Meet the Java Developer Advocacy Team
After our conference celebrating IntelliJ IDEA’s 20th birthday, it occurs to me that I haven’t had a chance to introduce the expanded Java Developer Advocacy Team here at JetBrains. Last year we doubled in size! I, Trisha, lead the Java Advocacy Team, and I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about everyone, and why I’m so excited to work with these incredible women.
Mala Gupta
Let’s start with Mala. Mala joined us in January 2019, and you’ll have seen her screencasts and blog posts over the last two years. You probably know she’s a Java Champion and author, but did you know, she also performs a unique role in that she does a lot of advocacy work that is local to India as well? Mala also leads the monthly live streams, she’s great at finding members of the community and inviting them to come and share their extensive knowledge with you. She’s also been using her connections in the community to interview developers, and get them to share some tips with you. Mala is a very well known speaker, and a highly valued member of the Java community. Her passion for the Java language is evident in the content that she creates, especially around the semantics of the language. Mala is also working on her next book as we speak. Mala is very talented in crafts and enjoys paper quilling with her daughter (I’m not sure where she finds the time)!
Helen Scott
Next up, let me introduce Helen. Helen joined us in August 2020, she started out as a Java programmer but has spent the majority of her career creating content as a technical writer. Helen combines her passions for content creation, learning new things, and communication to bring a unique mix of skills to the team. Helen is exceptionally keen on championing the experience of all users, especially those who are new to the product, because she can empathise with them thanks to her own journey. Before last year, she last wrote Java code in anger sometime around 2002 (without an IDE), so she’s using the journey of re-connecting with Java via IntelliJ IDEA as an opportunity to help others. She has a true appreciation of where people may struggle when they’re new to Java and/or to IntelliJ IDEA. Helen enjoys lifting weights and quilting in her spare time, although not at the same time!
Dalia Abo Sheasha
Our most recent recruit is Dalia who joined us in October 2020. Dalia is a very experienced Java Developer with a number of high profile projects to her name including Open Liberty and Eclipse Link (JPA). Dalia is an experienced speaker and Java developer who has a real understanding of how enterprise developers work, and the challenges they face. Dalia is passionate about helping developers to migrate to newer versions of Java and has created tools to help with this journey. Assuming Dalia is happy in this new job, she’s a living example of how reaching out to ask for mentoring can impact your career, I first got to know her when she asked me for feedback on her presentations. Dalia recently submitted a change to our very own IntelliJ IDEA, a task that I, after 6 years at JetBrains, have yet to do! Dalia enjoys helping her mum with her bakery (and taunting us with the photos of all the baked goods) and has recently embarked on running as a hobby as well.
Trisha Gee
Finally, I guess I should mention me, Trisha, although I hope you’ve already seen me around the IntelliJ IDEA blog and YouTube channel. I am a Java Champion, blogger, speaker, and a published author. I guess I should include something about my hobbies too, I try to run several times a week, usually pushing my two kids in a buggy while I do so – they enjoy it much more than I do! I recently started knitting, and I’m ruminating over the similarities of knitting and programming (they’re both creative but technical – if you don’t believe me, you’ve clearly never seen a knitting pattern).
It is my pleasure to lead this exceptional team of individuals. Their unique mix of skills, passions and experience means we can deliver a bunch of content to you.
Talking of content, here’s just a small portion of what we (currently) do:
- Tip Tweets. Follow IntelliJ IDEA for tips twice a week
- What’s new in Java. Java is now released twice a year, we usually have blog posts and screencasts for each new version. For example, this blog for Java 15 and this video. Java 16 is coming soon, subscribe to the blog and YouTube channel to get these updates.
- What’s new in IntelliJ IDEA. We get a new release three times a year, and the Java advocates summarise the features that are most relevant for Java developers in a video, for example this one for 2020.3. 2021.1 is coming soon, and I’m working on the next video right now!
- Live streams. Once a month we invite a developer from the community to share their specialised knowledge with you. Sign up for the next one here, watch recordings of previous sessions, and subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of new ones
- Interviews. We’ve recently started publishing interviews with voices in the JVM community on YouTube on Sundays.
- Screencasts & other videos. We work our socks off to bring you a new video every week, usually on a Wednesday. These are all available on our YouTube channel. The topics can be features in the IDE, tips and tricks, language or frameworks tutorials, or combinations of all of these things.
- We collaborate with others in JetBrains, for example on things like JetBrains Connect, Ep. 3 and JetBrains Connect, Ep. 1
- Here I’m going to sneak in some Brand New News that you didn’t know: we’ve created an IntelliJ IDEA Guide! This is a very early version, we’ve made a start on the sort of content we think might be useful to you. We’d love your feedback on what you’d like to see here. You can send it directly to Helen, leave a comment here, or email the team.
- Conferences & virtual events. Talking of which, we cannot wait to get back to conferences and see you all again!. Meanwhile, reach out to me (Trisha), Mala, Helen or Dalia on Twitter, or email the team.
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