Robert Burrell Donkin

Robert Burrell Donkin

Recovering Agilist, Open Sourceror, Emeritus Apache Member, Blogger; Developer: Java += Ruby, JavaScript and Python

Location
Bradford, United Kingdom
Industry
Computer Software

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Robert Burrell Donkin's Overview

Current

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Past

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Education
  • The University of Manchester
  • University of Warwick
  • University of Warwick
  • Titus Salt School

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Recommendations

3 people have recommended Robert Burrell

Connections

407 connections

Websites

Robert Burrell Donkin's Summary

As summer 2012 approach, I'm glad to say that I've taken the next step in my recovery: back to commercial software development. It's good to be back.

I'm still working hard on the physiotherapy, with three treatments sessions a week and several hours of exercise each day, to build up typing time outside work.

To learn more about how I arrived here, read on...

In 2009, when I decided to take a break to start studying my second masters (this time in Advanced Computer Science), I hoped for new ideas, new experiences and new challenges. Though the journey turned out to be longer (and more painful) than I expected, looking back now there's no reason for me to be disappointed on these counts.

University at Manchester in 2009 was very different to Warwick in the 1990s. This was my time studying academic computer science and getting up to speed on the semantic web and the logics behind, machine learning, and the future of multi-core software and hardware was most definitely a steep curve but learning from a team of leading researchers made all the hard work a pleasure.

Forcing me away from the keyboard opened up new opportunities to get involved: I helped teach Agile to Masters students, shared knowledge with local technology groups, traveled around England for grassroots technology events, recorded over a hundred short, unedited videos and read over fifty papers on speech recognition. Working hard at my physiotherapy, building my typing from nothing back to over 9 hours a day, has - I think - tempered my enthusiasm and passion with more patience and discipline.

Specialties

- agile and open source methods, principles, techniques and tools

- enterprise and internet object-oriented development, design and architecture

- concurrent, multi-threaded and distributed Java: Swing, J2SE and J2EE

- build, release and delivery integration, versioning and automation

- early stage software projects, innovation, start-ups

- coaching, training and technical leadership

Robert Burrell Donkin's Experience

Lead Agilist

Hedtek Ltd

Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry

February 2012 – Present (5 months) Manchester, United Kingdom

The Hedtek team specialises in short and interesting Agile projects, and loves Ruby on Rails best but can call on a wide range of development skills including Java, JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3. Hedtek plays well with any Agile method but leans towards Kanban.

If you have an interesting development challenge, get in touch with the Hedtek team...

Experiences
- Ruby
- Rails
- Git
- JavaScript
- CoffeeScript
- JQuery
- Jasmine
- HTML5
- HAML
- CSS3
- Chef (DevOps)
- DSpace (Java)
- Kanban

Committee Member, James PMC

The Apache Software Foundation

Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry

April 2007 – Present (5 years 3 months)

Elected to the project management committee in 2007.

I'm interested in intelligent personal information management - finding smart ways to make sense of the data flood faced by people. This led me to email, and to look for a modular, programmable open source platform for experimentation. James - and it's development community - had potential. I was draw in, far beyond my original intentions. We worked hard together to grow our community, and our software. As well as implementing IMAP and improving our SMTP, we factored out a loosely coupled component based architecture and rewired James for modern, lightweight dependency injection containers. The newly reusable libraries encouraged experts on specific aspects to join our community. Kudos to everyone involved.

I'm yet to reach my original destination but my journey has been worthwhile.

Experiences
- IMAP
- SIEVE
- MIME parsing (SAX, DOM and pull)
- SMTP
- POP3
- Modularisation
- Refactoring
- Inversion of Control
- Separation of Concerns
- Dependency Injection
- Message driven architecture
- Open standards
- Protocol implementation
- Concurrency
- Community building
- Parser generation with JavaCC
- Domain specific languages
- Cryptography
- SMIME
- OpenPGP
- Spring
- Maven

Emertius Member

The Apache Software Foundation

Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry

July 2005 – Present (7 years)

Elected a Member of The Apache Software Foundation in July 2005. Emeritus from February 2012.

With over 50 projects, 2500 committers and a top 1000 site, The Apache Software Foundation is a major non-profit open source software foundry. Apache HTTPD (the world's more popular web server by volume) was the first (and is perhaps the most famous) project but many other Apache projects are well known (including Ant, Axis, Hadoop, Harmony, Lucene, Maven and Tomcat). Perhaps less widely understood is that this success arises from an open, community led development philosophy and a process-light, socially-dense organisational structure. New members are elected by the existing membership on the basis of their contributions to Apache.

Becoming a Member meant a lot to me.

Experiences
- Open source governance
- Socially dense, process light organisations
- Community driven documentation
- Process codification
- Consensus building
- Open development

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Committer

The Apache Software Foundation

Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry

February 2001 – Present (11 years 5 months)

First elected a committer in 2001, for the Jakarta project.

I've contributed to a variety of products in a range of projects, most notably in the first phase of the (then Jakarta) Commons. The Apache Commons project now houses some of the worlds most widely installed open source software. The way that this happened interests me. The successful recipe was a broad and open development community coding tightly and clearly scoped micro-libraries collaborating through one noisy list. Socially dense but process light.

