I there, I’m Patrick and I am a new team member of Cake Solutions where I will be working on the Java development team.
I am currently undergoing a training program to improve my skills in Java, MVC patterns and inversion Control. I am also working on migrating the old Variety Club website to new Object oriented Zend Framework with PayPal.

I arrived back on Tuesday the 15th after an extended Christmas break (the longest time I have been away from work since I was at school!) and less than 12 hours later arrived for the Spring Exchange 2008 conference in London. This was an important day for Cake for two reasons, so Cake was out in force with Ani, Aleksa and Jan supporting me.

Firstly we officially launched an exciting business partnership with DeCare systems to collaborate on projects in the UK. Combining our skills and geographical locations will enable us to provide the best possible service to our clients. Details of the partnership can be found at Cake/DeCare partnership.

Secondly we used the conference for the launch of a Consortium, Content Unlimlted, of which Cake is a founding member. Ben Whittam-Smith and DeCare make up the rest of the Consortium. Content Unlimited is formed around a jointly developed business information management system, a solution to help enterprises get closer to their customers by taking a unique approach of merging document management with contact management. The establishment of the partnership formalises and expands an earlier initiative in which the members designed and developed this system for the UK Trade & Investment government agency. The custom-built application is used across its network of 2,300 staff and advisors internally (at department level) and externally (by all overseas embassies) to locate up to date, attributable and accurate information. The system facilitates a continuous interaction between content and contacts, to the mutual benefit of both, and to the benefit of the public perception of the organisation. Details of the product can be found at, White Paper.

I also took the opportunity to speak to members of the SpringSource team about certifying the UK Trade and Investment system making it the first SpringSource certified system.

We have said goodbye to Jess who has left to pursue an ambition of working in London and we will be saying hello to Andrew Chalkley who will be joining us us as a Java developer on the 4th of February. Andrew brings a number of additional skills such as Ajax, RubyonRails, expert cc skills and expert OOP PHP skills.

I travel to London tomorrow for my quarterly Strategic Coach course on Friday which I will report on in my next post. One of the Cake’s team New Years resolutions is to make more frequent posts to our blog, it is after all the most viewed area of our website.

Finally my first post.

It comes after sleepless night watching Australian Open (Djokovic and Ivanovic joined Jankovic in the semis, and in style, was worth it:)).

Some interesting times ahead, with Pro Spring 2.5 book work nearing the end, and few new projects coming.

I am currently working on some JMX management on Weblogic 9.2, will keep you posted how it goes.

Hopefully this is just a start of regular blog posting for me.

See you soon!