My journey as a part of the Java community (podcast)

My journey as a part of the Java community (podcast)

- 10 mins
Java Community

This is an extended summary of my February podcast talk with Jim Grisanzio from the Java DevRel team about my journey in the Java community. We talked about my career, mentoring experience, community work and the journey to become a Java Champion. I hope my story and journey can inspire more developers, especially younger underrepresented groups of talents.

You can listen to the interview (46 minutes) on Apple Podcasts or X/Twitter. The podcast is also available here:

Early years

My interest in computers began at the age of 14 (mid 90s) when my mother got me a 386 PC with Windows 3 from a flea market. Initially I did nothing but randomly typing around in a terminal, but I quickly discovered the file system and got a huge interest in learning how DOS and the Windows-shell worked. This was the only computer I had access to in my childhood until 1998 when my mother spent half of her salary to buy me a Pentium III 300MHz computer with Windows 98 installed on it. She worked in a factory, so spending that kind of money to buy me a computer was a huge risk. But it paid off, and it became the computer I used to write my very first applications with Visual Basic and C++. Being able to write code and create programs gave me a major boost in moral and confidence, and it shaped my entire life and career. I am extremely thankful to my mother for her sacrifices. I also learned a lot by experimenting with scripting with friends at school, their inspiration has made a significant impact on me. So, at age 16, I knew what I wanted for my future.

Java in my education

I continued to learn coding with C++ through books during high school, alongside my studies in maths and physics. I was first introduced to Java in the early days of my Computer Engineering program at the university in 2002. Having worked with VB made me able to rapidly understand GUIs in Java, and my C++ experience helped me understand the JVM. I fell in love with the language, and having experience with coding was a huge advantage during my studies. In 2008, I completed my master’s degree in computer science. My thesis used Java together with Bluetooth and low-frequency RFID tags with customized memory model to create rich ubiquitous environments.

During my studies, I got involved in the student community as the vice-president of the student union. Contributing and volunteering to make the campus and classes better for my fellow students were extremely important for me, and it was the first time I was part of a community steering group.

Java in professional career

I spent about 3,5 years as a backend Java developer within the largest Norwegian bank. I then moved on to work as a Java developer for an additional ten years in several different sectors such as statistics, public management, pension and welfare. I started my career with Java 1.4, continuing to Java EE 5 and SE 5. Later, I continued building control systems for the energy sector using a process-driven architecture. From there, I went onto building a large-scale distributed enterprise pension platform before I finally spent much of my time building Java microservices.

Throughout my career, I often contributed to the communities within the companies I worked for by taking responsibility for content, calendar and the organization of events. I often spoke at internal events, wrote blogs and published articles. Lastly, I had the advantage of working in Capgemini, a global company with offices all over the world, which enabled me to connect with communities in different countries. Taking part of local and international communities gave me the necessary training and experience of building, running and organizing groups and events for developers. Another company that shaped and impacted me was Inmeta Consulting, where I had some of the best leaders of my career. In Inmeta, I got the opportunity to practice having responsibility for events for about twenty developers. After ten years in consultancy, I moved on to work for the Norwegian Labour & Welfare Administration, the largest Norwegian organization in the public sector. This led me much closer to jobseekers and underprivileged citizens, and it allowed me to voluntarily mentor and train people on Java programming.

Share, care and dream big

The advice I’d like to give to developers is: be engaged with local communities, keep learning, share your ideas, and connect with new people. The first talk I ever did was about Java enums. It might look simple at first, but as you go deeper, you soon see how much science it really is behind it and how it can inspire other developers. Sharing talks made my goals achievable by connecting me with many great people all over the world. For that reason, never underestimate an idea; work on it, share it. More importantly: Allow your self to dream big and allow your self to think the big ideas. Having great people around you, your dreams can become true. Finally, great people will find you if you are kind to those you meet along your journey.

Java community work

I joined the Norwegian Java User Group (JavaBin) first time ever in 2010. What led me there was the fact that I understood electronics. Beate, a colleague at Capgemini, who herself was a board member of JavaBin, knew about my master’s thesis and invited me to visit. JavaBin had built a super-cool Duke beer vending machine specially built for JavaZone, and I joined the team in Oslo with the aim of helping out with the machine. In 2014, I became a part of the JavaBin board and I also joined my fellow JavaBin hero Markus Krüger to restart the meetup group in Oslo. After a highly active year with a lot of meetups, I took over the leadership of the Oslo meetup group summer of 2015. I am proud to share that our group, nearly every single month for the next seven years, organized completely free meetups and events for Java developers.

While organizing events for JavaBin, I also ran events for several other tech communities such as Oslo Software Architecture (OSWA) and the Norwegian Computer Association(DND). In total, since 2014, I’ve organized more than 150 meetups and events for multiple communities as a volunteer. During the same period, I also spoke about Java at several conferences around the world, ranging from Americas, Europe and Asia.

JavaBin also built what is known as the “House of Communities and Technology” (Teknologihuset). For a long time, JavaBin did not have a dedicated space for our meetups, forcing us to use spaces in various locations around Oslo. Therefore, JavaBin decided to invest in the construction of a community house equipped with all the necessary technology and space for running meetups. We then made the entire house open and free for any group hosting free events. Since its start in 2012, Teknologihuset has supported more than 70 local communities in Oslo. I’m honored to have been a part of the steering group that coordinates Teknologihuset for the last two years now.

The high amount of involvement in the Java community locally and internationally, is what I believe led me to the events in 2019:

2019 was the highest moment of my career as two major events happened. First our user group, the Norwegian JUG (JavaBin), won the “Duke’s Choice Award” for our community work, and a month later I was awarded the Java Champion title.

Community is never a one-man show, it’s team work. Being awarded the Duke’s Choice Award is a testament of how a small group of community people can achieve great things in life. A lot of heroes, volunteers and active members of JavaBin worked hard together over several years to achieve this great honor. I am extremely thankful for everyone that helped our community, including our guests, speakers and volunteers. Traveling to San Francisco in 2019 to receive the Duke’s Choice Award from Java luminaries such as Sharat Chander and Georges Saad is still one of the best memories I have from my journey as a part of the international Java community.

Community is not competition, but cooperation between great people. Choosing cooperation over competition within a community means greater possibilities for everyone.

The recent years

In the last five years, as an engineering manager, I have been actively offering free mentoring for underrepresented developers. My work resulted in a talk about “Empathic Mentoring”. Remembering my tough early years and my mums’ heroic sacrifices, I was never in doubt that I wanted to “pay it forward” by helping the next generation of developers. I am proud of the fact that I helped multiple diverse developers land jobs within tech and development, all of them Java-related positions. I still teach Java, and currently I mentor and teach five young developers.

In 2022, I had the great honor of being elected the chair of JavaBin. Two years later, I am proud to share that we nearly doubled the number of active volunteers in JavaBin. We also diversified our group with more underrepresented people from our community, and we welcomed great people from other disciplines (such as data science given the current AI wave). We also had a strong focus on psychological safety and transparency within all our groups. A culture of mutual respect for everyone, being able to speak your opinions and participate in any group, is the key to building a strong Java user group that will make it through challenging times.

Final words

Great things can be achieved when people choose to trust each other and help each other. Community is not competition, but cooperation between great people. Choosing cooperation over competition within a community means greater possibilities for everyone. Even greater things can be achieved when people value mutual respect, justice, humility and compassion. Those are my values, and I like to build and be a part of communities that share those same values.