k When Celebrities Attack By belledejour-uk.blogspot.com Published On :: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:37:00 +0000 By now, you may already be aware of Ashton Kutcher's campaign against the Village Voice, sparked by an article critical of the substance and message of his anti-trafficking adverts. The Voice has form on this one: their earlier article about dodgy stats that get bandied about in the trafficking discussion is a must-read. The usual disclaimer... I am (as indeed all of Kutcher's critics are) opposed to trafficking in any form, including child sex trafficking. But we must not let emotion exclusively carry the day; it achieves nothing. The Voice hits the nail on the head when they sum up anti-trafficking efforts: "an emotional reaction, based on good intentions, but grounded in bogus information." The problem of bogus information is this - campaigns such as Kutcher's conflate all sex work with child sex trafficking, and child sex trafficking with all trafficking. Approaches that do so not only encourage criminalisation legislation that harms consenting adults, but also obscures the real victims. How? By using vastly inflated numbers for one kind of trafficking, and pretty much ignoring everything else. Actual children being actually trafficked for actual sex are rarely, if ever, found by the kind of scatterhsot brothel raids and streetwalker crackdowns so many seem to consider "succeses" in the anti-trafficking effort. Please, please stop kidding yourselves. The raids you hear about are not successes. They are vast wastes of time, money, and manpower. And many groups receiving funding meant to help victims of trafficking seem instead to be lining their own pockets. There is undoubtedly work to be done eliminating trafficking of men and women for any kind of labour. It almost certainly isn't the approach anti-traffickers think will work. Kutcher’s response against the Village Voice has included tweeting advertisers on Backpage.com, accusing them of supporting slavery. So far, so "concerned". And then this tweet: Like a lot of people, Ashton Kutcher seems to have some pretty confused ideas about sex work. To be in a position of wanting to help people, yet still falling back on ridicule and stereotype when talking about them, is inexcusable. Someone who says, "I’ve spent the last 2 years meeting with every expert on the issue of Human Trafficking that I can find, reading countless books, meeting with victims and former traffickers, and studying effective international models to combat trafficking." Maybe Ashton should have made time for a little bit of victim sensitivity training in there somewhere? (Not that he's known for politically correct tweeting, mind. He seems to channel the spirit of Littlejohn every now and again.) Kutcher's response has been strongly supported by the Family Research Council who are regarded by many as a hate group. The FRC is one of the main contributors to the Witherspoon Institute’s “research” on pornography that conflates the adult industry with trafficking. That report contained significant input from Patrick Fagan of The Heritage Foundation – you know, those people whose work inspired Reagan’s covert Cold War military actions. The Witherspoon report encourages celebrities to “use the bully pulpit” and abuses suspiciously similar dodgy statistics as Kutcher’s campaign. And while it doesn't name particular celebrities to be promoted as faces of such bullying, a similar document from Abt Associates does - it specifically names Kutcher's wife, Demi Moore. I know a little about what it's like to be asked to comment on issues you don't necessarily have expertise in. Sometimes, journalists and television shows approach people like me to provide commentary rather than, say, academics in the relevant fields. It's unfortunate but it's a fact of media life. And I do try, by following academic discussions and talking with friends who are professionals in, say, sex education or the porn industry, to at least not come off as too much of an ignorant tit. I would shudder in horror, though, to ever be described as a "leading player" in the debate around trafficking or related issues. Something that Kutcher and his wife Moore seem to have no problem with. The strategy clearly works, with significant numbers of Kutcher's followers joining in his Twitter tirade, and the man himself being promoted as somehow more of an expert on the issues than, ya know, actual experts. Not bad for a guy whose credentials, according to his Twitter profile, are: "I make stuff up." The Voice article pointed out that it's not known how many of the millions, if any, raised by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's campaign have actually gone to helping victims directly. With their charity having only been launched 5 months ago, and apparently no financial reports as yet available, it's hard to know when that pointed question will be resolved. I'd like to add another dimension to that question: how many of the millions raised by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher could be coming from groups such as the Family Research Council? The well-meaning Twitter fans following Kutcher's lead probably don't realise they're being taken for a ride on the facts front. It can actually be very hard to sort the real from the fake when people keep repeating made-up stuff as true. So I guess my question now is, why are Kutcher’s millions of fans seemingly totally okay with this movement's possible links to the far-right hawkish Christian lobbyists? And when will the likes of Kutcher and Moore realise they're the ones being used, not by evil evil sex traffickers, but by conservative groups with a frightening agenda? Full Article kutcher trafficking twitter
k Why Scotland should not make sex work illegal By belledejour-uk.blogspot.com Published On :: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 09:14:00 +0000 UPDATE: MSPs have voted that Grant's bill will have to go to consultation and will not be fast-tracked. Which is good news. But the fight is not over, and expect more to come when the consultation hits. At the same time that the Moratorium 2012 campaign kicks off in London, spearheading a common-sense approach to sex work, there appears a bid in Scotland to try to make prostitution illegal. Just to recap: soliciting, running a brothel, and kerb crawling are already illegal (as too are trafficking and sexual exploitation of children). Exchanging sex for money at this point is not. Not yet. Labour MSP Rhoda Grant claims "Scotland should become an unattractive market for prostitution and therefore other associated serious criminal activities, such as people trafficking for sexual exploitation, would be disrupted." Grant is, unfortunately, badly informed and wrong. I'm going to keep this one short and sweet because the points are pretty straightforward... Scotland does not have a sex trafficking epidemic Sex trafficking is the excuse frequently given these days to harass and criminalise sex workers. Problem is, it's not remotely the "epidemic" they would have you believe. If you're not already up to speed on the whys and wherefores, I highly recommend reading Laura Agustin's work on this. Or if I may be so cheeky to suggest you could also buy my book. Specifically, it is not happening in Scotland. “In Scotland, to the best of my knowledge, we don't have a conviction for human trafficking,” said police constable Gordon Meldrum. Meldrum had previously claimed research “proved” the existence of 10 human trafficking groups north of the border, and 367 organised crime groups with over 4000 members. “We had one case which was brought to court previously but was abandoned. My understanding is it was abandoned due to a lack of evidence, essentially.” Strange how the evidence seemed to disappear precisely when someone was asked to produce all these fantasy baddies, isn't it? It's not only Scotland where the trafficking hype falls flat though: investigation throughout the UK has comprehensively failed to find any