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JIM Grisanzio Hey, everybody.
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This is Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations.
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And this is Duke’s Corner.
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And we are here at JavaZone in Oslo.
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We’re here with Dervis and Marek.
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And these are just two of the many guys here who have been organizing this unbelievable conference.
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We’re at day two here, actually day three.
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So the conference is over in a few hours.
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And I just wanted to get some final comments about how things went for you guys.
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Because for me, I’ll offer my comments as we go as well.
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It’s been an incredible event.
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So how about for you guys?
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How did it go this week?
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Hey Jim, nice to be back with you again.
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Thanks for the last time we talked, it was a great conversation.
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I had a great time in this year’s conference.
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I think we managed to create a conference that had all the things that JavaZone is known for.
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Good food, good entertainment, a strong program with great speakers.
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So, and of course, our community.
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I had the chance to talk with many,
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many people from former colleagues,
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current colleagues that I haven’t seen for a while.
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A lot of great people, many good discussions with many great people.
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So I had a great time.
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Excellent.
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This is okay.
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So that was Darvish.
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And Mardik, what about you?
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Hi Jim,
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it is very nice of you to ask us about this hobby project of ours,
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that is this community-driven conference.
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I am super pleased, very happy with the result.
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At this point,
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a couple of hours before the conference is over,
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I am also getting into the mood of,
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oh,
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it’s so sad that it’s almost over,
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because that’s something that we’ve been working for in half a year.
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But…
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During this week,
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the level of joy and endorphins was basically over the roof,
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and I am so happy that it’s happening.
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Excellent.
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So six months, about a half a year to organize this?
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Yeah,
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I mean,
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it takes actually,
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we start normally in around November when we establish the working groups.
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And then we start the really heavy lifting, we start in January.
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Also,
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Marek will establish,
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he establishes the program committee groups and all the,
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makes it basically possible to start the call for papers and he initiates our work.
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He’s very good in keeping us collected and connected with each other to actually work as a team.
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So as the months are progressing, the group has increasingly a lot of work.
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And this year has actually been interesting because we had an all-time record high
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number of sent-in abstracts.
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That means, yeah, proposals for the conference.
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So we had really like a lot of stuff to do.
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So yeah, it takes a while.
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And it’s not only the program committee work.
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We also work with the designs.
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We have this location at the venue.
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It’s a known and famous venue in the city, middle of the city.
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So this is the place we have been for numerous years already.
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So we know the venue.
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We know what’s possible to do.
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And I’m happy that each and every year we are actually able to create very
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different teams and very different image.
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And last year we had a circus and a lot of people asked what was the purpose of having a circus?
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The answer is actually we wanted to honor.
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volunteer people traveling in refugee camps and helping children so people from
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entertainment so that meant a lot for us this year’s team is different and I really
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have to say we have a great people in our community creative people because imagine
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that in November when someone says what can actually the team the topic be for the
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next year’s conference well let’s say Retro 1924
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So each year it changes and yeah we start November all the way to the summer
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You mentioned the call for papers.
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You got a lot of paper submissions.
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So I was a speaker here and I went through that whole process.
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Just a couple of observations.
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The submission process was really comprehensive.
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I found the website, it was easy, it was intuitive, but it asked for a lot of information.
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And I thought that was really helpful to scope the session.
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And I thought that was really interesting.
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And the communication with the speakers was very good.
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I just felt, you know, like I was helped, you know, through the process.
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And so is that something you’re on the program committee, right?
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So, Monica, how did that evolve?
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Is that something that you guys,
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you know,
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just actually,
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I guess,
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just walk me through how you guys came up with that process.
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It is very interesting to hear it from your perspective that the type of questions
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that we have in the forum actually helped you to reflect on the content of your talk.
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Well, I can speak for the last four years, let’s say.
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We have established our routines in terms of how the call for speakers or proposal works.
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We do try to guide the speakers in a way that will result in them giving us enough
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information to have an idea about the talk,
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because with so many submissions we have to be able to…
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I wish we could talk to every of the hundreds of speakers that submits to JavaZone
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and discuss the details,
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learn more about their perspective in a video call,
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whatever,
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but…
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Sadly with the scale of the submission process we cannot do that so often we have
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to base ourselves on what you have written in the form and then hopefully we get
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enough information from that to be able to evaluate the talk and find out which
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talks we should put together in the program to make it the best program possible.
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I also know that, yeah.
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Can I also just add that the systems that we use is actually custom built by our own volunteers.
