2015 in review - On the road with JBoss Integration & BPM

My last article for 2015... the year in review where I get to look back and review my work, play, cycling, running, writing, and travels for the past year.

This year is my seventh year at Red Hat and fourth year as a JBoss Technology Evangelist, covering the Integration & BPM technology products.

We have had a pretty turbulent and exciting time this year with lots of expansion in our Evangelist team and more coming soon now that plans are finalizing for team expansion in 2016.

In April there was the release of JBoss BRMS 6.1 and JBoss BPM Suite 6.1, which included full support for the new Business Resource Planner component.

I spent a lot of time traveling to talk about these products and to also preach on the topics of PaaS with OpenShift, but I must admit that there too I was mostly focusing on how to get started with JBoss BPM and rules technologies.

Not to be forgotten, the jbpmmigration project continued to evolve and is still an integral part of the process designer component found in JBoss BPM Suite product. Always nice to be able to contribute something to our efforts to help customers.

Finally just in time for the end of this year, there was the release of JBoss BRMS 6.2 and JBoss BPM Suite 6.2, which I kicked off with the first in a series on some of the newest features. I also provided an ultimate collection of JBoss BPM Suite demos to showcase the new release.

Writing

Aside from the articles here (134), content published on DZone and my continuing side hobby of sports journalism for the Red Sox fan site RedSoxLife.com (40), I was able to focus on a couple of very comprehensive product based starter kits.

There is now a JBoss BPM Suite starter kit and a JBoss BRMS starter kit, both highlighted around the world at various meetups, JBug and JUG events. On top of that they were featured in Red Hat webinars. They are the one stop shopping for all things to get you started with our products.

On top of this writing I also published various video tutorials on Vimeo and Youtube. Along with these tutorials you will find all my demo projects on JBoss Demo Central, your one stop shopping for all things related to JBoss Integration & BPM products.

Travel

The places I went and the people I met again this year are what make the efforts we put into JBoss worth the time and jet-lag. I wish I would be able to list everyone and every place but that is just not possible. I enjoyed the chats, the beers, the hanging out, the presentations, the workshops, the dinners, lunches and meetings with each and every one of you.

Here are some of the 21 cities I visited in 6 countries this year, just to give an impression of the spaces we covered while I told stories around JBoss, BPM, Rules, Events, PaaS, xPaaS and OpenShift.

• London, UK (2x)
• Scotland (2x)
• Denmark
• Sweden
• Netherlands (2x)
• Boston (8x)
• Washington DC
• Atlanta
• Las Vegas



Got a bit beach bound in 2015!

• Raleigh (4x)

This was all to facilitate various conferences, Java User Groups (JUG's), partner events, customer workshops and JBoss User Groups (JBug's).

Probably the most special trip of 2015 was late in the summer when I was able to move my family from the Netherlands to the coast of North Carolina.

You will notice that my travel and focus on JBoss BPM has been targeting mostly North America and that was the plan that involved my placement here in the USA.

I have been working since then, producing JBoss BRMS and JBoss BPM Suite content while being able to walk down to the beach that is just five minutes from my front door. Red Hat is a very flexible employer and I am very happy that this was possible.

Online workshops

One of the major items launched last year and updated throughout 2015 was my online rules, events and process (BPM) workshop series. It is a full blown walk through showing you how to build a project from scratch for both JBoss BRMS and then JBoss BPM Suite, now showcasing versions of the product from 6.0.3 through to 6.2.

There has been a massive response to this and after feedback it has evolved into the version you see now that has been presented at various partners, customers and JUG's around the world.

This content is tied into the starter kits I mentioned above and have also been put into canned versions so that you can setup and host your own workshops, meetups or user groups.

Thanks to you all

I certainly hope you enjoyed what we were able to bring to you in 2015.

I want to thank you personally for attending any of the webinars, conference sessions, workshops, JUG's, and JBug's were our paths might have crossed or for just taking the time to read a published article.

2016 is going to start with a bang, so join me on this wonderful ride as we explore the amazing things you can achieve with the Red Hat product portfolio... stay tuned!