supposed sex trafficking epidemic. Not convinced by the evidence? Then consider this: criminalising sex workers and their clients removes the most reliable information sources police have for investigating abuses. Police don't have a great track record on this: In interviews by the Sex Workers Project with 15 trafficking survivors who experienced police raids, only one had been asked by law enforcement if she was coerced, and only after she was arrested. SWOP-NYC make this case clearly. Criminalising sex work has been shown in Scotland to make criminal activity worse Criminalisation has all kinds of effects on the behaviour of sex workers, but unfortunately, none of those effects are good. Fear of police forces sex workers to get into clients’ cars quickly, and possibly be unable to avoid dangerous attackers posing as clients. When vigilantes and police roam the pavements, sex workers wait until the wee hours to come out, making them more isolated and vulnerable to harm. Such an approach can also result in a transfer of activity from streetwalking to other ways of getting money. High-profile crackdown results in repeated arrests of prostitutes, which translate to fines that sex workers, now burdened with criminal records, are unable to pay except by more prostitution or by fraud, shoplifting, and dealing drugs. Take Aberdeen, for instance. From 2001 onward, the city had an established tolerance zone for sex workers around the harbour. That ended with passage of the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act in 2007. In the following months the city centre experienced an influx of streetwalkers and an increase in petty crimes. Quay Services, which operates a drop-in centre for streetwalkers, reported that sex workers became more afraid to seek assistance, and the number of women coming to the centre dropped to “just a handful”. There was also evidence that displacing sex workers led to more activity in the sex trade, not less – convictions for solicitation tripled. This kind of ‘crime shuffling’ takes prostitution out of one area and dumps it on another. It only resembles an improvement if you fail to look at the full picture. Prohibition never works There is a lot of talk in the political sphere about the need for “evidence based policy”. This means rejecting approaches that are moralistic and manipulative. Sex workers have suffered the tragic consequences of prejudicial social attitudes that lead to bad policy. The prohibition approach has not worked. It will never work. The people who endorse this view are putting people in danger and should not be guiding public opinion any longer. Disliking sex work is not a good enough argument to justify criminalising it. Is there any public interest served by preventing adults from engaging in a consensual transaction for sexual services? No, there is not. Bit like the war on drugs: making the business profitable only to criminals, awaiting the inevitably grim results, then claiming that it’s the drugs themselves, not the laws, wot caused it. Few reasonable people believe that line of argument when it comes to drugs. Why does anyone believe it when it comes to sex? Moral disapproval is a bad basis for policymaking. I don't find the idea of taking drugs at all appealing, but I don't assume my own preferences should be the basis for law. The condescension heaped on people who do sex work is embarrassingly transparent. All this mealy-mouthed, 'oh but we want to help them, really’. How’s that again? By saddling people with criminal records and taking away their children? Do me a favour. As well as the happy prostitutes there are unhappy sex workers in need of support. Society should protect the unwilling and underage from sexual exploitation and provide outreach for those who need and want it. We already have laws and services for that. Maybe the laws should be more intelligently enforced and the services better supported. But prosecuting the victimless crimes does neither of these. It helps no one. The potential existence of abuses does not mean such work should be automatically criminalised if for no other reason than doing so makes the lives of people in sex work worse, not better. Criminalisation is the very opposite of compassion. Rhoda Grant is hiding behind an "end demand" approach that will not achieve what she claims it will, but will punish sex workers and send those with already chaotic lives further into a downward spiral. If that isn't punishing them with no hope for change then I don't know what is. It's time we started acting like grownups and stopped pretending that making something illegal makes it cease to exist. Full Article crime prostitution Scotland trafficking
k The Economics of Hooker Books By belledejour-uk.blogspot.com Published On :: Sun, 24 Jun 2012 14:43:00 +0000 One of the more persistent criticisms I get these days is that by being public about my really rather normal experience of sex work, I am "silencing" people who label themselves a victims. I'm not going to rehash the particular arguments regarding Happy Hookers vs. Abused Victims here, in part because Maggie McNeill has already done it. Suffice it to say that people who have read my writing know my experience of sex work, while useful, positive, and not abusive, was not quite the shopping-and-shoe-buying fantasy critics paint it as. But then most people who think that about me have never encountered my writing firsthand and are instead basing their impressions off a half-remembered advert featuring Billie Piper's tits. I understand. It's easy to get confused. But it did give me a moment of pause: is my writing crowding out other voices in the market? I decided to examine this further. Since many people purport to tell the story of sex workers for them, I excluded books that were either not written by or not straight biographies of a particular sex worker. I also excluded all that were fiction (such as my own Playing the Game) or deal with post-sex work life (such as Lily Burana's I Love a Man in Uniform). Anyway, here are the results: As you can see, my books are outnumbered by hooker memoirs that predate mine (Tracy Quan and Xaviera Hollander in particular). Outspoken strippers also chalk up plenty of contributions to the genre. But outnumbering all of us by far are the 'misery memoirs' about prostitution. (Don't get angry at me for the sweeping generalisation. That is what the genre actually is called.) There are, to use the technical term, fucking shedloads of these books. You'll notice more than a few bestsellers in that stack as well. These were just the ones I could fit into the graphic; there are dozens upon dozens more. Many if not most of which were published after my books first came out. It's probably fair to conclude that not only has my writing not stopped others from contributing their experience to the general debate on sex work, but that you're actually more likely to get noticed if you're unhappy with prostitution than generally satisfied with it. With the swirling vortex of Kristof/trafficking/concern porn making the rounds, in fact, now might just be the right time to do it. If you were of a mind to write a book like that. I encourage people with real firsthand views on the topic, whatever they are, to write. In fact moreso if you are not white, or not a cis woman, or not from the US or Western Europe. Women who look and sound approximately like me are already pretty well represented in the hallowed halls of sex worker lit. Let's diversify it all over the damn place until the orientalists and anti-migration-disguised-as-anti-trafficking types have to eat every last one of their words. Just so long as we all understand that there is no such thing as one story of sex work - they are as diverse as the people in it. My story is my story. Your story is your story. None of us speak for all sex workers. And be honest. As Bob Dylan memorably put it “If you live outside the law you must be honest.” So long as we are all on the level, then getting as many true voices out there as possible is no bad thing. Now