Foojay Podcast #10: JUG World Tour: Dubai JUG

Transcript

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[0:00] Hello and welcome to this new edition of the Foojay podcast this is our second stop of the Java User Group World Tour and we are in Dubai podcast all your news about OpenJDK last month we introduced a new topic in this podcast when we visited the Manchester Java user group that joke already exists nearly 10 years so they had a lot of history to share today I’m talking to the organizer of the Dubai joke that started in May of 2022. let’s learn what the challenges are for a new joke hello Frank thank you hello everyone and all the listeners thank you for having me honestly it’s a very exciting considering we’re starting a new job my name is Jad salhani I’m not to say you know the founder but basically the main organizer in Dubai of the Dubai I’m originally a software engineer for the past it’s been like 10 years now I’m in the business and I’ve turned now more to open source software architecture and all things around sharing knowledge basically so that’s where the Dubai job kind of Falls in my life started the things I love to do we started The Jug like you said in May that was where

[1:19] The spark happened and it happened very quickly so I’ll tell you that story later and yeah I’m basically using my experience and I currently work in Consulting so my collections as well to try to you know increase the Java community in the Middle East and specifically in the UAE in Dubai and I’m Frank the porter I’m the host for this podcast I’m technical writer at Azul and doing Java development for over 10 years you said you started this Chuck why were you interested in sorting a joke in Dubai actually it’s a it’s a very funny story so it all started end of 2021 at Joy taxes if you know it which is one of the biggest kind of tech sales conferences that’s where I met Azul since I’m you know an all-time Java fan since Java 1.4 I was kind of happy to learn about Azul and what they do in terms of the JPM and all that it was new to me at least in the region so after I got to know them they got to tell me that they also do lots of workshops and trainings and I always had the dream to kind of the community or at least support the community wherever I am and for those who don’t know in the Middle

[2:30] East the development communities are very shy so it’s not at all like you see in Europe or in the United States or any other country where there’s you know a meet up every every two days it’s very difficult to find you know developers ready to find meetups and Technologies you like and surprisingly there was no Meetup for Java at all eventually we kind of agreed that the Dubai jug is something they can help me start and they would like to start as well to support so we kind of jumped chip and say we’re gonna start the Dubai joke why not that was the trigger to me now maintaining or managing this Dubai jog in the UAE and trying to grow this community which is having a lot of hidden fans I would say in terms of developers and software Engineers you say that the developers are shy is it a big number of developers that you have in that region there is a big number of developers yes there’s you know a lot of people that move from India because the UAE is kind of the closest country so there’s a lot of software Engineers here there’s a lot of people also kind of locals since there’s the initiative from

[3:43] The government to kind of push software engineering and development as a national program in a sense so there’s a target from the government themselves to kind of support 100 000 coders right or even MLA encoders I don’t recall so there’s a lot of numbers there’s it’s increasing the idea of you know open source Community open Community knowledge sharing is not something familiar in this region at least so they’re all new to the idea of attending talks on Saturdays and you know sacrificing their weekends for a technical Meetup and all these things so that’s one of the challenges we Face actually for our sessions so I can imagine that it will also be challenging to find local speakers people who want to stand up and really come in front of an audience and talk about their passion or the specialty it’s funny because I work at PWC Middle East it’s just Place Waterhouse school which is one of the big four companies Consulting and all that and with me there’s around 100 you know 100 Architects and Java experts daily and whatever I ask them like hey guys anyone wants to you know do a session For an

[4:51] Upcoming drug I get like zero replies so it’s interesting that they talk all day to clients but whenever they want us to share knowledge there’s just zero communication they shut up and hide that that’s an example of how shy people are yeah that was one of my questions what will be the biggest challenge for you to organize this jug so I think we’ve already found one that’s finding local speakers that’s one big challenge yes definitely because I mean obviously we’re starting fresh so we don’t have unfortunately a big budget to kind of always bring all the European experts from the countries to Dubai it’s kind of a far away trip but another big challenge was getting people to actually come to the job actually so the first drug that we had there was a lot of support from Azul to get you know speakers coming in with great talks and we had great topics lined up but we had one attendee two-hour drug so we had six speakers and one attendee basically in the room which was funny we had so we were basically pitching the talks to each other in a sense that’s the biggest challenge I would say here is to get

