July 2026 - Marit van Dijk

June started off with not one, but two Java conferences: jPrime in Sofia, Bulgaria, and JSpring in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

When travelling to jPrime from Amsterdam, I already ran into two fellow Dutch speakers Hinse ter Schuur and Willem Jan Glerum at Schiphol airport. We were all on the same flight.

LinkedIn post by Marit van Dijk with the text: "On my way to jPrime Already ran into other speakers Hinse ter Schuur and Willem Jan Glerum" and a picture of a suitcase and backpack with IntelliJ IDEA labels on them at Schiphol. — Travelling to jPrime

Arriving in Sofia

Upon arrival in Sofia, we met up with Piotr Przybył in the arrivals hall, as he had landed just before us. We then proceeded to arrivals to meet up with Ivan St. Ivanov, one of the jPrime organisers, who drove us to our hotel.

At the hotel, Piotr and I had some lunch before preparing for our talk (as it had been a few weeks since we last presented it at GeeCON).

jPrime speaker dinner

We then walked to the speaker dinner where we met up with Mitya, other organisers and several other speakers including François Martin, Johannes Bechberger, Arnaud Jean. Also present was my colleague Andrei Kogun, who was attending the conference. It is always nice to see him in person, as we work together a lot but he is located in a different country.

Speaking at jPrime

Our talk Learning modern Java the playful way was scheduled right after the opening. It was really nice to speak in the big room in front of about 800 people (probably our largest audience for this talk so far!).

Marit van Dijk and Piotr Przybył posing for a picture on stage at jPrime. Both are wearing a labcoat. — Marit and Piotr at jPrime

Marit van Dijk and Piotr Przybył speaking at jPrime; both are wearing a labcoat. — Speaking at jPrime

Dmitry Aleksandrov announcing Marit van Dijk and Piotr Przybył at jPrime. — Speaking at jPrime

Our talk was well received. Thanks to everyone who came up afterwards to talk to us! Meeting people is one of my favorite parts of conferences.

Social media post by Thanos Stratikopoulos: "Great start in #jPrime2026, features a playful way of learning modern #Java by Piotr Przybyl and Marit van Dijk (with links to their Bluesky accounts) — Great start to jPrime

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to stay long and we had to head to the airport not long after our talk.

Social media post by Piotr Przybył with the text: "It was sadly a short visit, but the crowd at @jPrimeConf has been lovely as always! I hope you've learned something useful about modern Java and also had some fun with us 🥼🥼" including a picture of Piotr Przybył and Marit van Dijk both wearing labcoats in front of a packed room — Thank you jPrime

You can catch the recording of our talk here:

You can also find pictures for day 1 and day 2.

Thanks to the jPrime team for having us and taking such good care of speakers!

On to the next one!

From Sofia, I travelled back to the Netherlands, to speak at JSpring the next day. While I had planned to go to the speaker dinner that evening, it was too tempting to go straight home as I live close to the airport.

Speaking at JSpring

JSpring is one of my local conferences, organised by NLJUG. This was my third time speaking there, and I have attended several years prior to that. The lineup this year was stellar as always!

Since the conference was in a cinema, they had posters advertising the speakers. It was slightly intimidating to see my face up there, but also very nice…

Speaker posters for JSpring speakers: Sven Peters, Baruch Sadogursky, Marit van DIjk, Nicolai Parlog, Ana Maria Mihalceany, Elena van Engelen, Bruno Souza, Felienne Hermans, Lucia Conde-Moreno, Josh Long & James Ward, Piet van Dongen, Holly Cummins — Speaker posters at JSpring

The conference was opened (as always) by Brian Vermeer and Bert Jan Schrijver, followed by the opening keynote by Sven Peters.

Bert Jan Schrijver and Brian Vermeer half hiding behind a JSpring banner. — Bert Jan Schrijver and Brian Vermeer at JSpring

This year, I really enjoyed the keynote by Felienne Hermans:

The following keynote by Baruch Sadogursky was also very nice.

My session Be more productive with IntelliJ IDEA was in the afternoon, so I had plenty of time to prepare. Even though the outline of this session is always similar, I like to include the latest features like command completion and upcoming features like logpoints (which is included in IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2).

You can watch the session here:

You can find the full playlist for JSpring 2026 on YouTube.

As always, the best part of the conference was meeting people; both the other speakers and the people from the Duch Java community.

Marit van Dijk, Marianne Hoornenborg, Felienne Hermans and Ana-Maria Mihalceanu at JSpring. — With Marianne Hoornenborg, Felienne Hermans and Ana-Maria Mihalceanu at JSpring.

