot of good questions, and showed great interest in participating in Open Source. The venue is great, pizza delicious, and I would definitely come back later should I get the opportunity.

If you are a Java developer in the Dallas area, I strongly suggest to check out the events at JavaMUG. They meet monthly on the second Wednesday of the month, and features an amazing lineup of speakers. This is the place to be if you want to increase your network and create a solid foundation for your career.

JaxJUG 2024

The second stop of the US South JUG Tour 2024 with Jakarta EE was Jacksonville Java User Group, or JaxJUG, for short. This time, I was very careful making sure that the address I gave to the Uber was the correct one and made it to the venue 10 minutes before the pizza arrived. Perfect timing!

I did the same Jakarta EE meets AI presentation here, and it was received equally well. I think I am on to something with this talk. It is very simple, and the demo has a nice progression making it easy to follow.

I was not the only speaker at this event. Ed Burns from Microsoft drove up from Orlando to give a talk as well. At the end of his presentation, he gave a pre-announcement of the General Availability of Java experiences on Azure Container Apps. Check it out, and see how easy it is to run your Java workloads in a cloud environment. It pays out to be attending JUG events. Sometimes you get the announcements before the general public. Join your local JUG, and if you really want to enhance your career, get engaged and help out organizing events!