[5:56] People to First you kind of sacrifice their time for a technical Meetup which is not something they’re used to and second even the companies here themselves to allow their employees to attend these meetups without kind of you know penalizing them they don’t believe in it much that okay you’re gonna benefit from a technical Meetup for example so that’s the biggest I would say issue or biggest challenge we have in the region currently like last month talk to the Manchester Jack they have over 1 000 members in Meetup so I think that’s definitely something you’re building on I would love to see this number one day I currently have I think 80 in Meetup but 10 who attend so you know 1 8 of the population but it’s still something yeah that’s something noticeable is the difference in culture of visiting this kind of talks to learn I was at some conferences lately and people come to me and say yeah I didn’t know that Java evolved so much in the last years and by coming to this conference I learned about out that I think that’s exactly what the joke tries to do keeping people up to date

[7:08] Telling them what has changed What new technologies Frameworks Evolutions are available so yeah there’s definitely a big challenge for you to spread this message there’s a lot of ground to cover but I mean evidently you need an audience right to kind of not waste the box and the thought potentials so we’re trying I mean we’re trying and maybe with this podcast we can help in spreading this message definitely people will hear the story maybe get excited and decisions that you already organized so you had speakers for long sessions over an hour that kind of talks the second one which was for me the official first had around 18 attendees actually which was a good number and our sessions were around I think 35 to one hour long we try to do two to three sessions each meet up depending on you know the length of course and whether there’s a workshop or not and with a break in between time for social socializing people meeting each other because that’s that’s a big part of the culture here that people attend these meetups to meet new people maybe even you know explore job opportunities

[8:17] Or kind of new new careers new career contacts so we try to put that give that it’s it’s respective time basically to people to enjoy it yeah that’s what I learned already from other jokes that the part after The Jug can sometimes be more important than than the talk exactly actually during the joke yeah being it for social interaction or getting to know about job opportunities indeed that or the most rather things the Java developer group you say yeah there are quite some developers in Dubai or those most young people like more experienced people there’s a mix definitely we’ve had a lot of young people who I mean they’re they’re you know young in age but not young experience as far as I’ve seen so they’ve worked with Java extensively with the latest features in springboard hibernate things like that the basic rest API development and they’re very excited to learn more from experts and I’ve also had actually one attendee which is around 60 or 70 years old and he was basically working with Java when it was still you know Java server pages and Java facets and around Java 1.2 or

[9:35] Something like that it was the first programming languages he learned and he attended actually the second Meetup and he stayed you know the whole three hours was very interested so that kind of made me happy to see that we were still appealing to people who kind of recognize Java as the one of the development pillars I would say but yeah there’s a mix definitely a lot of people are also you know team leads who are trying to extend their Horizons so they’re around you know the 30s 40s but yeah it’s it’s a good mix of the audience so far and for Education what kind of education opportunities are there in Dubai are there a lot of universities and do they focus on Java there’s a lot of software development courses definitely in universities there’s a standard you know computer science and software engineering graduates as well but the focus here is mostly outside of University actually at least in terms of development and software engineering and all that because like I said the kind of the program is backed by the government to increase the number of coders in the country in general so there’s a lot of

[10:47] Initiatives there’s a lot of conferences there’s a lot of hackathons that are organized the funny thing is that these events kind of get a lot of people attending so I’m not sure what we’re missing to get the same amount of people to attend the drugs maybe because it’s their commercial or they’re backed by big companies they think that may be one of the one of the things and also because they’re kind of supported by the government and just on that I’ve been trying to use my affiliation to one of the government programs to boost the drug a bit more as well what are the plans for your next events it’s the end of the year we had I think our last drug for the year at the end of November the plan would be to have one when we get back so around mid or end of January when everyone is back from their holidays maybe in a bit more organized fashion I would say with a bit more boost to you know bring people in definitely we have already 10 or 15 people which are regular attendees I would say to the limited sessions we have but they’re they’re kind of inside the community now so hopefully by then

