Nicolai Parlog: Structured Concurrency in Action

Posted on March 22, 2026 by zettiec

Date: Thursday April 2nd, 2026

5:30-6:00: Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: Structured Concurrency in Action

In Java 25, the structured concurrency API sees its fifth preview with considerable changes over previous iterations. With chances being good that it will finalize without a further overhaul, let’s put it into action and explore how to:

* structure concurrent code
* process and propagate errors and cancellation
* observe thread relationships
* refactor from a reactive approach

After this presentation, you’ll be ready to put the structured concurrency API into action in your project.

About Nicolai Parlog
Nicolai (aka nipafx) is a Java enthusiast focused on language features, core APIs, and runtime evolution with a passion for learning and sharing. He does that mostly at conferences and in his biweekly Inside Java Newscast, but also occasionally in podcasts, live streams, articles, and books – more on all that on nipafx.dev. He’s a Java Developer Advocate at Oracle and otherwise best known for his haircut.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

  • Strides Staffing – Beer
  • Agile Developer – dev2next will be held in Lone Tree, Colorado, from October 12 to 15, 2026. As an incentive for DJUG members to attend the JUG meetings in-person, dev2next will raffle off one free ticket for the conference each month a meeting is held, through September 2026.
  • JetBrains – Coupon for a 12-month personal subscription to any JetBrains IDE
  • Thrive Workplace – Event Host
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Tim Berglund: A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence

Posted on February 11, 2026 by zettiec

This event will be held at Thrive Cherry Creek! Centennial was already booked on this date.

Wednesday March 18, 2026

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence
Up until early 2023, I regularly said AI would always have a bright future—and I didn’t mean that as a compliment. Sure, deep learning had made us good at building very impressive classifiers in the decade or so prior, but for so long, human-like intelligence was just five years in the future—and that made me a skeptic. Things are different now, but how much skepticism is still warranted? What is it that we’ve got on our hands? What changes is modern AI bringing with it? Like with so many other questions, the answers are easier if we understand where we’ve come from.

Beginning with the Turing Test itself, the famous Dartmouth Conference of 1956, and the Perceptron of 1957, we’ll trace decades of disappointment and broken promises as we tried to realize the true potential of computing, at the same time grasping for an understanding of what it means to be human. Taking a close look at various technologies along the way, we’ll arrive in the 21st century, the revival of neural networks, the advent of the Transformer, and a revolutionary new technology category that has prompted oracles of weal and woe from our most optimistic and apocalyptic technology prophets.

Standing on the edge of the unknown, what elements of the 75-year-old promise have we realized? A close examination gives us a better view of our immediate future as technologists and insight into what it means to be human.

About Tim Berglund

Tim serves as the VP of Developer Relations at Confluent, where he and his team work to make streaming data and its emerging toolset accessible to all developers. He is a regular speaker at conferences and a presence on YouTube explaining complex technology topics in an accessible way. He lives with his wife in Arvada, CO, USA. He has three grown children, three step-children, and five grandchildren.

You can find Tim on LinkedIn.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

  • TEKsystems – Food and Drink(Soda, Water, Gatorade)
  • Strides Staffing – Beer
  • Agile Developer – dev2next will be held in Lone Tree, Colorado from October 12 to 15, 2026. As an incentive for DJUG members to attend the JUG meetings in-person, dev2next will raffle out one free ticket for the conference each month a meeting is held, through September 2026.
  • JetBrains – Coupon for 12-month personal subscription to any Jetbrains IDE
  • Thrive Workplace – Event Host
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Daniel Hinojosa: Java’s Asynchronous Ecosystem -Too Many Tools, One JVM

Posted on January 31, 2026 by zettiec

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 at Thrive Centennial

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: Java’s Asynchronous Ecosystem -Too Many Tools, One JVM

Java has accumulated a diverse toolbox for concurrency and asynchrony over the decades, ranging from classic threads to parallel streams, from Future to CompletableFuture, and from reactive libraries to the latest innovations, including virtual threads, structured concurrency, and the Vector API. But with so many options, the question is: which ones should we use today, which still matter, and which belong in the history books?

In this talk, we’ll explore the entire spectrum:

  • Classic Threads – the original concurrency primitive.
  • Parallel Streams – data parallelism for the collections era.
  • Futures & CompletableFuture – async results with callbacks and chaining.
  • Reactive Programming – backpressure, publishers, and the rise of frameworks like Reactor and RxJava.
  • Virtual Threads – Lightweight Concurrency Made Mainstream.
  • Structured Concurrency – Taming async chaos with lifetimes and scopes.
  • Vector API – data-level parallelism on modern CPUs.

We’ll also tackle the hard questions:

  • Do virtual threads really kill the need for reactive programming?
  • What does it mean by “hidden stack traces,” and how do they impact debugging and profiling?
  • Where should you invest today, and what patterns should you abandon permanently?

