Spring Builders

Discussion on: What's your Spring journey?

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Sergi Almar

My journey also starts back in my university days. In 2005, I had to implement a web application as part of an assignment. After doing some research, I stumbled upon the Spring Framework, but I realized I didn't have time to learn it properly. Later that year, while doing my Master's degree, I founded my first company with an ex-professor and I knew I needed some solid tech foundation, that's when I started learning Spring seriously (and this has been my best investment so far).

I rapidly became a Spring fan, and one year later, in 2006, I reached out to Interface21 (the original company behind Spring) to try to deliver the official training for them. They rejected, they thought it was too risky. I continued using and learning Spring in my startup, which also became my Master's thesis, called "Developing with the Spring Framework". In 2007, I delivered some Spring training at the university and had the pleasure of attending SpringOne Europe.

During Devoxx 2008, I approached the people at the SpringSource booth and proposed again to be a training partner. After some months of back and forth, we made it happen, I was delivering my first training 🎉.

Given that SpringOne Europe disappeared, I thought of starting a Spring-focused event. At that time, I knew most of the Spring team and I was involved in a JUG called javaHispano (it covered all the Spanish-speaking countries) which meant I had access to the community. In 2010, Spring2GX Day was born (the first edition of Spring I/O). This was held in Madrid and was mostly a local event, 600 people registered, a complete success. Because the name of the event was too close to the one from VMware (SpringOne2GX), I was kindly asked to change it, and that's how it was rebranded to Spring I/O.

I organized Spring I/O 3 years in a row in Madrid (and one edition in Mexico!), but given the epic effort that organizing a conference requires, I burned out, the other folks from the JUG who were helping me didn't want to support it either. There was no Spring I/O in 2013 and 2014.

During a conversation with Juergen Hoeller at SpringOne 2014 in Dallas, he asked me to bring Spring I/O back. As a true fan of him, I revived Spring I/O in 2015, this time with a renewed focus, more international and I brought it home (Barcelona). The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward to 2024, I still use Spring on a daily basis and continue to deliver the official Spring training. I'm truly privileged and honored to be part of this community and you should be too!