[11:52] They would have also gotten a bit more time to bring their friends and get to the Meetup so yeah that’s with the plan moving forward at least the short range plan in terms of long range maybe kind of push towards getting some companies to you know attend the Meetup get a bit of support that’s a bit of the cultural problem here where they don’t usually attend stuff unless it’s backed by Google or Amazon or Microsoft or whatever so which was actually proven once I did one of the meetups in the PWC offices we had like 2022 attendees so big names bring people unfortunately in the region so we’re gonna try to see if we can find the mix that and it makes sense at least for the for this job to boost yeah and also have the feeling that if a jug is organized at the company that you get a lot of attendees from that company either they feel obliged that’s also a possibility or it’s just easier because they are already there working and then they see that the joke will happen there and they can just stay for it yeah exactly you were mentioning something about boosting the joke more this isn’t

[13:03] Like other standard countries or regions I would say where you know if you put them it up you’ll get 25 people no matter what it’s it’s very technically oriented but only in the workplace or in the business sense right nobody and for sure everyone wants to learn and increase their skills and all that but they’re not used to expressing that and kind of doing it and having the open and that’s why I say developers are shy in the region right because I’ve had a lot of feedback and I tend to ask all the new joiners how did you hear about the job why did you come Etc and most of the feedback was that you know I can I came to Dubai there was no Community every every few weeks I go to meet up and search for Java and then I finally found that you guys existed so that’s one of the feedback there’s another feedback is that they want to a place to you know expand their knowledge learn more outside of the work that they spend and they’re not they’re not even they don’t mind sacrificing their Saturdays for example to attend a talk or two so but they just need the push to kind of convince them that this is worth it

[14:09] Basically this is worth the time because the country itself is very work oriented you don’t have much time for yourself it’s you know a nine hour work day usually for normal normal companies private companies so people kind of value their few hours on the weekends there’s family time on Sunday Etc so you need something to kind of hook them and basically hey yes this is the joke it’s part of my life now what part of my schedule and I can attend it you know without worry in a sense are you supported by your company as an organizer Yes actually the second drug which I mentioned I did in the wwc offices they were very supportive mostly because I convinced them it will bring them lots of publicity as you know supporter of the community and all that but they did we were able to use you know the big office bring kind of a good dinner for the attendees even get the budget for a few speakers to fly into Dubai to kind of give their talks so that they the guys in the community like that very much and at the same time you know it gave kind of a new face to the company in terms of

[15:19] Supporting development and the software engineering community so it’s a win-win for everyone that Community feeling is very important and I have the feeling like in Belgium that this feeling it’s the lifts but yeah a lot of jugs struggled from kovit they have to refine their community and their members and some people had changed job went into different directions so I think a lot of Chucks are also struggling to restart to reboot after that long period of yeah being going offline and not having any real life talks anymore no definitely that’s a problem you don’t have he started from zero so funnily enough the problem is that when you try to tell people to give some time for a remote talk they don’t do it anymore because now everything is face to face everyone wants to fly up and give talks no so it’s like but why you were doing it for the past two years you can do it one more time so that’s that’s the con of things I was devops for instance and it was tremendous how many people there were and tickets got sold out in 10 minutes so yeah also the visitors want to go to live talks again

[16:34] And see the people in real life yeah it’s definitely you know a different experience rather than kind of yeah thank you guys and logging off right you can talk to the speaker you can interact see the Expressions more meet the people with you in the in the session so it’s definitely a much better experience than the whole remote that we were having a lot of other jugs start doing side activities like training speakers new speakers even organize conferences I think that’s not directly on your schedule yet it would be nice to go and organize a conference but you need people to believe you won’t attended right we have it as a kind of a high level Target to have a conference not sure which one not sure which type you know what are the details exactly but definitely definitely it’s a Target and the problem also with the region that there’s a lot of conferences fake conferences I mean it’s it’s Dubai you know it’s the land of money and fake money in crypto and all these things so people have lost trust in almost everything if it’s not kind of verified so definitely it’s a challenge and we’ll

