Eric D. Schabell: December 2011

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Year in review 2011

Taking a personal look back at a very busy year in which I spent a great amount of my focus on JBoss technologies, writing and presenting all over the world. Trips to Sweden, Spain, England, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Boston, USA.

Instead of rattling off all the stuff that passed by this year, I would refer you to the Blog Archive in the sidebar of this blog where you can follow that action month by month. ;-)

On the cycling front I was able to make good use of my lunch hours when working from home and these one hour rides added up! I clocked around 3000 km this year and with travel I was able to ride in the Ardennes (Rochefort), Germany (Trier), Limburg (Cauberg, Keutenberg, etc) and in the Veluwe (Postbank). I got my climbing hat on this year with the top being the trip to Trier (first time I had to stop on a climb to rest, ever...) and the Ardennes (single day ride with over 500m climbing, rockin' area around Rochefort).

Take care, thanks for reading in 2011 and see you next year!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Open Source Conference 2011 - OpenShift, jBPM and much more in Amsterdam at OSC11

OSC11 ready to rock!
Some time ago I mentioned that I would be giving talks on jBPM and OpenShift at OSC11, well let me tell you a bit about that experience!

Scott Crenshaw interview.
Interview
It all started on Thursday afternoon when I arrived at the hotel in Amsterdam to check in. Our VP Cloud, Scott Crenshaw was stuck in traffic coming back from a customer visit and I was asked to fill in for him with a reporter from CloudWorks. I got the chance to focus more on OpenShift than on the general Red Hat strategy until Scott arrived, at which time I was able to relax and snap a few pictures of him doing his magic.

View from 17th floor.
After that I got the chance to actually go up to my room before heading over to the venue. I have never stayed 17 floors above Amsterdam, but as you can see, the view was amazing over Central Train Station and the river behind it. I know, the photo looks like a hotel room with a painting on the wall, but believe me that is the view over the city. At night you could just sit in your hotel room and stare out the window at the city lights.

Keynote Scott Crenshaw
 Setup PTA
At the venue, the Amsterdam Passenger Terminal (PTA), the local cruise ship terminal, we arrived with our technical team to ensure a few things were going to be working smoothly for the demos and sessions. The rooms I would be talking in were about 80 seats, so nice for break-out sessions! We hung a few banners, watched the crews setup the main stage and then headed for our hotel to get ready for the Speakers Dinner.

OpenShift t-shirt was a hit!
Speaker Dinner
That evening there was a speakers dinner that started with drinks, then food and finished up in a lounge bar on the top floor of the Mint Hotel, again, another nice view over the city of Amsterdam. The nice part was chatting with the various keynote speakers, where I got some time with the VP from Alfresco talking BPM and with Scott Crenshaw talking OpenShift a bit.

Open Source Conference
Friday was the big event, we got there early and watched around 800 attendees (more than doubling the number from last year) appearing slowly out of the morning fog to come enjoy a day filled with Open Source and networking. It was amazing to see the PTA filled up with customers, partners and contacts that I know from my years of working on Open Source.  It was not possible to cross the main floor without getting stopped by someone at least 3 times, amazing interactions!

The OpenShift talk was packed full with all seats eventually taken and standing room filled on the sides. Even though the talks were only 30 minutes, it was possible to get some nice interactions with the crowd. I got some interesting Python and PHP questions, passed out a few goodies and after the talk even had to give away the last t-shirt I was wearing to a fan! The jBPM talk was filled also and again had to put a lot of information into the short time frame, but there were some really nice reactions to the talk in discussions after the session and on Twitter.

Both sessions slides will be made available via the OSC website, but I will include them here for all to enjoy. It was a long day, a busy day, but filled with great people at a great location. I am seriously looking forward to next years event and wonder if we can double the attendance again!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

JAX 2012 - Integration woes, solving the migration to BPMN2

Submitted a talk to JAX 2012, fingers crossed!

Abstract:
We stand now on the brink of a revolution. The future calls to us with a promise of standardized processes and a specification to lead us. There is one small catch... what to do with our existing enterprise integration projects? This session will help you position your existing JBoss projects for the challenges of migrating to the JBoss Business Process Management System with real world examples.

JAX 2012 - The future is now for all your Business Processes


Submitted a talk to JAX 2012, fingers crossed!

Abstract:
A lot has happened in the BPM area over the last few years, with the intro of the BPMN 2.0 standard, the increasing interest in more dynamic and adaptive processes, integration with business rules and event processing, case management, etc. In this session, we will show you how JBoss tackles these challenges, discuss migration to this new platform and give an overview of its most import features.

JAX 2012 - Rise above the Cloud hype with OpenShift

Submitted a talk to JAX 2012, fingers crossed!

Abstract:

Whether a seasoned Java developer looking to start on EE6 or you wrote your 1st line yesterday, the Cloud is turning out to be the perfect environment for developing apps. Join us for an action-packed hour of power. If you want to learn how the OpenShift PaaS works, how investing 1hr of your time can change everything you though you knew about  developing apps in the Cloud, this session is for you!