Foojay Podcast #15: Japan JUG

Transcript

Automatically generated from the audio, so it can contain errors in names and technical terms. Suggest a correction.

[0:00] Hello and welcome to this new edition of the Foojay podcast for the next stop of our virtual Jack World Tour in Japan OpenJDK last month we were in the US and from my point of view we traveled today to the other side of the world as we speak with the organizers of the Japan jug hi everyone one of organizers of Jay Jack and javajo which are Jax in Japan I am a software developer at jfrog actually currently I don’t use Java so much but I like Java and my first programming language was Java so I’m into organizing Java communities and enjoying Spade spending time with people from our communities today I’m looking forward to talking and introducing our communities to all over the world so yeah please enjoy our stories my name is Maya a walker the Microsoft Event so my job role is agile specialist for developers and Angel parts and so specialist means pre-sales as your crystals so I joined Jay Jack and Japan women user groups from 6 or 7 years ago I can speak it don’t well but please bear with me thank you hello I’m Shin tanimoto I’m a leader or representative of Japan Java is a group

[1:47] AKA jejeg I started my career from 2004. through a developer for around 20 years I have written a book on Java for beginners and articles for several magazines and the imlr frequent speaker at Japan domestic events or international events including jabbawang and spring one other for open source projects there used to be an open source community in Japan called the sisa project I was a committer of the Jazz product there I hope we can have a nice podcast today okay thanks a lot for joining I’m Frank Del Porto I’m a Java developer and technical writer and I’m making these Foojay podcasts where we visit jux around the world Jax being Java Juice groups and actually we have two now today in the podcast as we have the Japan Java youth group but also the woman group so that’s really great can you tell me how long these jocks exist and Japan Java is a group was founded in 2007 so it continues to 4 14 or 15 year years it was started by fujio mariama who was very passionate about Jabra at that time and was funded with the goal of creating a community for the Java community that supports other Jags around Japan at that

[3:25] Time in Japan there was an open source project called sisa project and it’s it’s Community was a major force in Japan this framework has the same functionality as spring spring framework developers in Japan at that time like the Caesar communities and spring with a group and local drugs were starting up at that time and Jesus tried to play a role in bringing the communities together it is hard to say if Discord was a Successful Failure but JJ continues to support the Japanese groups around Japan and like dispatching Java speakers to the local Jazz so actually Japan user group is really for the whole country and you are helping other groups local groups to organize other events yeah yeah which is really great whatever user groups for the Java groups by the German groups to the Java groups yeah and working together is really what is driving the different jugs forward so yeah you’re existing already a long time does the same go for the woman Java User Group it was founded in 2014 so a bin years ago oh we’re actually surprised it’s okay now that’s very strange with that’s the third time in this podcast series

[5:00] That people are surprised how long their jug exists so we found that in the Manchester drug that they have to celebrate the birthday the 10th birthday I think it was and in Denver it was the 20th so yeah these jugs really exist for a long time it’s really great that these communities keep existing and keep having events can you tell me why you are involved in this joke what is your goal of being an organizer of these jugs a woman Java Community was created to encourage female developers who were worried about being in the regular communities as there are more men yeah that’s why we started that community and I was one of Founders actually that person who came up with the idea was different that’s that’s not me but I’ve been organizing this community from it was created what I know from Europe is that the amount of female Engineers is really low so 10 may be in a team we see that this really stems from the education where we have not a lot of girls choosing for an engineering role or education is this different in Japan is there a bigger female group who is studying software engineering and who is

[6:24] Taking up a role in this job that’s not different same same large station happening in Japan as well and also yeah as far as I searched and actually five years ago to have a presentation about our committee at Java one the rate of women in Japan was even worse than the us we have less women in our industry so I think what women feel and experience is similar globally do you think that this woman Java youth group has an impact on the popularity of being a programmer I don’t know how we affect impact on the Japan text industry but maybe our activities could be keep motivation for already Engineers or students for example the women use a group in Japan such as python Jabbar and movie are often communicate between user groups sometimes we organize join event so in point of view about create buyers types Network It’s very effective but I don’t know how we reflect in practice in Japan my organized is a couple of women communities so yes she knows not only station in Java Community but also other languages and Technologies so yeah what she says is I think very real that’s actually what I’ve seen with

[7:58] The other jokes that the organizers are really Community people it’s not that they are Java Community people they are really Community people and organizing Java events but also other events and then taking your experience of organizing one event to another is really great with those Java groups how many of these events do you have is that a monthly thing or just whenever you have a speaker available in case of java Joe is a Java women’s group there’s a meet up three times or forward times a year we organize their means the teams development events so it’s a kind of person we developed a website for you using their spring boot event and a large biennial event the Jesus cross Community Conference AKA jfccc Jessica CCC is a one-day event with three or four tracks and eight sessions so up to 30 sessions in a day these events do they mostly have local speakers Japanese speakers or do you really have speakers traveling in most of the speakers are from Japan but at CCC about one truck is further with overseas speakers for us Japanese the language barrier is huge and it is difficult to feel most of the decisions