[17:48] Need support from Big players to kind of make it happen or at least give it credibility but the side activities are always something that I’ve been thinking about maybe do kind of like you said speaker sessions and even kind of do things like open discussions just you know a panel or kind of an Open Table where everyone Roundtable sits around and just discusses just have to be a specific workshops or anything just to kind of build the community wall the community foundations and make people interact and not be afraid to pitch their ideas because I know there are people with 10 15 years of experience but they’re they’re barely look you in the eyes and these people need to be the ones giving the talks eventually the local local speakers so yeah we need to we need to work on them definitely you mentioned already that actually some people of azul inspired you to start this Jack so yeah it’s it’s a funny story actually yeah I made I basically had it in mind to kind of do something in the community but it was never fully concrete or I was never fully you know believing in myself I

[18:55] Don’t know what was the problem the what happened we the people that guys from Azul were here they were giving him a tour actually of the new PWC Office and we’re talking about the few a few collaborations on Java and we went out for dinner with also a few people from the government of Dubai and over dinner we were discussing about communities and all that and what we should do to kind of do something in Dubai and make an impact and then I remember the kitchen was like yeah let’s let’s do the job that’s good like what do you mean he’s like yeah that’s a Dubai Jack let’s have a meet-up who cares we’ll bring speakers we’ll do everything why not let’s just kick it off and so basically that’s how the Dubai jug was kicked off over over a dinner it was the beginning of March and then we had the talk two three weeks after and what’s more funny is that we were all pushing because we had supposedly this government entity’s support but in the end they installed the speakers for their own session and didn’t bring us any attendees so that’s why my drug had eventually wanted

[19:57] Attendee for it but yeah it’s still a funny story when you think about it how it began it shows you that you know things can just start magically and then live live on their own and we have an extra guest as Chris stallinger also joined his call I’m in the Java world for a very very long time I started to work for sun Microsystems back in 2009 and then I was just working on job of the platform and specifically I was working on the chit compilers in the JVM so that’s that’s how I got into the whole thing I did a lot of java related JVM work before at the University got involved in canoe class path if you still remember that and then when OpenJDK was released then I got involved in that and then later I worked for Oracle still doing Java work and then later I worked for Twitter because Twitter is running on the JVM it’s using Scala but it’s running on the JVM so the Java platform and I did a lot of compiler work there as well a lot of performance work with crawl and so on so if I’m correct you moved from Hawaii to Dubai or you are moving not directly but

[21:11] I’m actually not in Dubai right now I’m in Europe and it’s snowy outside so it’s kind of nice yeah I’m thinking about moving to Dubai we’ll see I first I need a visa and all that you know the organizational stuff the job you know I’m not really involved let’s put it that way I just came in late it was a funny story I was in Morocco at that time at devox Morocco like a big Java Conference of the devox family and I was thinking at that time moving to Dubai but I hadn’t I haven’t decided yet and I was then having a conversation with someone and we were joking around and we said ah devops to buy that would ring right that has a nice ring to it and then I talked to a few other people and then I bumped into Mark Hazel you know one of the Devils people and I said you know what would be funny that books to buy and then he told me that Potter who is the organizer of devox Morocco wanted to do a Vox days to buy which is like the smaller version of the devil spread in Dubai already in 2016.

[22:25] But I didn’t know that so he never told me about this and then I talked about it and said hey I was thinking about going to Dubai maybe maybe we should do it now and he said yeah yeah let’s do it let’s do it and then we were looking into okay what is in Dubai like in terms of java Community is there anything and then you know just two months before whatever that was or even one month before this Dubai jug was created and we thought who is that who’s that who created that right and gertian his name was I didn’t know Chad back then and gertiel and his name came up and I thought oh I know him you know let me contact him he got me in touch with Chad and that’s how it came to be I’m just as I said I’m not really helping out with the joke it’s it’s Chad’s thing I’m I’m just there that’s how communities are built coincidence coincidence yeah yeah yeah really that’s what drives life right coincidence and a little bit yeah that’s coincidence how things yes seem to click together at some point you had your ID that already started with the jerk and then the conference comment into the picture so