Marit van Dijk, Daniel Garnier-Moiroux and James Ward at JSpring. — With Daniel Garnier-Moiroux and James Ward at JSpring.

Thanks again NLJUG for organising and I hope to be back for many years to come!

This year I had the opportunity to speak at JNation for the first time. It was a great conference; great speakers, nice people and a very responsive audience!

Getting there

JNation is held in Coimbra, Portugal. It takes some time to get there, but it is well worth it. The conference arranges for shuttles from Porto and Lisbon to Coimbra; I opted for Porto as it was a shorter flight and drive. At the Porto airport, I ran into Simon Schrottner, who I had met at Devoxx Morocco last year. It turned out we were on the same shuttle bus. We also picked up Martijn Verburg and his cousin Bella from the train station on our way to Coimbra. We had some interesting conversations on the way, which we continued over lunch once we made it to the hotel. While we were there, several other speakers also arrived.

Speaker dinner

The conference organised a speaker dinner the evening before. Andres Almiray, Patrick Baumgartner, Simon and I decided to walk there. This was a bit of an adventure, as the hotel we were staying at was next to a highway which we had to cross…

The speaker dinner is a good opportunity to see the other speakers. Fortunately, my colleague Anton Arhipov was also speaking; it is always nice to see him. And I ran into Sam Aaron, who I hadn’t seen in a while. To top it off, I had the opportunity to hang out with my friend Ewa.

Josh Long told me that he had some feedback on IntelliJ IDEA, and from my side I wanted to show him some new features we had been working on. After we got back from the dinner, we spent some time in the hotel lobby hunched over a laptop.

Conference day

The conference started with some live coded music by Sam Aaron, the creator of Sonic Pi.

The conference was officially opened by Roberto Cortez and team, followed by a keynote by Martijn. After that I had a little time to prepare for my talk, like finding the room where I would be speaking…

Speaking about IntelliJ IDEA

My talk was Be more productive with IntelliJ IDEA, where I live demo features in IntelliJ IDEA. Some features have been there for ages, but I also like to include new features that were added recently, like command completion, and even features that we are still working on for the upcoming release, like logpoints. The room was full, with some people even standing in the back, and the audience was lovely!

You can watch the other talks from JNation 2026 on YouTube.

The hallway track, with extra snacks

After my talk, I had some time to explore the venue some more and talk to people. Some of my friends were staffing a booth with their company, so I went to find them. Also, I spent some time in the speaker room, which was nice and cool. This is a good place to get some work done, or talk to other speakers. Walking around the venue is also a good way to meet people, and get feedback either on our products or my talk, or hear what people are working on.

There were plenty of food and snacks, including some delicious pastéis de nata as well as ice cream, which was very welcome in the hot weather! To get some of the snacks, you needed tokens which you could get by speaking to sponsors at the booths. (Thanks Michał for some extra tokens.)

Star shaped pastéis de nata on a white plate. — Pastéis de nata

Flyers with pictures of ice cream, waffles, brigadeiro and brownie, and the text "JNation teams get tour tokens at the info desk". — Pastéis de nata

Livestream with Josh Long

Josh had invited me to come on his podcast, Coffee + Software. We had a lovely on-air conversation, which was also joined by our friend Daniel Garnier-Moiroux in the chat.

Interview with Andres Almiray

Andres Almiray was at JNation not as a speaker, but as an interviewer. He set up interviews with the speakers in the courtyard of the venue. Among other things, we spoke about some IntelliJ IDEA features, including the upcoming logpoints feature as an entry point to the debugger. Logpoints allow you to add logging to your application running in debug more, without having to change the code and redeploy your application. This will make it easier to start your investigation when debugging issues. It is built on top of the debugger, so you can expand your investigation with additional debugger features as needed.

You can watch the other interviews on the JNation YouTube channel.

After party and another dinner

The conference ended with an after party, with more music by Sam, and drinks with friends in the sun. From the party, we walked to a restaurant for another dinner arranged by the organisers. The food here was great, as was the company. This time I managed to get some pictures with Sam.

Marit van Dijk wearing a black IntelliJ IDEA t-shirt and and Sam Aaron wearing a dark blue JNation t-shirt. Marit is sticking out her tongue and Sam has his thumb up. — Marit van Dijk and Sam Aaron at JNation

Conclusion

Even though it is a little hard to get to, I really enjoyed the conference. The lineup was great, the organisers take good care of the speakers, and I would highly recommend speaking at or attending this conference in the future!

Thanks Roberto Cortez, Bruno Baptista and all of the organisers and volunteers for a great event!

Month: July 2026

More Java conferences: jPrime & JSpring back to back