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AlBlue’s Blog

Macs, Modularity and More

Moving on

2016 Java Eclipse

I’ve been working for the last decade in the finance industry in London, most recently at Credit Suisse where I was the JCP Executive Committe representative, attending meetings and voting on behalf of the firm. (You can see more information about what makes up the JCP EC; there are representatives from companies such as Azul, Eclipse, RedHat and Twitter as well as user groups such as SouJava and the London Java Community – along with big users of Java technology, such as Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.)

Working in finance has always been an interesting challenge, with a scale of computing resources unknown outside of a small set of cloud-scale technology companies. Furthermore time tends to be profitable which means large scale computing and/or meaty hardware, which from a technology perspective comes with its own challenges and interesting solutions. I’ve heard it said that some companies in the finance industry, if they were considered to be technology companies rather than financial houses, that they would be the biggest technology firms in the city.

The other thing that I’ve enjoyed has been writing books, speaking at conferences, and writing for InfoQ – not to mention the open source contributions that I’ve been doing over the years. Thanks to my previous employers for being understanding. It has also helped launch the Docklands.LJC, which has entered its teens and had speakers from across the globe come and talk to interested attendees from around the Wharf.

However, the time has come for me to move on, and at the end of this week I start somewhere new. It’s a well known technology company that you will have heard of, but it’s an ideal move for me and I am definitely looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead. My LinkedIn profile has me as a Director of Bandlem Ltd, which is my own company, but I need to verify what I can (and can’t) say before I say it publicly. As a result, and with the ramp up of the new role, I may be slightly quieter than usual here and on Twitter for the near future, but the good news is that I will be speaking at both JavaOne and EclipseCon later this year, as an independent speaker.

It also means that I will be handing over the reins of the Docklands.LJC to my co-founder Robert Barr, who will take over the organisation of events in the Docklands. Hopefully I’ll still be able to come over to them in the future, time permitting, so I may well see you at future events over there.

I will also be taking a sabbatical from writing at InfoQ for the time being; although my writing output has dropped (both here on the blog and at InfoQ), which I put down to having spent so long writing books. It will be an interesting exercise to see what I will do with free time in the evenings now.

I’m really looking forward to where I’m going, and I can’t wait to start.