[23:40] That’s how things happen indeed you can’t already explained that it’s quite a challenge to get to people of Dubai to we joke and even more challenging to get them to speak even you have any ideas how you could influence that Chad and I we talked in Dubai about this it’s difficult it really is and I mean one thing that I’ve I’ve learned in Dubai and I’m I was only there for like earlier this year I was there for two months and then now I was there for like five weeks or something because it’s such a big thing right now and it’s Dubai and blah blah blah so another speak I know from a Java conference he and he said oh I’m speaking at a conference in Dubai and I said oh that’s cool you know and he gave me a ticket and then I stopped by and it was a crypto conference like a web 3 conference so the web 3 stuff and the crypto stuff works really well in Dubai so I attended the conference and then a meet-up and there are lots and lots of people so it is possible it’s just a question of how to mobilize and find these people and unfortunately I don’t have an answer to

[24:58] That yet so I don’t know exactly how we reach the people because I think the problem is a little bit the same problem that a conference has no matter what it is you know people have their lives their day-to-day job and their family life and miss an app in Dubai from what I can tell is it reminds me a little bit of Silicon Valley to some degree because it’s like it’s so diverse so people from all over the world and it’s they’re so tied up in their work that they think going to the conference has no purpose right there’s no there’s nothing in it for me and I think that’s a little bit the issue to convince because if you go to a conference and we’ve all been there you and me and Chad I guess once you go you realize oh this is really good right you learn something you meet people the one thing that I always said about conference is why I think they’re so important and why people should go at least once a year I always said they should go at least twice a year is because you get a little numb to your job right you do your work all the time and but every now and then you need a

[26:14] Little bit of a lift up so to say right you go to a conference and you see you hear about all these new technologies and whatnot and you think oh this is really cool this is really cool I should try this right and so until that’s that’s really the purpose of a conference in my opinion and you know and then there’s also the networking and you get to know people and this and that and then when Once people realize that they go right they want to go because they know oh this was good last year and we should go again and a chug is similar right it’s just a very small version of a conference and we just have to get people to come because then they will realize oh this is good for me this is this has this is Meaningful how we do that as I said I don’t know yet I also have a theory a little bit which might be wrong but my theory is because Dubai is so diverse that it’s difficult to build a community right if you are in a small country let’s say Belgium or whatnot I mean it’s not that small but it’s it’s me yeah sure but it’s most it’s mostly the same people right you know they’ve worked

[27:32] There for a very long time you switch companies you know people from everywhere and then it’s a little bit easier in Dubai everybody comes and is there for a year or two or three or maybe for a long time then but it’s still so new and everything’s so diverse that I think that’s a little bit of an issue as jet sets you already have 15 regulars the people who came to the last sessions yeah I think they will also be critical in spreading the love for this community and this new joke and bringing people with him Chris said an important point a lot of people think of Dubai as a stop in their life rather than a destination right so there are people who would say you know I’m gonna come here for two years three years whatever make money and then leave so they don’t care about giving time for a job or a community or whatever and the ones who are here long enough know that or maybe or not know but they’re used to that it doesn’t lead anywhere maybe or they’re not used to this type of community being there so they don’t give it much attention so and that’s what kind of enforces that most of

[28:43] The people that we had attendees were people who just arrived to Dubai and they just arrived they Googled on me that they search and meet up you know Java community and they found us and they attended so a lot of them were fresh fresh blood I would say to the country and to the community which I can actually be pretty important for your career so to learn new things to be updated of new technology get into contact with other people yeah all things attitude can contribute to it as Chad said a lot of them were new people in Dubai so they don’t know a lot of other software developers yet right so it’s spreading the word makes makes that a little more difficult so the question is how do we get to the core of the people right I don’t know yet as I’ve already said like three times now maybe maybe the right path is to actually reach out to the big companies and find the chart of a developers there as a little Side Story maybe when I lived in Hawaii it’s it’s a similar problem in Hawaii there are multiple issues in Hawaii but the two main issues are the people who live there

[29:58] Because Hawaii has relatively good universities and computer science departments and so on so there are people the Hawaii is very small so that that’s a bit of an issue so if you would and I tried that if you would build up a Java conference and the Java Community that’s difficult because it’s too small but you can go abroad right you just say oh we have a meet-up or whatever it is or then later what I did was I did an unconference in Hawaii because an unconference you can talk about whatever you want right it doesn’t matter that worked pretty good the last one we had but that was I think March 2020 so right before the pandemic and then the pandemic hit and then you know that went away so the other issue that Hawaii has is maybe a little with us to buy people people go there because they let’s say they think they like it and they do like it right but it’s they don’t stay for a long time so one of the things that before I moved to Hawaii that I learned is local people who live there it’s very hard to become friends with them like true friends because they know the

