Fika Interview with Jennifer Reif and Mattias Karlsson

Jennifer Reif, a developer advocate from Neo4j is interviewing Mattias Karlsson, one of the organizers of the JFocus conference. This year marks the 20th edition of JFocus. The organizer notes that the conference is a “full house” with almost 2,000 attendees, 100 speakers, and 35 exhibitors.

Key points from the conversation include:
Conference Preparation: The organizer’s favorite part of preparing the event is putting together the content. This involves finding great speakers and ensuring balance in the content, including different levels (intro to expert) and a wide variety of topics.
Hot Topics: Current event topics include domain-driven design, architecture, updates in languages and frameworks, tooling, security, and especially AI.
Impact of AI on Organization: The organizer states that the “craft of putting the conference together hasn’t really changed” and that he has had “very little help of AI”. However, AI was used to easily create Norse mythology-themed avatars for all the speakers, which would have been too expensive and time-consuming to do with an artist.
New Event: The organizers have created a new, one-day, AI-focused conference. The first edition was last year, and they hope it will grow this year. The call for speakers just closed, and the event is coming up on May 19th.
The Developer Advocate’s Experience: The Neo4j developer advocate, who had attended JFocus previously in 2019, expressed how much she enjoyed the event, noting the “fantastic place,” the theme, the excitement, and the engagement from people. The organizer hopes she will return in the future.