Devnexus 2026

10 Things I Hate About AI

Cody Frenzel

Cody is a Solutions Architect at Ippon Technologies and self-proclaimed software craft evangelist. He has over 10 years of experience as a full stack developer, with a passion for optimizing engineering workflows. In his free time he likes to play tennis competitively or go hiking with his dog King Louie.

Laurie Lay

Laurie is a senior software engineer at Ippon Technologies, where she specializes in front-end development and software solutions that drive both user engagement and business success. With a master's degree in cognitive psychology, Laurie brings a unique perspective to software engineering, combining her understanding of human behavior with cutting-edge technology to create intuitive, user-friendly, and developer approved software applications. Her diverse career path spans a variety of fields, including professorship, owning a restaurant, motorcycle mechanics, and software engineering, each of which has contributed to her well-rounded skill set and innovative approach to problem-solving. This eclectic experience allows her to bridge...

10 Tools & Tips to Upgrade Your Java code with AI

Vinicius Senger

Vinicius Senger is a developer, inventor, and technical speaker working for AWS in California in the Global Specialist Team as a Senior Developer Advocate for Java. He started developing software at just 8 years old and never stopped accumulating 30 years of work in the IT area. Founder of Globalcode and The Developers Conference, Vinicius was considered top 20 influencer in IoT development, Java Champion winning two Duke's Choice Award in California for innovation projects in automation, robotics, boats, houses, helmets and many others. Since 2017 at AWS, he has been working with Java, IoT, Serverless, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence...

Jonathan Vogel

Jonathan has been working as a DevOps specialist solutions architect at Amazon Web Services for over a year and has previously practiced professional software development for over a decade. He is passionate about enabling builders. Jonathan lives in the Triangle area of North Carolina and enjoys climbing rocks, birding and music.

Agents, Tools, and MCP, oh my! Next-level AI concepts for developers

Jennifer Reif

Jennifer Reif is a Developer Relations Engineer at Neo4j, speaker, and blogger with an MS in CMIS. An avid developer and problem-solver, she has worked with many businesses and projects to organize and make sense of widespread data assets and leverage them for maximum business value. She has expertise in a variety of commercial and open source tools, and she enjoys learning new technologies, sometimes on a daily basis! Her passion is finding ways to organize chaos and deliver software more effectively.

AI for Busy Java Developers

Frank Greco

Frank is a senior technology consultant and enterprise architect working on cloud and AI/ML tools for developers. He is a Java Champion, Chairman of the NYJavaSIG (first JUG ever), and runs the International Machine Learning for the Enterprise conference in Europe. Co-author of JSR 381 Visual Recognition for Java API standard and strong advocate for Java and Machine Learning. Member of the NullPointers. #STEAMnotSTEM

Architecting Microservices for Agentic AI Integration

Rohit Bhardwaj

Rohit Bhardwaj is the Director of Architecture at Salesforce, where he specializes in architecting multi-tenant, cloud-native solutions within resilient microservices and service-oriented architectures using the AWS stack. With a passion for solving complex problems, he has led transformational programs that reduce costs and improve efficiencies. Rohit has a rich background in designing scalable cloud microservice architectures with Spring Boot and Netflix OSS on AWS and Google Cloud. As a Security Ninja, he proactively addresses application security vulnerabilities through ethical hacking and threat modeling. Rohit has been involved in building Lambda architecture solutions using Apache Spark and Cassandra for real-time analytics...

Building AI Agents with Spring & MCP

James Ward

Professional software developer since 1997, with much of that time spent helping developers build software that doesn't suck. A Typed Pure Functional Programming zealot who often compromises on his ideals to just get stuff done. Currently a Developer Advocate for AWS.

Josh Long

Josh (@starbuxman) has been the first Spring Developer Advocate since 2010. Josh is a Java Champion, author of 7 books (including "Reactive Spring") and numerous best-selling video training (including "Building Microservices with Spring Boot Livelessons" with Spring Boot co-founder Phil Webb), and an open-source contributor (Spring Boot, Spring Integration, Axon, Spring Cloud, Activiti, Vaadin, etc), a Youtuber (Coffee + Software with Josh Long as well as my Spring Tips series ), and a podcaster ("A Bootiful Podcast").

