2015 Preview

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2014 was a great year for the MDM Developers community, with a growing knowledge base on our wiki, new videos on our YouTube channel, and nine more blog posts. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to the MDM Developers community over the last year. We're already well in to the new year so, rather than looking back, I'd like to share a quick look ahead at what's in store for 2015.

The biggest news is that there are now seven more people committed to supporting the community, so look forward to seeing an even more active community this year! For example, there should be more MDM Collaborative Edition resources coming soon. It's my great pleasure to introduce Bob Maddison, Chitra Iyer, Dmitry Drinfeld, Doug Cowie, Mohana Kera, Nic Townsend and Shweta Shandilya...

Bob Maddison

Bob Maddison is our most experienced MDM Workbench developer. He is a senior software engineer based at the IBM Hursley Laboratory. Over the past twenty years he has been involved with a number of major IBM products including CICS, Java Virtual Machines and more recently with development of tooling for Master Data Management.
 

Chitra Iyer

"I am Chitra Ananthanarayanan.  After completing Masters in Computer Applications in 2004, I joined IBM.  I am working for Master Data Management since 2007.  I enjoy solving interesting puzzles that come up during product development through code, and learning new programming languages and databases.  Recently IBM Bluemix keeps me busy, and is helping me to learn services - Cloudant, Secure Connectors and Watson Cognitive applications.  I have started blogging on Big Data and on Bluemix.

I am fascinated to note that over the past ten years, the advent of applications for almost all services, has helped almost everyone save a lot of time,  Of these, the mobile applications deserve a special mention.  The direction in which the industry is moving now, to gather information through these applications and leverage it, will provide varied benefits.

I prefer to see the small businesses make a presence in the Internet and am sure this will happen quite soon.  

Big Data and Analytics interests me and I read posts on it, some of these posts are from links in Twitter.  I am available in Twitter @chitraaiyer"
 

Dmitry Drinfeld

"I've started my MDM journey as an intern back in 2010 and liked it so much that I could not bear to be away from it for too long, so I returned to the team as a full time developer in 2012. Since then I've been fortunate to work on major features of the product and provide continuous support to multiple high profile clients as a lab advocate. The topics of MDM, secure engineering and big data are near and dear to my heart and I am always ready to share my expertise and learn new things! Beyond that I've been interested in all things tech ever since I can remember. Everything from wearable tech to mainframes fascinates me. And the true magic unveils when you start to understand the inner workings and complexities behind it all. One thing I've always found to be extremely important in which ever task I am undertaking is the presence of a challenge. Luckily, with our ever evolving technology those are abundant :) ."
 

Doug Cowie

Doug Cowie is a software engineer on the MDM Application Toolkit team at IBM's Hursley labs. He joined IBM after finishing his Master's degree at the University of Bristol, and has previously worked on the User Interface Generator and other projects.
 

Mohana Kera

Mohana Kera has more than 15 years of in-depth experience in architecture, design, development and implementation of software solutions. He has been working at IBM for the last 10 years, primarily on InfoSphere MDM Collaborative Edition(MDM CE). Prior to that, he has worked on developing Business Process Management solutions. He has in-depth experience with all aspects of MDM CE and was the development lead for Java API interfaces of the system. He has published several technotes, developerWorks articles, provided customer training on Java APIs, and has actively worked in developing the content for IBM Knowledge Center around MDM CE Java APIs. He is passionate about latest technology trends, blogging, social media and an active user of the social media.
Twitter handle: @mohkera
LinkedIn: Mohana Kera
 

Nic Townsend

Q. How long have you been working with MDM?
A: 3.5 years

Q: What did you do before that?
A: Studying CompSci at University of Warwick

Q: What inspires you in your work?
A: Being able to architect solutions as a team rather than receiving a strict specification.

Q: What are you passionate about?
A: Mobile, IoT and wearables

Q: If you were stuck on a technology deprived island, what single technology could you not live without?
A: Smartphone (assuming signal reaches the island, and it has electricity)

Q: What book are you currently reading?
A: Games People Play by Eric Berne

Q: What has been your biggest surprise you have witnessed in the technology industry?
A: Smartphones becoming cloud based for applications

Q: Is there any technology that you think should get more respect and adoption but does not?
A: VR (oculus rift) etc with haptic feedback for more than just gaming

Q: What is your favorite technology that fizzled or failed to live up to the hype?
A: Kinect/PS Eye for gaming

Q: Any new technologies that you think are about to break into the big time?
A: Embedded/tattoo tech

Q: What future technology would make your life easier?
A: Driverless cars

Q: How do you prefer to find answers to your questions?
A: Google - typically then linking to stack overflow/wikipedia etc.

Q: What are some of your favorite websites/feeds/twitter accounts to follow?
A: Gizmodo, Wired, Engadget

Q: Where can we find you on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, and other social spaces?
A: @nict0wnsend
 

Shweta Shandilya

Shweta Shandilya is a development manager working in IBM's India Software Lab having joined IBM through the Trigo acquisition in 2004. Shweta leads a team of install developers and blogs about technology, MDM, and big data.

Something to look out for later in the year is a live video tech talk. The exact details, including the topic, are still to be confirmed but it should be a great opportunity for more interaction with the community.

As usual, there will be more articles and blog posts over the year but if there is anything else you would like to see, please let us know. Or, better yet, please join in and get involved- it's your community!