Today marks seven years since I joined the Eclipse Foundation as the Jakarta EE Developer Advocate. Looking back, it has been an amazing journey filled with community, collaboration, innovation, and more conference talks, webinars, podcasts, and flights than I can count.

The best part of my role is the connection with the communty and the people. From specification leads and committers to user group leaders, conference organisers, and developers around the world, the Jakarta EE community continues to demonstrate what open collaboration can achieve. Every conversation, contribution, and piece of feedback helps move this ecosystem forward.

Community matters, always had, always will, especially in these days where AI is taking over many of the tasks we considered as being key to our success. Such as the art of coding. But technology cannot replace the human connections that are at the heart of the community. Conversations in the hallways, discussions over coffee, conference meetups, and spontaneous brainstorming sessions build the trust, spark the ideas, and create the relationships that helps move the Java community and Jakarta EE forward.

Open source is ultimately about people, and as AI becomes more capable, the value of talking, interacting, socialising, and building the community only becomes greater. The future belongs not only to those who master the technology, but also to those who strengthen the human networks around it.

Thank you all for being part of this journey. Looking forward to the next seven years!