Open development at Apache was a major part of my life in the '00s.

Experiences
- Open development philosophy
- Open source software
- Open source release management
- Open standards
- Open API design
- Collaborative documentation
- Java
- XML, XSLT, SAX, DTD, JAXB, XML Schema
- Eclipse
- Ant and Maven
- CVS and Subversion
- Teamwork
- TDD with JUnit
- BDD with JMock
- Cryptography
- OpenPGP
- Design Patterns
- Editing (news)

Freelance

itstechupnorth.me.uk (Self-employed)

Self-Employed; Myself Only; Computer Software industry

2010 – February 2012 (2 years) Bradford, United Kingdom

The summer of '10 should have seen me hard at work on my masters project, applying machine learning to virtual machines. Instead, I found myself on medical leave. In the autumn, I accepted that I would be unable to complete the course and settled for a Diploma (with Distinction). '11 brought more lessons in patience and discipline (tempering my passion and enthusiasm) with lots of physiotherapy, building back the computer time.

By the end of 2011, I celebrated reaching 9 hours per day by offer a limited number of days for charity http://tinyurl.com/cphhphv.

Charity Days
- Agile Coaching [http://tinyurl.com/c8fsa2d] (Scrum basics)
- Maven Training [http://tinyurl.com/cb6bpx5]

By February 2012, my recovery allowed me to move back into a development team with my friends over at Hedtek. Read the story on http://itstechupnorth.me.uk

Attendee and Speaker

Agile Yorkshire

2007 – February 2012 (5 years)

Agile Yorkshire is a great local technology community.

I've spoken on Test Doubles, paired with Mark van Harmelen to deliver a hands on workshop on retrospectives and given short talks on facilitation, timeboxing and The Pomodoro Technique.

I have a lot of fun over the years, and made some great friends but getting back to work meant moving on.

Committee Member, Incubator PMC

The Apache Software Foundation

Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry

May 2006 – February 2012 (5 years 10 months)

Elected to the project management committee in 2006. Resigned in 2012.

From the outside, the most visible part of bringing a project to Apache is the due diligence - demonstrating code provenance, adopting the Apache License and ensuring compliance with license compatibility policies. Some might be fooled into thinking that it's also the most important part. But Apache values community over code. Learning, adopting and (hopefully) enriching the open development culture here at Apache is essential for graduation. Achieving a harmonious balance between these aspects interests me.

Energy consuming fun.

Experiences
- Mentoring
- Community building
- Community driven documentation
- Process codification
- Consensus building
- Open source governance
- Code provenance

Committee Member, Jakarta PMC

The Apache Software Foundation

Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry

January 2003 – December 2011 (9 years)

Elected to the project management committee in 2003.

For a few years in the early '00s, the Jakarta project felt like the epicenter of the exploding Java universe. Many influential and popular products (including Ant, Tomcat, Lucene, Struts, Maven, Poi and Commons) were forged in this fire. Too much, too fast. It couldn't last, and didn't. I was elected at the start of the effort to introduce a more sustainable and representative structure. To allow its contained components to grow and mature, the Jakarta project disassembled itself. Quite appropriate for a community wedded to separation of concerns, inversion of control and loose coupling. I think this change turned out well.

Jakarta is now quietly fading away but my memories remain.

Experiences
- Open source governance
- Diplomacy
- Process codification
- Consensus building

Demonstrator

University of Manchester

Educational Institution; 10,001+ employees; Research industry

September 2010 – November 2010 (3 months)

Fun teaching agile teamwork to masters students.

The invitation from Dr Mark van Harmelen to help deliver the agile component of the Software Engineering course unit presented me with a great opportunity to set aside my frustrations and dive again into agile teamwork. We share a passion for educational revolution, which made this course a particularly exciting experience. The students started as 44 individuals facing cultural, linguistic and technical challenges. After an intense 6 weeks, they left as 8 agile development teams.

I'm proud of the effort, engagement and achievement of the students.

Experiences
- Teaching
- Coaching
- Facilitation
- Scrum
- Retrospectives
- User stories
- Pair Programming
- Teamwork
- Refactoring
- Git
- TDD and BDD

Committee Member, Legal Affairs

The Apache Software Foundation

Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry

March 2007 – April 2010 (3 years 2 months)

A founding member of the Legal Affairs committee.

Code provenance and license compatibility may not be the most glamorous subjects but are essential to the smooth running of an open source foundation. The Apache Software License is permissive, encouraging a rich downstream license ecology. This means more legal complexity, paperwork and policy than is typically the case for reciprocal licenses. Interests in open source release management, open standards, process codification and digital rights led me to become a regular contributor to the legal-discuss mailing list. Legal Affairs was create to help the community develop and document policy and guidance. When the committee formed, I was asked to join.

My time taught me a lot about diplomacy, perhaps too often the hard way.

Experiences
- Open source governance
- Process codification
- Consensus building
- Open policy development
- Diplomacy
- Intellectual property for open source

Senior Consultant

Retail Express

Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry

May 2003 – March 2009 (5 years 11 months)

Innovative JEE software for retailers in an agile environment.

