Running a user group

Rabea Gransberger: Yes! It's also great because I'm not good at motivating people. I'm good at teaching people who are already motivated, but I'm not good at motivating people.

We initially had very low attendance at the Java User Group, but I think that was more due to the platform that we chose. In the beginning, we chose to create all the notifications for the meetings on the German XING platform, which is like the LinkedIn platform, and XING is just not good at sending out a meeting invitation.

You only get an email that you have a new message. Then you have to log in to actually be able to read it. I, myself, would never read a message sent via XING, unless the topic was very interesting.

We had 200 people who were registered to that group, but only five people were showing up for the meetings. Due to the low attendance, it was hard to convince speakers to come to Bremen. Peter Neubauer, a founder of Neo4j, for example, came down from Sweden and there were only around six or seven people attending. I felt very sorry for him because of the long travel, but I was very grateful he came and I was able to show him the city. I would always warn the speakers, saying, "Don't expect more than 10 people to come!"

After a while, it didn't feel right to me anymore to ask people to drive such a long way for just a small group of people. So, when I was reading emails from Simon Maple, who was organizing the Virtual Java User Group at the time, I was thinking, "Oh, he's so good at motivating people and I'm just not good at it."

I decided that somebody else would do a better job and I gave the position of the Java User Group lead to somebody else. We also changed the platform to Meetup, which is very good at reminding people about meetings and informing new local users with an interest in Java about the group. Now we have around 50 people attending the meetings, which is much better.

Geertjan Wielenga: How did you start speaking at conferences on a regular basis?

Rabea Gransberger: I was at Devoxx and I got to know some people. They told me about the inaugural Devoxx UK conference, so I submitted a talk and that worked out. In 2013, I gave my first conference talk alone in London.

What is very interesting is that before I went to the Java masterclass in Crete, I didn't even know that there were conferences about Java! So, for me, it was a whole different world to see normal developers giving talks at conferences and I really liked that because the people were very friendly. You would meet some other passionate people, you could talk about what you were doing, and you could learn from others. I stayed with the conference scene after that.

Geertjan Wielenga: One of the last times that I saw you, you were actually helping to run JCrete. Are you still doing that?

Rabea Gransberger: Yes, I'm in the "unorganizers" team for JCrete! I've been doing that since 2014. I mainly help with the event and with the setting up, and I make sure that everything runs smoothly when I'm there.

I was also part of the JavaLand program committee for three years, but I'm not doing that anymore because I just don't have the time for it.

Geertjan Wielenga: Do you also write articles or books, or anything like that?

Rabea Gransberger: I did write one article for the German iX Developer magazine, which was published last year. The article was about Java 9 modules and I did answer some interview questions for another German online magazine.

I don't do that much because writing articles just takes time. Currently, I don't feel that I need to write any articles. I also started my own blog, but the only blog post was about creating the blog!

Geertjan Wielenga: Since you're doing all of these different activities, how do you find the time to be involved in the community?

Rabea Gransberger: Currently, it's hard for me. When I was younger, until I was probably 30, I would enjoy writing some code in the evenings after I got home from work. I would sit at home and read something about Java or do some coding, and so on. But for the past few years, I haven't found the time anymore to do that. Now I need time to relax in the evenings!

Sometimes, when I have a longer vacation, I feel like I need to write some code. I'm also doing some open-source work, like helping to solve some of the Eclipse bugs.

With conferences, it's usually one week before I have to give a talk, then it turns up on my calendar and I think, "Oh, I should probably start creating the talk or rehearsing an older talk again." It consumes so much time. It takes one whole weekend until I have the basic structure and slides for a talk if it's a 45-minute talk.

Geertjan Wielenga: When do you decide that you've had enough of a talk and you want to do something new?