About Daniel Hinojosa
Daniel is a programmer, consultant, instructor, speaker, and recent author. With over 20 years of experience, he does work for private, educational, and government institutions. He is also currently a featured speaker on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour. Daniel loves JVM languages like Java, Groovy, and Scala; but also dabbles with non JVM languages like Haskell, Ruby, Python, LISP, C, C++. He is an avid Pomodoro Technique Practitioner and makes every attempt to learn a new programming language every year. For downtime, he enjoys reading, swimming, Legos, football, and barbecuing.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

  • TEKsystems – Food and Drink(Soda, Water, Gatorade)
  • Strides Staffing – Beer
  • Agile Developer – dev2next will be held in Lone Tree, Colorado from October 12 to 15, 2026. As an incentive for DJUG members to attend the JUG meetings in-person, dev2next will raffle out one free ticket for the conference each month a meeting is held, through September 2026.
  • JetBrains – Coupon for 12-month personal subscription to any Jetbrains IDE
  • Thrive Workplace – Event Host
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Billy Korando: To Java [n] and Beyond!

Posted on January 6, 2026 by zettiec

This event will be held at Thrive Cherry Creek! Centennial was already booked on this date.

Wednesday, 01/14/2026

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: To Java [n] and Beyond!

Java 25 has been released, but the Java release train continues chugging along with Java 26.

In this presentation, we will start with a quick review of the key changes from 17-21 and how they have improved developer experience, performance, and support Java applications in production.

From there, we will transition to changes to Java post-21 and how the various changes are bringing important stores into focus, including improved concurrency support, data-oriented programming, native support, and more!

The Java platform is evolving quickly to keep pace with the current needs of users. Be sure to attend this presentation if you want to keep up!

About Billy Korando
Billy is a Java Developer Advocate with the Java Platform Group at Oracle. With over a decade of experience in Java, Billy brings a passion for helping developers reduce tedious work, such as project initiation, deployment, testing, and validation, through automation and by adopting the latest features and tools in the Java ecosystem. Outside of work, Billy enjoys traveling, playing kickball, and cheering on the Kansas City Chiefs. Billy also co-organizes the Kansas City Java users group.

You can find Billy online at https://billykorando.com.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

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December Meetup: Lightning Talks!

Posted on December 10, 2025 by zettiec

Jump into fast, 5–10 minute talks to spark ideas, gain practical insights, and connect with a friendly, curious crowd of peers.

Details
5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: Lightning Talks

For our December meetup, we’ll be doing lightning talks!

What is a Lightning Talk?
Lightning Talks are short, powerful presentations lasting 5 to 10 minutes that focus on a single idea, insight, or topic. They’re fast-paced, engaging, and designed to leave a lasting impression. This is your chance to share your knowledge, spark conversations, and inspire the audience—without the long-form commitment of a full presentation.

Speakers:

Greg Ostravich: The Original Digital: Understanding Morse Code
Jarek Krych: Real-Time Metering Intelligence: Using Kafka Streams to Enrich AMI Metering Data

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

TEKsystems
Strides Staffing
Agile Developer
JetBrains
Thrive Workplace

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Annual Career Discussion

Posted on November 4, 2025 by zettiec

Wednesday, 11/12/2025 at Thrive Workplace(9200 e mineral ave centennial co 80112) 

Details

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: Annual Career Discussion

Adam Bach
Adam Bach is an Onboarding Coach and Technical Recruiter at TEKsystems, based in Denver, Colorado. With over seven years of experience in the IT Services industry, Adam has built a reputation for strategic recruiting, stakeholder collaboration, and delivering exceptional candidate experiences. His expertise spans the full software development lifecycle, including full-stack engineering, cloud infrastructure, data analytics, and digital transformation initiatives.

Adam has supported both individual IT professionals seeking new opportunities and hiring leaders looking to build high-performing teams. He has partnered with IT executives to deliver tailored solutions through a variety of service models—including offshore, nearshore, onshore, managed/co-managed services, and outsourced project-based engagements. His experience includes navigating vendor partnerships and direct client relationships, giving him a deep understanding of the hiring process from requisition to candidate selection.

Kyle Larson
Technical Recruiter at TEKsystems

Joe Fair
Joe Fair is a software engineer with 25 years experience. His focus is on back-end integrations, effective documentation, and good communication. In his spare time he enjoys hiking and working on his 125-year-old cabin.

Scott Hallock
Scott began his software career as a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft in 1995, starting just before the release of Windows NT 3.51. He worked on the RPC and Shell (UI) systems of Windows NT. Since then, he has built a voice communication service for the early web, contributed to early versions of Cisco’s VPN client, built cable modem firmware from scratch, shipped a billion Android devices at Qualcomm, built a machine learning team at Amazon, and helped Google Drive continue to scale.

Currently on a break from the industry, Scott is tinkering with small, fun projects like generating mazes in a variety of programming languages. He maintains his passion for building software and software teams.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

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Viktor Gamov – Stream Processing Smackdown: Kafka Streams vs. Apache Flink

Posted on September 13, 2025 by zettiec

Wednesday October 1st, 2025 hosted at Thrive Centennial 9200 East Mineral Avenue, Centennial, Colorado 80112

**Everyone, please note that our October Meetup will be on the first Wednesday in October.

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: Stream Processing Smackdown: Kafka Streams vs. Apache Flink

Attention, Data Streaming Engineers! In a world where speed is everything, choosing the proper stream processing framework is crucial. Want to supercharge your apps with real-time data processing? Should you opt for the streamlined Kafka Streams, a lightweight library for building streaming applications, or the feature-rich Apache Flink, a powerful and flexible stream processing framework? Viktor will walk you through the nuts and bolts of these two leading technologies.

