David Norwood
David's Resume
With 20 years of systems development and 15 of them as a hands-on developer, David has become a JEE mentor and trainer to many individuals. As a specialist in Java development, he has been a project manager for on-and-offshore development teams for large projects, an integrator of COTS applications to custom deliverables and EAI initiatives, and a team leader and development manager with excellent motivational skills. With profound knowledge of object-oriented methodologies, database application design and web-based application development, David has a deep background in large-scale enterprise applications with transaction processing using JEE, .NET, UML, messaging, and other integration technologies. David has wide experience with open-source cross-platform development and integration and is an excellent communicator ...<< MORE >>
Red Hat Post-Mortem
Right now I'm looking back at the last 5 years, where I first learned I enjoyed technical teaching and where Red Hat gave me the opportunity to do so, even with little proof on their part that I could do so. The experience was priceless, as it taught me to be able to deal with many sorts of planned and un-planned situations.
On at least one occasion I was asked to teach a class I'd never seen before. I won't reveal the client, for they seemed not to be able to tell that I was learning along with them. I got good reviews on the class! Amazing. There are many stories to tell about being on the road and experiencing a new host of students each week. I'll spare the reader those stories, for now.
Suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed teaching technology to corporate students, each one who seemed to take their time in class quite seriously, and who seemed to care a great deal about learning. Many of those students are still my friends today.
When I came in-house to work in courseware development, my experience turned somewhat sour, as the management team and I didn't read from the same songbook. I valued customer experience too much, they said, so therefore I was "mentored" by folks who should never stand in front of a class. This they didn't realize, and the company (I believe) has suffered from the current group running things. This is simply my opinion, and I share it only with a few close friends. This must surely include you now!
After leaving the courseware team, I joined up with the Amentra group of folks, who were at the time a subsidiary of Red Hat (as of January 2012 they've become Red Hat Consulting.) I've been working with that team for the last 18 months or so. I've had a great time.
The timing of my leaving is not in any way related to the new absorption, since the management team I knew before never changed. I loved working for Amentra, and my management team there was par excellence. I wish to especially mention Brad Davis, who stands out in my mind as both a great customer representative AND a very capable people manager. Brad will go a long way in this company, or anywhere he ends up. Many thanks go to Brad for his excellent skills and mentoring.
Now it's on to another adventure, possibly the last one in my IT career. I'm moving on to Hortonworks, and I'm very excited to be classroom teaching again. This is new technical territory for me, but I'm pretty confident I can swing it.
Advent of the Eyephone
Well, the time has arrived. The wireless application is now accepted. Everybody's doin it, and we'll all have apps galore on our iPhones and Droids. See, I've been doing this stuff for years. It's
been a long, hard slog to get people to see the value of real applications held in the hand, providing real value for users, both for recreation and business. What has caused this adoption of the
technology, to the point that we all will be using this stuff in a few more months? ...
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I'm finally Flex-able
I have to say that I've been around these 20+ years, and I've developed rather large complex projects on just about every tool available. I'm a deep developer with J2EE, PHP, and .NET Compact Framework, and I've always been very unhappy with the tools we were given to produce user-interface-heavy applications. For most of my career, RIA meant a hip town in Brazil. ...<< MORE >>
A Brave Old World
I gotta say a little bit about the gig I've been on for the last month. Located in New Jersey, a major financial house has purchased tons of Red Hat technology, including JBoss, and has a large group of sharp folks that are working hard to get all this new cool software integrated into the corporation. It takes lots of testosterone, however. ...<< MORE >>
My Baby's Gone
Well, it finally happened -- I got rid of my Baby. She was an adorable, exciting, and demanding partner for over 6 years. Now she's gone -- and I'm not too sad.
"She" is the wireless hand-held solution for USDA compliance known to the Food Safety industry as Mobilitee, and she was a very cool software product. In the space of a few short months, she became the darling of the industry, and some called her the "gold standard." And she came about quite by accident.
Mobilitee started life as a brainchild of mine when I owned a consultancy with 2 partners ...<< MORE >>
"She" is the wireless hand-held solution for USDA compliance known to the Food Safety industry as Mobilitee, and she was a very cool software product. In the space of a few short months, she became the darling of the industry, and some called her the "gold standard." And she came about quite by accident.
Mobilitee started life as a brainchild of mine when I owned a consultancy with 2 partners ...<< MORE >>
The next New Thang
So what is the next new language? Why need a new language? Isn't where we are good enough? I believe that the answers to these 3 questions are Dunno, Yes, and No. Let me explain.
We are truly in the Software Dark Ages. It is crazy in 2008 that we have to jump through such hoops when attempting to create elegant solutions for enterprise users. Web applications, for example, are such that no current platform readily adopts to the web model. So we use workarounds like Struts, JSF, Ajax, and others because there are simply no credible alternatives. J2EE has been ...<< MORE >>
We are truly in the Software Dark Ages. It is crazy in 2008 that we have to jump through such hoops when attempting to create elegant solutions for enterprise users. Web applications, for example, are such that no current platform readily adopts to the web model. So we use workarounds like Struts, JSF, Ajax, and others because there are simply no credible alternatives. J2EE has been ...<< MORE >>
