Friday, October 30, 2009

Thank You QSI

About 6 years ago I began my first consulting assignment with the idea that I would bounce around from client to client, build my network, and begin to determine what type of company I wanted to work for. A strange thing happened however, I began to realize that my consulting company, Quick Solutions, was exactly the type of company that I wanted to work for. They valued people above all else and built a staff of passionate leaders in technology that I was proud to be a part of. They realized that software development is most successfully done with TEAMS and not individuals so they fostered a team culture that made me excited to go to work every day. They understood that our company should be built with a mentality of ownership and provided benefits that cultivated that mindset across the organization. For the past six years I have been extremely privileged to work at QSI and it is with a heavy heart that I announce my departure from this great organization.

All things change and eventually come to an end, but words are not capable of articulating how hard this decision has been. I hope all of my great friends at QSI know that they made this decision gut wrenching and I am only able to make it knowing that I will keep in touch and continue to work, drink beer, talk shop, or golf with them in the future. The number of people at QSI who have helped change and crystalize my views on software development are too many to list here, but I sincerely thank all of you for the career altering opportunity to work with you. We will always be bound by our shared hatred of Lotus Notes.

TK

Monday, October 12, 2009

OSGi Talks

I'll be presenting at the Central Ohio Java User's Group tomorrow, 10/13 on Modular Java with OSGi. This talk will be a discussion of why OSGi is needed with enough demo code and meat to leave the attendees ready to start exploring OSGi on their own.

I've also been fortunate enough to be selected to present a 1/2 day pre-compiler at Codemash on OSGi. This talk will quickly cover the gaps in Java that necessitate OSGi in addition to exploring, via hands on construction, the patterns and tools for successful OSGi adoption. We'll basically spend 3+ hours building an enterprise Java system with OSGi from scratch! I'm pumped and honored to be hosting the pre-compiler so please sign up if you want to get a 1/2 day submersion into building better Java applications that are more flexible, maintainable and testable than previously thought.