back to the critics... For pity's sake don't come crying to me if you're not as popular as you like. As the objective evidence shows, it categorically is not down to me whether or not people want to read your writing. As regards writing as a career, it is dangerous to assume I or anyone else is getting "vastly rich" off of writing (as one bitter soul recently accused). Many people seem to think that writing a book, even a bestselling one, is a ticket to financial freedom and nets far beyond what even your common-or-garden escort can potentially make. I hate to break it to the dreamers, but that is not so. If it was, do you think I'd still be writing? Hell, no. I'd be kicking back with J.K. Rowling and E.L. James in our secret volcano fortress warming my toes on a fire built by our minions entirely out of £50 notes and cackling madly. As opposed to the reality - sitting in my home office in a very average house in one of the poorest areas of the country. I'm not bankrolled by any grant-grabbing NGOs, my personal appearances usually only cover expenses, and nuisance legal threats from people with a lot of time on their hands cost more than all my living expenses combined. I've done better than most by writing and am still a long way off being a millionaire. As it turns out, I hear the person who made that accusation supposedly comes from family money herself and spends her time as a dilettante poetess. If that's true, well, good luck with that. Whatever works amirite? Best of luck, former fellow hos. This is not exactly the road less traveled but is no less bumpy for it. Full Article fucking hooker drama prostitution writing
k BREAKING NEWS: I was a sex worker. By belledejour-uk.blogspot.com Published On :: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:21:00 +0000 This morning I awoke to find a claim published in the Mail that I was not a sex worker. It is a direct attack on my integrity as a writer, to claim that I lied. And I have been prepared. When the case goes to trial, I will have to present evidence that I was a sex worker. Starting with this - an Archive.org snap of my first escorting ad from October 2003 (link NSFW). (Readers of the first book may recall this was the session with the grumpy photographer I wrote about. As I have often said, it was that experience - being made to wear terrible lingerie, awkward poses, all the rest - that first made me think, 'hey, I should be blogging this.' And if you read the third book, I made a reference to a restaurant on Old Compton Street that has the same name as my working name - that is, of course, Taro.) I will also be presenting my bank records from 2003-04, showing the cash deposits from the money I earned as an escort, and tax records from the same years showing that this income was declared to HMRC and tax paid. Here is a sample: I also have the notebook in which I recorded details of appointments, etc. In several instances I have been able to piece together entries from the notebook, deposits to my accounts, and the corresponding entries in the book. If pressed, I will name a client, but only as a last resort. The Mail also claims I didn't own nice enough clothes so couldn't have been an escort! That's from December 2003, and is the same red silk top I wore to meet the manager for the first time (as written about in the first book). The next is at Henley Regatta in July 2004, suit is from Austin Reed, the bracelet was a gift from a client. The Mail claims I was in Sheffield when writing the blog, but I moved to London in September 2003 and started escorting in October, starting blogging a few weeks later. All of which is easy - trivial, even - to prove. Oh, and the "former landlady in Sheffield, who did not wish to be named", where I supposedly lived for three years? Who apparently saw me in 'Oxfam jumpers'? Hmm... I lived one year in university accommodation (St George's Flats), one year in a shared flat with an absentee landlord I never met (Hawthorne Road), and one year on my own in a house let through an agency (Loxley New Road). All well before moving to London. So either the landlady is lying about the timing of my tenancy and having met me, or (shock, horror) they made it up. There's much more but it would be boring to put it all here. It's amazing to me the MoS made no effort at all to match anything they printed against things that are easy to find and in the public domain. But that's by the by, and will come out in due course. It matters because this is a concerted and direct attack on my work as a writer. When I was anonymous, being real was my main - my only - advantage. The Mail on Sunday have made some frankly nonsense claims, and I will be going to town on this. Because I know people do not trust the word of a sex worker, that is why I saved everything. I look forward to the opportunity to rebut all claims in court. (The MoS claim the trial is expected "within weeks." In fact it is scheduled for June 2015.) Full Article lawsuit Scotland
k Track cycling By davewalker.com Published On :: Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:15:57 +0000 The various events The post Track cycling appeared first on Dave Walker. Full Article Cycling Diagrams Diagrams Diagrams from the books The Cycling Cartoonist Bikes Cycle racing
k News roundup: deck.js, Yahoo Kills off Maps API, Patterns for Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture By www.jsmag.com Published On :: Listen to this week's podcast (September 9, 2011) Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture is a lengthy article by Addy Osmani detailing some basic principles of writing a large-scale JavaScript application. It's inspired by a classic Nicholas Zakas talk outlining some of the same principles ... Full Article
k News roundup: JavaScript under attack! By www.jsmag.com Published On :: Listen to this week's podcast (Podcast edit: I mistakenly mention Respond.js, which is actually a media query polyfill - I'm actually talking about Responsive images) Google Dart By far the biggest news of the week isn't JavaScript, but rather a language called Dart (formerly Dash?), which certain factions within Google hope will replace ... Full Article
k News roundup: I Like Eich. 140 byte synthesizer, An End To Negativity, Sencha Touch 2.0, Dart (again) By www.jsmag.com Published On :: Listen to this week's podcast (October 29, 2011) (23:05 minutes) I'm trying a little something different this week. I hope you guys like pictures. :) Brenden Eich + "I Like Ike" mashup by @lonnen 140 byte synthesizer A while back Jed Schmidt created a simple little project on GitHub called 140 bytes ... Full Article
k News roundup: 11-11-11! insertAdjacentHTML, classes in JavaScript?, twilight of Flash and Silverlight, Yahoo! Cocktails By www.jsmag.com Published On :: Listen to the podcast for November 11, 2011 insertAdjacentHTML Mozilla has a nice overview of insertAdjacentHTML, a DOM function that's intended to supplement innerHTML. It's a bit less destructive and plays nicely with content that's already in the DOM. For instance, whereas innerHTML completely blows away whatever is inside the ... Full Article
k News roundup: tons o’ links for the New Year By www.jsmag.com Published On :: Hello there, it's been a while! Oh dear, another year has passed. And it seems that I've been stocking up a year's supply of JavaScript tidbits to dump on the unsuspecting populace! Ok, not quite, but I do have quite a backlog, that's somewhat in chronological order, ... Full Article
k Interlagos must improve “very bad” new track surface for 2025, say F1 drivers | Formula 1 By www.racefans.net Published On :: Fri, 08 Nov 2024 12:12:39 +0000 Formula 1 drivers urged the operators of the Interlagos circuit to improve the new surface they laid ahead of this year's event. Full Article 2024 F1 season Formula 1 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix interlagos
k The times McLaren came closest to breaking 25-year constructors’ title drought | Formula 1 By www.racefans.net Published On :: Sun, 10 Nov 2024 12:53:50 +0000 McLaren could be set to win their first constructors' title for 25 years this season. Here is how close they've come over that time. Full Article Feature Formula 1 McLaren
