JCON USA 2026 as a located within IBM TechXchange 2026 was a tremendous success! This was the second time the Java community had it’s own space at TechXchange thanks to Richard and the JCON crew. This year, it was bigger and more prominent than last year. All Java user groups were offered to have their logo displayed on the wall, and of course Javaforum Malmö was there in the good company of Java User Groups from around the World.

In addition to my TechXchange talk with YK, I also did a talk with Emily under the JCON USA umbrella. This talk was titled AI in Java: No Python Required. Emily was in charge of the slides, so I don’t have the latest version to publish here. But I am sure Emily will make them available somewhere.

Whereever Bruno is present there is a Mentoring Hub. And JCON at TechXchange was no exception. I hosted a mentoring session titled AI Mentoring Roundtable: Get Started with Open Source – and What’s AI Got to Do with It? In this session, we talked about how to contribute a project to Eclipse Foundation as well as how to become a contributor on an existing project. The participants were most interested in how to contribute a project since they already had some Open Source projects on GitHub and wondered what it would mean to move in under an open source foundation.

I spent most of my time at this year’s TechXchange in the Sandbox around the JCON Community Hub. That was where most of the good discussions took place among the cool people hanging out there. It was also fairly close to the coffee stations so we could monitor the queue to the barista. This year brought so many good conversation and so much inspiration to bring back home. And, of course, a lot of fun. As soon as the conference ended, Gerrit and I went to watch Atlanta Dream play the 6th game in the WNBA finals. That was an experience! What a show!