About Viktor Gamov
Viktor Gamov is a Principal Developer Advocate at Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka®. With a rich background in implementing and advocating for distributed systems and cloud-native architectures, Viktor excels in open-source technologies. He is passionate about assisting architects, developers, and operators in crafting systems that are not only low in latency and scalable but also highly available.

As a Java Champion and an esteemed speaker, Viktor is known for his insightful presentations at top industry events like JavaOne, Devoxx, Kafka Summit, and QCon. His expertise spans distributed systems, real-time data streaming, JVM, and DevOps. Viktor has co-authored “Enterprise Web Development” and “Apache Kafka® in Action”.

Follow Viktor on X – @gamussa to stay updated with Viktor’s latest thoughts on technology, his gym and food adventures, and insights into open-source and developer advocacy.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

RSVP on DJUG Meetup

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Jeremy Davis – An All Code Introduction to Domain Driven Design and Hexagonal Architecture

Posted on July 15, 2025 by zettiec

Wednesday August 13, 2025  at 9200 E Mineral Ave Centennial co 80112

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: An All Code Introduction to Domain Driven Design and Hexagonal Architecture

Domain Driven Design is designed for implementing complicated business logic and is an excellent fit for microservices development.

Domain Driven Design provides a repeatable, logical structure that makes implementing business logic easier, faster, and more maintainable. Hexagonal Architecture (or Ports and Adapters) excels at producing loosely coupled, interchangeable components that fit well with DDD.

In this presentation I will introduce the Domain Driven Design and dive into the DDD concepts of Aggregates, Repositories, Value Objects, Services, Ubiquitous Language, Adapters, and Shared Kernels. I will also build an application using these patterns and leverage Hexagonal Architecture for easy extensibility. Testing will of course be included.

You will leave this presentation with a basic knowledge of Domain Driven Design, how to structure and test your application to implement DDD and how to use Hexagonal Architecture to extend your applications.

No slides; just live code.

About Jeremy Davis

Jeremy is a Principal Architect at Red Hat. He helps Red Hat’s customers to design and deliver applications, works with Red Hat engineers to create great products, and occasionally speaks at conferences.

Before joining Red Hat he wrote a lot of code in C, C#, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Visual Basic; mostly Java.

He currently co-lead Red Hat’s Application Development Community of Practice, and used to lead Red Hat’s Microservices Community of Practice and the Business Rules and Workflow SME group. He has recently spent a lot of time with Quarkus and Kubernetes.

He recently acquired a Marshall amp after relying on Fenders for years.

You can find Jeremy on LinkedIn.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

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Venkat Subramaniam: Extending Functional Pipelines with Gatherers

Posted on July 2, 2025 by zettiec

Wednesday July 9th, 2025 – Thrive Workplace Centennial(9200 E Mineral Ave · Centennial, CO 80112)

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: Extending Functional Pipelines with Gatherers

The Stream API has a wealth of methods, like filter, map, takeWhile, limit, and so on, to build functional pipelines. Yet, you may run into situations in your applications that readily do not fall in place to make use of these built-in methods. The new gatherer() function, along with the Gatherer interface, gives you the necessary tools to create your own custom steps in the functional pipeline. In this presentation, learn about the different types of gatherers and how to implement them using practical live-coded examples.

About Venkat Subramaniam

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., an instructional professor at the University of Houston, and creator of the dev2next conference.

He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects.

Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at https://www.agiledeveloper.com.

You can connect with Venkat on LinkedIn.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

 

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Joshua Angolano: Kotlin for Cloud Development

Posted on May 18, 2025 by zettiec

Wednesday June 11, 2025

Venue : Thrive Centennial 9200 E Mineral Ave, Centennial, CO 80112

5:30-6:00: Food, Soda, Beer, and Networking

6:00-6:15: Announcements

6:15-7:45: Kotlin for Cloud Development
Kotlin and the cloud are a perfect fit.

Cloud providers such as Amazon have created clients that make use of Kotlin’s coroutine and DSL features.

Kotlin can be used for all sorts of cloud services, from Lambda (functions), containerized compute to large scale data processing applications.

Amazon for example has also created a way for JVM language based lambda functions to start up faster without a large penalty.

This session will include live coding demos of building cloud functions, containerized Kotlin services and using Kotlin along machine learning workloads.

Attendees will learn how easy it to create and test cloud-native software using the Kotlin ecosystem.

About Joshua Angolano
Josh has been interested in computers since he was five years old. He has worked professionally as a developer, engineer, director, and architect for over 20 years. He considers himself a lifelong learner. He ​loves mentoring and working with others. His passion is seeing others progress through their careers.

Josh has led large product development initiatives for multiple financial services organizations. This has included migrating from desktop applications to the web and from on-premise to the cloud.

You can find Josh on LinkedIn.

7:45: Door prizes

Thanks to our sponsors!

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