Apache ActiveMQ and ServiceMix at Devoxx

This week I delivered a three hour University talk at the Devoxx conference in Antwerp, Belgium. Stephan and his crew really do a great job with the conference. This was my third year in a row to speak at Javapolis/Devoxx and I feel pretty lucky to have had the opportunity to speak there.

The crowd this year was over 3000, but I'm not sure of the exact number as I heard both 3200 and 3600. The speaker's dinner was on Tuesday night and I heard that there were 150 speakers! Geez, that's the lot! I had a great time seeing old friends and meeting lots of new people as well.

If it seems like I'm rambling in this post, it's because I am. I'm writing this from the Memphis airport and I'm incredibly jet-lagged right now. My body clock is going in nine directions right now and I feel a headache coming on. One more flight and I'm home - phew! This was the last scheduled conference for a while. I'm pretty burned out from all the travel lately. This makes the sixth conference I've done since late September and three of those were in the EU. I'm just ready to be home with my family for a while.

Apache ActiveMQ at SpringOne

Last week I spoke about ActiveMQ at the SpringOne Americas conference in Hollywood, Florida. This was my first time at SpringOne but it was good since it's organized by fellow Coloradan Jay Zimmerman of NFJS fame. Tons of great people, lots of great sessions and I finally got to meet lots of folks from SpringSource.

The hotel was right on the beach so I was fortunate enough to be able to stroll on the beach a couple times. Unfortunately not enough time to go for a swim or rent a wave runner though. The weather was pretty nice while we were there. Compared to the cold spell that blew into Colorado as I was leaving on Wednesday, 70 degrees Fahrenheit was pretty nice.

After the conference Arjen Poutsma and I flew to Amsterdam where I took a train to Antwerp for the Devoxx conference. No sleep on the plane means that I'm gonna be upside down all week - ugh.

Apache ActiveMQ and ServiceMix at Øredev Conference

This week I am at the Øredev Conference in Malmö, Sweden speaking about ActiveMQ and ServiceMix. The weather here has been quite cold, rainy and windy, but the conference has been great. I've met lots of great people here, many of whom are very passionate about the Scrum development process. Unfortunately I haven't slept much since I've been here (sometimes that happens when I travel internationally) but I have gotten a lot of work completed.

One unique feature of this conference is the keynote talk each morning to start off the day and each one has been very good in topic and delivered by some very entertaining speakers including Ted Neward, James Bach and Robert C. Martin. Another unique offering here has been a track dedicated to development processes, and, as I mentioned, very slanted toward Scrum. I wish I saw this level of passion for the development process at more companies where I've consulted! I've also noticed that every talk has been captured on video (using Macs ;-) ), so I wonder if it will be offered up on the website - hmmmm - I need to ask Michael Tiberg about that.

Some Choice Quotes
Wednesday morning that Ted was speaking, he asked if anyone in the crowd writes perfect concurrent code. As one guy in the nearly 1000 person crowed raised his hand, Ted pointed in his direction and said, 'Aaaahhh, I think we need some mental health professionals over there.'



Today, Bob Martin asked, 'How many people have looked at code and thought, oh I must fix this code, but then you decide not to do it? Because if you fix the code you might break it and if you break it, you own it - ha, ha.'

New CEO Joins Sonatype

Recently Sonatype hired a new CEO to take the helm. Mark de Visser has a lot of experience working with open source companies as he has held key positions at Zend, Agitar and Red Hat. As noted previously by Matt Asay, Mark joined the team in early October, but it's only recently become fairly recognized.

I had the pleasure of spending some time with Mark back in October and I was impressed with Mark's analytical sense even the first time I met him. I think he's a good fit for the Sonatype crew. He's got a lot of knowledge of the open source world how to do the right kind of marketing in it. This is very important for any startup who is focused on building quality commercial products around open source and Mark's experience in this area is immediately useful.

Sonatype has done a great job with its products so far and they're getting great adoption. Now Mark can help them really get the right marketing message out there and spread further awareness of the company and all that it offers.

Purchased Songs Disappear From iPhone

Just recently I finally broke down and got an iPhone. My old Sony Ericcson T610 was konking out so it was time to buy a new phone anyway. So far I've been very happy with it, even the service from at&t has not been too bad. Being that my old phone was nearly eight years old, having a phone with newer, more easily accessible features is a nice change.

A couple weeks ago I purchased the new album from Ryan Adams and the Cardinals from iTunes on my iPhone. After listening to it for a week or so I sync'd my iPhone with my MacBook Pro only to realize that the entire album disappeared from both the iPhone and iTunes. Upon trying to download it again on my iPhone, I received an error stating that I had already downloaded it, am I sure I want to purchase it again? So I started Googling the problem and much to my amazement this seems to be a fairly widespread issue with the iPhone. I found many folks in the same predicament with no solution whatsoever. The only option is file an issue with Apple about it by selecting the purchase in my iTunes account and clicking a button named Report a Problem.

So far I have received nothing from Apple about the problem I reported and, sadly, I don't expect anything. My solution was to purchase the album a second time and make sure it was backed up by iTunes so I won't lose it again (hopefully).

Has anyone else experienced this and had the situation remedied by Apple in some way?

ActiveMQ, Camel and ServiceMix at ApacheCon US 2008

I just returned late last night from New Orleans after speaking at the ApacheCon US 2008 conference. I had a great time seeing old friends, attending the conference and exploring the French Quarter with Guillaume, John, Shawna and Jack. Lot's of history throughout the area and the people of New Orleans were very pleasant. I've been to many cities where folks are very nonplussed by your presence, but that's not the case in New Orleans. Everyone was very friendly, forthcoming with information and helpful.

I was at ApacheCon to speak about Apache ServiceMix. Then last weekend I was contacted by my friend Aaron Mulder who informed me that his whole family was ill and he wasn&apost going to make it to the conference so he wondered if I could deliver his talk about Apache ActiveMQ at the conference. So I spent some time putting together the slides and prepared for this talk.

I was scheduled to deliver the two talks on Friday afternoon and I was prepared. Then only 20 minutes before I was to begin speaking, I got a call from my good friend Chris Custine. He was calling me to let me know that he was in the hospital in New Orleans with a herniated disk in his back (ouch!) and wondered if I could cover his talk as well. So I agreed to cover Chris' talk as well, but with a different topic - Apache Camel. Just before Chris' time slot, I explained to the attendees the situation and they were all gracious enough to let me speak about Camel.

In the end, everything went well. I just hope Chris will be OK. I even finally got to meet Joe and Roger from TTM Solutions. I only wish we'd met earlier in the week so we could have spent some more time together.

Update:
All three sets of slides have been posted to my SlideShare space.

New Release of Apache Camel Now Available

The newest release of Apache Camel is now available for download! Grab the binary release as a tarball or a zip now. It includes a big list of improvements and new features driven from the Camel community. This is a great testament to the continuing widespread adoption of Camel.

Just a few of my favorite items include:

• Camel's Maven archetypes


• clarification of the recursive property on the file component


• The use of exclusive locks for reading a file to prevent reading a file before it's fully written


• Some new options on the tracer


• The Eclipse Templates for Camel (nice work Jon)

There are many, many more items in the full list of improvements, take a peek.

A couple weeks ago I spoke about Camel at the Colorado Software Summit and received a lot of wonderful feedback. Folks at the conference really enjoyed the session, so much that three separate people began writing Camel routes after seeing my session and were really enjoying its simplicity.