More Than a Blog: How Foojay Connects, Sustains, and Evolves the Java Community (#94)

Foojay.io, the website for the Friends of OpenJDK, is turning six years old. To celebrate, Frank Delporte headed to JCON in Cologne, Germany, and sat down with twelve members of the Java community to talk about what Foojay means to them, what they learn from each other, and how the community is evolving.
Foojay is more than a blog. It is a Mastodon server, a Slack community, the Disco API, a book on sustainability, a podcast, and now an education catalog. Six years in, it is still growing, still community-driven, and still very much a place where anyone who works with Java is welcome.
00:00 Introduction
02:16 Sharat Chandar
• linkedin.com/in/sharatchander
• Java community and history
• What you can learn from conferences and articles
05:37 Markus Westergren
• linkedin.com/in/markuswestergren
• foojay.io/sustainability-for-java-developers
• foojay.io/today/join-slack-com-t-foojay-signup
• Book "Sustainability for Java Developers"
• How to "sustain yourself" in this strange-AI-changing-world
09:46 Iryna Dohndorf
• linkedin.com/in/iryna-dohndorf
• foojay.io/today/author/iryna-dohndorf
• Mentoring about sustainability as a developer + groundness + robustness skills
• High performance without crushing your soul
13:59 René Schwietzke
• linkedin.com/in/reneschwietzke
• foojay.io/today/the-curious-case-of-different-…
• Diving deep into the runtime, JITWatch
• About the broad mix of topics handled on Foojay
18:28 Gerrit Grunwald
• linkedin.com/in/gerritgrunwald
• foojay.io/today/author/gerrit-grunwald
• foojay.io/today/disco-api-helping-you-to-find-…
• sdkman.io
• The Disco API, the source with all the available OpenJDK distributions, is used by SDKMAN, Gradle, and many other tools
• About the many distributions that are available, even ones that are mainly (and only) used in Asia
27:45 Catherine Edelveis
• foojay.io/today/author/catherine-edelveis
• youtube.com/watch?v=Ytdo8OGEYFI
• foojay.io/today/which-java-runtime-should-you-…
• Reducing Docker sizes improves security and performance
• Many distributors provide builds of OpenJDK
31:16 Jago de Vreede
• foojay.io/today/author/jago-de-vreede
• About the Java community and the place of Foojay in it. What is good, what are we missing?
• SDKMAN, creating an UI for it, and using the many OpenJDK distributions
35:05 Annelore Egger
• linkedin.com/in/anneloredev
• foojay.io/?s=egger
• Java community, conference volunteering, mentoring
• How to become a conference speaker
• Learn by teaching
38:03 Buhake Sindi
• linkedin.com/in/buhake-sindi
• foojay.io/today/author/buhake-sindi
• github.com/langchain4j/langchain4j-cdi
• Jakarta EE, LangChain4J CDI, Agent to Agent
• Impact of AI on developer life and sustainability
44:03 François Martin
• linkedin.com/in/fran%C3%A7oismartin
• foojay.io/today/author/francois-martin
• foojay.io/today/eliminating-flaky-tests-to-end…
• foojay.io/today/five-ways-to-use-gradle-enterp…
• Learn from mentoring, for example, how to earn from opensource
• Foojay author, just published an article about Flaky tests
48:18 Dominika Tasarz-Sochacka
• linkedin.com/in/dominikatasarz
• foojay.io/today/author/dominika-tasarz
• foojay.io/today/join-slack-com-t-foojay-signup
• foojay.io/today/how-to-submit-your-next-articl…
• The future of Foojay, how can we get the community even more involved
• What you can learn from the community
51:18 Geertjan Wielenga
• linkedin.com/in/geertjanwielenga
• education.foojay.social
• Java communities are everywhere
• How Foojay started and grew
• How can contributing to the community influence your career
58:15 Conclusion