In June, I had a public presentation at a Java User Group in Prague. It was the first time I gave my new talk about building reactive applications with Java EE. And as a bonus, I wanted to introduce Payara project and how it relates to the GlassFish project.I was surprised how natural it was for me to talk first time in front of a big audience. Fortunately, a JUG meetup always has a friendly atmosphere and the audience seemed to be interested in the topics, which is always a good start. Despite some technical difficulties, which forced me to use a public Windows box instead of my Linux laptop, I had a good feeling during my talks. I had the best introduction I could get – Jakub, the leader of the JUG, is an Oracle employee that used to work on GlassFish himself and expressed his keen interest in how GlassFish has evolved since then within the Payara project. He was even wearing a GlassFish T-Shirt. I so damn regret that we didn’t take pictures together, with me wearing my Payara T-Shirt!

So my first talk went on like this:

I had some beautiful homemade animations in my presentation that I’m proud of (well, not really 🙂 I’m not a professional designer, but I hope that people had fun anyway )

The talk was about the idea behind reactive programming and what could we gain with that approach. I focused on showing how some reactive programming techniques can be implemented in existing Java EE applications, with a combination of suitable parts of Java EE 7 API and Java 8 constructs. And I also tried to wet the appetite by demoing what Payara Micro offers on top of that to further enhance Java EE applications in reactive manner.

Soon I realized that David has also arrived. He is one of external contributors to the Payara project. I was in contact with him for some time already but it was the first time we met in person. Yes, besides the technical stuff, JUGs are social events too. And the social aspect is often even more important. David was also very active in raising questions after my talk, igniting others to join the discussion. A good feeling that I was not the ony one talking 🙂

During a break, there was free pizza, but I didn’t have time to taste even a tiny bit. Several people approached me with questions and I spent whole breaking talking to them about my talk and Payara in general.

After the break, I amused the audience with a funny video story about how Payara Server was born, while the people were finishing eating their pizza.

Then I followed with my presentatin about the Payara project. This presentation was less technical and I wanted to make it friendly and amusing for the audience, so I decided to experiment with the slides. I was inspired by the 3D slides that the guys from Geneea Analytics used for presenting at the previous JUG session. And I came up with this:

(Press left and right arrows to navigate the above presentation, or open in a new window)

Meantime, my talk about reactive applications with Java EE was accepted by JavaOne. It will be my honor to speak in San Francisco, co-speaking with Mert Çalışkan, my friend and a Java Champion from Turkey.

At the end, I add an interesting comparison of project statistics between original GlassFsh project and Payara project. It is a proof that the Payara project is worth looking into.

I want to thank everybody that came to see my talks. I have been invited to talk at JUG events in other towns all over the Czech republic and I’m looking forward to it!

Resources and links:

• info about the JUG event:
  • Announcement on Payara website
  • JUG event on facebook (Czech language)
  • JUG event on JUG webpage (Czech language)
• Slides from the talks:
  • Reactive Java EE: http://bit.ly/1Yp6aZd
  • About Payara: http://bit.ly/1WMnVSX
    
    • live slides: https://itblog.inginea.eu/resources/payara/slides

The event was recorded, but the recording is not yet available. Recordings from past JUG events: http://slideslive.com/czjug