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I had a nice “lie in” this morning and after a wonderful breakfast and a couple of cups of tea we went off to “Barton on Sea” to wander along the ocean with Archie, the Johnson’s terrier. When we got back Sue had prepared a Sunday roast, and when we had finished Craig showed up to drive us up to London.
It is amazing what a wrong turn or two will do to you in a city like London, but we managed to make it to Camden Lock and to find our hotel. This is David’s first trip to London, so after checking in we did a real quick site-seeing tour and we ended up at a Chinese restaurant near Leicester Square (it was just okay, but the company was nice). The picture is of me at Trafalgar Square with Lord Nelson in the background. Then we went back to the hotel to prepare for tomorrow’s OpenNMS seminar. Should be fun. |
Month: May 2008
Europe 2008: Lyndhurst
I had forgotten how unpleasant the flight to England could be. I swear that American has removed another inch of legroom in coach (although business class now has “lay flat” beds), or maybe it was because the seat next to me had a person in it (which is rare on this flight), but I was pretty uncomfortable. The fact that the video service was unavailable was a pain too.
But we managed.
We landed at Terminal 3 in Heathrow. I thought since the service was new that it would be Terminal 5, but I assume that BA has taken all of those gates and thus American was able to get one of their older ones. It literally took less than 10 minutes for David and I to get through customs and to get our bags (I guess that getting our bags is a plus about Terminal 3). Martin met us at the airport and drove us to his house in Lyndhurst.
Lyndhurst is in the “New Forest,” and since it was founded in 1066 by William the Conquerer, “new” is a relative term. It’s a delightful place, and a great way to get acclimated to England.
We wandered around the village for a bit, and visited the grave of Alice Liddell, the “Alice” of Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland“. We also stopped by one of the two automobile dealerships in town, this one specializing in Ferrari and Maserati. I haven’t decided which one I plan to buy when OpenNMS becomes a large company with hundreds of millions in revenue (grin). We also stopped by a tea shop called the “Pages of Lyndhurst” where I tasted “scrumpy” for the first time. It’s a carbonated cider-like beverage made from apples.
Then we had time for a light lunch and even though I’d been downing copious amounts of tea it was time for a nap.
That evening (after watching Doctor Who) we went down the road to Bank and The Oak. I really like this pub and the combination of great company, good food and nice beer made for a perfect evening. Along with Martin and his wife Susan, we were joined by their son Tom, Bob Potter and his fiancé Wendy, and Craig Gallen (OGP). Bob and Martin both work at Arqiva, which is a large communications company in the UK that we work with (and is how I met Martin in the first place).
Tom, Bob, Wendy, Me, David, Martin, Sue and Craig
We watched a little television when we got back – a show called “Have I Got News for You“. It was sort of a televised version of “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me“. The host, Bill Bailey, reminded me a lot of Chris Dibona. Then it was time for bed.
Separated at Birth? Bill Bailey and Chris Dibona
Images yoinked from the web
Europe 2008: And So It Begins
It’s been a busy yet fun week in OpenNMS-land. We got 1.5.91 out the door, one of our old clients is doing really well with their on-line business, and we signed up a record number of new ones.
So now David and I are off to Europe for two weeks. Ah, the jet-setting life of an open source maintainer: first class all the way.
Not. (grin)
There are two ways to increase the money you make in a business: sell more or spend less. We’ve always taken the “spend less” bit to heart, so when we decided to attend the TM Forum’s conference in Nice, France, we decided to maximize the value of the plane ticket to Europe by adding on a week of seminars. Travel within Europe is pretty inexpensive, even in US dollars, so it was just an incremental cost to do this.
It will be a lot of coach-class air travel and sharing hotel rooms (apparently in Europe if two men share a hotel room it means they are gay – we’re not gay [not that there’s anything wrong with that], just cheap).
The “first class” part will be seeing many old friends and making new ones. It was only through the OpenNMS community that we were able to get this thing together in first place, and it is due to their kind nature that we’ll be able to have a really fun trip.
The first stop will be Lyndhurst, Hampshire, England. My friend Martin is picking us up at Heathrow and driving us down (train service from LHR sucks – I wish American still flew into Gatwick). The weather looks grand, and we’re getting a bunch of people together at my favorite pub in the whole country.
My plan is to keep the blog updated as much as possible, but time and Internet availability may limit that to some degree. If you’re coming to one of our seminars, hope to see you then.
How to Protect a US$1 Billion Product Line
It seems like every day I find out about a new company or new organization that is using OpenNMS, and whether they purchase services for it or not I am just happy that people find it useful.
A lot of the advocacy for the project comes from the community itself, and that is one reason why we strive to keep the project side of OpenNMS separate from the commercial side. To me a user is a user, someone finding benefit from our work, whether or not they actually pay any money. The power of free and open source software is only realized when the software is truly free and open.
It is probably that attitude that also keeps us from sending out a press release every time we get a new commercial client. I am humbled by the pedigree of our client list, and I just feel a little uncomfortable advertising it. This doesn’t mean we won’t – I thought it was pretty cool when IdleAire chose OpenNMS mainly because I really like their product – but on the whole we prefer to be discreet.
This morning I was reading the news and I came across an article on CNN about Papa Johns Pizza. They just reached a milestone of US$1 billion in online sales. They were the first major chain to set up online ordering and it has really paid off.
And they use OpenNMS to insure it works.
Papa Johns has been an OpenNMS client for over three years. I really like those guys, and I’ve even been out to Louisville once. I can’t talk too much about their network (NDA) but they’ve really thought out this whole online ordering process and they can even deal with remote areas without broadband. Plus, I like their product, and I assume they like OpenNMS since they have been using it for so long.
Now if we can just get oven temperature into OpenNMS we’ll be set (grin).
While I was very much aware of how important online ordering was to their business, the “one billion” number was still a bit shocking to me. But even more shocking was the thought that we are indirectly responsible for protecting that service. It kind of brings home the fact that network management is just not some nice add-on but is integral to the bottom line.
OpenNMS often doesn’t get the respect I think it deserves, but the fact is that the project has been around for over 8 years and has reached a certain level of maturity and robustness. Enterprises trust it, and they trust our company to support it. Since commercial support is available, it can be (and has been) deployed in mission critical situations.
So congratulations to PJI for hitting this milestone. I hope that OpenNMS will insure they reach two billion quickly. Now if they would only open a Papa Johns in Pittsboro I could help with that.
[UPDATE: Similar story on Yahoo.]