Where to start... I was *meant* to be leaving Glasgow yesterday at 6am and arriving in New Orleans (via Schipol and Detroit) mid afternoon.

So we waited for four hours at Glasgow, which meant I'd missed my intercontinental connection after we'd been airborne for 40 minutes.

Then they stacked us above Schipol for another *long* time, I lost track at that point!

Then I queued for 2hrs to be seen at the transfer desk, to get re-booked. Before I even got to the front of the queue we were told to go straight to the gate, where there was an agonising wait of about another 30 mins before I found out if there was a seat or not.

Luckily there was, but on arrival in Detroit there was no connection, and another *slow* queue so I hung around the airport all night, and I should be flying this morning to New Orleans via Memphis.

Which I'll believe when it happens.

== UPDATE ==
I've had to withdraw this talk, because it coincided to closely with the New Job. Sorry.

===

My Talk "Apache James - The Complete Email Application Platform" has been accepted for Apachecon US 07 in Atlanta on the 15th of November at 15:00. Be there!

If you didn't see me at Apachecon EU 07 in May you can look forward to a description of the major features and components of the Apache James mail server, with a focus on how the modular architecture can enable extending, customising and embedding of email functionality into systems and products of all kinds with an email related need.
If you want to integrate email with your enterprise systems, or want to add an open source email application server to your J2EE stack this talk is for you.

Since I first gave the talk in Amsterdam in May life and art have converged, the Mailet API has its own sub-project and the componentisation of James' trunk has proceeded along very similar lines to those anticipated by that talk.

I will be presenting the same outline but with some added detail, news of progress and further plans from the James team, so even if you heard me in Amsterdam I'm sure I will have things to say which will interest you.

Slides from my Apachecon EU talk on James can now be found here

Steve Loughran took the piss out of architects during the lightning talks at Apachecon, claiming that we (and when I say we I was the only mug to put my hand up!) worked only in M$ Word and PowerPoint. Well, I'm glad to say that I put him straight on that one, his blog post on the subject which proposes "ArchitectUnit" now acknowledges that I was right all along and there is a lot more to the job than that, namely Visio diagrams as well. Hopefully we can now expect to see our efforts recognised for the true value they add, with not only ArchitectUnit but why not an ant task to turn our priceless hard work directly into fully operational systems? Thus avoiding all the opportunities for mistakes to creep in during the so called analysis and development phases of a project, and highlighting the fact that innacurate claims in the vendor marketing literature on which we base our product selections is the *real* reason why IT projects so often fail to live up to their promises. ;-)

This is Apache calling The World, come in world..., originally uploaded by ki113rb33s.

When David came to talk to me for feathercast I wanted to take a pic of him in action, but it was just two middle age blokes talking, however just as I was leaving Apachecon EU 07 I spotted Rich in *exactly* the pose I have in my mind whenever I listen to feathercasts, so I snapped him with my phone. (I've never exchanged more than two word with Rich so if this embarrasses him I'm truly sorry)

2, originally uploaded by ki113rb33s.

Yes, that's right!
Robert Burrell Donkin fell in this dock in Amsterdam last night, with his bag containing his laptop.
Looking none the worse for his ordeal this morning his only concern is for his mac which went in with him.
Apparently the Axio bag it was in helped to protect it on its journey to the bottom of the sea. Lets hope the all the incubator docs he'd written over the week can be saved. oops!

img_6490.jpg, originally uploaded by herberts.

Gave my talk on James yesterday, I'm not sure how it went, I can never tell. However its done now. I could've done with less material, or more time, which isn't such a bad thing.
If it gets accepted for Apachecon US 07 I'll definitely rationalise it a bit.

Damn fine job of making blogger appear in Dutch when I'm in Holland blogger guys, now how the hell do I make it appear in English so I can understand it?!

Hackathon, originally uploaded by ki113rb33s.

Well I got here, after a 1hr delay to my flight, and a further delay while the pilot drove round the airport looking for a parking place. "There's a space over there dad" we all yelled.

And lo! The hackathon is already progress.

I find it difficult to track down everyone's Apachecon pictures on flickr, tags are OK but not brilliant for this so I've created an Apachecon group on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/apachecon/

If you are attending any Apachecon feel free to join the group and post your pictures, the more the merrier.

Well the Call For Papers for Apachecon US 2007 is now open:

• The Call for Papers is now open for ApacheCon US, to be held November
• 12-16 at the Peachtree Westin, Atlanta. The conference will consist
• of two day of tutorials (November 12-13) and three days of regular
• conference sessions (November 14-16).
• Please log in to the website at http://apachecon.com/html/login.html
• to submit your proposal.

While I'm blogging I ought to tell you that I finished, and submitted, the slides for my talk on Apache James at Apachecon EU 2007 and let me tell you, if you like diagrams you're in for a treat!

Now I need to put some polish on the lyrics.

The timetable for Apachecon EU 07 has been posted.
I'm speaking on Wednesday at 5:30 (note to self, stay sober to boost that speaker competence score!) Title; Apache James - The Complete Email Application Platform don't miss it. :-)

Flushed with the sucess of my first ApacheCon presentation in Dublin last year, Happy New Year by the way, which the Dublin audience [pictured below] liked everything about apart from my competence (I'll practice for next time I promise!) which was below average but NOT "poor"!, I just proposed two James related papers for ApacheCon EU 07 , one on James as an application server and the other on the Mailet API as distinct from James.

Hopefully at least one of them will be accepted, IMO it is high time the James community started to make up for the woeful lack of James related activities outside of the project itself.
So if you're involved in the review of the submissions I'm shamelessly asking you to give James its 15 minutes (well 2 x 60 minutes in fact) in the spotlight this year...