Yesterday I headed down to Bedfont with a car load of IBMers to present at the WebSphere User Group meeting. I was presenting an update covering new function in WebSphere ESB and Process Server 6.2. After days of pulling together slides from all the various product architects I ditched my pitch in favour of a few minor modifications to an excellent presentation from one of the worldwide tech sales team. Obviously I know the WebSphere ESB material well enough but this was a good opportunity to brush up my knowledge of the new function in Process Server. I also went to a couple of interesting presentations on OSGI, JAX-RS and JPA as well as my colleague Brian Hulse’s detailed presentation on the Service Gateway and Policy support in 6.2. With attendance down on usual, I felt the large number of parallel tracks led to smaller than desirable audiences for many of the presentations. It was also a horrendous drive back home along the M3 through torrential rain.
Archive for the ‘Work’ Category
User Group Presentation
Wednesday, March 4th, 200910 years on
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Being presented with my “10 year pen” at a departmental meeting on Monday seems like a good excuse for a bit of a retrospective on my career with IBM…
No danger of CrackBerry addiction
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008As part of IBM UK’s transition from O2 to Vodafone we’re all being issued with new mobiles. I’m a bit behind the curve as most people were moved over whilst I was in Norway. Today, the SIM card for my new BlackBerry Pearl has finally been activated. Sadly, like most employees, IBM hasn’t given me a data service. This is considered a “personal option” and I could get it for £16pm (providing my department agreed to match that approximately to cover the server-side costs and support which is highly unlikely in the current climate). I largely understand that decision – I already have a data card for my laptop if I need to read e-mails on the move. What I don’t understand is the decision to give me a BlackBerry. It even says on the box “Vodafone Email Solutions”!
It’s also a shame that it’s only a Pearl 8100. If it had Wi-Fi support then at least I’d have some form of connectivity on the phone. As it is, I can’t even work out how I’m going to sync contacts from Thunderbird, Plaxo or Google Apps via the USB cable. No danger of me becoming a CrackBerry addict then…
Changing jobs
Saturday, September 6th, 2008No – I’m not about to leave IBM but, after nearly four years in IBM Software Services for WebSphere it’s time to hang up my travelling bag and, as in all good resignation speeches, spend some more time with my family. I’ve really enjoyed the chance to work closely with customers on some very interesting projects during that time and in many different countries (let’s see, from the top: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and the US). I have also had the opportunity to work with some very talented and knowledgeable IBMers. I can’t really claim to have enjoyed the travelling – one business hotel looks much like another after a while – but for some reason customers insist of the consultant coming to them rather than vice-versa! The real killer though is not knowing where you’re going to be next week or perhaps even tomorrow.
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My first US patent
Thursday, September 4th, 2008Last week I had my first US patent issued: #7218708. The patent describes the use of the J2EE Connector Architecture to integrate a Java Message Service provider with an application server. This is something that is actually very easy to do with JCA 1.5 given the restriction of one JMS session per connection introduced by J2EE 1.4. However this patent describes a mechanism to use JCA twice (once at the connection level and once at the session level) that doesn’t require this restriction. This was first used in WebSphere Application Server V5 and continues to be used for the WebSphere MQ and generic JMS provider support today.
Embarrassing breakdown
Thursday, August 28th, 2008Sadly it turned out that the quick charge that I gave the car battery following our return from Monmouth wasn’t going to be sufficient to get me in to work on Wednesday. Going via the sorting office to pick up a package the warning lights started popping up as I passed under the M3 on Leigh Road. I pulled in to the right hand lane to turn back for home at which point the engine cut out. Just where you want to be – in the middle of the road during rush hour.
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