Garden State Java User Group

--- Please check the website this week for the EventBrite link to register for in-person or on-line attendance. ---

We are happy to announce that Bruno Souza and Luiz Real will be our special guests on March 9, 2026. This will be the first of two meetings this month!

#### The Reputation Formula: Turbocharge Your Developer Career (Abstract)

Get ready to level up your career in software development with the secret sauce just for developers - the "Reputation Formula" that can skyrocket your professional journey in the software world!
This presentation will break it all down for you, revealing the insider tips and tricks to shape your reputation as a software developer. This session is a tailor-made roadmap for your success in the coding career!
You'll learn about the good stuff like staying laser-focused, gaining visibility in the developer community, taking action, improving your coding skills, giving back to the open source world, showing responsibility, and being consistent. These earn you trust and respect from your fellow developers and industry leaders.
The presentation is full of real-life coding stories and will include answering your questions in a lively Q&A session. It's like a developer's masterclass on how to own your coding journey.
So, if you're a developer ready to power up your coding career, don't miss this chance to discover the Reputation Formula. It's time to level up your code game and make your mark in the software world.

#### Refactoring (Abstract)

Refactoring isn't just cleaning code ‐ it's preparing it for what's next. In this session, Luiz Real shows how small refactoring steps can make your Java projects easier to maintain, ready for new features, and more enjoyable to work on. Real examples, simple techniques, and insights you can apply right away.

#### Bruno Souza

Since 1995, helping Java developers improve their careers and work on cool projects with great people, Bruno Souza, the Brazilian JavaMan, is the creator of Code4.Life, an initiative to accelerate developer's careers. Bruno is a Java Developer and Open Source Evangelist at Summa Technologies, and a Cloud Expert at ToolsCloud.
Developer communities are a personal passion, and Bruno worked actively with Java, NetBeans, Open Solaris, and many other open source communities. As founder and coordinator of SouJava (The Java Users Society), one of the world’s largest Java User Groups, Bruno leaded the expansion of the Java movement in Brazil. Founder of the Worldwide Java User Groups Community, Bruno helped the creation and organization of hundreds of JUGs worldwide.
A Java Developer since the early days, Bruno participated in some of the largest Java projects in Brazil. Bruno is a emeritus Director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), served as President of the innovation-focused Campus Party Institute, and coordinated Nuvem, the Cloud Computing Lab of LSI/USP.
When not in front of a computer, Bruno enjoys time with his family in a little hideout near São Paulo. An amateur in many things — photographer, puppeteer, father — he strives to be good in some of them.

#### Luiz Real

Luiz Real is a Software Engineer at Fundunesp with over 20 years of experience in Java. Beyond his technical work, Luiz is an active community leader at SouJava JUG and organizer of major conferences such as The Developer's Conference (TDC) and DevConverge, where he helps developers share knowledge, build meaningful relationships, and grow their careers.

Please be advised that registration via EventBrite is required for in-person or on-line attendance.

We happy to have Viktor Gamov visit with us to present "The Missing Protocol: How MCP Bridges LLMs and Data Streams."

Abstract

Nobody's talking about this: MCP isn't just another way to build chatbots. It's the bridge we've been missing between AI reasoning and real-time data systems. Teams build AI applications that work great in demos, but fall apart with production data.

Your agents analyze historical reports but can't tell what's happening in your Kafka streams. They're blind to schema changes and disconnected from events that matter to your business.

Instead of treating streaming platforms like black boxes, you expose them directly to your agents via MCP protocol. Suddenly, your AI doesn't just read about data - it lives inside your data flows.

Learn what becomes possible when you stop thinking about AI as an external service and start treating it as part of your streaming architecture. We'll build systems where agents subscribe to real-time events, reason about evolving schemas, and make decisions that ripple through your data platform.

Bio

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" from O'Reilly and "Apache Kafka in Action" from Manning.

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