Category Archives: Technology

In Philadelphia, at Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise

I'm in Philadelphia, at the Philly ETE conference, for the second year in a row.  I took a break from working on my slides (my talk is tomorrow afternoon) to carefully consider which talks I want to attend while I'm here.  So, for anyone interested, here's the lineup:

On Friday, I'm looking forward to:

And then, I'll be taking off, so that I can get back to Michigan in time to tuck the kids into bed, but if I were staying through the end of the day, I would have hard choices between James Ward's Architecting Flex RIAs, Clojure and the Robot Apocalypse: Needfuls for Newbies, Introduction to Groovy, and the Agile Round Table: Scrum in the Real World.  Looking forward to both days!  I'm thrilled with the content here, and the organizers do a fantastic job.

AAJUG meeting on Java Expert System Shell (JESS) tonight, March 24

The Ann Arbor Java User Group meeting is tonight, Tuesday, March 24, from 6:39-9:30 pm.  Jason Morris will be speaking on an "Introduction to the Java Expert System Shell (JESS).  The meeting is held at

Washtenaw Community College, WCC BE250

Presentation Title:
Introduction to the Java Expert System Shell (JESS)
 

Summary:
Sandia National Laboratory's Jess is a rule engine implemented in Java and based on the Rete pattern-matching algorithm.  The entire Jess distribution consists of the Jess API, a LISP-like scripting language (also called Jess), and an integrated development environment called the JessDE which is an Eclipse plugin.  Any Java developers who write complex business logic will benefit from this talk.  Business rules will be mentioned, but not glorified as the canonical example of Jess's abilities. 

If you want to learn how to add powerful reasoning capability to your Java applications, then this talk is for you.

Keywords:  artificial intelligence, CLIPS, expert systems, inferencing, knowledge engineering, knowledge-base, LISP, rules, rule engine, rulebases

Speaker Bio:
Jason Morris is the owner of Morris Technical Solutions LLC, specializing in Java web-application development and rule-engine applications.  He has more than 15 years in the software engineering field, spanning many application domains and comprising many different functional roles.  Currently, Jason is involved with the USAF to semantically enable human resources information systems via custom ontologies.  He is also a technical marketing and services consultant for Sandia National Laboratories, where he provides custom training and development services for licensees of Jess, the Java Expert Systems Shell (www.jessrules.com).  His latest joint-development effort with the University of Sydney (Australia) is a rule-based expert system called SINFERS for computation of soil properties from field data.

 

From 2006-2007, Jason was a GAAN Fellow at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts where he was pursuing a PhD in Computer Science and working on Intelligent Tutoring Systems.  He holds a B.S. in Applied Engineering Sciences from Michigan State University, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University, and a M.S. in Engineering and Technology Management from Portland State University.

Speaking at Philly Emerging Tech conference this week

Last year, I was invited to speak at the Philadelphia Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise conference.  I learned about the confernece through one of the organizers (and fellow devchix member), Andrea Wright.  Much like CodeMash, Philly ETE attracts a mostly regional audience.  A company in Philadelphia, Chariot Solutions, organizes the event, and they do an amazing job.  I'm thrilled to be speaking there again this year.  I'll present my talk "Practical Scala" on Thursday March 26 at 4 pm.  I'm looking forward to several talks, including "Exhibitionism in Software Development", "Under the Covers of the AppEngine Datastore","Legally Agile", "The Future is Clearly Cloudy", "Diets Don't Work: Getting Sustainable Results with Scrum".  I expect to be using the Open Spaces mentality (moving between talks) because there are several running simultaneously that I'm interested in.  AND … all of the keynotes look amazing, especially Andy Hunt's (need I say more than his name?) and another by Jascha Franklin Hodge, the CTO of Blue State Digital, the company who built the Obama technology platform will talk about how they did it.

I'm disappointed that I'll miss David Chelimsky's RSpec talk (coincides with mine).  I met David at the conference last year – he's a great speaker – and I'm really impressed with RSpec.  And I'll miss my friend James Ward's talk on RIA with Flex, since I'm heading home on Friday mid-day so that I can spend the evening with my family.