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And we are using completely custom made software for the call purpose process.
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And it’s meant to actually help both the speaker and help us.
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Yeah, I agree with Marek.
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It’s very interesting to hear your perspective on this.
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But…
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Yeah, it was really good.
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It was flawless for me.
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Everything just worked.
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I also noticed that you have a lot of speakers and a lot of,
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you know,
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there’s obviously English here,
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obviously,
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but there’s a lot of local language speakers as well.
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And so I was just wondering what the ratio was of local versus English, you know, foreign speakers.
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That’s a good question.
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Sadly I don’t have the statistics with me right now but I think in terms of
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language divisions it would probably a third of the talks is in Norwegian but we
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also have Norwegian speakers who do their talks in English.
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Generally when it comes to Norwegian speakers we tell them or we suggest that they
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can do the talk in the language in which they feel more comfortable in.
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But being a Norwegian Java user group and organizing the community conference for
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the local community,
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we have no problems definitely with having a number of talks in Norwegian.
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But at the same time,
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of course,
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having guests that don’t speak Norwegian,
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we make sure that every hour in the program you have enough of talks that are in
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English so that everybody finds something for themselves.
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And one thing which I would like to add here is also that
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One thing which I love about JavaZone is that while we do get submissions from the
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greatest speakers in the Java universe from all around the world,
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we give ourselves the opportunity or the possibility to find space in the program
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also for the local talents and it can be
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In the same hour you can find two of the greatest speakers in two of the rooms and
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in another room you will have a Norwegian developer who has been working for two
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years but has a very interesting hobby project and we will have a stage for this
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person as well because we want to support this type of initiatives as well and
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local young talents.
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It’s really interesting.
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I also noticed just some of the things here that you found unique, like the overflow room over there.
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Hundreds and hundreds of people up there looking at sessions.
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There’s a huge screen.
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I think you can put like eight sessions on video up there.
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Really interesting, a beautiful view.
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I’m looking up now too, and they’re looking down on us here on the show floor.
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So that seems very innovative to me.
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You’ve got obviously a very unique space here, but also little things like each speaker room
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has color you know like there’s I mean that’s a very thoughtful thing especially if
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you’re a photographer like I am you’re looking to see what you know like what the
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mood is this is a very moody place it’s got style you know and so like one speaker
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room you know so one session room will have red another one will be you know blue
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or turquoise or something that obviously that was intentional
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Yeah, I would probably say it is.
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Because for us, the conference is not only about actually going and listening to talks.
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It’s actually meeting people that you care about.
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People, you know, great people that you haven’t seen for a while.
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And connecting with people, building new connections, having fun.
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So yeah, I would say it’s designed like that in order to enhance the good feeling in the people.
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I like how Dervish put it.
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I would like to say in terms of the design,
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you probably can see that we are a community driven non-profit conference because
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we do give ourselves the space to be a bit playful,
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try different things.
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The colors probably happened some years ago as an experiment and it worked very well.
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We tried different decorations.
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Like last year,
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somebody came up with an idea of having a circus tent floating in the air over the
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middle of the space.
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What’s stopping us actually?
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We are here for the community,
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we have our scale and power to try different things and if they end up being
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something pleasing and fun for our guests and for the community in general,
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that’s a big win.
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And I really like that we don’t have to focus on being a profitable franchise or something,
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but we can be this community-driven conference that is able to try things and do
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something funny.
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And we also inherited actually a culture of experimenting.
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We are just one generation of many volunteers that have been keeping the conference going.
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I remember speaking to former volunteers
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volunteers and people in Javabin that they, for example, one generation built a rocket as an entrance.
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Another generation, they built something called Bear Duke.
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So if you had a conference card and you was a volunteer in the jug,
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you could scan that card in front of the vending machine.
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And that vending machine, of course, with the Duke, it was dressed as a Duke.
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It will give you a beer.
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I mean, that’s kind of a playful ideas.
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And the hardware and the software was developed by the… Yeah, everything was connected together.
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So we kind of inherited this and we are trying to bring it forward.
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But when I see the,
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for example,
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this year’s the clock tower,
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the circus last year,
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we are actually thinking that nothing is impossible.
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Like when some of our volunteers have an idea, we are thinking, yeah, that might work.
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You know, when I look at the scale, it makes me happy.
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And that’s something that starts with as ideas in someone’s heart and mind.
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And actually,
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and then six,
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seven months later,
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we are sitting here,
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we are looking at this thing and I’m reconfirming that everything is possible.
