JCON COMMUNITY HUB

Community Agenda

IBM TechXchange 2026 · Atlanta · October 27–29

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)Mentoring RoundtablesBreakout RoomsTech Talks
Schedule notes: Tech Talk details below are based on the list provided. Mentoring times, titles, speakers, and session codes are updated from the full list provided. Breakout session details are transcribed from the full list provided. The AJUG theater session was supplied with an 11:30 AM–12:00 PM slot (30 minutes), unlike most 20-minute talks; that duration is preserved as provided. Confirm last-minute changes in the IBM conference app.
MentoringBreakoutTech Talk

Tuesday, October 27 · 24 sessions

10:30 AM–10:50 AM
Tech Talk

Java on Kubernetes Without Container Images: The WebAssembly Way

Bruno Borges
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
10:30 AM–11:15 AM
Breakout

A Modern Introduction to Serialisation in Java 26 [TEC-4876]

Steve Poole
B315, Level 3, Building B
10:30 AM–11:15 AM
Breakout

Who moved my (Java) Heap? AI, CLIs and Libraries to the rescue! [TEC-4962]

Chandra Guntur; Don Raab
B316, Level 3, Building B
11:00 AM–11:20 AM
Tech Talk

Steering a Coding Agent Toward Quarkus Best Practices

Elder Moraes; Luis Fabricio De Llamas
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
11:30 AM–12:00 PM
Mentoring

Have You Considered Contributing to Jakarta EE? [MTE-4888]

Reza Rahman
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
11:30 AM–12:00 PM
Tech Talk

Growing Big Ideas from Local Roots With AJUG

Glenn Renfro
Theater, User Group Pavilion, Sandbox
11:45 AM–12:30 PM
Breakout

Adding AI to Enterprise Java Without Rewriting the Application [TEC-4881]

Brian Benz
B316, Level 3, Building B
11:45 AM–12:30 PM
Breakout

Debugging in the AI Era: Tools, Techniques, and Mindset [TEC-4880]

Bhupendra Mishra
B315, Level 3, Building B
12:00 PM–12:20 PM
Tech Talk

How DDD Gives AI Assistants the Context They're Missing

Oliver Ernesto Sierra Pac
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
12:30 PM–1:00 PM
Mentoring

Beyond Borders - Connecting Technology, Industry & Global Careers [MTE-4883]

Fabiana Piazza
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
1:00 PM–1:20 PM
Tech Talk

Beyond SEO: Optimizing Your Web Content for the Age of AI

Nerando Johnson
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
1:30 PM–2:00 PM
Mentoring

From Code to Context - The Future of Technical Leadership [MTE-4886]

Bhupendra Mishra
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
1:30 PM–2:15 PM
Breakout

Java's Evolution: How Java is Quietly Transforming Itself for the AI era [TEC-4871]

Vijay Sundaresan; V. Krishna Nandivada
B315, Level 3, Building B
1:30 PM–2:15 PM
Breakout

Java-Native AI on IBM Semeru: High-Performance AI with OpenJ9, CUDA and the Vector API [TEC-4885]

Zoran Sevarac
B316, Level 3, Building B
2:00 PM–2:20 PM
Tech Talk

Seven Ways You Can Build an Amazing Dev Career in the AI Era

@brjavaman Souza; Karina Souza
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
2:30 PM–3:00 PM
Mentoring

What Is My Java Expertise Worth in an AI World? [MTE-4879]

Ari Waller
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
2:45 PM–3:30 PM
Breakout

Free Isn’t Free: Moving From Open Source Abuse to Alignment [TEC-4889]

Brian Fox
B315, Level 3, Building B
2:45 PM–3:30 PM
Breakout

The Jakarta Agentic AI Specification - Status and Future [TEC-4890]

Reza Rahman
B316, Level 3, Building B
3:00 PM–3:20 PM
Tech Talk

Building Scalable Multi-Agentic AI Systems in Java: Orchestrating Agents with Event-Driven Approach

Mary Grygleski
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
3:30 PM–4:00 PM
Mentoring

From Coding to Leading - Learning to Focus on Different Kinds of Problems [MTE-4892]

Mark Stoodley
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
4:00 PM–4:20 PM
Tech Talk

Customized Jakarta Bean Validators

Scott Sosna
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
4:00 PM–4:45 PM
Breakout

Expect the Unexpected: Handling Exceptions in Enterprise Applications [TEC-4895]

Kito Mann
B316, Level 3, Building B
4:00 PM–4:45 PM
Breakout

Of Microservices and Monoliths [TEC-4894]

Spencer Gibb
B315, Level 3, Building B
4:30 PM–4:50 PM
Tech Talk

Java NIO Deep Dive: Building a File System on Neo4J

Scott Sosna
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox

Wednesday, October 28 · 23 sessions

10:30 AM–11:00 AM
Mentoring

AI is NOT Replacing Human Developers [MTE-4899]

Mary Grygleski
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
10:30 AM–11:15 AM
Breakout

JCON Panel: Has AI Broken Application Security Forever? [TEC-4898]

Steve Poole; Zoran Sevarac; Brian Fox; Micah Silverman; Dan de Silva
B316, Level 3, Building B
10:30 AM–11:15 AM
Breakout

