No apologies for over simplifying this :

1. If you’re in business you need computer systems to support your team. Systems to find previous dealings with a customer, systems to allow your team to work together, systems to stop people finding out things that they shouldn’t.
2. Once your business passes the 100 employee mark and is heading for ‘Enterprise’ scale, chances are you need custom software written just for you, in addition to he ’shrink wrap’ stuff you’ve been able to get away with until now.
3. Most custom Enterprise software is written in (or uses a large element of) Enterprise Java.
4. Enterprise Java is hard to get started with - it’s a big and complex framework because it solves big and complex problems. The Spring framework makes it easy.

OK, so we’re Spring nuts. But nuts only because it’s solved problems for FirstPartners over the last 4 years. What we like:

• Spring allows you to use just enough Enterprise Java to solve your problem
• Spring complements Enterprise Java, not replaces it.
• Spring gives you a gentle slope to using Enterprise technologies.
• Spring works well with Java, Oracle, .Net , (J)Ruby and pretty much any mainstream technology - including most of the widespread Java Frameworks like Struts and Hibernate.

So you wait ages for one Spring Event in Ireland, then two come along at once. We’ve written about Rod Johnson speaking in Dublin on Tue March 11th. Now there is a full day Spring Event in Belfast the day before (March 10th). And it’s sponsored by Momentum NI, so it’s free. And the Hilton Hotel is right beside Belfast Central train station, so it’s easy to get to from Dublin.

The full agenda is here (more details below), but given the importance of Spring to the Enterprise world, and the fact that the top four Spring guys are speaking, we reckon that it the Enterprise event of the year. The booking form is here.

Spring Ireland 2008

Start: 10th March 08:30 End: 10th March 17:30
Hilton Belfast, 4 Lanyon Place, Belfast (Beside Central Train station) SpringSource is proud to announce Spring Ireland 2008. Join us for a free one-day conference with presentations from the SpringSource team including a keynote from Rod Johnson.

Keynote: Spring into the Future - Rod Johnson

The Spring Framework began in 2002 with Rod’s best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development; one of the most influential books ever published on J2EE, Rod is recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities on Java and J2EE development.With the rapid expansion of SpringSource and move to new corporate HQ in Silicon Valley, this is a rare UK opportunity to hear Rod provide his views and explore the future of J2EE application development.

What’s New in Spring 2.5 - Sam Brannen

Sam is a lead architect at SpringSource and one of the most experienced developers within the organisation.This session provides delegates with an overview of the new features available in Spring 2.5. Specifically, highlighting the simplified and extensible configuration support provided via configuration annotations and new XML configuration namespaces, new Java 6 support, updates to Spring AOP, improved JDBC and JPA support, annotation-driven web MVC controllers, the new annotation-based TestContext framework for unit and integration tests and more!

SpringSource Professional Services – Greg Southey

Greg has built SpringSource’s UK Professional Services organisation into the leading Spring consultancy business in the world.

This is a brief resume of some of the 97 major projects completed by the UK Professional Services team in 2007. Delegates will hear about the business drivers behind some major development projects, the business issues faced and how they were resolved in partnership with the client.

Spring as a Full Stack Web Framework - David Syer

As Principal Consultant at SpringSource, Dave leads the way in the understanding of satisfying business requirements using the Spring Portfolio. His easy manner cloaks a prodigious knowledge of application development.

This session explores the “full stack” web framework trend and answers the question: how does Spring stack up? This session defines what a full-stack web framework is, then provides a fair technical comparison between a Spring-centric web development stack and the alternatives. Delegates will head about the feature-set of modern “full stack” web frameworks, and what Spring has that differentiates itself from the pack.

Spring in Ireland – Ian Graham

Ian Graham, Momentum, will explore the use of Spring in Ireland and introduce case studies from companies who are using the Spring family of products.

Round Table Discussion - Rod Johnson, Rob Harrop, Dave Syer, Sam Brannen & Greg Southey

Your chance to ask Rod and his team anything that’s on your mind regarding Spring!

If you’re interested in Open Software, and you’re around Belfast next Friday (Feb 1st) , you could do worse than go to this OpenIsland- it’s in Spires, opposite Jury’s Inn , right next to the Europa Bus Station (i.e. it’s pretty easy to get to).