k New Aston Martin simulator ‘like something from Star Wars’ – Krack | RaceFans Round-up By www.racefans.net Published On :: Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:01:00 +0000 In the round-up: New simulator 'like Star Wars' - Krack • Pirelli likes 'flexibility' of new C6 • Play NZ anthem when McLaren wins - Lawson Full Article RaceFans Round-up
k Wittich replaced as F1 race director, Marques to take over from Las Vegas | Formula 1 By www.racefans.net Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:19:17 +0000 Niels Wittich has unexpectedly stood down from his role as Formula 1's race director. The FIA named Rui Marques as his replacement. Full Article Formula 1 FIA niels wittich
k Alpine must make up for 0.3-second deficit with 2025 chassis – Briatore | RaceFans Round-up By www.racefans.net Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:01:00 +0000 In the round-up: Alpine must make up for 0.3-second deficit with 2025 chassis - Briatore • Stolen Lauda helmet goes on display • Wittich 'has not resigned' Full Article RaceFans Round-up Alpine
k Listen to a spooky Halloween electronic music show tonight – that obvs features me By martinbelam.com Published On :: Thu, 31 Oct 2024 11:00:57 +0000 If you are home alone tonight on Halloween and fancy something spooky and electronic to listen to, please allow me to direct you to the annual Homebrew Electronica horrorthon! Promising “spooky bangers, creepy electronica and twisted soundscapes for Halloween night”,... Full Article Music
k I’ve been reading 2000AD again and Thistlebone and Brink are great! By martinbelam.com Published On :: Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:00:53 +0000 Borag Thungg! When things like Woolworths go bust, people who haven’t been to Woolworths for years feel sad and say “Why can’t the old things I liked survive?”. So at the start of the pandemic I worried about things going... Full Article Media
k Cut taxes to make Michigan more attractive By www.mackinac.org Published On :: Tue, 15 Oct 2024 06:08:00 -0400 Even blue states are doing it; what’s the matter with this state? Full Article
k Mackinac Center Unveils 101 Recommendations to Revitalize Michigan By www.mackinac.org Published On :: Wed, 30 Oct 2024 17:07:00 -0400 Sound public policy ideas are needed for families and businesses to thrive Full Article
k Lawmakers shouldn’t take vows of silence By www.mackinac.org Published On :: Thu, 07 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0500 There is no excuse for non-disclosure agreements about public spending Full Article
k GM looks to revitalize itself in Europe with direct sales, which Michigan makes illegal By www.mackinac.org Published On :: Mon, 11 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0500 21 states allow manufacturer-to-consumer sales with no restrictions Full Article
k One year after the UAW strike, Michigan is worse off By www.mackinac.org Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 05:51:00 -0500 Six weeks of labor action led to a year of job losses Full Article
k The SEO Starter Guide got a makeover By developers.google.com Published On :: Fri, 2 February 2024 10:00:00 +0000 Today we're publishing a refreshed, more pocket-sized version of the SEO Starter Guide with a better focus on a starter audience and the topics we think a person who's just dipping their toes in SEO should focus on and why. Full Article
k What web creators should know about our March 2024 core update and new spam policies By developers.google.com Published On :: Tue, 05 March 2024 10:00:00 +0000 Today we announced the March 2024 core update. This is designed to improve the quality of Search by showing less content that feels like it was made to attract clicks, and more content that people find useful. We also shared that we have new spam policies to better handle the practices that can negatively impact Google's search results. In this post, we'll go into more detail for creators about both the update and the spam policies. Full Article
k Improving Search Console ownership token management By developers.google.com Published On :: Tue, 16 Apr 2024 06:00:00 +0000 This post discusses an update to Search Console's user and permissions to improve the accuracy and reflect the actual state of unused ownership tokens. Full Article
k Search Central Live 2024 is coming back to the APAC region By developers.google.com Published On :: Thu, 29 May 2024 06:00:00 +0000 Search Central Live is coming back to the Asia Pacific region, bringing you insights from Google Search, fun networking opportunity, and more! This year we're aiming to visit Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand. Full Article
k We're on LinkedIn (finally) By developers.google.com Published On :: Tue, 4 Jun 2024 06:00:00 +0000 The Google Search Central LinkedIn channel is (finally) here! Full Article
k Adding markup support for organization-level return policies By developers.google.com Published On :: Tue, 4 Jun 2024 06:00:00 +0000 We're adding support for return policies at the organization level, which means you'll be able to specify a general return policy for your business instead of having to define one for each individual product you sell. Full Article
k Search Central Live Bangkok 2024 By developers.google.com Published On :: Thu, 20 Jun 2024 06:00:00 +0000 We're coming back to Thailand with Search Central Live! As mentioned in our blog post about our APAC plans for SCL, we now have a date and a site where you can sign up for a chance to secure your spot at Search Central Live Bangkok 2024. Full Article
k What to know about our August 2024 core update By developers.google.com Published On :: Thu, 15 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000 This post announces the August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search. Full Article
k Search Central Live 2024 is coming to Kuala Lumpur and Taipei By developers.google.com Published On :: Tues, 27 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000 As previously announced, we're coming to Kuala Lumpur and to Taipei in the last quarter of 2024. And yes, we're very excited! The KL event will be in English and the Taipei event will be conducted in Mandarin (Traditional Chinese). Full Article
k Search Central Live Jakarta and Bangkok 2024: it's a wrap By developers.google.com Published On :: Tue, 15 Oct 2024 06:00:00 +0000 Our first two Search Central Live events in Asia this year have been wrapped up and we finished looking back at what we've learned and what we can do better. Full Article
k Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box By developers.google.com Published On :: Mon, 21 Oct 2024 17:00:00 +0000 It's been over ten years since we initially announced the sitelinks search box in Google Search, and over time, we've noticed that usage has dropped. To help simplify the search results, we'll be removing this visual element starting on November 21, 2024. Full Article
k SDL Trados Studio ? Corrupt file: Missing locked content for Oasis.Xliff 12.x. By blog.cinciala.eu Published On :: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 09:35:43 +0000 I recently accepted a large proofreading job to be completed in SDL Trados Studio 2014. All seemed to be fine until I tried to open some of the project files. This article describes how to deal with “Corrupt file: Missing … Continue reading → Full Article Computer-aided Translation Software-related
k Trados Studio 2017 – Auto propagation not working in review mode By blog.cinciala.eu Published On :: Wed, 04 Jan 2017 21:45:04 +0000 Have you ever reviewed a large file in SDL Trados Studio with numerous repetitions and struggled with confirmed segments not being propagated to the rest of the file? Here is what to do. Imagine you have a big file to … Continue reading → Full Article Computer-aided Translation Software-related
