Open Community eXperience 2026 is a wrap. This is the second time since the rebranding from EclipseCon. It is certainly a different type of conference than EclipseCon used to be. The feeling is that it is slightly less community-oriented and more geared toward industry collaborations. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but with so many different types of people attending, creating a cohesive experience is difficult.

In 2024, we hosted the Open Community for Java as a so-called co-located event, with two rooms dedicated to Java in a separate building. It certainly gave us the opportunity to fill the agenda with more relevant content for the Java community, but it also made us feel a little as second class citizens compared to the “Main OCX Track”. This year, we chose a different approach by being a part of the Main OCX Track. The result was that we ended up with slightly less relevant content for the Java community, and all mixed in with everything else. Due to the date conflict with several other major Java conferences in Europe, the expectations were not very high for the number of attendees from the Java community, so this was probably not entirely a bad decision, even if the ones that did attend had a little less to choose from.

Those present at OCX this year could enjoy great food, great coffee, and great hallway conversations in addition to high-quality talks from excellent speakers. I hope that we will be able to get a bigger presence of both Java in the talks as well as among the attendees next year. At least, the dates for OCX and JCON won’t conflict next year, as the dates for OCX 2027 are April 13-15, while JCON Europe 2027 will be held May 31-June 3.