Title: OpenIsland - All-Island Conference on Free and Open Source Software

Location: Spires Conference Centre, Belfast

Time: All-day Date: 1st February, 2008

Cost: Free Web: http://openisland.net

The event will include talks from Bruce Perens, author of the Open Source Definition, and a senior speaker from Sun Microsystems, as well as a number of local case studies. Please note that the website says that the closing date for registration is 24th January, but if people wish to attend they can still do so by sending an email to info@openisland.net Registrants should include the following information: Name, Company, Job Title, Email, Special Dietary Requirements

At a recent OpenCoffee Dublin event Brian Cleland of InterTrade Ireland mooted the idea of a Seedcamp Ireland. He’d love to see it be held in Newry or Dundalk (as cross-border networking is really his thing), but is realistic enough to consider other locations.

To quote the main Seedcamp website:

Seedcamp is where Europe’s top young founders can come together in one place.

From securing funding to developing the right network, young entrepreneurs in Europe face challenges in building globally competitive technology businesses. Through the provision of seed capital and a world class network of mentors, we want to provide a catalyst for Europe’s next generation of entrepreneurs.

We might need to use a different name, but would you be interested in an informal meetup of startups and investors? Given the turn in the property market, would investors be ooking to put their money into the startup technology sector? Where would you like to see it held?

Summary of BarCamp Belfast - on the day presentations about Business Startup - Java - GIS and the Semantic web .

Link to slides for our presentation ‘Java Bites Back’ - what’s bad and good about Enterprise Java, e.g. compared to Ruby.

Fresh from Barcamp Dublin , we’re glad to hear that Barcamp Belfast has been announced. I can only hope that the organisers are a better looking crew than this (apologies to With the exception of Elly). But will they have better T-Shirts?

For most people in Dublin , the Belfast Barcamp is nearer than the forthcoming Galway and Tipp events. It’s 2 hours by train from Dublin (with the venue pretty close to both the Central and Botanic rail stations) and about the same by Car , with Motorway for all but 15 miles of the journey.

If you haven’t been to Belfast before, this could be the reason you need to visit. And the excuse ‘I’ll wait until Gerry and Ian sit in the same room together’ no longer holds water.

It’s a co-incidence of timing , but a reminder that there are many more meetups than just Barcamp (Dublin Event is on this Saturday).

Plato North West (Louth - Newry and Mourne) launched last night - thanks to Coca-Cola concentrates in Drogheda for hosting.

Plato is a self help group for small business owners. (’Hello , my name is Paul and I’m self-employed’). All the people involved are looking to grow their business. What Plato offers includes:

• A support group of other people in similar situations that will meet regularly over the next months.
• Networking opportunties , both within the group, cross border , and with other Plato groups (e.g Dublin, Cork and South East).
• Clusters of companies in related sectors that would benefit from linking.
• A struture to plan business expansion and a peer review to ensure you execute the plan.

Most of the details of the meetings are confidential , but I’m (happily) surprised at the cross section of companies involved. External companies can be invited in by consensus of the group.

Related posts: How to network , people not computers.

If you’re planning to travel by Irish Rail, don’t trust the timetable information given out by it’s website. On a recent trip from Drogheda to Portadown, the actual outgoing and return times were between 5 and 10 minutes earlier, due to timetable changes made up to 6 months before. It’s all very well getting consultants to redesign your website , like CIE did recently , but if your organisation can’t keep it up to date , what’s the point?

There’s no excuse for giving out inaccurate information. Translink , the company that operates the northern half of the Dublin-Belfast Enterprise service, manages to display the correct train times. Incidentally , Translink is also publicly owned , so the ’shrug shoulders it’s just public service’ excuse isn’t valid either.

Get your act together , and display accurate times, or don’t give out any information at all. I made the train , but how many people have been caught out by this? Bluire has found more reasons to be angry with Irish Rail.

Update: Red Cardinal has shown that at least the ex-CIE group of companies are consistent, with Bus Eireann showing an appalling web design for their site.

Update 2: Ken reports about a recent webchat with Irish Rail. Interesting reading.

Update 3: And I thought I had problems. This is much worse.

Java Meetup in the Virtual Dublin Pub

By Paul Browne

Below is an extract of a report Distributed by Computer People. It’s a breakdown of all the Java Job Adverts for the last 6 months in the London Contract / Permanent Market. While it should be treated with caution as (a) it’s sales and marketing material and (b) the London / UK market will differ substiantially from Dublin. For example , I would not expect to see as many Sybase roles in Dublin as London, due to the use of Sybase in the London Financial markets.