If you're in Philadelphia this week, I hope that you're able to attend the conference!  (And if you're in Chicago, I hope that you're at PyCon … it's unfortunate that these two conferences overlapped this year!)

 

Insight into the Java Posse Roundup: Why I Go

The 3rd Java Posse Roundup was held last week in Crested Butte, Colorado.  As I flew back home on the plane, I reflected about why this conference is my favorite conference to attend, and why I start looking forward to the next event as soon as the current one concludes.

The contributing factors include:

1. The people

2. The format

3. The location

 

The people.

The Roundup attracts some new faces and some diehards. Some come back after missing a year for whatever reason.  Even before the conference begins, an online group is created which starts communication among attendees about housing, flights, what to bring, etc.  This communication is not driven by the old-timers.  Sure, they answer questions, but the new attendees are pro-active as well.  This year, one newbie set up a google map of the areas of interest (houses, etc.) while another set up a list of things to bring.  Discussions were started long before we ever met one another, and houses were shared by complete strangers.

It also helps immensely that the people who drive the conference (in particular, Bruce Eckel, Dick Wall, Carl Quinn, Tor Norbye, and Joe Nuxoll) are all really approachable and inviting.  They invite people into their homes for dinners and for hacking sessions and for discussions that extend long into the night.  Their approachability sets the tone for the conference, and the attendees reflect that with one another as well.  I have never felt intimidated about going up to ANY roundup attendee (including industry luminaries) to talk.  They've all been very nice and generous.  This sense of approachability was described by attendees all week, this year.

Through our online group, the attendees continue to maintain contact throughout the year.  As one attendee put it, there's a lot of benefit in having a personal connection to the other attendees, in setting up that network.  I have certainly made long-lasting friends and those relationships continue to grow.

 

The format.

The open spaces format of the event is announced/described on the registration page, but even before people experience open spaces, they act in an open spaces way.  The self-starting attitude that the attendees, old and new, bring to the conference is apparent long before we all touch down in Crested Butte.  It doesn't take long for the attendees to understand that pretty much anything goes.  The first day or so is often a bit driven by concerns about where the boundaries are, with newbies asking "should we do it this way", "is it OK to do this".  The answers typically come back as "Sure, go ahead" (when it's an idea that someone has, or "Let's just let things happen" (when someone is trying to impose some additional order on the process).  Quickly, people learn that for the most part, things will happen, but that this is their experience to help mold and create, and they go with it.

 

The location.

The conference is held in the remote mountain town of Crested Butte, CO.  A town of just 1200 residents, CB is a great place to hold the conference for many reasons.  For one, Bruce Eckel lives there.  He helps to organize the conference with the Posse and holding it in his town certainly simplifies things.  The prior-year attendees are comfortable with the town and with the rental housing there, and that has a bit impact on the interactivity among the attendees. And I think that it's a really big deal that no one (other than Bruce) is close enough to their homes or their jobs to be able to move in and out of the conference.  For the most part, people are on a retreat (or as several people called it "Camp"), and spend the entire week together.  The retreat from "real life" in a region unfamiliar to most encourages the attendees to eat together and to form groups to hack or to ski. I strongly believe that if this conference were held in the Bay Area, we would have a boatload of attendees, but the experience wouldn't be nearly as rewarding.  And the town reflects a casual welcoming attitude as well.  By policy, there are no chain (stores or restaurants) in Crested Butte. That means that visitors are "forced" to local hangouts, where they quickly learn that they are welcome.  People stop and talk, and seem genuinely interested in a conference coming to their town. A few locals have stopped by lightning talks to see what it's all about.  After a while, several of us recognize some of the locals, and we even turned the tables on one of them, with 15 of us visiting his restaurant.   We chatted him up, and he knew who we were.  In addition to being a fabulous town, Crested Butte offers the perfect backdrop to such a friendly conference, but being an approachable town.

 

What I've decided is that it's hard to separately analyze these factors.  While I definitely think that the Roundup would succeed in another location (because of the people who organize it, and because of the format), I do think that care has to be taken to choose a location that reflects its intimate nature.  On the other hand, I believe that the people and the open spaces format are the key ingredients to the Roundup's success.   And if I had to pick only ONE component that really described why I like to attend the Roundup each year, why I count it as my favorite conference, I would have to answer … the people.  It's really all about the people.

