Conversations, Code & Community: Highlights from Devoxx Belgium 2025

Devoxx Belgium 2025, running in Antwerp 6-10 of October, was another unforgettable week celebrating the Java ecosystem! We had a fantastic time meeting developers, partners, and friends; sharing Payara Qube demos and being part of one of the most vibrant and well-organized developer events in the world.

From super interesting and inspiring talks, to community connections and plenty of booth fun, here’s our look back at an incredible week in Antwerp.

Payara Qube at the Booth

Throughout Devoxx, our team showcased Payara Qube, our modern solution for cloud-native Java application deployment. Many Java and Spring developers dropped by to see how Qube simplifies deployment, monitoring, and management – and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive!
It was fantastic to see so much curiosity and enthusiasm around Payara’s continued innovation in the Java space.

Talks That Inspired Me

Devoxx Belgium is always packed with quality content, and this year was no exception. Here are some of the sessions that stood out to me:

• “Code, Burnout and Depression: An Engineering Perspective of Mental Health in IT” – Manuel Bernhardt
  A powerful, honest look at mental health in tech and how awareness can foster healthier engineering cultures. Watch here.

• “30 Years of Java – How Did We Get Here?” – Simon Ritter (Azul)
  A fascinating journey through Java’s evolution — and a reminder of its enduring impact on the software world. Watch here.

• “Shifting the Trajectory: Undoing the Damage of Working in Front of a Computer Screen” – Georgios Diamantopoulos
  Practical and science-based strategies for improving health and wellbeing in a sedentary profession. Watch here.

• “Cryptography in a Post-Quantum World” – Jules May
  A forward-looking session on how quantum computing will reshape encryption and security. Watch here.

• “Raising Young Coders” – Cassandra Chin
  A truly inspiring talk about getting kids excited about technology and making programming accessible to all. Watch here.

Some Java Greatness

• “Writing GPU-Ready AI Models in Pure Java with Babylon” – Ana-Maria Mihalceanu & Lize Raes (Oracle)
  An exciting look at Project Babylon, which brings GPU acceleration and AI workloads to Java through Code Reflection and the FFM API — showing that Java is ready for the next generation of AI and ML applications. Watch here.
  
• “Wat? That’s Possible in Java?” – Michael Vitz (innoQ)
  A fun, mind-bending talk exploring quirky and surprising Java behavior — and what they can teach us about the language’s inner workings. Watch here.
  
• It (Only) Starts with a Container – Patrik Duditš (Payara)
  Our very own Patrik Duditš delivered a thought-provoking talk comparing deployment approaches — from handcrafted YAML and Helm templates to GitOps, Infrastructure as Code, and developer portals. He broke down the trade-offs between control and developer experience to help teams choose the right strategy for production. Watch here.
  
• The Best of Java Shorts Show: 100 Snippets in 50 Minutes – Adam Bien
  Always a highlight, Adam Bien shared his signature lightning-fast coding session filled with practical Java snippets. It’s always great to catch up with Adam, and we’re already discussing some exciting collaborations coming in 2026! Watch his talk here.
  

Community, Partners & JUGs

One of the best parts of Devoxx is always the community connection.
We had great catch-ups with our partners at Azul and the Foojay.io team — strengthening our collaboration around OpenJDK and the open-source ecosystem.

It was also fantastic to meet Arun Gupta (long time no see!), and we’re thrilled to share that an exciting podcast episode with Arun will be coming soon — stay tuned!
We also had the pleasure of hosting Alexius Diakogiannis at our booth. His energy, videos, and introductions brought an extra spark to the event — keep an eye on our channels for some fun and insightful content from him soon.

Java User Groups

Devoxx is always a meeting point for community leaders, and this year was no different.
We met several Java User Group (JUG) leaders — both familiar faces and new connections — and had great discussions about collaborating more closely in the future.
Payara has long supported community-driven learning, and we’re looking forward to engaging with even more JUGs worldwide in 2026 and beyond.

Booth Fun & Raffle

Our Amazon Fire TV Cube raffle was a huge hit! Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth, had their badge scanned, and joined in. Congratulations again to our lucky winner Ahmad Karim.

And of course, no Devoxx recap would be complete without a shout-out to the amazing event branding — from the polished booth design to the stylish Devoxx polos that every attendee loved! The attention to detail truly made the atmosphere special.

Until Next Time!

A huge thank you to the Devoxx Belgium organizers, speakers, partners, and attendees for making it such a memorable event. We left inspired, full of new ideas, and proud to be part of this thriving dev community.

See you at the next Devoxx!