k Linguistic Alchemy to unlock AutoHotkey By multifarious.filkin.com Published On :: Mon, 31 Jul 2023 15:20:02 +0000 In the echoing halls of the Tower of Babel, myriad languages tangled, creating a confusion of tongues and leaving humans estranged. Fast forward to the present day, professional translators stand as the modern-day heroes, bridging linguistic divides and fostering global connections. Yet, these linguists often grapple with the technical juggernaut of AutoHotkey scripting. AutoHotkey, an … Continue reading Linguistic Alchemy to unlock AutoHotkey Full Article Studio Tips Useful tools AI artificial intelligence autohotkey ChatGPT
k Working under a cloud! By multifarious.filkin.com Published On :: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 19:01:30 +0000 In the heart of LingoVille, translator Trina was renowned for her linguistic prowess but was a bit behind in the tech world. When her old typewriter finally gave out, she received a sleek new laptop, which came with OneDrive pre-enabled. Initially hesitant about this “cloud magic,” she soon marvelled at the convenience of securely storing … Continue reading Working under a cloud! Full Article Studio Tips onedrive
k Back to school… again! By multifarious.filkin.com Published On :: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 21:59:38 +0000 After I did my last studies, apart from all the endless mandatory HR type training we have to endure these days, I thought that would be it for any sort of formal training for me. In fact the main reason for me doing my last formal studies, TCLoc Masters degree at the University of Strasbourg, … Continue reading Back to school… again! Full Article Studio Tips education localization regex Trados Studio
k Working with CSV’s… By multifarious.filkin.com Published On :: Sun, 17 Mar 2024 23:20:44 +0000 CSV, or files with “comma separated values”, is a simple format that everyone should be able to handle. Certainly you’d think so except nothing is ever that straightforward and if you’ve ever spent time trying to work with these files and having to deal with all the problems inherent to this format then you’ll know … Continue reading Working with CSV’s… Full Article CAT Tools Studio Tips Useful tools csv filetypes Rons Data Edit
k You can take a CAT to water! By multifarious.filkin.com Published On :: Tue, 07 May 2024 15:55:07 +0000 The phrase “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” emphasises the idea that you can offer opportunities or advantages to someone, but you can’t force them to take action if they’re unwilling. This proverb has deep historical roots, with its first recorded use in Old English around 1175, and … Continue reading You can take a CAT to water! Full Article Business CAT Tools Studio Tips community support training
k Congratulations Dr. Jaliya Ekanayake! By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Sat, 01 Jan 2011 11:24:00 +0000 It gives me great personal pleasure to congratulate Jaliya on completing his Ph.D.in Computer Science from Indiana University in late December. His PhD work was on extending the applicability of Map Reduce to a larger class of problems. The software he developed as part of his work is available at http://iterativemapreduce.org/. Jaliya was a student of Prof. Geoffrey Fox. Jaliya has already started work at Microsoft Research and works on applying map-reduce and other approaches to solve large scale systems problems. Jaliya is the second person from the original Apache Axis2 team to complete his Ph.D. after Srinath. Jaliya is the original father of Apache Sandesha, the WS-Reliable Messaging implementation for Apache Axis. He, along with the rest of the original Axis2 crew, laid the foundation for a lot of the technology that WSO2 is built on. The remaining original Axis2 team members (and about 20+ others who have been at WSO2 at one point) are now in the pipeline to complete their Ph.D.'s over the next few years! Congratulations and best wishes Jaliya for a bright future! Full Article apache axis2 grad school sri lanka
k Cricket World Cup - kudos to Sri Lanka Cricket By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 03:18:00 +0000 I had the fortune of landing a ticket for Saturday's quarter final match between Sri Lanka and England. Someone who had 2 grandstand tickets got sick and I was lucky to be asked whether I want it at list price :). At Rs. 4000 each I felt they were pricey but then at the event I met a friend who had paid double that for his ticket! I will comment on the ticket selling process later. First of all, the stadium atmosphere was just incredibly amazingly fantastically electric and rocking. Being there is nothing like watching at home .. despite being able to see the match poorly, the environment is of course unbeatable. The fact that Sri Lanka gave England a total drubbing was awesome, even though as a result the game became quite non-competitive .. but I'll settle for non-competitive games up to the final and thrilling victory in the final (vs. to have it stolen like the last time). This post is not about the quarter final match - its about Sri Lanka Cricket, the embattled organization which runs the sport in Sri Lanka. As most people in Sri Lanka know, the organizers were hammered very very hard in the press before the World Cup started about their preparations, about how the stadiums were completed last minute and about every aspect of team selection to overall management. I'm not an expert on cricket- so I have no useful views on the cricketing aspects and will leave them alone. However, I do want to comment on the overall organization of the event. I have made it to 3 matches in Colombo - the first was the loss to Pakistan, the second the rained out draw with Australia and the third of course the drubbing of England. All these were held at the newly refurbished Kettarama Stadium of course- an absolutely AWESOME stadium now! I have been there a few months ago and it was a nightmare to get in and out. Now its a breeze and reminds me of the convenience of getting in and out of Purdue's Mackey Arena (for basketball). Once you are inside, the view is breathtaking. The atmosphere is amazingly electric. Every match was sold out (of course) to a capacity crowd of 35,000+. I didn't make it to Hambantota for the first match but the news from there was that the brand new stadium there was absolutely amazing as well. The words from a friend (usually a skeptic) was "money well spent". Same has to be said for Pallekalle in Kandy. That's again a new stadium (or a refurb'ed old ground; not sure) and while its not as built up as Hambantota or Colombo the location is just amazing and all the reports are that the place was fantastic. There was not a single time in all the matches in Sri Lanka where something went wrong with the logistics. All the comentators have been giving kudos about the venues and the amazing environments offered by them. I too was caught up in the press vendetta against Suraj Dandeniya (the head of the World Cup organizing team in SLC). While the work was indeed completed last minute it is time to give this gentleman a tip of the hat and acknowledge the amazing work they have done to deliver perfectly for Sri Lanka. Press stories have a way of finding individuals guilty without judge or jury and this vendetta was played out by most of the newspapers in a merciless manner. Maybe Suraj has refused some passes for the press and their buddies? Who knows. Yes yes I know there's one more match to be played in Sri Lanka. That's the one where Sri Lanka will whack the New Zealanders home :-). I am confident that too will go off without a hitch! At one level "may the best team win" may apply but, honestly, to hell with that .. Sri Lanka has to win to set up an amazing final in India against (most probably) India. Nothing like that victory! (The NZ team has done amazingly well to get to the semi-finals and they've always stepped up big at the big occasions. Their country also suffered a massive earthquake recently .. only to be overshadowed by an even bigger one. If they go on to winning the tournament they'll again get some all-important PR for the recovery efforts there. To that extent I want NZ to win. Yeah, treacherous.) Now about those ticket sales. Fundamentally, this is a no-win situation for the organizers. 