Virtual Tour Is Biggest Project Yet For New Java Community Platform Foojay

Fifteen events are already confirmed in an ambitious virtual tour of Java User Groups across the globe, marking a strong start for new Java community platform Foojay. Foojay.io was founded last year as a vendor-neutral platform for developers who create and run applications on top of Java and OpenJDK. It is designed to provide free information on all things Java, with updated analysis, highlights, OpenJDK update release details, and command line arguments hosted on its website.

The tour offers all Java User Groups, also known as JUGs, the chance to sign up for timely, informative talks and demonstrations from the world’s most esteemed Java experts working together under the Foojay.io umbrella, all delivered virtually to their members. Each step of the tour will consist of a brief introduction to Foojay.io followed by a session of 30 minutes on a topic presented by a Foojay community member, with subject and expert speaker chosen in advance by the JUG.

The tour is taking place throughout March and April, and Foojay.io also offers technical and strategic support to JUGs when creating, marketing, and hosting the virtual events. Speakers participating include the Eclipse Foundation’s Ivar Grimstad, software development academic Dr Almas Baimagambetov, and representatives from the companies on Foojay’s inaugural advisory board — Azul, Datadog, DataStax, JFrog, Payara, and Snyk. Each speaker has provided an abstract from which JUGs can choose. This offers Java developers the opportunity to pick from a wide range of topics, spanning security, JavaFX, RaspberryPi, Cloud computing, Jakarta EE, third-party libraries, DevOps tools and more. Some of the community’s biggest groups are already involved, including 10,000 strong  non-location specific Virtual Java User Group and the Silicon Valley Java User Group. JUGs are currently signed up from across North America, Europe, Africa and South America. Applications are still open for JUGs who want to participate in the knowledge exchange.

Senior Director of Open Source Projects at Azul & Foojay Lead, Geertjan Wielenga said: “Bringing Java experts from across the ecosystem to the Java User Groups is yet another activity we’re now working on under the Foojay umbrella. Not only is the Foojay community providing a thorough and technical Java dashboard at Foojay.io, we’re providing access to a related set of great Java speakers too.”

Christian Stein, JUG Bonn Co-Lead also had this to say about the Foojay tour: “We at JUG Bonn didn’t meet in person for about an entire year – hence we’re really looking forward to assemble at the beginning of March 2021 in the realm of Java, JDK, and friends once again. Speaking of friends, without the Virtual JUG Tour initiated and organized by foojay we wouldn’t meet for months. This is just another great aspect of foojay next to dashboards, blogs, and data: supporting friends of OpenJDK.”

Please find all the topic abstracts on offer here and already confirmed talks here. If you are a JUG leader or organiser and would like to involved in the tour, please contact JFrog’s Ari Waller, Foojay’s Event Manager, and specify a time, date and preferred topic for March or April: [email protected]

Follow @foojayio on Twitter for regular highlights of new dashboards, services, and content provided by Foojay for Java developers everywhere.