Brian Vermeer at JavaOne on Keeping the Community Thriving
Jim Grisanzio and Brian Vermeer
Duke’s Corner Podcast — December 8, 2022
Duke’s Corner Podcast with Java Champion Brian Vermeer at JavaOne Las Vegas 2022 about the thriving Java community in The Netherlands, how to keep the Java community growing globally, and his thoughts on becoming a developer.
https://dukescorner.libsyn.com/brian-vermeer-at-javaone-on-keeping-the-community-thriving
Transcript:
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hey it’s Jim welcome back to duke’s corner so continuing our series here from java
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one this is with a conversation with brian Vermeer from the Netherlands i met brian
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for the first time at the conference it’s really great meeting people for the first
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time just kind of introducing yourself and having a very casual conversation very
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much off the cuff so yep so there’s one more to come after this but for now hope
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you enjoy the conversation with brian from the Netherlands talk to you soon bye
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Hey, everybody.
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This is Jim Grisanzio from the Java Developer Relations team at Oracle.
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And we’re at the end of the day here on day three of Java 1 in Las Vegas.
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And I’m here with Brian Vermeer.
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Brian, welcome.
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Hey, Jim.
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Thanks for having me.
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It’s great to see you here.
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This is the first time I’ve actually met you live, I think.
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I’ve actually been following you on Twitter for a while.
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So you’re from the Netherlands?
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I am, I am, absolutely.
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So what’s going on in the Netherlands with the Java community?
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Well, the Java community is quite bright in the Netherlands.
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I mean, we have the NLJUG, which I’m part of.
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I’m one of the leaders of the NLJUG, which is the national Java user group.
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And then we have a bunch of local Java user groups bound to cities like Amsterdam,
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Rotterdam,
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Utrecht,
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Arnhem,
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that kind of thing.
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And we have different purposes.
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So that’s how we currently currently roll.
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So it’s kind of big then.
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It is kind of big.
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Like within the NLJUG, the Netherlands Java User Community, we have like 4,500 members.
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And I mean, the country is not that big.
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You can drive from up north to down south in approximately three hours.
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So that gives a lot.
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Many, many states in here in the United States are bigger than that.
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But yeah, it’s a bright community.
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So it is quite big and it is very, very active.
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Actually,
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I was just going to mention that because I remember in 2019 in San Francisco,
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at one of the community events,
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all you guys showed up in your jerseys and everything,
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and you stole the show.
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Actually, I think that was during the community keynote.
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So that was very active.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Like we did at a couple of years in San Francisco while we were there.
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And it turned out that a lot of companies sent their people over and all these
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companies had all their all these all these folks were NLJUG members.
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And then we found out like, hey, what if we
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put everybody in an orange jersey with the NLJUG logo on it and try to stand out in the crowd.
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So we had that separate section with the big orange group making noise and just
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being present and to show that the Netherlands has a lot of love for Java and the
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Java community.
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I remember I got a lot of pictures.
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I just didn’t know who you guys were.
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So who are these guys?
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What are they doing?
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So this particular conference is just about wrapping up now.
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So how’s it gone for you?
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went it went quite well i mean i didn’t honestly i didn’t know what to expect uh
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but i was pleasantly surprised with how things are arranged how the how the venue
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is the venue is great i mean it’s great it’s it’s in my opinion is better than we
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had before in san francisco so that is a good one uh and i hope that next year it
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can be can be bigger and better and more people will be able to travel here uh and
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i guess it’s still a thing with covet that some people might be afraid to get into
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large crowds which i understand
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But I hope that we’ll tune up next year and that we have a bigger and better Java 1 again.
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But it’s good to be here.
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So I noticed that you were in the community keynote,
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which was the wrap-up session there,
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in terms of the keynote wrap-up.
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And you were also in, a few days ago, the Java Leaders Summit as well.
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And so can you give me a sense of some of the conversations that you’ve been having
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this week with really whoever?
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Yeah, I think the first conversation was like, hey, good to see each other again.
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Good to be here back in real life.
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I saw a bunch of folks already back in European conferences.
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But for instance, Bruno Souza and folks from Southern America, you don’t see them that much.
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And now this is the whole Java leaders community back together again.
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So that was great just to see how people are doing now.
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what they have been doing over the last couple of years, but also how we can make Java better.
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I think one of the main questions during the Java Leaders Summit was not where is Java going?
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I mean,
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obviously there are new features and stuff,
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but also how can we make Java better that people will adopt Java and don’t see it
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as an old language,
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the new COBOL or that kind of stuff,
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and what are things
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we need to improve as a community,
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or in some cases,
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it’s on Oracle’s side,
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Oracle’s DevRel team side,
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or in general,
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how can we make Java more popular again,
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because we need to battle against other languages like
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Python and JavaScript, Java still has that stigma that we’re old.
