Top 20 Jakarta EE Experts to Follow on Twitter

This is the most viewed post of this blog, so I believe it deserves an update now in 2020! Its first version was written back in 2017.

There’s a lot of different opinions in this kind of lists, and there will be always somebody or something missing… just don’t be too passionate or take things personally, ok?! 😉

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We all have to agree: there are tons of tons of information shared through social media. It’s no different on Twitter.

When we talk about staying tuned with some technology, it’s important to have some kind of focus. Otherwise, you could end up confused or, worst, getting bad and/or wrong information.

For these reasons I have a small but incredible list of people/accounts that I use to follow on Twitter to get really good information about Jakarta EE.

If you are passionate about Jakarta EE like me, I truly hope this list may be helpful to you. If you are not, I hope you enjoy as well! 😉

Important: the list isn’t a ranking, so don’t judge the account by the position at the list. In fact, don’t judge anyone by anything…

Jakarta EE – @JakartaEE

The official Jakarta EE handle.

Wayne Beaton – @waynebeaton

Wayne is a Director of Open Source Projects at the Eclipse Foundation. Undoubtedly, Jakarta EE is one of the biggest projects at Eclipse today (if not the biggest one), so it’s important to stay tunned with Wayne has to say.

Adam Bien – @AdamBien

Adam works as a freelancer with Java since JDK 1.0, with Servlets/EJB since 1.0 and before the advent of J2EE in several large-scale applications. He is an architect and developer (with usually 20/80 distribution) in Java (SE / EE / FX) projects. He has written several books about JavaFX, J2EE, and Java EE, and he is the author of Real World Java EE Patterns—Rethinking Best Practices and Real World Java EE Night Hacks—Dissecting The Business Tier.

He is also a Java Champion, NetBeans Dream Team Founding Member, Oracle ACE Director, Java Developer of the Year 2010 and has a huge amount of nominations as JavaOne Rockstar.

Kevin Sutter – @kwsutter

Kevin Sutter is the lead architect for the Jakarta EE and JPA solutions for WebSphere Application Server and the WebSphere Liberty Profile. He is also very active with Java and open-source strategies as they relate to IBM’s application middleware.

Ivar Grimstad – @ivar_grimstad

Ivar Grimstad is Java Champion, JUG Leader, JCP Spec Lead, EC and EG Member, NetBeans Dream Team and International Speaker.

He is the PMC (Project Management Committee) Lead of EE4J and Jakarta EE Developer Advocate at Eclipse Foundation.

David Blevins – @dblevins

David Blevins is the founder of Tomitribe and a veteran of open source Jakarta EE. He has been both implementing and defining Enterprise Java specifications for more than 10 years and has a strong drive to see it simple, testable, and as light as Java SE. Blevins is cofounder of OpenEJB (1999), Geronimo (2003), and TomEE (2011). He is a member of the EJB 3.0, EJB 3.1, EJB 3.2, Java EE 6, Java EE 7, and Java EE 8 Security Expert Groups, and a member of the Apache Software Foundation. Blevins is a contributing author to Component-Based Software Engineering: Putting the Pieces Together (Addison Wesley). Blevins is also a regular speaker at JavaOne, Devoxx, ApacheCon, OSCon, JAX, and other Java-focused conferences.

Otavio Santana – @otaviojava

Otávio Santana is a developer and enthusiast of open source. He is an evangelist and practitioner of agile philosophy and polyglot development in Brazil. Santana is a JUG leader of JavaBahia and SouJava, and a strong supporter of Java communities in Brazil, where he also leads the BrasilJUGs initiative to incorporate Brazilian JUGs into joint activities.

He is also the co-creator of Jakarta NoSQL, a Java framework that streamlines the integration of Java applications with NoSQL databases. It defines a set of APIs to interact with NoSQL databases and provides a standard implementation for most NoSQL databases. This helps to achieve very low coupling with the underlying NoSQL technologies used.

Java Champions – @Java_Champions

Well, why the Java Champions handle is here? Because many Java Champions are Jakarta EE experts, so following the official Twitter is nice to be in touch with what they are saying about it.

Alex Theedom – @alextheedom

Trainer, Java Champion, Jakarta EE spec committee, author of Jakarta EE books and courses. Conference speaker and blogger.

OmniFaces – @OmniFaces

OmniFaces is a utility library for JSF 2 that focusses on utilities that ease everyday tasks with the standard JSF API. OmniFaces is a response to frequently recurring problems encountered during ages of professional JSF development and from questions being asked on Stack Overflow.

Dmitry Kornilov – @m0mus

Dmitry has over 20 years of experience in design and implementation of complex software systems, defining systems architecture, team leading and project management. He has worked as project leader of EclipseLink and Yasson and as spec lead of JSON-P and JSON-B specifications.

Steve Millidge – @l33tj4v4

Steve is the Founder and Director of Payara and C2B2 Consulting. Having used Java extensively since pre1.0, Steve has over 15 years’ experience as a field-based Professional Service Consultant along with extensive knowledge of Java middleware.

Before running his own business, Steve worked for Oracle as a Principal Consultant in Oracle’s Technology Architecture Practice, specializing in Business Process Integration and scalable n-tier component architectures.

Emily Jiang – @emilyfhjiang

Emily is a Java Champion and has been working on MicroProfile since 2016. She also leads the specifications of MicroProfile Config, Fault Tolerance and Service Mesh. She works for IBM as Liberty Architect for MicroProfile and CDI and is heavily involved in Java EE implementation in Liberty releases.

Arjan Tijms – @arjan_tijms

Arjan is a Jakarta EE committer and member of the Jakarta EE Steering Committee.

MicroProfile – @MicroProfileIO

MicroProfile is a baseline platform definition that optimizes Enterprise Java for a microservices architecture and delivers application portability across multiple MicroProfile runtimes. The initially planned baseline is JAX-RS + CDI + JSON-P, with the intent of the community having an active role in the MicroProfile definition and roadmap.

Sebastian Daschner – @DaschnerS

Sebastian has been working with Java enterprise software development for many years. Besides his work for clients, he set a high priority in educating developers in conference presentations, video courses, and training. He believes that teaching others not only greatly improves their situation but also educates yourself.

David Heffelfinger – @ensode

David R. Heffelfinger is an independent consultant based in the greater Washington DC area. He has authored several books on Java EE and related technologies. Heffelfinger has been architecting, designing, and developing software professionally since 1995. He has been using Java as his primary programming language since 1996. He has worked on many large-scale projects for several clients, including the US Department of Homeland Security, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the US Department of Defense. He has a master’s degree in software engineering from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Heffelfinger is a frequent speaker at Java conferences such as Oracle Code One (forme JavaOne).

John Clingan – @jclingan

John is Product Manager at Red Hat and an ex Java EE PM. He is also a MicroProfile co-founder.

Josh Juneau – @javajuneau

Josh Juneau works as an application developer, system analyst, and database administrator. He is active in many fields of application development but primarily focuses on Jakarta EE. Juneau is a technical writer for Oracle Technology Network, Java Magazine, and Apress. He is a member of the NetBeans Dream Team, the JCP, and a part of the JSR 372 Expert Group. He enjoys working with the Java community—he is the director of meetings for the Chicago Java User Group.

Tanja Obradovic – @TanjaEclipse

Tanja is the Jakarta EE Program Manager at Eclipse Foundation.