[9:32] In English even for the participants and also before covet as we said we have two conferences in a year and the spring one we tend to by speakers from overseas and the next CCC would take place in June would have more speakers from holding countries I guess you also had a big impact because of kovit did you switch to Virtual events or did you just stop for a while what was the impact on your side yeah in the covet virtual events we didn’t stop having our events so legal events were held continuously and we could have more people from various areas in Japan which was a good point of coffee impact but also we had some cons for example people got tired of attending many events virtually and we tend to think many people in person so getting together at the same place is kind of festival party so it’s just fun after kovitz was lasting for a while our events got less people and less newcomers yeah yeah yeah and yeah yeah that that’s that big point one of the biggest problem was new people like freshmen even don’t know we have such events yeah if we get together at companies somebody tells hey we

[11:20] Have set this kind of event this week or did you see this tweet or yeah such conversation we always have like same people yeah which is also great but to make communities flashier and gain more thoughts from various people that’s the hard thing of coffee that was also my experience it’s easier because everyone from all around the world is available virtually but you really miss getting together having a drink talking about something completely different and then end up at the technical subject yeah that’s the thing that people are missing from these these Live Events are you catching up again past covet but we should say that probably but are you going back to Live Events and getting together and are people coming back actually in Japan we cannot say it’s back to normal people still with remote work and using masks and many events are still online yeah but from this year we start packing to normal and have offline events the next District spring has offline rooms and organizations and besides that we are planning to have unconference staying Japanese style

[12:52] Ryukan it is called Jay onsin yeah we restart the J Onsen event and how many people join your drugs in average for the night seminars there are a couple of hundreds attendees and foreign CCC we have around 1000 attendees in that event yeah there’s a big conference in data what is the mix of visitors do you have a lot of young Java developers in Japan I already have a few of them in here in the call is it a mixed community that you have young old male female we already had a bit of discussion about a female but is there a lot of young blood I had some statistics about it I see that over 95 percent of I think these are Japanese and mostly software developers and there are not many business people or managers and not many women either like 10 percent once JJ hadn’t been popular among young people but the number of young attendees started to grow around the time of java age with Lambda expressions and stream API so now we have a lot of young people and you know all the people like us are you looking at me for the older people but you’re right yeah as you mentioned Java is evolving a

[14:29] Lot of streams and all these new modern approaches in the language do you see some kind of trend of what is popular as a talk in your jokes of course course new features of new version of new Java version or one of the most popular topics we noticed that we the Japan Jacks have interesting Trends in Japan to talk about design and architecture is quite popular which means not how to write code or which is better calling or something like that but what kind of architecture we have to choose or what kind of responsibility the code in this class has to have or what kind of layered architecture is good yeah topics like that are really popular as we think at conferences in the United States or Europe the way we could is talked about a lot we don’t have so many sessions about design that design is the Hot Topic in Japan that’s really the contrary of what I had heard in another joke where they really focus on technical Evolutions in the Java language which is also a hot topic now with all these fast releases what some jokes also do a lot is not really Java related but developer life talk about

[16:06] Agile principles and stuff like that or these popular yeah yeah they are Agile development management things and the specific ways like methods like scrum these stuffs are also very popular you already mentioned that you already also have the conferences that your go going back to life events what are the plans for the next months and this year I’ve been thinking about doing something to get more overseas but since to Japan Japanese groups you know but the college stopped us yeah I want to talk about the unconference event we are now planning the James event on conference events at Japanese reconcile hotel with hot spring bed and we have a little website json.jp now this unconference is English only event and most attendees are from overseas and I think listeners have interests this event and I think they can join the Giants and on conference so please remember that you are well onsen.jb or the other topics that we didn’t talk about that you want to discuss definitely we want to be in a world where the women’s Community is no longer needed we wanted the clothes this community and the women’s

[17:42] Developers join their Jag or another overseas groups so we together discussion and not afraid not scary so they want to prayer and enjoyed communities we want yeah that would indeed be ideal if we don’t need separate women group but it’s just a developer community and we all to work together and be together and discuss together what we learned and what we want to learn and what all changes in these yeah for me I’m looking mainly at Java but I know my you do several groups but technology is evolving so fast that we have to keep coming together and share what we’ve learned you know Japan is a small Asian country but I feel that the level of issues or technical difficulties or commitment to Quality at a high level I want to have that recognized more outside of Japan as the sisa project I talked about earlier was a better framework than spring project but because it didn’t adopt a global strategy it wasn’t recognized at all overseas ended up closing so I won’t make Jesus more Global in their future so that’s what I joined jj4 actually that’s what we try to do with this podcast connect other people with

[19:12] Your Japan Community are there any questions you want to ask our listeners and that they can contact you for instance to come speak at your event or where they can join yeah you can contact from Twitter which account is JJ ug jjr or any of us we can contact the directory and I guess you’re open to new speakers new visitors whoever wants to join your community is more than welcome I guess it can be our website Java users.jp from the japanese.jp you can find the event not similar events and just like ccc’s and also General I’d like to ask one thing to listeners have you thought about taking part in events in Japan or Asian countries if you have I appreciate that or if you already have participated in events in Asian countries oh yeah that’s super great and really glad to know that but if not what is the cause is it because it’s far or you don’t know many about such countries or because of the language barrier or cultural difference yeah which is I want to ask and yeah if we can find any reason we’re gonna try to remove that for the future that’s a great message everyone who has a barrier to join

[20:46] Please inform you and you will try to get these barriers out of the way that’s a great message to conclude thank you for joining this podcast recording even if you were a bit afraid of using English but my Japanese is way worse so I would not have been an option to do so thanks for joining the recording for everyone listening thanks for listening of course and keep an eye on Foojay for future articles about the development and everything related to the Java world and let’s see where the world tour of the jokes leads us next month