Choose your fighter: Spring AI vs LangChain4j

Malavika Balamurali

Malavika Balamurali is a longtime Java fan who has been working with it since Java 8 released. She is a Junior at Kennesaw State University pursuing a Bachelor's in Computer Science with a focus in Data Science. She's also a member of SWE, GWC and NCWIT and likes working with Java in all of its glory. Even Applets, which she makes fun of on a daily basis. She also presented a lightning talk at AJUG about SpringAI and LangChain4j.

Conversational AI Semantic Search for E-commerce using Elasticsearch + RAG

Karthik Govardhanan

Karthik Govardhanan is affiliated with Boston University and has spent over 14 years building and scaling AI-powered search and discovery systems across large-scale retail and e-commerce platforms. His work spans search relevance, personalization, SEO, and conversational commerce, with a strong focus on applying large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, and semantic search in production environments.

From Context Windows to Context Graphs: The Next Generation of AI Systems

Medha Chakraborty

An engineer at heart and a leader by practice, I bring 17 years of experience in building robust enterprise solutions. As an Application Development Leader at BlackRock, I focus on designing and delivering scalable systems that drive real business impact. Java has always been my strongest language, and I’m equally passionate about exploring new and emerging technologies, especially the world of AI. Beyond my role, I nurture my passion for community building by leading the Java SIG at Atlanta BlackRock, where I connect developers, ideas, and innovation. Prior to BlackRock, I worked as a consultant with GAP, Pearson, JP Morgan,...

Srijani Dey

As a Senior Director, in the 'Strategic Program Transformation' function of Aladdin Data, I am responsible for the delivery of Studio programs, collaborate and connect the dots across multi-disciplinary teams and help focus on value realization. 'Strategic Program Transformation' function at BlackRock, is accountable to deliver complex, cross-functional, multi-year, Aladdin-wide strategic initiative, aligned to firm's goals and priorities and commercial client outcomes.

From Microservices to Agent-Services: Architectural Patterns for Autonomous System Boundaries

Mo Haghighi

Dr Mo Haghighi is distinguished engineer/Senior director for Cloud Platform and Infrastructure at Discover Financial Services. His current focus is hybrid and multi-cloud strategy, application modernisation and automating application/workload migration across public and private clouds. Previously, he held various leadership positions as a program director at IBM, where he led Developer Ecosystem and Cloud Engineering teams in 27 countries across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to IBM, he was a research scientist at Intel and a Java developer at Sun Microsystems/Oracle. Mo obtained a PhD in computer science, and his primary areas of expertise are distributed and edge computing,...

Prasanth kumar Pari

Prasanth Pari is a Principal Infrastructure Engineer at Discover Financial Services

From Monolith to AI Agent: Modernizing Java Systems with MCP

Theo Lebrun

Theo Lebrun is a seasoned Data Engineer and Technology Consultant based in New York City, with extensive experience in cloud computing, databases, and software development. He has a strong command of tools and technologies such as AWS, Kafka, Databricks, and Python, enabling him to assist numerous clients in optimizing their data pipelines to meet and exceed their objectives. Theo's technical expertise are matched by his passion for sharing his knowledge with others. He has authored multiple blog posts while also being an active speaker at various conferences and meetups. Some of his recent presentations include technical topics such as creating...

Inside MCP: Live Protocol Messages, Real-Time Flows, and Smarter Agents

David Parry

David Parry is an accomplished Director of Architecture with over 20 years of experience in Software Development. It all began in 1996 when he discovered the fascinating world of programming, with a particular focus on Java applets. Throughout his illustrious career, David Parry has been involved in various noteworthy projects. He has successfully built and implemented content management systems for a wide range of clients, including the esteemed Johny Walker and its renowned keepwalking.com. Additionally, as a consultant at a Big 4 firm, David played a pivotal role in solving critical issues for numerous customers, demonstrating his expertise in handling...

Integrating LLMs in Java: A Practical Guide to Model Context Protocol

Dan Vega

Dan Vega is a Spring Developer Advocate at VMware Tanzu. He has been developing software for the web for over 20 years and his superpower is problem-solving. Dan is a blogger, YouTuber, course creator, and speaker. He is a lifelong learner and his passion is sharing his knowledge with the developer community. Dan lives near Cleveland Ohio with his beautiful wife and 2 daughters. When he isn’t writing code or teaching he enjoys spending time with his family, lifting weights, running, or reading a good book.

Its Up To Java Developers to Fix Enterprise AI

Rod Johnson

Rod is a developer, author, investor and entrepreneur. He has authored several best-selling books on Java EE. He is the creator of the Spring Framework and was cofounder and CEO of SpringSource. He has served on the board of Elastic, Neo Technologies, Apollo, Lightbend and several other successful companies. He is presently developing a structured RAG system using Spring and Kotlin.

