JavaLand Top Speaker Check: Hanno Embregts

Hanno, your JavaLand 2025 talk is named “From Zero to Secured: Live-Coding a Full-Stack Jakarta EE REST App with MicroProfile and JWT Authentication”. Why did you choose this particular topic? 

I believe the best talks stem from real problems or challenges we experienced ourselves. So, when I was having a lot of trouble preparing a Jakarta EE / JWT Authentication demo for a class of students, I immediately thought of creating a talk about it. In cases like this, sharing the journey towards the eventual solution is often more valuable than simply providing the solution itself. This idea became the basis for my talk. 

What developments or trends are you currently following in the Java world? 

I’m very interested in Java’s newest features and where the language and platform is headed. So, I try to read up on the newest JEP’s whenever I can. My favorite new (or future) features are virtual threads, structured concurrency, value types and anything related to pattern matching. 

Where do you live and how are you traveling to JavaLand? How long will your trip take? 

I live in the Netherlands, and I’ll travel to JavaLand by electric car. This will take just over 3 hours. 

How do you pass the time on the journey? Do you have any book or podcast recommendations? 

I’m a big sports fan – I like to follow football, speed skating and Formula 1. So, I’ll catch up on a few sports-related podcasts. When it comes to software and tech, I like to listen to “Duke’s Corner”, “Environment Variables”, “Reply All”, “Darknet Diaries” or “foojay.io – The friends of OpenJDK”. 

What are you most looking forward to at this JavaLand and what benefits do you hope to gain from the event? 

I’m looking forward to reconnecting with my fellow Java Champions and other Java friends that I made in the past years at events around Europe. And I hope to hear something new about Java or software in general that makes me enthusiastic and hopeful about the future.