Evening at Lorraine , a glass of wine and some French cheese, my body relaxes after a nice bike trip across the Meurthe River, my notebook connecting to Ireland - tonight is my first virtual meeting with the Java Community of Dublin.

The Dublin Java Meetup Group

The The Dublin Java Meetup Group (DJMG) is an initiative to connect Irish people interested in Java technologies. It is a monthly event organized by Jakub Korab. The description of the meeting goals can be found at the DJMG website:

    The DJMG is the place to connect with fellow Java professionals. We
    give you the opportunity to meet with other developers to cut through
    vendor hype, compare battle scars, and toss around ideas. New members
    of all experience levels welcome.

The community discussing What technologies should I be learning...

The starter topic of the last night was What technologies should I be learning in the next 12 months?. The meeting had about fifteen people and the discussion was focused on the innovative technologies such as EJB3 and JPA. The complexity of the new J2EE5 platform and also the tools required to produce good J2EE applications were also discussed with enthusiasm. Other topics presented were about the profusion of the web frameworks and what will really survive for the time. Many other topics were suggested, but I will stop here to shorten this blog entry (the full conversation is available here). The audience was plenty of professionals and also students, the level of the discussion was quite impressive.

As a foreign person I can't figure out how the Ireland Java community works and even less from just one experience, but the feeling after two hours of talking with the Irish fellows is that Ireland can be a great Java experience. The software market of Ireland seems growing quickly and the extroverted nature of the Irishes makes the conversation very easy.

That's it, it is midnight here in France and I am just posting this entry to remember the nice country of Ireland, perhaps a good place to visit and also to talk about Java. You are all invited to join the next virtual meeting - and also to drink some pints of Guiness :).