Raible Designs

A Delightful Trip to Devnexus

Devnexus is one of my favorite conferences in the world. I have many fond memories of attending over the years and some awkward ones, too. My first memory is when Micah Silverman and I worked at a Stormpath booth there in February 2017. Okta had just acquihired us and we weren't allowed to talk about it. We encouraged folks to sign up for our service even though we knew signups would shut down at the end of the week.

It's funny how life comes full circle. My employment with Okta officially ended the week before this year's Devnexus. I tried to cancel my talk when I first got the news, but Vincent and Pratik convinced me to go, and I knew it would be good for networking. I'm glad I did because I had a blast! It all started on Monday, April 8th.

I was in a tremendously good mood when I took this photo. I was sporting a new DU hat in anticipation of their NCAA Frozen Four victory the following weekend. And I was on my way to what seemed like a college reunion. I've been a part of the Java community for over 20 years, and many of the speakers are old friends whom I've made a lot of memories with.

Tuesday, April 9

The first day started off with a JUG Leaders Summit. The two presentations I really enjoyed were from Jorge Cajas and Ari Waller. Jorges talked about getting students and younger people involved in JUGs (Java User Groups) and encouraged beginner talks.

The Denver JUG used to have two talks at every meeting. The first was a basic concepts talk, and the second was more advanced. Over the years, we did away with the first talk in favor of one main talk and more networking afterward. Jorges pointed out we often expect developers to know Java frameworks when many of the younger developers have never used them.

Ari talked about an AJUG initiative to support qualified global JUGs by providing a paid Meetup Pro account. This is also part of an effort to bring visibility to the greater Java community and it will be called the Devnexus Java Community Meetup Pro Network. I'll update this post when I have more information.

That afternoon, we had a Java Champions Summit. We discussed many topics, and we've since scheduled more time to talk virtually later this month. The photo below from Ken Fogel captures that we had a lot of Java leaders in attendance!

Wednesday, April 10

Pratik and Vincent kicked off the <dev/>olution on Wednesday morning. Amazingly, they've been doing it for 20 years!

I did an interview with Baruch Sadogursky at Gradle's Build Propulsion Lab after the opening keynote. We talked about developer productivity, open source, Develocity, and JHipster.

I also did an interview with Melissa McKay at the DevOps Speakeasy. We talked about my session, Micro Frontends for Java Microservices.

That afternoon, Sharat Chander's keynote about moving Java forward together contained wisdom he learned from his father.

I talked with Sean Phillips the night before. He dazzled me with his enthusiasm for fighting back against bad actors with his Trinity project. I was not disappointed during his talk and thoroughly enjoyed all my conversations with him and his lovely wife.

Seeing so many old friends at the conference before the social activities that evening was awesome.

Thursday, April 11

I prepped for my talk Thursday morning, practiced my demo, and dressed up as an old-fashioned Java developer. My talk had a full room and I finished right on time. The demo worked flawlessly, so I was quite pleased. You can find my presentation on Speaker Deck.

That afternoon, I hung out with Josh Long and met Chris Bono. We had cocktails at White Oak and had a fun time talking about Spring, life, and our fantastic children. From there, I reunited with former colleagues Brian Demers, Randall Degges, Micah Silverman, and others at Cuts Steakhouse. I sat next to Jonathan Schneider from OpenRewrite and learned a lot. I was impressed to learn that OpenRewrite is used to upgrade applications between major releases, and some folks have used it to migrate from one Java framework to another.

Friday, April 12

The conference ended on Thursday, and Friday was a designated Speaker Day. We gathered at Cabbagetown Park for a few hours of volleyball, reminiscing, and recovering from the week of intense social activities. That evening, we headed to The Painted Duck for some duckpin bowling. It was a lot harder than regular bowling, yet fun was had by all.

If you ever get a chance to attend or speak at Devnexus, I highly recommend it. It's a well-run show, and the community vibe is wonderful. Thank you, Pratik, Vincent, and the Atlanta JUG team!