Example from the figures: Of all java jobs advertised in the UK , 36,86% were also looking for J2EE (Enterprise Java) Skills.

• 22504 (36.86 %) J2EE
• 17476 (28.62 %) Oracle
• 16045 (26.28 %) UNIX
• 15510 (25.40 %) XML
• 15321 (25.10 %) SQL
• 15269 (25.01 %) C++
• 12815 (20.99 %)  Finance
• 12370 (20.26 %) Banking
• 11152 (18.27 %) Graduate/Degree/BSc
• 10069 (16.49 %) OO
• 9465 (15.50 %) .NET
• 8413 (13.78 %) CSharp
• 8188 (13.41 %) JSP
• 7529 (12.33 %) Sybase
• 7340 (12.02 %) HTML
• 6940 (11.37 %) Investment Banking
• 6740 (11.04 %) UML
• 6606 (10.82 %) Front Office
• 6479 (10.61 %) Windows
• 6343 (10.39 %) SQL Server
• 5991 (9.81 %) Linux
• 5533 (9.06 %) Perl
• 5047 (8.27 %) WebLogic
• 4940 (8.09 %) JavaScript
• 4685 (7.67 %) Struts
• 4547 (7.45 %) EJB2
• 4456 (7.30 %) Servlets
• 4435 (7.26 %) Microsoft
• 4136 (6.77 %) VB
• 3892 (6.37 %) Fixed Income

The FOSS Means Business conference will take place in Belfast on Thursday the 16th March 2006. This all-island event will focus on the adoption and use of Free Software/Open Source Software (FOSS), with particular emphasis on the economic and competitive benefits for both the public and private sector.

They’ve also got Bruce Perens.

More details here.

Well, apart from 30 Seconds early on in my life on RTE’s Wanderly Wagon, I’ve not had national media exposure before. Given what I write about (how to use technology in business), I doubt if I’m going to be on celebrity big-brother any time soon. So here’s the photo from the Irish Times. If you click on it, you’ll be able to buy it.

The story is that we (as in FirstPartners.net) were sponsoring an award (couple of quid back when Damien was trying to get the blog awards off the ground). On the night , I had to catch the last train for Belfast at about 8.30 , so the Irish Times photographer got a couple of us together earlier on to take the shot.

So , apologies to Roger Galligan of IrishBlogs.ie who I didn’t get to hand the award to on the night, and any of the blog award winners, all of whom deserve to be in the pic!

5 Years ago, you could walk into Waterstones in Dublin and see 8-10 filled with computer books. Walk in today and you would be lucky to see 1-2 sections, less than a quarter the number. The titles still being covered are the ‘mass market’ items - Word, Excel , Access, Microsoft Office. No longer can you find the items of specialist interest - JMX, Aspect Orientated Programming, Ajax and the like. Even slightly more mainstream books on Oracle and Enterprise Java are getting hard to find.

What is going on? Remember how the dot com boom promised to revolutionise retailing and that old fashioned retailers were doomed? It turns out that a both online and offline retailers are thriving. Specialist areas (the long tail - as explained in this post) are migrating online. Mass market hits (such as Sharon Osbourne’s and Will Young’s biographies) stay in the shop, where you’re more likely to buy them as a last minute present or impulse purchase.

From on online retailers point of view (e.g. Amazon), computer books are a perfect product. No ‘bricks and mortar’ book shop is going to be able to stock all the books I need, given that for a worldwide population of 6 Billion people, less than 20,000 copies will be sold of an book such as Java Messaging Service (JMS), even for a popular title from O’Reilly. This translates to about a quarter a copy a year for even an above average bookshop in Dublin , Belfast or Drogheda. Bundle them up into an online bookshop however, and 20,000 copies is a very nice market.

This process, far from being the death of traditional retailers is proving their renaissance. Companies like Tesco and Argos are mastering true Clicks and Mortar techniques. They can devote previous shelf space to high volume, high profit goods, while direct their ‘do you have this in pink in a size 20′ queries to their online store. Maybe not as convenient for techies in
search of the latest knowledge fix, but 3 days wait for a book is better than not being able to get that book at all.