End of an era?

By now you may have heard about the Arjuna and JBoss deal: basically JBoss acquires the transaction technology that Arjuna has developed independently or when working in Hewlett-Packard, which we then acquired from them when we span out. A consequence of this acquisition is that I now work for JBoss. I'll blog on the deal itself later, but for now I wanted to say a few things about leaving Arjuna Technologies.

This isn't exactly the end I had in mind when we span out of HP and started Arjuna Technologies Ltd (ATL). I've always seen ATL as a logical extension of my original start-up, Arjuna Solutions, and I think deep down I thought company acquisition was a good possibility too. Being a director, obviously the exit-strategy benefits to the shareholders were always upmost in my mind, but there's always a selfish component (and no, it's not monetary): I've been in the enviable position to have worked with the same group of friends for the best part of twenty years (if we're counting, then it's 18+ years for Stuart and I) and I would like to have had that continue. Of course we've all had our disagreements and ups-and-downs over the years (who hasn't?!), but it's always been fun and interesting.

Although we're not moving far (literally down one floor and across a corridor!) that daily interaction will be something I'll miss a lot. After I received word that the deal had completed, my first thought wasn't about the work ahead, but it was "It's not my company any more :-(". Strange.

I obviously wish everyone at ATL the best of luck in the future, but particularly Stuart, Barry, Steve and Dave. It has been fun (most of the time) and it's a period in my life I wouldn't change. I've learnt a lot from Arjuna Solutions and Arjuna Technologies and I only wish the "exit strategy" had been more inclusive!

With any luck our paths will continue to cross.

WS-TX face-to-face meeting

I'm on my way back from the inaugral OASIS WS-TX face-to-face meeting. I think the two day meeting went well - certainly better than expected. Eric is one of the chairs, along with Ian, who I've worked with before on the CORBA Activity Service and it's J2EE equivalent. It's a small world!

Eric has some interesting comments on the face-to-face. I'd just like to add that after the meeting I'm even more convinced that WS-CAF has a lot to offer this new TC, both in terms of experiences gained and as a place to do additional work, such as heuristics.

Greg also has something to say on the subject, but I think WS-Coordination isn't the right building block for sessions: it should be WS-Context. Greg also has a reference to the XML 2005 presentation he just presented, based on our paper.

Interesting statistics for WWW 2006 submissions

This year we've got 13 tracks for paper submissions. Here are the statistics:

Browsers and User Interfaces: 51 papers
Data Mining: papers 98 papers
E* Applications: papers 105
Hypermedia and Multimedia: 23 papers
Performance, Reliability and Scalability: 34 papers
Pervasive Web and Mobility: 14 papers
Search: 128 papers
Security: 37 papers
Semantic Web: 75 papers
Web Engineering: 61 papers
XML and Web Services: 67 papers
Developing Regions: 0 papers
Industrial Practice and Experience: 5 papers

Update: overall, paper submissions are up 25% on WWW2005.

And so it begins!

The submission deadline for WWW2006 finally passed this morning (10am my time). We got 67 paper for the XML & Web Services track that I'm chairing. This year we're using the OpenConf system for paper reviews and assignments. It's pretty good and certainly better than most of the ones I've used over the years. However, there are still issues with it that made my role of assigning papers more problematical than it should have been. Maybe if I ever find some spare time I'll sit down and write the ulimate paper reviewing system; with 20 years of reviewing experience behind me, how hard can it be ;-)?

Anyway, the assignments are done. We ended up with a couple more papers per reviewer than I expected, due to the high number of submissions and the fact that a couple of PC members dropped out at the very last minute. Now we've got until the 24th of December to do the reviews :-(

WS-TX presentation

The first face-to-face meeting of the new OASIS WS-TX technical committee is next week. As one of the co-authors I'd try to attend anyway, but as luck would have it, I'm also giving one of the presentations: on WS-AtomicTransaction. Hopefully there'll be discussion around WS-CAF, as I strongly believe that there is scope for collaborative work between these two committees. I'm in the process of writing a blog entry on that subject for WebServices.org, so watch this space.

Session modeling for Web Services paper published

Via Greg, I'm reminded that our ECOWS paper has been published.

WWW 2006 submission deadline extended

Extension: The submission deadline for WWW2006 refereed papers has been extended to Friday November 11 11:59PM Hawaii time (hard deadline).

As you may know, on Sunday October 30 there was a significant fire at the site hosting the www2006 server. No one will be allowed into the building until Christmas and half the research labs are completely destroyed.

We attempted to mask the failure with a temporary site and have restored the site as quickly as possible in order to maintain the original deadline. But we have become aware that DNS and routing problems are still causing locations to be unable to reach the site even as late as Friday November 4th 2005.

Given these technical difficulties, the fairest thing to do seems to be to grant a blanket 1-week extension, until November 11th 2005.

In fairness to those who submitted on time and managed to find the web site, we will allow revised versions of papers to be uploaded up to the new deadline.

We apologize unreservedly for the confusion stemming from this fire and its aftermath - its been an interesting exercise in network complexity, and at least nobody was hurt - and we thank you for very much for submitting your work to WWW2006.

TEMPORARY WWW2006 WEBSITE: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~lac/ but SHOULD be visible at www2006.org
DIRECT ACCESS to the paper submission website: http:// www.openconf.org/www2006/
TEMPORARY EMAIL FOR ENQUIRIES: lescarr@gmail.com

Information about the fire can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm.
---
WWW2006 Co-chairs: Les Carr, Dave De Roure, Arun Iyengar
WWW2006 PC Chairs: Carole Goble, Mike Dahlin

URGENT WWW2006 update

---------------------------------------------------------
WWW2006 Web Site affected by serious fire
---------------------------------------------------------

Due to a serious fire at the University of Southampton, UK, the www2006.org website and mailing lists are temporarily unavailable.

THE SUBMISSION PROCESSES have been unaffected by this fire, only information about the submission url, deadlines, tracks, document formatting etc has been affected. A temporary replacement website has been set up with all the information for submitting papers, panels and tutorials.

The deadline for paper submission is UNCHANGED. It remains 4th November 2005 midnight Hawai'i time. The panel and tutorial submission deadlines are also unchanged.

Access to the format instructions on the web site has been patchy. We therefore WAIVE the formatting regulations. Submitting a 10 page pdf document in any format is sufficient.

TEMPORARY WWW2006 WEBSITE: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~lac/ SHOULD be visible at www2006.org but we know that this isn't always the case due to networking irregularities.
DIRECT ACCESS to the paper submission website: http:// www.openconf.org/www2006/
TEMPORARY EMAIL FOR ENQUIRIES: lescarr@gmail.com

Information about the fire can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm.
---
WWW2006 Co-chairs: Les Carr, Dave De Roure, Arun Iyengar
WWW2006 PC Chairs: Carole Goble, Mike Dahlin