35,000 tickets for the match where 500,000 at least would love to watch in person. So no matter what approach is taken, there will be 465,000+ who will be crying foul! There have been stories about how people stood in line, bought the ticket and turned around and sold it to someone else. I see no way to stop that - and keeping the ticket price low (lowest was Rs. 50 for group stage matches in Colombo) meant that anyone could buy them without any problem - a good thing in general. Personally I have no issue with blackmarket sales (and I don't understand why they are banned) - the only problem it highlights is that the original ticket was sold too low! Why doesn't Sri Lanka Cricket sell the ticket for Rs. 10,000 if it can get away with it and make more money? Maybe they should've also set up an auction at EBay or something where people can bid and buy tickets at whatever price above the minimum price. No I'm not suggesting doing that for all tickets but rather for a percentage- you give some on a pure lottery, some for those who stand in line .. and the rest to the best price via auction with batches sold daily. I don't understand why they created a secondary market in the first place when they themselves could've run both the primary and secondary markets. Obviously I don't know enough about market economics. The real problem is that many tickets seem to have been sold only to "known parties". The Colombo powers-that-be who want to watch the matches shouldn't have been able to buy through back channels. If they don't want to stand in line they can certainly afford to buy the tickets on the blackmarket if they want and let some poor guy make some money. Why should these fat cats be able to buy tickets at list?! When you are at the match (and I went to A lower the first time (Rs. 250), to C upper the second time (Rs. 100) and to the grand stand for the quarter final (Rs. 4000) its clear that most in attendance were way above average in economic terms. In practical terms, that suggests that a lot of blackmarket sales were happening. If someone's a true fan, there's no amount of money that would make them sell the ticket - so the people who sold the tickets were not real fans. Or they were true fans who felt the money was more economically valuable for them than the experience (maybe they had a sick child or needed some home repairs or whatever ..). Or they were savvy businessmen who stood in line and sold the ticket for a profit. The bottom line is that there's no way to prevent normal capitalism from taking place and the value balance ending up wherever it ends up. So while I too am frustrated I can't get a ticket for the semi-finals, I am only upset about connected people getting tickets at list price through backchannel means. The rest of the system I have no concerns with - and next time (20-20 World Cup next year) I hope Sri Lanka Cricket does a combination of lines, lotteries and auctions to sell the tickets. Talking about tickets .. anyone have a spare grandstand ticket for the semi final they want to sell me at list price? :-) Full Article cricket sri lanka
k Congratulations Dr. Eran Chintaka! By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:33:00 +0000 It gives me great pleasure to congratulate Eran Chinthaka on his completing his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indiana University on the topic User Inspired Management of Scientific Jobs in Grids and Clouds. His advisor was Prof. Beth Plale. Eran is of course one of the founding team members of Apache Axis2 in the Lanka Software Foundation. Of the original 6 person core team who created Axis2, he's the 3rd to finish his Ph.D. (joining Srinath (back in WSO2) and Jaliya (in Microsoft Research)) and the other three are getting close to finishing up their PhDs too. Eran worked in WSO2 for a couple of years before leaving for his Ph.D. and I hope that when he finishes his Wall Street stint he'll come back home and join us again :-). Congratulations Dr. Chinthaka! Full Article axis2 sri lanka wso2
k 10 years since returning to Sri Lanka By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Sat, 06 Aug 2011 15:51:00 +0000 Today marks the 10 year anniversary of our returning home to Sri Lanka. I went to the US in 1985 where I lived for a total of nearly 16 years .. first arriving on August 18, 1985 to go to Kent State University for undergraduate studies. I lived in Kent, Ohio for 4 years, finishing both a BS and an MS, and then moved to West Lafayette, Indiana for 8 years where I was a PhD student at Purdue for 5 years and then visiting faculty for 3 more. Then I joined IBM Research in August 1997 (starting August 4th) and moved to Yorktown Heights, New York and finally left the US on August 4th 2001 and arrived back home on August 6th, 2001. That's 10 years ago today :-). Wow, 10 years .. time flies when you are having fun! I remember that there were pieces of airplanes on the ground at the Colombo Airport when we landed - the dreaded LTTE had brazenly attacked the airport just 10 days before that destroying 3 Sri Lankan Airlines planes and damaging 3 more as well as damaging or destroying 26 Airforce aircraft and killing a bunch of people. What a difference 10 years makes; guns have been silent and peace reigns loudly in Sri Lanka for more than 2 years now. Whether you like the current leadership team in the country or not, we all owe them an incredible debt of gratitude for putting everything aside and destroying the LTTE menace and creating a stable nation so we have (another) chance at becoming what Sri Lanka is capable of becoming. I was of course still working for IBM Research when I came back .. working remotely from Sri Lanka. I finally quit on April 15, 2005 and started WSO2 a few months later. I started encouraging Sri Lankan developers to contribute to open source projects in fall 2002 and ended up starting the Lanka Software Foundation in early 2003 (along with friend, colleague and mentor Jivaka Weeratunge). LSF was of course instrumental in many projects that ended up in Apache and for Sahana, the tsunami-inspired disaster management system we created. (BTW IBM recently highlighted Sahana in their 100 year celebrations .. very cool!) I also started teaching as a volunteer visiting lecturer at the Computer Science and Engineering Department of the University of Moratuwa from around 2002, where many of the brilliant brains that contributed to LSF's projects, and later WSO2, came from. (We of course get brilliant people from many sources now .. but MRT still dominates!) One of the things I'm really proud of is that so many people have benefitted from the work done in LSF to help get them into grad school for further studies. Counting WSO2 too, there are now more than 25 people in various places doing PhD's in Computer Science. Three have finished so far. -- Many people have asked me at various times: "Have you ever regretted coming back home?". I can honestly say: NOT EVEN ONCE! Don't get me wrong- the US was a great country to live in and I will never forget the superb education nor the wonderful experiences and friends I made in my 16 years there. However, this is home and there's nothing like home (for me). I love the fact that I can have some small impact on young people who can help Sri Lanka get ahead in its journey. I love the fact that I am not second class in any way in my home country. I love the fact that my kids are growing up here with roots in their home country - where they end up as adults is their decision, not mine. But at least they have a firm footing here as their home. Moving back to Sri Lanka is not without its challenges. Many things that are easy in the US are not so easy here. At the same time, many things that are hard in the US are quite easy here. So its always a mixed bag .. what matters is your mindset about the