Well… I’m a Java Champion now. 🥳
I still need a second to let that sink in. When the news landed, I did the classic dance: read the email twice, smiled like an idiot, then immediately wanted to tell someone. So here I am, telling you.
I’m genuinely thrilled. Not in a polished press-release way — more in a “wait, me?” way. This program is full of people I’ve looked up to for years, people I’ve shared stages with, people I’ve learned from in hallway chats after a JUG meetup. Landing in that circle feels surreal and wonderful at the same time.
If there’s a through-line in what I do, it’s Java and the joy of shipping useful things with other humans. FSCrawler is still the project I started years ago because I needed to index files into Elasticsearch and thought others might too. Along the way I’ve also had fun contributing around the ecosystem — things like the Elasticsearch module for Testcontainers, or helping keep LangChain4j’s Elasticsearch integration in good shape. None of that was a grand plan to collect badges. It was just… building stuff, fixing stuff, and sharing it.
And then there’s the community side. Speaking at JUGs and conferences, live-coding without a safety net, meeting developers who are stuck on the same problems I was stuck on ten years ago. That’s the part that still gives me energy. Open source without people is just a repo. The rooms, the coffee breaks, the “can you show me that again?” moments — that’s where it becomes real.
So thank you! ❤️
To the folks who nominated me: you know who you are. To everyone who voted with so much enthusiasm: I felt that, and it means a lot.
Funny detail: this whole “you should join the Java Champions” conversation actually started during a DJ set at Volcamp. Yeah — sharing in another way… music this time. 😉
I’ll keep showing up — writing code, giving talks, helping where I can. Same David. Just with a slightly wider grin today.