UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Hillmer Chona, a master’s degree student in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), was invited by the Devnexus Conference to serve as a panelist at the Java Users Group Leaders Summit. The conference was held April 9-11 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
“Hillmer was invited for his expertise and leadership in the field,” said Frank Ritter, professor in the College of IST and Chona’s adviser. “He is a Java Champion, which is a title that recognizes a unique group of skilled Java technologists and community leaders around the world. The conference covered all of his expenses, which is uncommon for a student at the master’s level.”
Java is a programing language and computing platform. The evolution of the Java platform is overseen by the Java Community Process with the open-source reference implementation developed in Open Java Development Kit. Oracle leads the Java platform with contributions from the community and industry. Millions of developers worldwide run more than 60 billion Java Virtual Machines worldwide. Devnexus is the longest-running and largest Java Ecosystem Conference in the world, according to its website.
Java Champions come from a broad cross-section of the Java community. They participate in Java projects, engage with Java User Group communities, speak at conferences, teach other developers and foster inclusive participation. They are also able to advocate or influence other developers through their own professional activities via consulting, teaching, writing and speaking, for example. They provide independent, constructive feedback and ideas — without a competitive agenda — that enables Oracle to continue to move Java forward.
“Being a Java Champion provides me with the opportunity to contribute to the Java ecosystem, support Java user communities and contribute to open-source projects,” Chona said. “It enables me to engage with developers, industry professionals and others who want to learn more about software development technologies.”
Chona, who has been admitted to IST’s doctoral program in informatics for fall 2024, earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science engineering from Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander in Colombia, his home country. There, he organized and participated in Java User Groups designed to facilitate networking and information sharing among users of the Java platform.
Since 2017, Chona has served as speaker and organizer at software development conferences spanning from Canada to Argentina. He helped to create an organize the Java Community's conferences in Colombia in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and in the Dominican Republic in 2019. In August 2019, Chona helped organize Devoxx4Kids Colombia, an event where children and young people explored, played and learned technologies such as video game development, robot programming, software development and electronics.