journey: if you are committed to moving back then you can come back. If you are half-hearted and look for problems instead of challenges then you will run back to wherever you attempted to move back from. I am writing this because I am very very keen to attract Sri Lankans living in other countries to come back home. We need our educated, experienced, connected, knowledgable Lankans to come back home and help us rebuild after the 30 year nightmare that ended 2 years ago. The opportunities here are absolutely amazing and this is the start of a boom period .. now is as good as ever to come back home. OF COURSE Sri Lanka is not a perfect place. Neither is the US (can you say "debt ceiling"?) nor any other place. The advantage Sri Lanka offers to Sri Lankans is that this is our home. Whatever hard work you do will have tremendous impact. Sri Lanka is a small country .. that means the impact of your work is much more direct and immediate too. Every problem is an opportunity if you take up the challenge! I, along with Dulith Herath, Founder and CEO of Kapruka.com, along with SL2College (another non-profit project I'm involved in - founded by Nayana Samaranayake) are launching a "come back to Sri Lanka" effort soon. The idea is to help dispel many myths (that traffic is a nighmare, that everything is corrupt, that nothing is easy etc. etc.), get info about jobs and other opportunities, provide accurate and direct information and eventually help people who want to come back make the move and settle down (including things like kids school etc.). BTW if you're a hardcore passionate techie wanting to come back then I know at least one great place to work ;-). The last 10 years have been amazingly fantastic for me. The last 6 years have been most special because I have helped create a company that now employees more than 125 people here (and soon more here as well as in the US, UK and some in Europe). Thank you Paul for much of that! The move was made easier by many many people who helped get settled in, helped get connected to various places and helped in various other ways. You are too numerous to list (and I know I will screw up by missing some key people) but please know that I know you played a crucial role in how well the last 10 years have gone. From the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. Full Article sri lanka wso2
k API Management: The missing link for SOA success By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:32:00 +0000 Nearly 2 years ago I tweeted: Well, unfortunately, I had it a bit wrong. APIs and service do have a very direct and 1-1 relationship: an API is the interface of a service. However, what is different is that one's about the implementation and is focused on the provider, and the other is about using the functionality and is focused on the consumer. The service of course is what matters to the provider and API is what matters to the consumer. So its clearly more than just a new name. Services: If you build it will they come? One of the most common anti-patterns of SOA is the one service - one client pattern. That's when the developer who wrote the service also wrote its only client. In that case there's no sharing, no common data, no common authentication and no reuse of any kind. The number one reason for SOA (improving productivity by reusing functionality as services) is gone. Its simply client-server at the cost of having to use interoperable formats like XML, JSON, XML Schema, WSDL and SOAP. There are two primary reasons for this pattern being so prevalent: first is due to a management failure whereby everyone is required to create services for whatever they do because that's the new "blessed way". There's no architectural vision driving proper factoring. Instead its each person or at least each team for themselves. The resulting services are only really usable for that one scenario - so no wonder no one else uses them! Writing services that can service many users requires careful design and thinking and willingness to invest in the common good. That's against human intuition and something that will happen only if its properly guided and incentivized. The cost of writing common services must be paid by someone and will not happen by itself. That's in effect the second reason why this anti-pattern exists: the infrastructure in place for SOA does not support or encourage reuse. Even if you had a service that is reusable how do you find out how well it works? How do you know how many people are using it? Do you know what time of day they use it most? Do you know which operations of your service get hit the hardest? Next, how do others even find out you wrote a service and it may do what they need? SOA Governance (for which WSO2 has an excellent product: WSO2 Governance Registry) is not focused on encouraging service reuse but rather on governing the creation and management of services. The SOA world has lacked a solution for making it easy to help people discover available services and to manage and monitor their consumption. API Management What's an API? Its the interface to a service. Simple. In other words, if you don't have any services, you have no APIs to expose and manage. API Management is about managing the entire lifecycle of APIs. This involves someone who publishes the interface of a service into a store of some kind. Next it involves developers who browse the store to find APIs they care about and get access to them (typically by acquiring an access token of some sort) and then the developers using those keys to program accesses to the service via its interface. Why is this important? In my opinion, API Management is to SOA what Amazon EC2 is to Virtualization. Of course virtualization has been around for a long time, but EC2 changed the game by making it trivially simple for someone to get a VM. It brought self service, serendipitous consumption, and elasticity to virtualization. Similarly, API Management brings self service & serendipitous consumption by allowing developers to discover, try and use services without requiring any type of "management approval". It allows consumers to not have to worry about scaling - they just indicate the desired SLA (typically in the form of a subscription plan) and its up to the provider to make it work right. API Management & SOA are married at the hip If you have an SOA strategy in your organization but don't have an API Management plan then you are doomed to failure. Notice that I didn't even talk about externally exposing APIs- even internal service consumption should be managed through an API Management system so that everyone has clear visibility into who's using what service and how much is used when. Its patently obvious why external exposition of services requires API Management. Chris Haddad, WSO2's VP of Technology Evangelism, recently wrote a superb whitepaper that discusses and explain the connection between SOA and API Management. Check out Promoting service reuse within your enterprise and maximizing SOA success and I can guarantee you will leave enlightened. In May this year, a blog on highscalability.com talked about how "Startups Are Creating A New System Of The World For IT". In that the author talked about open source as the foundation of this new system and SOA as the load bearing walls of the new IT landscape. I will take it to the next level and say that API Management is the roof of the new IT house. WSO2 API Manager We recently introduced an API Management product: WSO2 API Manager. This product comes with an application for API Providers to create and manage APIs, a store application for API Developers to discover and consume APIs and a gateway to route API traffic through. Of course all parts of the product can be scaled horizontally to deal with massive loads. The WSO2 API Manager can be deployed either for internal consumption, external consumption or both. As with any other WSO2 product, this too is 100% open source. After you read Chris' whitepaper download this product and sit it next to your SOA infrastructure (whether its from us or not) and see what happens! Full Article api cloud soa wso2