Scotty I Need Warp Speed - Ways to Improve the JVM Startup/Warmup [TEC-4897]

Gerrit Grunwald
B315, Level 3, Building B
11:00 AM–11:20 AM
Tech Talk

TODO or not TODO

Kito Mann
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
11:30 AM–12:00 PM
Mentoring

Beyond Senior Dev - The Next Steps for The Technical Career [MTE-4901]

@brjavaman Souza
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
11:45 AM–12:30 PM
Breakout

AI Security Engineer Foundations: OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications [TEC-4902]

Micah Silverman
B316, Level 3, Building B
11:45 AM–12:30 PM
Breakout

AI in Java: No Python Required [TEC-4870]

Emily Jiang; Ivar Grimstad
B315, Level 3, Building B
12:00 PM–12:20 PM
Tech Talk

Learning Java When AI Is Your Pair Programmer

Jennifer Reif
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
12:30 PM–1:00 PM
Mentoring

AI Adoption Clinic - From Experiments to Engineering Capability [MTE-4904]

Luis Fabricio De Llamas
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
1:00 PM–1:20 PM
Tech Talk

Is Java a statically or dynamically compiled language? Get the best of both with static analysis

Vijay Sundaresan; V. Krishna Nandivada
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
1:30 PM–2:00 PM
Mentoring

Giving Coding Agents a Real Dev Environment [MTE-4907]

Jonathan Putney
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
1:30 PM–2:15 PM
Breakout

Beyond Code: The Intent-Driven IDE for the Agentic Age [TEC-4906]

Bruno Borges
B316, Level 3, Building B
1:30 PM–2:15 PM
Breakout

Treat Your Build Like Prod. Attackers Already Do. [TEC-4905]

Brian Demers
B315, Level 3, Building B
2:00 PM–2:20 PM
Tech Talk

Reviewing AI-Written Java: Coding Assistants and a CI Gate

Brian Benz
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
2:30 PM–3:00 PM
Mentoring

FIRST - How to Start Something Without Waiting for Permission [MTE-4909]

Alexandra Arguello Saenz
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
2:45 PM–3:30 PM
Breakout

Big Data and AI Architecture: Apache Iceberg, Spark and LLMs [TEC-4910]

Pratik Patel
B315, Level 3, Building B
2:45 PM–3:30 PM
Breakout

Getting the most out of the Semeru Runtimes JDK [TEC-4875]

Mark Stoodley
B316, Level 3, Building B
3:00 PM–3:20 PM
Tech Talk

The Reputation Formula: Turbocharge Your Developer Career

@brjavaman Souza
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
3:30 PM–4:00 PM
Mentoring

Get Started with Open Source - and What's AI Got to Do with It? [MTE-4912]

Ivar Grimstad
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
4:00 PM–4:20 PM
Tech Talk

The Lauda Question: What Separates the Top 5% of AI-Era Java Engineers

Silvio de Morais
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
4:00 PM–4:45 PM
Breakout

My children will never deploy active-passive [TEC-4915]

DaShaun Carter
B316, Level 3, Building B
4:00 PM–4:45 PM
Breakout

One Tool Call Doesn’t Make an Agent: Building Real Agentic Workflows in Java [TEC-4914]

Jennifer Reif
B315, Level 3, Building B
4:30 PM–4:50 PM
Tech Talk

What Is My Java Expertise Worth in an AI World?

Ari Waller
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox

Thursday, October 29 · 10 sessions

9:00 AM–9:20 AM
Tech Talk

Why AI Agents Struggle With Your Java Web App

Alexandra Arguello Saenz
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
9:00 AM–9:30 AM
Mentoring

Grow Your Dev Career Building Visibility in the Java Community [MTE-4917]

Luiz Real
JCON Hub | 370, Sandbox
9:00 AM–9:45 AM
Breakout

AI Agents Need the Engineering Java Already Has [TEC-4873]

Elder Moraes; Luis Fabricio De Llamas
B316, Level 3, Building B
9:30 AM–9:50 AM
Tech Talk

What xz should have taught us (and didn’t)

Brian Demers
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
10:00 AM–10:20 AM
Tech Talk

rm -rf self-doubt: Debugging Impostor Syndrome for Developers

Vincent Mayers
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
10:15 AM–11:00 AM
Breakout

Building Observable Java Apps that Scale with Quarkus [TEC-4920]

Thiago Gonzaga
B316, Level 3, Building B
10:15 AM–11:00 AM
Breakout

People-First Software Engineering: 10x Your Team's Delivery with AI Agents [TEC-4919]

Luiz Real
B315, Level 3, Building B
10:30 AM–10:50 AM
Tech Talk

How Old Is Your Code?

Steve Poole
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
11:00 AM–11:20 AM
Tech Talk

Refactoring the ROI of Software: Lessons from the Frontlines of OpenRewrite Adoption

DaShaun Carter
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox
11:30 AM–11:50 AM
Tech Talk

AI Security Engineer Foundations: Addressing Shadow AI

Micah Silverman
Tech Talk 05 | 371, JCON Hub, Sandbox