Another Java Posse Roundup comes to a close

Well, I've been here in Crested Butte since Sunday afternoon, for the 3rd Java Posse Roundup. It's been an amazing experience, as always.  I blogged earlier in the week about how this conference evolves to match the interests of the attendees. Of course, I should have anticipated that it was still changing.  The attendees really take charge of this conference, and that's part of why it's so great.

In addition to the new (optional) hackathon day, there were several other changes this year. First of all, the size has exceeded the capacity of the Posse House and so the evening events were held at the conference location.  This gave everyone a bit more breathing room and was just as fun.

The lightning talks offer a wide variety of topics, not all of which are Java-related. I enjoy the non-technical talks and tech talks alike.  Some of the more amusing sessions from this year include Barry Hawkins' "Introducing Change" and Andrew Harmel Law's "Zombies".  The lightning talks will make their way to YouTube at http://youtube.com/javaposse.

The sessions, as always, were fascinating. Ranging from the very specific to the very general, they were all great. Of course, they will be released on the Java Posse podcast channel, and it will be interesting to hear the reaction of those who didn't attend. But I did realize that if you're not here, you miss out on a lot.  Not only will you likely not get the jokes, but you also miss out on the opportunity for "free consulting".  People are very generous with their time and ideas.  I have met some amazing people here over the years, and I do keep in touch with them throughout the year.  We bounce ideas off of one another and I benefit immensely.  I hope that I offer at least a fraction in return. 

The afternoon activities were varied. Some people gathered at houses around town to hack together, while others "networked" (aka, skiied and snowmobiled).  I was thrilled yet again to leave my downhill gear packed because of the interest attendees had in learning how to cross-country ski.  We went out two days (so far; I suspect we will go tomorrow morning as well) and the groups were great! Some footage may make its way to the internet; we'll have to see.  Fewer people downhilled this year than in years past, and I suspect that was a combination of the weather (it was grayish without new snow) and the fact that Bruce had broken his leg a few weeks ago.  I think that his mishap may have spooked people.

The hacking groups had productive afternoons as well.  Dick was able to rewrite his JFlubber app in both JavaFX and Flex. With both Tor and James to work with, Dick seemed pretty happy.

Bill Venners was here as well, and he was able to find several willing participants to work on ScalaTest.  Rumor has it that he and Tor got the NetBeans build working for ScalaTest, which will certainly improve the developer experience "out of the box". We had a group at our house one afternoon, and most of us were having difficulty getting it to build.  I'm glad that they were able to make progress. Bill's done a great job with ScalaTest!

After lightning talks, groups formed.  I never went to bed early, always intrigued by some interesting conversation at my house or another one, that went well into the night.  As is consistent with the previous 2 Roundups, I found that I spent nearly ALL of my waking time with other attendees.  I had one brief shopping trip alone to buy souvenirs for my kids.  That's it.  So, if any employers doubt the "hard work" that we do at this conference, pass this information along.  Even while we were out cross-country skiing, we were talking about "things", either about Java things or business things or the conference.  It's truly an experience in conference immersion.

 

Oh, and just to dispel the myth that geeks don't socialize and can't cook, here's a story:

Since several of us had rented houses around town (5 or 6 in total) rather than renting hotel rooms, we got together and organized a progressive dinner.  While Wikipedia describes it as a complex process requiring a lot of organization, we didn't have that experience and it was awesome.  So, if you're going to do one, don't do it THAT way.  Try it OUR way … you might be surprised.  Here's the official (LOL) Java Posse/Open Spaces version of a progressive dinner:

  1. Write down addresses of houses that are interested in participating. Each house will prepare "some food" (we left that open).
  2. Pick a start time.
  3. Pick a house to start at.
  4. Pick the successive houses and write down the order on the paper.
  5. Go to first house, and migrate to the next in line until done.

We announced this on Tuesday afternoon, and simply reminded everyone on Wednesday at noon.  40 people traipsed from house to house!  It was a lot of fun.

