JavaOne 2012/Joining Oracle

I had two sessions at JavaOne this year. One was a solo talk on the CDI ecosystem. It was well-attended and I got excellent feedback on it. The other was a joint talk with my fellow co-author Ryan Cuprak on Java EE tooling support. The talk went very well as well considering we had stiff competition from other very good Java EE talks.

JavaOne this year was different for me in a very significant way -- I did not present as an indepenent this year but as an Oracle employee! In fact, the first day of JavaOne was my first day as an Oracle employee. I was invited to join Oracle as Java EE/GlassFish evangelist alongside the likes of Arun Gupta (Arun introduced me to the community at the Sunday GlassFish community event).

The decision to join was by no means an easy one as I've always seen myself as an engineer and a consultant. And the truth is that some of the connotations of the evangelist title has always made me cringe a little even with shining examples like Apple's Steve Jobs/Guy Kawasaki, Googles' Vint Cerf and Microsoft's Vinod Kumar who bear little resemblance to either religious zealots or mercenary salesmen. I also cannot honestly say I have no reservations about Oracle as a company.

I took on the opportunity because I believe I can really make a difference for the community in this role and help advance Java as an insider in the truest sense. As Oracle seems to understand, as the new stewards of Java, Oracle needs more people from the community like me working inside their walls. As a very nice side effect, this also helps me reclaim some of my personal time by essentially turning what I had been doing for some years on my own time into my actual job...

In the spirit of merging ones hobby/adopted cause/personal time with one's profession, I likely won't be maintaining this blog going forward much. Instead, I'll be reaching out to the community via my official Oracle blog here as well as the the Aquarium blog.

All views voiced are my own, not necessarily Oracle's.

Arquillian Talk at the Atlanta JUG

On August 19th I spoke at the Atlanta JUG -- one of the biggest JUGs in the east coast and the sponsors of the popular DevNexus conference. I gave my Arquillian/Java EE 6 testing talk. The attendance was great as was the participation. I am hoping I'll get to come back to Altanta again for DevNexus. I've been to Atlanta before, but it always amazes me what a sprawling metropolis Atlanta is!

Arquillian Talk at Twin Cities JUG

I did a talk on Arquillian/Java EE 6 testing at the Twin Cities JUG on May 14th. The attendance was moderate but I had some pretty good discussions afterwards. This was my first JUG talk in the mid-West so it was interesting. While I was there, I got to check out the iconic Mall of America.

JCP Talk at Marylad JUG

On January 18th, I went back to speak at the Maryland JUG once again -- this time talking about the JCP. Even despite the fact that this wasn't a technical talk per se, the atttenance was great as was the participation. I really enjoy speaking at this JUG and the JUG leaders are doing a great job growing this JUG.

CDI Talk at Dallas JUG

On January 11, I spoke at the Dallas JUG -- I gave my CDI demo/tour. This was my first talk so far down South so it was exciting. The talk went great and the crowd was fantastic. I got a chance to look around Dallas a bit. I never realized exactly how metropolitan this part of Texas has become! I look forward to speaking at the JUG again some time...

Seam 3 Talk at Maryland JUG

I did my CDI/Seam 3 talk at the Maryland JUG on 17th August, 2011. The JUG was great and it had excellent active participation. I hope to speak there again soon.