Richard Fichtner at JavaOne Las Vegas on Building the Java Community
Jim Grisanzio with Richard Fichtner
Duke’s Corner Podcast — November 11, 2022
Duke’s Corner Podcast with Java developer Richard Fichtner at JavaOne Las Vegas 2022 about building the Java community and what Richard loves about Java.
https://dukescorner.libsyn.com/richard-fichtner-at-javaone-las-vegas-on-building-the-java-community
Transcript
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Hey, it’s Jim.
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Welcome back to Duke’s Corner.
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So this is the third interview I have here from Java 1 in Las Vegas, and this is with Richard Fichtner.
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And the story here is I just met him at lunch one day.
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He seemed like a really interesting guy, so I got to get a camera in front of him and see what’s up.
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Now, he obviously is well-known in the community.
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It’s just that I don’t know everybody.
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So at the conference, I’m meeting everybody, a lot of people, anybody new.
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And so anyway, good conversation.
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He’s from Germany.
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He runs Java User Group there.
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And they do local events as well as entire conferences.
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And in this quick conversation, we talk about Java 1.
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We talk about the things he loves about Java.
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And yeah, so enjoy it.
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And we’ve got a few more to go.
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And we’ll talk to you soon.
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Sure.
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Sure, let’s do it.
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Okay.
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Hey, everybody.
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This is Jim Grisanzio from the Java Developer Relations team,
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and we’re here at Java 1 in Las Vegas inside the pavilion,
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and I’m here with Richard.
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Richard, I met yesterday at lunch just randomly, and so I wanted to have a chat with him.
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Richard, welcome.
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Welcome to the program.
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Yeah, thank you, Jim.
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Hey, nice to meet you.
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That’s what I like about Java conferences,
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especially Java 1,
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of course,
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that you can meet people you’ve never met before.
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I learned yesterday that you moved to Japan, so this is great.
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So meeting people from Japan usually don’t happen in Las Vegas, but this just happened.
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No, this is Vegas, yeah, right?
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Exactly, exactly.
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So tell me, let’s just, you know, we just met for the first time, so I don’t know anything about you.
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So,
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but first,
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first,
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you know,
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give me some impressions of the conference and then a little bit about you.
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Yeah, sure.
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So far, it’s great.
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Met a lot of people, had a lot of good talks.
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We went out to have some drinks yesterday, hit the casinos, so lost a lot of money, you know.
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So you actually gambled?
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We gambled a bit, but we won, we lost, but we quit.
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I think that’s the right time, so still fun.
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Yeah.
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So where are you from?
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So I’m from Germany.
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My name is Richard Fickner.
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Twitter handle is Richard Fickner.
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It’s my name.
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I’m the leader of the Java user group in Oberpfalz, which is a small part of Germany.
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But we organize a well-known Java conference.
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It’s called JCon.
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We ran it three weeks ago in a virtual event.
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It had 2,600 attendees from 82 countries.
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It was a great show we put on.
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So I love Java community.
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This is what I do, what I love.
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And that’s what I’m here for, connect to people and exchange ideas.
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So this is going to be a great opportunity here to come here to Las Vegas and talk
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to all the people that built the stuff that we are using every day.
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And so this is like the one special thing I think that Java does better than JCon.
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You got the Oracle folks here.
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So if you want to talk to them, you got to come here.
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Excellent.
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So we talked a little bit about the community.
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Talk a little bit about Java, the technology.
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What makes it special?
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Yeah, there’s so much things going on right now.
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So one of my key projects that I’m working on right now is have a way to find a way
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to scale Java to zero because I see a lot of applications running all the time and
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I don’t think this is necessary.
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I was looking at the space and there is so much great solutions.
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There’s not yet a really good fit,
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but so much things going on and moving that were not moving a few years ago.
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So,
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for example,
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GrowlVM,
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Project Layton with the great startup times,
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also Crack,
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the coordinated snapshots and the restores of the snapshots going on.
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There’s so much cloud solutions to support Java as a first-class citizens.
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So this is so great, and it’s so much new stuff.
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So when I think back a few years ago, this wasn’t there, nothing.
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And so this is a really exciting time to be a Java developer,
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and I cannot tell you how often I hear when I go somewhere and I say,
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hey,
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I’ll do Java,
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and they’re like,
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Java is that,
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and I’m like,
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no,
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it’s not that.
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It’s alive and kicking, you know?
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Is this your first Java one?
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No,
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it’s actually my almost 10th Java 1,
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so my first Java 1 was in 2012,
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but there were some years where there was just Oracle Code 1,
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and then of course there was the pandemic,
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but this is the 10-year anniversary of having this event with a small pause where
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there was no event.
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Do you have a favorite memory from any of the previous conferences?
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Oh, it’s hard to have one.
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So, of course, there was Elton John.
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There was one Oracle Cloud or Oracle Open World then party where there was Elton John.
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This one was really great.
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I love this one.
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But from a technology perspective, there were talks that really were fantastic.
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I remember one talk from Adam Bean.
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I think it was in 2014 where he talked about Docker containers.
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And back then, Docker was not a big thing.
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And this was an eye-opener for me.
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So, yeah, I guess I go with this one.
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Excellent.
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Okay, Richard, well, thank you very much for stopping by.
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It was great meeting you.
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And enjoy the rest of the conference.
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This is only day two, so we have tomorrow as well, all day tomorrow.
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And, yeah, cool.
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And we’ll see you around.
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Thanks.
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See you guys later.