Eight (8!) Years on the Spring Team
I'll never forget it. I was sat at my desk at the offices of Shopzilla in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California talking to then Spring Integration lead (he now runs the Riff project) Mark Fisher about some code I'd contributed. I'd been working with, and for, him for a while on Spring Integration since I was enamored with enterprise application integration and, it seemed to me, Spring Integration was the technology to learn and invest in. A propos to nothing, he volunteered that there was this new job opening for a "developer advocate," and suggested that I should perhaps apply. Now, I'd only ever known James Ward in this role and it seemed to me that I could never do what James Ward did. His wisdom and patience were matched only by his charisma. The guy's a rockstar!
