Sunday, October 14, 2007

VikingPLoP and Software Engineering Radio


Two weeks ago I was at VikingPLoP in Bergen, Norway. I have never been to Norway before so I enjoyed the trip. Bergen is absolutely beautiful, it has to be one, if not the, most beautiful towns I have ever visited.

Anyway, a bunch of interesting things came up.

Personally I had another paper with business patterns work-shopped - as soon as I’ve done the changes I’ll post it online.

There was a lot of discussion about VikingPLoP 2008. All is not well in the VikingPLoP world. VikingPLoP is a small (less than 20 people) conference and it moves each year. This raises a number of problems and it is not my place to say any more. However as a result of these problems I think BritPLoP has taken a step closer.

BritPLoP is the name of a conference that doesn’t exist. It is an idea Kevlin Henney and myself sometimes discuss - usually after a few beers. If it ever takes place it might be branded as VikingPLoP, it would most probably occur in late September and would be the first true patterns conference to occur in the UK. It won’t happen in 2008 but I think it might well happen in 2009 now.

Also at VikingPLoP I was fortunate enough to meet Bob Hammer. Bob is president of the Hillside Patterns group and a really interesting guy. Like so many people in the patterns community he software engineer with a multitude of interests, one of which is book-binding.

Bob has written a new book entitled Patterns for Fault Tolerant Software which should be available in the next few weeks. I’ve seen some of these patterns before and even used a few. But until now I didn’t know Bob was behind them. I’m sure this book will be a major contribution to software engineering knowledge.

Although I don’t do much coding any more I’m going to buy this book. I know I’m going to learn a lot of new idea and techniques. And if nothing else the book includes one of my favourite patterns of all time: Leaky Bucket.

When we were in Bergen Bob was just waiting on the print run but in the meantime he had printed the final proofs and hand bound them. This makes him the first person I have ever met to have: written a book, printed a book and bound a book!

Bob also told me about Software Engineering Radio. This is an internet radio station from Markus Voelter and a few others. I haven’t had time to check out all the podcasts but the ones I have listened too are impressive. This looks like a great new way to spread software knowledge.

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