Talk for EclipseCon 2012

Since I am back to the world of developing tools for Eclipse developers, I thought it would be interesting to propose a talk for the North America edition of EclipseCon. As for the subject of the talk, I chose to share some of the knowledge I gathered between 2008 and 2011 while using linked data and RDF on a few projects at IBM.

The talk has a catchy name: I cheated on EMF with RDF. And I may do it again!. If you are interested on hearing this confession, vote for it. Moreover, if you are really, really interested, please leave a comment with your expectations and even the topics you'd like to hear about. I won't be able to put 2+ years of hands-on experience with RDF in a 35 mins talk and would hate to leave behind something that a lot of people are interested just because I don't know they are interested ;-)

That said, the greatest thing about EclipseCon is that the technology sharing experience is not limited to the presentation rooms. If I am there, I will be more than happy to discuss this and any other topic, especially while having some drinks at the bar ;-)

There is a world of statements out there

People that work with me have certainly heard "wow, I was smart" more than once. Typically I use this sentence when I am puzzled trying to understand some beautiful code I've written or designed a while ago. Now I am afraid that one day I will be saying it a lot if I ever need to look back at the technologies that I was focused on during my last years at IBM. Since 2009, I've been head down understanding the main pieces behind linked data:

• Resource Description Framework (RDF)


• Representation State Transfer (REST)


• HTTP

I have to confess: these technologies are fantastic! Out of them, the one that I like the most is certainly RDF, probably because it's in the realm of models. Honestly though, I had a hard time understanding it at the beginning for I was seeing it with my old, schema-driven eyes. You know, for more than 15 years I trained myself to see the world as instances of rigid schemas, mainly formed by classes, attributes, and references. Alas, this way of thinking doesn't go well with RDF. If one is like I was, I'd suggest repeating "RDF is not just a new way to express a schema" at least every five minutes while trying to make some sense out of it.

My plan is to use the free time that I happen to have now to write down my thoughts about these technologies. Hopefully I will be able to register here what I refer to as my "linked data intuition": the small pieces of knowledge that I've assembled from various sources and that I now use to tackle any new RDF or REST challenge. For a second I've considered writing this on a personal document and store it away for future reference. How dumb is this? Putting the words here may benefit others and even allow people to correct me. Albeit pretentious, I like to believe that I know the stuff I am about to write ;-) But I wouldn't be surprised to be proven wrong. And that would be actually great: that's when one has an opportunity to reset and reflect about a topic again.

Looking forward to spending more time here in the next few days.

A new life ahead

It has been a while since I've written something here. Either by laziness or my notorious capability of ignoring the social media aspects of today's world, I know I have completely abandoned this blog.

What made me take the time to post now, then? To share that after 10+ years I am no longer an IBMer. It was a very hard decision and at the end the I've chosen what made sense for me and my family. At this moment I fell great, anxiously waiting for the start of my life. Honestly though, by the beginning of this week I was almost miserable: not for regretting the path that I was taking but to be taking it. It is hard to explain. IBM has been a second home, one that was opened to me just two weeks after I came to Canada. Oh well... I promised myself I wouldn't get emotional ;-)

So what lies ahead? In a few weeks I will join Oracle, working with the team that is creating the best Eclipse tooling for developers that have adopted Oracle technologies. Man, I am exited! First I will be back to daily interactions with my favourite framework and its related technologies. Second, I will have to learn an entire new world of enterprise-focused technologies! Lots of fun and hard work for the next months.