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Whatever you dream of, it’s possible.
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It’s really interesting you say that because I did a session, my session was on contributing.
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It was a community session,
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non-technical,
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but I talk about my stories that I have working with developers and how to contribute,
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why they contribute.
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And one of the things that they say is just exactly what you said about thinking about what’s possible.
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and not stopping yourself but this is possible let’s try this and it’s very clear
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that this entire conference is run by a community it has the community feel to it
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and it’s like as i said before it has style but it has class and everyone is a lot
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of young people here you know a lot a lot younger than me
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But there’s a lot of sophistication as well.
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You’ve got all the major topics of Java covered in terms of sessions.
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Seems to have been hanging together really well.
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Yeah, I agree.
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I agree completely.
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Like Marek said, we are not running for profit here.
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Everything that,
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you know,
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the tickets and everything,
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all the money that’s in circulation,
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everything goes to the community.
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100% of it.
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back to the community.
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And next year’s conference, new ideas, new creative minds.
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I mean, I think about our speakers, our volunteers, our partners.
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Everyone loves their profession.
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They love to create software.
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They love to build systems for people and innovate where it’s possible.
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and change the rules and regulations in our society to enable innovation.
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And I see this kind of a conference building bridges between public,
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private,
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between people is important to achieve this.
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And yeah,
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I hope many more great speakers all over the world that they will consider sending
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their proposals.
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And we’d love to have
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experienced people, new people, would love to hear from them.
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Last time we spoke, Jim, we talked about the mentoring also.
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Like this conference alone, three of my mentees spoke for the very first time on the JavaZone stages.
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And when I’m standing in the room looking at those great people,
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having the time of their life being on that stage so I really recommend everyone
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who think that they have something interesting to share send your proposal try it
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and you might be actually the next person on the stage here so yeah
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I don’t have any own mentees myself,
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but it is a great joy for me to see somebody who hasn’t spoken at a conference
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before coming to us with an interesting topic,
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getting accepted,
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coming here,
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possibly getting some help from our experienced speakers,
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a little bit of coaching,
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maybe just somebody experienced guiding them to the room and having a little bit of
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small talk just to…
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help the stress and then when I see the talk being delivered very well and I read
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the feedback that we gather after the session and people actually are enjoying the
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we see that people have enjoyed the talk then I see that’s like that’s what we want
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to do we want to give this space to people who hasn’t done it before but who have
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potential to contribute to deliver something really nice so when this type of
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success story happens I am very very happy
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That’s excellent.
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So how many people on your team actually running it here?
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Because I see a lot of volunteers.
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We have approximately 40 JAG members here,
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I believe,
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and then we also have the program for student volunteers,
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so we give them the opportunity to have regular access to the conference over the
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two days.
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In exchange for working for a couple of hours every day,
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we’ve helped being responsible for the different speakers rooms,
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guiding the participants.
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So this type of student volunteers are playing a very important role as well.
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So it would be around 40 members and 80 student volunteers, I believe.
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And of course, I have spoken to several of the young student volunteers.
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It means a lot for their careers also,
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because the advantage they have,
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they are able to speak with the different companies,
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build relations closer to the end of their studies,
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which is important for their journey ahead to find relevant,
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interesting work,
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as well as understanding the trends,
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the profession,
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what is important for them to learn and know.
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So there are several advantages of being a volunteer like that.
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Actually, a few other observations from me.
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I’ve spoken with a lot of the speakers,
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and I’ve observed that they’re very impressed with the feedback,
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with the conversations,
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with everything in the room,
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all the dynamics,
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the audio-visual,
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the look and feel.
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It’s a very comfortable place to speak.
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It’s not intimidating, although I was nervous because it was a big crowd for me.
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I mean,
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I’m not at the level of some of these guys here,
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but,
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you know,
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the speakers very clearly,
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I’ve spoken to several of them,
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are just very impressed with the experience that they’ve had.
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Another observation is the food, all-day food.
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That’s a nice touch.
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And it’s good food, too.
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It’s not just junk.
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It’s really good food.
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I see ice cream over here and everything.
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I didn’t really go for that.
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I’m not around sugar, but that’s okay.
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I have plenty of other stuff.
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And the party last night out in the city, really unique.
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Multiple bars, multiple restaurants.
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And the attendee participation was very high.
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There’s lots of people there.
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So it seems that you guys,
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I mean your whole team,
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obviously the whole jug,
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you know how to build community.
