For this episode, I had a really interesting chat with Richard Fichtner, the leader of JUG Oberpfalz. Some of you may recognise Richard from many Java industry events, as he’s a frequent conference speaker, but he’s also known as the face of the JCon Conference as one of the organisers of this very popular Java event.

Richard is a Java Champion with 20 years of experience in the software industry. He’s the CEO and Principal Software Architect at XDEV, he’s actively contributing to the open source community through projects like RapidClipse and advocating for best practices in Apache Maven.

My guests for this episode of the Payara Podcast JUG Spotlight series are the leaders of Chicago and Seattle Java User Groups – Mary Grygleski and Freddy Guime. 

During our chat, we discussed Mary’s and Freddy’s journey to becoming JUG leaders, we talked about the opportunities that come with being part of a local Java User Group, whether as organisers or members. We also explored the impact of AI on modern Java development, which unsurprisingly has sparked significant interest among both new and existing community members. However, it also presents a challenge—how to ensure the next generation of developers remains effective in a workplace where AI is increasingly integrated into development workflows.

JavaLand 2025 is happening from April 1-3, 2025, in Nürburgring, Germany, and Payara will be there! If you’re into Java, want to learn about the latest tech, or just want to connect with fellow developers, don’t miss this event. Our team of Payarans will be sharing practical insights and real-world use cases that you can start using right away to enhance your Java and Jakarta EE projects.

The second episode of the new series of Payara Podcast dedicated to the Java community is here! This time, I had a great pleasure to talk to Simone and Roberto from Torino Java User Group.

Roberto, a seasoned developer with 20+ years in open source, has contributed to projects like Jetty, CometD, and JBoss. Simone, a Java Champion and Eclipse Jetty Project Leader, specializes in high-performance JVM tuning and server-side development. We discuss the evolution of Java communities, the challenges JUGs face, and how we can ensure they continue to thrive.

We are kicking off 2025 with the new series of Payara Podcast dedicated to the Java community, which means that over the next couple of episodes, I will be talking to quite a few Java User Group Leaders, representing JUGs all around the world.

For this January episode, I had a great pleasure to talk to Mike and Barry from Garden State Java User Group.

During our conversation, we explored the importance of Java User Groups and their role in maintaining, supporting and educating Java developers within their local communities. Mike and Barry shared what’s coming to Garden State JUG this year that they are excited about, and the challenges their user group is facing.

Pushing the boundaries of innovation in application development is a must for Insurtech providers whose goal is to deliver competitive advantage for customers, positioning them at the cutting edge of customer experience, operational efficiency and resilience. Succeeding in this goal often requires a full migration to a new application server to create advanced tech capabilities.

When one of the UK's leading technology service providers, CDL, aimed to re-engineer its flagship platform, it opted to migrate to Payara Server Enterprise as the most effective solution to support its goals.

The Eclipse Foundation is launching a new Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group on 24 September 2024. Payara Services is delighted to be a Participant member and the organization is keen to ensure as many development and security teams, small to medium-sized enterprises, and corporations as possible are aware of its work. And, of course, the more organizations that join the Open Regulatory Compliance Group, the stronger our impact can be. When we work together, we can better represent open-source software-related industries while the EU develops standards under the Cyber Resilience Act 2024 and subsequent data security compliance legislation.

In this blog post, we look at the history and development of the Eclipse Foundation as well as its new focus on cybersecurity compliance regulations through the new working group since July 2024.

Open source technologies have become invaluable tools for software developers and software engineers focusing on innovation and experimentation. In particular, open source application servers can greatly help to accelerate project development, reduce costs and foster collaborative approaches within teams and across organizations.

However, when it comes to deploying mission-critical applications in production environments, open source runtimes that are unsupported can present significant risks, exposing businesses to unnecessary vulnerabilities.

In the latest episode of the Payara Podcast, we talk to Lenny Primak. Lenny is an experienced software architect and developer - he’s been contributing to various open source projects for many years, including Apache, Jakarta EE and Payara.

Last month, in June 2024 we held the Virtual Payara Conference, and that’s where Lenny joined us for the Open Source contributors roundtable. We had a really interesting conversation then, but had limited time to discuss various aspects of his work on open source, so we thought it’d be best to give Lenny some more time to share his journey and his experience during the Payara Podcast so here we are - we hope you will enjoy listening to this episode !

In the latest episode of the Payara Podcast, we dive deep into a very trending topic, Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a top expert who is committed to ensuring a sustainable and responsible use of this technology: Dr. Mansoor Ahmed-Rengers, CEO and Founder of OpenOriginsas well as a Scientific Researcher at the University of Cambridge. We discuss what AI is, the transformative potential of Gen AI, the challenges it presents and the importance of regulation to harness its benefits while mitigating risks.