Pretty simple. And FUN! Not only did it get everyone moving around, talking to different people, it was a great way to see the other rental houses and to learn who liked to cook. We didn't go to the trouble of telling people what to prepare, assigning a course, or even letting one another know our plans.  Our menu was varied and we had a blast. Try it.

The week was way too short.  There was a lot that I wanted to do.  But, as usual, I'll be returning home with my batteries charged and new friends. Can't ask for much more than that.

Alternative Languages on the JVM at the Java Posse Roundup

The Java Posse Roundup conference continues to evolve to meet the interests of the attendees. This year, the first day was an optional day,  with groups coding on alternate languages on the JVM.  Groups formed to share their collective knowledge and interest surrounding several languages. I chose to attend the Scala Hacking session, as did 13 other people.  In other locations around town, there was a similarly sized JavaFX group, and a smaller Groovy/Grails group.  Later in the day, Fan was added.

In the Scala session, we went through some code that we had developed for an evening session last year, implementing some functionality of LINQ (Language Integrated Query for .NET), in Scala.  We based our work on Bill Wagner's article from Visual Studio Magazine.  We didn't make much new progress, mainly because we were trying to dissect what we had dome both for our benefit as well as for those who had never seen the language.  We're hoping to get back to that later in the week.  You can read Joel Neely's blog that summarizes a lot of what we did along with some insight.

Later in the day at the Scala Dojo, Dick Wall demonstrated some of the work he's been doing with genomics, while another group moved over to another house, to work on ScalaTest with Bill Venners.  We spent some time getting our development environments set up, and started with some assignments.  Bill's talking about a release later this week, and is looking for help on the project.  Several people have expressed interest and working together was a good start.  I suspect that wasn't the last Scalatest hacking session either!

After a short break for dinner, we all got back together at the Posse House (as we affectionately call the house where the Java Posse stays during the conference) for a review of how we had all spent our day.  The Groovy/Grails team demonstrated their work on getting a simple CRUD app to work, and the JavaFX team demonstrated an application that they had built, which included a timer that counted down.  By adding some designer work in PhotoShop, they were able to get a styled app up and running, and even included sound.  It was an impressive demo. Joel Neely reviewed what our team had dome with Scala, and Fred Simon (who endured 48 hrs of travel and delays to get here) did a brief overview of Fan, which is a language that targets both the JVM and CLR.

We're all looking forward to the conference starting today, with open spaces sessions.  This year, we have exceeded the capacity of the Posse House for lightning talks (but not for gatherings), so the consensus is that the evening lightning talks will likely be held at the conference location as well.  It's not as cozy, but it will likely be more functional!  I'm sure that at some point today, people will head off to ski, and that's part of the experience as well.

So, off for another day in beautiful Crested Butte. First stop, Camp4Coffee.  Then, conference kickoff!

Lightning talks tomorrow (and a special guest!)

As we normally do on every other Friday, SRT Solutions will hold lightning talks tomorrow at our office.  But THIS WEEK, we have a special guest.  Catherine Devlin, one of our favorite python developers and PyCon and PyOhio organizers, will be joining us!  I first met Catherine at CodeMash 2007,and am thrilled that she's making her way "up north" (from Dayton) this week.  Catherine came to one of our first lightning talks last year.  She always has something interesting to say.

As always, I'm looking forward to lightning talks!  Please join us.

Lightning talks are our way of keeping up to date with what the other SRT developers are doing, as well as what the other developers in the community are doing.  We love it when outside people attend.  People come to listen and to speak (no one is forced to speak).  We'll start at 3:30, with people writing their topics on the whiteboard.  Then we'll start, giving each presenter 5 minutes to talk about the topic of his or her choice, before moving on to the next one.  It's great fun and very informative.

SRT Solutions is at 206 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 200, Ann Arbor.  That's at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington.  Entrance to our building is from Fifth.  Take elevator to 2R or take stairs PAST Suite 225 to Suite 200.

Looking ahead to the Java Posse Roundup (next week!)