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Because this is exactly,
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you’re doing all the things very well to build,
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you know,
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the first level is to bring people together,
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having them participate and start contributing.
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Because they’re all talking to each other.
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That’s a contribution.
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They’re teaching each other.
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They’re helping each other.
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They’re exchanging ideas.
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ideas and suggestion.
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And so it seems to me that as organizers, you guys really know how to build community.
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I mean, I would say that first of all, we do have a strong community.
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I am very impressed by everyone.
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I respect all the talent and I appreciate everyone.
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And I would say it’s not really easy to do this.
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First of all,
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everyone has to agree on having this mutual respect,
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having this mutual understanding of what everyone wants.
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We have a common goal of creating the best conference
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that we can and it’s never easy I mean there is always some bumps and difficulties
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in communities and that’s natural it’s a lot of stuff to do but always in the end
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it’s a mutual respect and treating each other as good as you can because everyone
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is volunteering doing this by their own will no one is getting actually paid for
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anything in this community
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So,
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I mean,
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that is fundamental,
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actually,
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having this safety that everyone has the safety to be who they are.
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When I look at our community here, I can look and I can proudly say that we have a diversity in people.
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We have a diversity in backgrounds.
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And this is something extremely important for us.
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And I would say probably because of that diversity that we have in the group.
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And if you look at the stand over there, you might see it yourself.
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And this is how I feel creativity becomes even better.
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But yeah, we have to continuously work.
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This is something that we do in Javabin.
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We have to continuously speak about how we can be better with each other.
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It’s like I usually use the Coca-Cola ads as a reference.
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We have to continue speaking about it.
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We have to continue talking about how we want the community to be.
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as the fundamental building blocks i think this is important to succeed i could
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perhaps add from the perspective of the program committee which effectively is a
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group of between 8 and 12 people who meet up every tuesday from january to june and
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then a bit in august and then are here during the conference
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We are all volunteers and all decide to spend one evening every week doing our voluntary program work.
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So we do have to learn to appreciate each other’s effort.
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We have to work well together.
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We have to communicate really well with our very different experiences,
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levels of experience,
(00:22:07):
backgrounds.
(00:22:08):
areas of interest.
(00:22:09):
So that’s always been a very fascinating thing for me to get a very diverse group
(00:22:14):
of people to work together on creating something great.
(00:22:19):
Yeah, well, congratulations, guys, and congratulations to your whole team.
(00:22:24):
We’re sitting here right in the middle,
(00:22:26):
actually on the show floor here,
(00:22:28):
actually in the lounge area underneath the clock tower here.
(00:22:32):
I think it was great content.
(00:22:34):
Talk to the speakers.
(00:22:35):
They love the content.
(00:22:36):
It’s high-end stuff, great community, and that’s what it’s about.
(00:22:40):
Java the technology, Java the community.
(00:22:43):
That’s all I talk about.
(00:22:45):
So it’s very helpful to me.
(00:22:47):
So congratulations.
(00:22:49):
Any final thoughts?
(00:22:51):
I mean, for my part, the people are really important.
(00:22:56):
The people who do things because they want to make it better for other people.
(00:23:01):
Not only in conference settings, but in any kind of voluntary work.
(00:23:06):
I love when people use their whole heart.
(00:23:09):
They create something they love.
(00:23:11):
I am extremely happy that you came.
(00:23:14):
That we could actually see this together and be here together.
(00:23:19):
I’m very proud of everyone involved.
(00:23:23):
Well as a program committee coordinator I would like to now at the end of this
(00:23:28):
conference I would like to express my huge appreciation for all the speakers who
(00:23:34):
decided to use their time and skills to participate in it and I am extremely
(00:23:40):
thankful that we get so many hundreds of submissions every year of people who
(00:23:45):
actually think it is a good idea to come to Norway in September and
(00:23:50):
speak at a conference which is non-profit and which is for the community.
(00:23:57):
I know that every year we have to,
(00:23:59):
we only have place for as many in the program so we sadly we have to reject many
(00:24:04):
that submit but I do hope that many of the people that are with us here or wanted
(00:24:10):
to be with us will also want to be with us in the coming years so that we can keep
(00:24:14):
growing and keep getting better for the Norwegian Java community.
(00:24:17):
Excellent.
(00:24:18):
Thanks, guys.
(00:24:18):
Appreciate it.
(00:24:19):
We’ll talk to you again next year.
(00:24:21):
Thank you, Jim.
(00:24:22):
Thank you.
(00:24:22):
I’m looking forward to it.