JakartaOne Livestream Wrap up
September 10, 2019 was a big day in Jakarta EE global circles. We released the first version of Jakarta EE, and we held the first JakartaOne Livestream conference. It was a very ambitious undertaking, but what an experience it was!
The intention of the JakartaOne Livestream conference was to mark an important milestone, the release of the first vendor-neutral, Java EE 8-compatible release of Jakarta EE following the new Jakarta EE Specification Process.
Almost two years after Oracle announced it would contribute Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation, we finally have a base-level release that will enable developers to easily and seamlessly move existing Java EE 8-certified products to the Jakarta EE 8 release. The release is the result of cross-community collaboration at the Eclipse Foundation. Jakarta EE 8 uses the same APIs and javax namespace as Java EE 8, its Jakarta EE 8 technology compatibility kits (TCKs) are fully compatible with Java EE 8 TCKs, and a compatibility and branding process is available to certify compatible products.
An Enthusiastic Response From the Start
It was very obvious from the beginning that this event would be bigger than we expected. Here’s why. We approached a few, well-respected leaders in the Java EE community to join the JakartaOne Livestream Program Committee. What a thrill that was! Reza Rahman graciously accepted the role of Program Committee Chair, and was supported by an equally eager and interested group of committee members: Adam Bien, Ivar Grimstad, Arun Gupta, Josh Juneau , and from the Eclipse Foundation, Tanja Obradovic. It was a great pleasure working with this team.
We started working on the conference in early June. Because all members had busy schedules and summer vacations, we made the most of the time we had to develop a plan and put out a call for papers (CFP) for the conference.
The response to our CFP was another indicator of the wider community’s interest in an event such as this one. We received more than 50 high-quality submissions, making it a difficult task to select the best ones. With Reza’s help, we settled on the sessions listed here at jakartaone.org along with links to the session recordings.
Excellent Participation, Interesting Sessions
Participants enjoyed a great mixture of introductory and overview sessions, including sessions on particular specifications, cloud native topics, keynotes from Mike Milinkovich and James Gosling, as well as industry keynotes from Jakarta EE Working Group Steering Committee members IBM, Fujitsu, Oracle, Payara, Red Hat, and Tomitribe, along with demos and panel discussions.
We selected 16 submissions, which resulted in 18 hours of program material including keynote addresses and panel discussions. Adam Bien was the event MC and I was available to help out.
A Resounding Success
You may call it beginner's luck, but on the day of the event, we had well over 1,350 registered attendees, and a number of questions on the chat were almost immediately answered by others in the community.
The positive spirit and sense of the community coming together were overwhelming, illustrating the true power of open source. With very few technical difficulties, sessions ran smoothly one after another, and even when we did have issues, Reza Rahman was available to save the day yet again with an additional Q&A session.
Leaving the best for last, in terms of running the event, the work of the Eclipse Foundation team was impressive, to say the least. I could not ask for better support than working with Stephanie Swart, Laura Tran, and Shabnam Mayel. Their level of dedication, professionalism, and readiness to improvise to deal with issues that arose was amazing. And this was the first conference any of us has worked on! Let’s take a deep breath and enjoy the success for another moment before we start working on the next Jakarta EE release.
About the Author
Jakarta EE Program Manager