The Java Posse is a group of guys (Dick Wall, Carl Quinn, Tor Norbye, Joe Nuxoll) who love Java enough to dedicate time to staying up on the latest in the Java world and reporting it for the rest of us.  I suspect that I'm not the only one who is only able to keep up on the news because of the time that these guys spend each week.  Two years ago, they teamed up with Bruce Eckel to host the first ever Java Posse Roundup Open Spaces conference.  Participants decided what they wanted to talk about, using the very lightweight process of placing a post-it note up on the conference schedule.  Voila! Conference born! The Posse (as we call them) was dubious at first.  Would people come?  Would they get something out of it?

The first year (2007) was a huge success, judging from the reactions of the participants and the posse.  We all learned a lot.  Friendships lasted beyond the week of Java immersion.    Everyone embraced the idea of making the conference their own, and lightning talks evolved in the evenings as well.

The second year (2008) saw previous year participants sharing houses, more lightning talks, and a pre-conference day discussing Android (which was hot off the presses last year). And, we added some workshops in the evenings as well.  The conference continues to evolve, and that's really the beauty of it.

This year, a pre-conference hackathon was added.  The pre-conference day is free to anyone who happens to be in the Crested Butte area on March 2, the hackathon will consist of a loosely organized set of houses, each sponsoring a different language on the JVM.  At the moment of this writing, Scala, Jython, Groovy (Grails, Griffon), and Fan have been identified. More may emerge (Clojure anyone?  JRuby?).  We'll kick of the morning with a short intro/orientation at the Posse House (a house in town where the Posse is staying), then quickly spread out to the various houses around town hosting different languages.  People will be free to move between houses/dojo sessions just as they are free (in fact, encouraged) to move about the open spaces sessions that will make up the main conference March 3-6.

I look forward to this conference all year. It's never the same, always fun, and always wickedly informative.  And yes, there's skiing too.  Each day during the week has time for participants to head off to go skiing.  Some people will choose to stay back and code on those days, or just hang out, but the ski hill does see a lot of geek talk that week as well!  I'm hoping to again ditch the ski hill in favor of skinny skis (nordic trails).  Each year so far, I've been successful in recruiting some people to go out with me.  Joe caught Tor crashing on camera last year … hilarious.

If you want to join us, you can still register at http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/JavaPosseRoundup/.

 

Great Podcast: 13 Mistakes and 13 Brilliant Strokes

One of my favorite podcasts is the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast. Yesterday, I listened to Hugh Martin of Pacific Biosciences "13 Mistakes and 13 Brilliant Strokes". This is definitely worth the time (54 minutes). Martin has started companies and worked for Kleiner Perkins.  The talk has tidbits ranging from how to grow a company to how to form a company to avoid an inopportune sale by anxious VC's.  It's definitely worth listening to!

Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup was a great event!

Last night, about 120 people converged upon Google Ann Arbor for a new, regular event that has emerged in Ann Arbor. Dug Song put together the Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup. Leaders from 5 Companies took the stage, spending 10 minutes however they wished to talk about their companies, products, etc.  This was NOT limited to software, although each of the companies had some software in their product.  The companies were:

Care Evolution provides secure Health Information Exchange solutions.  I liked how the speaker (Vik Kheterpal) described it as the Expedia of Health Care records.

Crowd Clarity is based on ideas from Wisdom of Crowds. They have an application that allows employees from organizations to "place bets" on which of their products will be a hit in the marketplace, and rank them. This feeds back to the company and can be used to project sales (and thus, target incentives for items that aren't selling well).

InstaTell Diagnostics is a UM spinoff that's commercializing the speeding up of diagnosing bacterial infections and improving on the more targeted use of antibiotics.

TheGenerationProject gives donors (in education) full control over how their funds are used. The founders are former educators from the Bronx, currently living in Ann Arbor.

URTURN is a Web2.0 project that pays you for activities that you already do on Facebook.  Rewards are paid in Uros (its own social currency). They also give away prizes.

StartupDrinks at Bar Louie followed the event, where conversations continued.

I'm already looking forward to the next event, which will be in a different format. March 26 will be Ann Arbor Tech Cocktail #1 at 7 pm.  TechNow 09 will be held April 23 in Royal Oak at the Royal Oak Music Theater.

These events are great for our area, showcasing what's going on! I'm thrilled that Dug, through a2geeks, has taken this on!