[31:13] People will leave again and so that might be a little bit of a problem in Dubai as well that you’re from Dubai I wish but no I would have loved to be a local emirati but I’m not I’m originally Lebanese and immigrated to Dubai like most of the country because of all the perhaps problems happening there which we all have to get into but I’ve been here for two years now and I personally I mean again thinking as an expect myself I personally love the country but then again you can’t know if you’re staying here your whole life or not so especially that you know unlike European countries there’s no passport involved we don’t get the residency which will help your life get better or whatever it’s just you stay here and as long as you’re working otherwise you’re out and it is true that it’s difficult to get close to locals actually because it’s a bit the same here they know that you know expats have their own community and locals are their own communities they don’t they’re not not much interaction and that’s maybe something that the Java use group can help to build a new type

[32:25] Of community there and keep people longer in the country definitely I would love to see I mean people coming in from all all residency Years to all people in Dubai new people in Dubai intermediate people in Dubai kind of into one group sharing the knowledge we already shortly discussed about extending The Jug to side activities like training the speaker and maybe a conference but Chris you mentioned something about the fox days as I said earlier zobara wanted to do this already a while ago and so we said okay maybe maybe this is the sign right The Coincidence let’s do it and he’s he’s very excited about it so you should get him on the podcast at some point so he wants to do it immediately and he would like to do it next may I think that was he said after Ramadan because he said that’s that’s the best time to do it I trust him on that because he’s Arabic so he knows the culture a little bit better than I do we’ve we’ve announced that we would do it in May I hope we can do it the first edition will definitely be small right I mean there’s it’s just the growing pains you have

[33:44] When you start a conference the best conferences might not be entirely true but very successful conferences came out of very successful drugs because you already have the people right hey we actually now bring International speakers and then you have two three days of fun and then people say yeah okay let’s go we don’t have that that’s why we start small and Dubai is a little bit of a destination right a hub in the Middle East so that might make it easier it could potentially be possible without even people fly in from other places we’ll see about that first and foremost it’s for the local people right that’s how it should be so we’ll try to do it we haven’t we haven’t decided yet on the exact date with there’s no cfp open yet although people ask us all the time so where’s the cfp where’s the cfp we will not have issues getting speakers in that’s for sure right because everybody wants to come especially first edition in Dubai box days everybody wants to come so speakers we can get the best ones we want and we just need the people to come so spreading the word is probably key here

[35:00] I know that Dubai Abu Dhabi I’m not sure if we can get them involved because we’re not doing it there but they have budget for events right and especially the IT industry is up and coming in Dubai as it’s been for a couple years now so that Dubai is very interested to get smart intelligent people to the country so maybe we can leverage that a bit and then we’ll see sounds like a promising Year 2023. I hope so yeah I hope so and let’s hope that this podcast maybe help you to attract new people to end the joke and the Vox days there’s a Twitter account I think it’s called Vox Dubai if I remember correctly as I said there’s not a lot the website is not even up yet so you know we got to work on that but if you if people are interested in that and they can follow the Twitter account for now and then once we know more we’ll we’ll just post it there if Twitter is Twitter still exists back then that’s a big question but of course we have the Mastodon of Foojay a bit of marketing in between so yeah that’s a good remark where can people find you so we have the

[36:18] Meetup where you can subscribe for the events there is the fox day on Dubai on Twitter are there other links that we could mention and that we can add to the show notes that people can easily find you also the Dubai drug on Twitter Dubai drug is the account okay I will add these at the notes of the of this podcast okay thanks a lot thanks for the nice talk I learned a lot again was happy to visit Dubai although it was virtually maybe one day maybe box days hopefully one day we’ll have you and our jugs yes maybe okay thanks a lot have a nice day thank you for listening to this podcast keep an eye on Foojay for all your news about Java the gvm and all related Technologies thank you give me the friends of OpenJDK