k Launching WorkInSriLanka.lk Initiative By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Thu, 16 May 2013 18:28:00 +0000 Over the last many months, I've been privileged to be part of a fantastic team of volunteers working on a new effort: This is an effort to help people who are considering moving to Sri Lanka to work and live. Me? Move to Sri Lanka?? What?! Yes, Sri Lanka. No more war. No more bombs. No one trying to (systematically .. yeah we have our share of crazies) kill anyone. Great weather. Majorly improving infrastructure. A second airport (with no flights yet .. but that's ok everyone's gotta start at the bottom!). A real, honest-to-goodness highway (dinner in Galle tonite?) and many more coming. Apartments everywhere. Parks all over Colombo. Compare that to where you're living? Do you go thru a metal detector to your workplace? Not in Sri Lanka any more. We had a long period of that .. but no more .. war finished in 2009, nearly to the day today (May 18th is the anniversary). Anyway :-). Our objective is to first be a one-stop-site for anyone who's considering moving to Sri Lanka. Everything you need to know from what kind of jobs are available, how much does housing cost, how much do cars cost to kids schooling to visa stuff. All there, all in one place. All done in an objective, volunteer, independent kind of way. The site is still in its infancy of course .. more to come but its got a lot of stuff already! With regards to jobs- if you're a senior person returning we will even help you get into the "network" to get into the loop of things. We have a pretty connected set of friends who are helping to get that done. We're also partnering with pretty much every industry body so that we can reach into all of those networks. Going beyond the information portal we want to become an advocacy group to promote what's good about moving to Sri Lanka and also to work hard on breaking down more barriers. Even ex-Sri Lankans returning have some major barriers in the system now and we want to work towards removing them. This was a totally volunteer group of people from all over the place. Check us out at the site! We had a fantastic launch event on Tuesday (May 14th) evening. We had the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka come and give the keynote talk and then had a superb panel. More on that coming soon at the site itself. Check it out and give us your feedback - plenty of places in the site to do that. Enjoy surfing! http://workinsrilanka.lk/. Full Article sri lanka
k Congratulations Dr. Malinda Kaushalye Kapuruge! By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 06:47:00 +0000 It gives me great pleasure to post extremely belated (he completed in October last year!) congratulations to Dr. Malinda Kaushalye Kapuruge on his completing his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Swinburne University in Australia. Kau's thesis topic was "Orchestration as Organization: Using an organisational paradim to achieve adaptable business process modelling and enactment in service compositions" and was supervised by Prof. Jun Han and Dr. Alan Colman. Kau's going to stay on in Swinburne as a Research Scientist for some time. Kaushalye worked in WSO2 for 2 years from 2006 to 2008 before going to grad school to pursue his Ph.D. work. Congratulations and good luck! (I'm going to post a few catch up congratulations so I can be up to date :-).) Full Article grad school sri lanka
k WSO2 moving to a new building in Sri Lanka By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:03:00 +0000 After many many months of painful work, we are finally starting work at our new location in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Here's a picture taken from my cell phone yesterday afternoon: The most awesome thing is that we will all be in one building again in Sri Lanka! That's after more than 3 years when we started adding new offices .. we had three here until yesterday; today we have one! We still have quite a bit of work to do to finish everything .. including a nice surprise coming in the front at the street level :-). The cage you see on the roof is our enclosed rooftop basketball court! The rest of the roof is taken up by the gym and the creche - will take another month to be fully ready. I'm waiting for the punching bag. Today's not our official opening day - that's next Wednesday with Paul Fremantle also present. We are moving in today however and will have a small ceremony (lighting the lamp and kiribath table). Its taken just over 8 years of incredible hard work by a super team of passionate people to get us here. Thank you to everyone who made it possible - including our customers, investors and of course the killer (past and present) team! This is only a small step along the way however .. Full Article sri lanka wso2
k Thinking about moving to Sri Lanka? By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 17:04:00 +0000 Then you need to be at the WorkInSriLanka Conference next Monday! Check us out at http://workinsrilanka.lk/conference and of course on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WorkInSriLanka: Full Article sri lanka
k WSO2Con Barcelona 2014 in just one more week! By sanjiva.weerawarana.org Published On :: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 03:38:00 +0000 Time flies when you're having fun .. the conference is now just a week away and the advance team is flying in today. If you've ever been to one of our conferences you know what an awesome event it is - Barcelona is going to notch it up again with a really cool Internet of Things platform for attendees (built with our own products of course - plus soldering irons and acid baths). Hope to see you there! Learn more about industry trends, being a Connected Business, the WSO2 story, and much more through our esteemed panel of keynote speakers at WSO2Con EU 2014. Alan Clark Director of Industry Initiatives, Emerging Standards and Open Source SUSE Chairman of the Board OpenStack® Serves as the chairman of the board at OpenStack. Alan has developed a reputation in fostering the creation, growth, awareness, and adoption of open source and open standards across the technology sector. He will explore the evolution of open source cloud platforms in enabling the Connected Business. James Governor Principal Analyst and Co-Founder RedMonk Leads coverage in the enterprise applications space, assisting with application development, integration middleware, and systems management issues. He also has served as an industry expert for television and radio segments with media such as the BBC. James will examine how open source middleware contributes to the Connected Business. Luca Martini Distinguished Engineer Cisco Leads the Cisco virtualization strategy in two major areas: mobility and home broadband access. He has been involved in the Internet engineering task force (IETF) for the past 15 years, contributing to many IETF standards. Luca will discuss the role of intelligent orchestration and how it is more than simply a Web services engine. Paul Fremantle Co-Founder & CTO WSO2 Paul co-founded WSO2 in 2005 in order to reinvent the way enterprise middleware is developed, sold, delivered, and supported through an open source model. In his current role as CTO, he spearheads WSO2's overall product strategy. Sanjiva Weerawarana Ph. D Founder, Chairman & CEO WSO2 Sanjiva has been involved with open source for many years and is an active member of the Apache Software Foundation. He was the original creator of Apache SOAP and has been part of Apache Axis, Apache Axis2 and most Apache Web services projects. He founded WSO2 after having spent nearly 8 years in IBM Research, where he was one of the founders of the Web services platform. During that time, he co-authored many Web services specifications including WSDL, BPEL4WS, WS-Addressing, WS-RF and WS-Eventing. Register now View full agenda Learn how WSO2 can help you build a Connected Business Contact Us Full Article wso2con