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Well, if you look at the numbers, JavaScript was also old and Python as well.
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But if it’s true or not, it’s what the perception is.
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And how can we get that back?
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And these conversations were good,
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like many different insights on what we can do in general,
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how we can bring new people up that it’s not only the old folks that we have seen
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in the last decade,
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but how can we lift up new folks,
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new people to make the community alive and to keep the community alive?
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And I think there were great conversations.
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Everybody is pretty much on the same line.
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So I love that.
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So what about you personally?
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Why did you become a developer?
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Was it something that you just loved to hang out with software and hang out with other engineers?
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Or did you just get into it because, yeah, it’s a job?
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What’s the reason?
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Well, as a kid, I wanted to be like every kid.
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You have this dream job.
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That wasn’t the developer.
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I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
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Then it turned out that there wasn’t anything remotely going to happen in that case.
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And I love to work with computers to play around with that.
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Was it hard to do?
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Like when you were young, was it hard to do?
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In terms of the intellectualization,
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the math,
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the writing of the code,
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all that,
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was it hard or did it come naturally?
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At first it was just getting acquainted with computers itself.
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I mean, my dad had a computer and he was also a bit geeky.
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So getting to know that,
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getting to know common line tools,
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getting to know,
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in that case,
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MS-DOS to work with that.
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And not being only on machines that do swiping and touch screens.
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Working with that and then building your own machines and then getting into more
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geeky things like,
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first of all,
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building your own website when you were a kid.
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That was fun.
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Playing around with stuff and then getting better at that and then develop an
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interest on that and then actually start your education path on that.
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First I did a bachelor’s in computer science and then I was like…
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Maybe we can go deeper.
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Let’s do a masters as well and go into how compilers are built and static code
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analysis and that kind of stuff.
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So it developed over time.
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I found an interest.
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I found that I was kind of good with it or it suited me.
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And so I moved on.
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Because I remember when I was in school that certain things just came more easily than others.
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I was taking some programming classes and I said, oh, this is really cool.
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But as soon as I got to a point where there was a lot of math,
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I just said,
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I just kind of flopped over,
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you know.
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Yeah.
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Gotcha.
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Yeah, I understand.
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But if I look back at the subjects I enjoyed at school,
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it was things like science,
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like chemistry,
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like math.
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So I was already in that corner.
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Not saying that I was the best in my class.
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Absolutely not.
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But I think naturally I developed a sense for that.
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And bringing that all together in programming is super fun.
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But also, if you work on things, it’s not only about the programming, it’s also about understanding…
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the concept you work for.
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So if you work for a bank, you need to know how that works.
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If you work for a company that delivers you mortgages,
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you need to know how the whole system works in general.
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If you work for a manufacturer of whatever,
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you need to know,
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you need to learn and understand that process.
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For me,
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it was a challenge to learn all these kinds of domains and then use your skills in
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programming to actually get better at that.
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So I learned a ton of things over the past decade or so.
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And it seems like the past decade, that’s 10 years, that’s a long time.
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You continue to learn?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Well, past decade is even more than that.
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I’m getting old.
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But yeah, of course you continue to learn.
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I mean, obviously you need to keep track of things.
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But you also need to know what is your bread and butter.
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What is the part that you enjoy the most?
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You cannot know everything and you cannot keep track of everything.
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So it’s okay to not know all about the internals of how the JVM works.
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Plus, I also want to know how to communicate in Kubernetes and how that all, like, I’m a noob.
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And if we look at Kubernetes and all that, the whole thing, I know the basics.
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That’s all.
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I know more about the Java language and how things can go wrong there.
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And so you pick your battles.
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And you’re a Java champion as well.
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Yes, I am.
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I became a Java champion early 2021, I think February.
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I had the honor to call myself a Java champion, and it was a surprise.
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Well,
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you’re around kind of a great group of people,
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sort of elite in terms of their skills and abilities and things like that.
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Yeah, true.
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But still, it’s some kind of an honorary title.
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So it means it is given to you by the community.
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And to have that, like if people say, yeah, you’re great or you’re doing good, that’s fun.
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But if it comes to that,
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it’s like it’s an honor to do that and that your peers vote for you to be such a
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community leader or a Java champion in this case.
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That still, yeah, that still humbles me.
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Well, Brian, thank you very much for coming by.
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I appreciate it.
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And hope to see you at the next Java 1 or some Java conference in between.
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Absolutely.
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You’ll probably see me around, and hopefully I will be there at the next Java 1.
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I’m looking forward to it.
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Thanks, Jim.
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See you guys later.
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Bye-bye.