OK, But What About Predictive AI?

Brayan Muñoz V.

Brayan Muñoz V., an Oracle Ace Associate, is a Java SDE, Data Scientist, and Professor with an MSc in Data Science (UCJC) and a Telematics Engineer degree (PUCMM). He brings six years of software development experience, which includes three years in AI and data science projects, in monolithic and microservices architectures. He currently serves as a Professor and thesis advisor at PUCMM's School of Computing and Telecommunications. Brayan is a Board Member of the Dominican Republic Java User Group (@JavaDominicano) and a winner of the JCP Program Awards Java in Education category with the group, frequently speaking on Java and...

José R. Almonte C.

I am a Telematics & Software Engineer and Data Science graduate with 4 years of experience building solutions in FinTech and E-learning platforms. My work is driven by responsibility, teamwork, and continuous learning, and I am passionate about advancing in Software Engineering, AI/ML, Data Science, Sports Analytics, and Finance. Outside of work, I enjoy traveling and exploring new cultures, following NBA, MLB, NFL, and European soccer, playing padel, experimenting with new recipes, reading, and practicing piano.

Performant GraphRAG: Improving Neo4j to Drive Autonomous AI

Brandon Tylke

With a focus on CI/CD and development best practices, Brandon drives innovation through the application of advanced patterns and methodologies. Brandon’s 25-year background in developing cybersecurity, big data and programming language solutions has provided CodeLogic with a unique deep-inspection, and graph-centric, platform. Prior to joining CodeLogic, Brandon led software engineering for a series of major cybersecurity and physical security solutions.

Jon Gentsch

Jon is a technology industry veteran with 20 years’ experience in complex software development. As a Chief Software Architect, Jon’s dynamic engineering expertise translates the technical aspects of designing extensible data models into scalable solutions, including transitioning real-world data, modeling the schema, and optimizing mechanisms around backend storage.

Real-Time Fraud Detection in Java with Kafka, Streams & Vector Similarity

Tim Kelly

As an Associate Developer Advocate at MongoDB, I specialize in leveraging my Java expertise to build scalable applications, with a particular focus on integrating MongoDB. My role involves not only developing solutions but also sharing insights with the developer community through various platforms. Passionate about continuous learning and innovation, I aim to demystify complex technologies and empower developers with practical knowledge.

Ricardo Mello

Ricardo Mello is a Senior Developer Advocate at MongoDB with over 14 years of software development experience. He specializes in Java, Spring, and Kotlin, helping developers and organizations build modern, scalable applications. Ricardo is active in the Java community, creating technical content, articles, and talks on architecture, data modeling, and database integration

Spec Driven Development Why your prompt chaos won’t scale

Simon Maple

Simon Maple is the Founding Developer Advocate at Tessl and former VP of Developer Relations at Snyk, ZeroTurnaround, and IBM; a Java Champion since 2014, JavaOne Rockstar speaker, Duke's Choice award winner, Virtual JUG founder, and London Java Community co-leader.

The wrong reasons to build an MCP server

Daniel Oh

Daniel Oh is a Java Champion and Senior Principal Developer Advocate at IBM, where he leads efforts to advance cloud-native innovation through open-source technologies. Renowned for his ability to bridge technical and collaborative gaps, he empowers developers and organizations to build transformative solutions—from AI-driven applications and serverless architectures to resilient microservices. As a CNCF Ambassador and TAG DevEx co-chair, Daniel actively shapes the cloud-native ecosystem, fostering partnerships between enterprise developers, AI engineers, and platform engineering teams to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption. His technical leadership extends beyond code contributions, as he mentors communities and champions strategies that enable businesses to thrive...

When One Agent Isn’t Enough: Experiments with Multi-Agent AI

Kenneth Kousen

Ken Kousen is the author of the Pragmatic Programmers books "Mockito Made Clear" and "Help Your Boss Help You", the O'Reilly books "Kotlin Cookbook", "Modern Java Recipes", and "Gradle Recipes for Android", and the Manning book "Making Java Groovy". He is a regular speaker on the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference tour, and has spoken at conferences all over the world. He is a Java Champion, a JavaOne Rock Star, and a Devnexus Rock Star. Currently he a Professor of the Practice of Computer Science and Associate Director for STEM Initiatives at the Entrepreneurship Center at Trinity College in Hartford,...

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