FOSDEM 2022 Conference Report

FOSDEM took place February 5-6. The European-based event is one of the most significant gatherings worldwide focused on all things Open Source. Named the "Friends of OpenJDK", in recent years the event has added a devroom/track dedicated to Java. The effort is led by my friend and former colleague Geertjan Wielenga. Due to the pandemic, the 2022 event was virtual once again. I delivered a couple of talks on Jakarta EE as well as Diversity and Inclusion.

Fundamentals of Diversity and Inclusion for Technologists

I opened the second day of the conference with my newest talk titled "Fundamentals of Diversity and Inclusion for Technologists". I believe this is an overdue and critically important subject. I am very grateful to FOSDEM for accepting the talk. The reality for our industry remains that many people either have not yet started or are at the very beginning of their Diversity & Inclusion journey. This talk aims to start the conversation in earnest by explaining the basics. Concepts covered include unconscious bias, privilege, equity, allyship, covering, and microaggressions. I punctuate the topic with experiences from my own life and examples relevant to technologists. The slides for the talk are available on SpeakerDeck. The video for the talk is now posted on YouTube.

Jakarta EE: Present and Future

Later the same day, I delivered my fairly popular talk, "Jakarta EE - Present and Future". The talk is essentially a state of the union for Jakarta EE. It covers a little bit of history, context, Jakarta EE 8, Jakarta EE 9/9.1 as well as what's ahead for Jakarta EE 10. One key component of the talk is the importance and ways of direct developer contributions into Jakarta EE, if needed with help from the Jakarta EE Ambassadors. Jakarta EE 10 and the Jakarta Core Profile should bring an important set of changes including to CDI, Jakarta REST, Concurrency, Security, Faces, Batch, and Configuration. The slides for the talk are available on SpeakerDeck. The video for the talk is now posted on YouTube.

I am very happy to have had the opportunity to speak at FOSDEM. I hope to contribute again in the future.