To give a flavour, I'll outline my last project. A multi-disciplinary, mixed experience agile team used test driven development (TDD) and behaviour driven development (BDD) to develop a high performance, data rich forecasting module. A responsive, multi-threaded asynchronous Swing screen connected through heavily parallel RMI to JEE middleware. This combined RDBMS data (accessed using Kodo JPA) with fresh calculations from map reduce forecasting analytics. Sounds complex, and it was - but the art lay in presenting the user with a simple, cohesive and response interface to this rich, high volume data. An intense experience but we pulled together and hit the release window.

Life at a start-up was an exciting roller-coaster.

Experiences
- Agile
- Extreme Programming
- Pair Programming
- Mentoring
- Teamwork
- Offshore collaboration
- Agile UML
- Design Patterns
- Java
- Python and Groovy (scripting)
- Swing (multi-threaded, HMVC)
- JEE on Weblogic and WebSphere (EJB, JMS, JCA)
- SOAP over HTTP with WSDL on Axis 1 and ActiveSOAP
- CVS then Subversion
- Kodo JDO against Oracle, DB2 and some MySQL
- IoC with PicoContainer
- Ant with CruiseControl
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Solaris
- Ubuntu Linux
- VMWare
- TDD with JUnit
- BDD with JMock
- Apache Tomcat and Jetty
- AOP with XDoclet and JavaAssist
- XML, XSLT and XmlBeans
- HTML and CSS with Struts
- Performance tuning with JProfiler
- MapReduce with GridGain

Technical Reviewer

Manning Publications Co.

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Publishing industry

2004 – 2004 (less than a year)

Reviewed "Jakarta Commons Online Bookshelf" by Vikram Goyal.

Over the years, I've contributed a quantity of documentation for open source projects. It's one of the best ways to learn a technology but this was the first time I've been involved in something more substantial and systematic.

I respect the effort and energy required to produce a book.

System Development Engineer

Du Maurier Limited

2001 – 2003 (2 years)

Innovative J2EE for retailers developed in a small, distributed team.

We developed a novel, internet enabled point of sale system, with accompanying management intranet. Java and J2EE feels much more comfortable to me than Visual Basic. This was a fine opportunity to switch the language used in my day job.

Distribution is cool but the physicality of a co-located agile team is special.

Experiences
- Java
- Swing
- J2EE (EJB, JMS, JSP and Servlets) on JBoss
- HTML (some JavaScript)
- XML and XSLT
- JDBC and SQL to MySQL RDBMS
- Mandrake Linux
- Ant
- CVS
- OpenLDAP
- Apache HTTPD
- Distributed development
- Design Patterns

Consultant

UniPro

2000 – 2001 (1 year)

Retention in a skeleton team gave me the chance to sample new skills.

UniPro experienced cash flow difficulties at product roll out. The group was saved by a reorganization with a downsized UK presence. We completed the existing contract, maintained the infrastructure and transferred operations to South Africa.

Lots of work but the final sign off was a satisfying moment.

Experiences
- Training
- Mentoring
- Customer support
- NT (administration)
- Oracle (administration)
- Red Hat Linux (administration)
- Network (administration)
- Visual Basic (VB)
- Object oriented programming (OOP)
- Offshore collaboration

Software Engineer

UniPro

1998 – 2000 (2 years)

Human resources software in an small, accredited agile software house.

My love of small team agile development started here. We established, developed and documented a process using the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM). We presented this to the ISO9000 inspectors and regained our accreditation. The short cycle with weekly integration and feedback drove up quality from a young and inexperienced development team. On the coding side, I focussed on developing a generative object relational framework, the core module system and build tooling but with exposure to a variety of other technologies and techniques. Variety is one of the things I like about working for small companies.

Good times for me.

Experiences
- ISO9000 accreditation
- Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
- Visual Basic (VB)
- Object oriented programming (OOP)
- Object relational (OR) mapping using ADO
- SQL and PL/SQL against Oracle RDBMS
- XML, XSLT, SAX and DOM
- HTTP and HTML
- Interviewing

Trainee Visual Basic Programmer

UniPro

1998 – 1998 (less than a year)

Began to learn commercial development on the job in a small software house focussed on Human Resources.

I knew Spectrum BASIC so Visual Basic came easily.

Learnt
- Visual Basic (VB)
- Object oriented programming (OOP)
- Object relational (OR) mapping using ADO
- SQL and PL/SQL against Oracle RDBMS

Milkman

A Local Milkman

1996 – 1997 (1 year)

Hard graft, early start but good mates.

The post-industrial Bradford of the '90s was bleak. I was glad to find part time work driving and delivering.

I started reading more history and taught myself to program my old Mac using Objective-C. Apple's thinking about event driven applications, and in particular GUIs, is still an influence.

Supervisor

University of Warwick

Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry

September 1994 – April 1995 (8 months)

Led small group tutorials for undergraduates.

The Mathematics Institute arranged for weekly small group tutorials (2-3 students) to supplement the personal tutor system. I had lots of fun explaining ideas and helping with exercises.

Robert Burrell Donkin's Courses

  • BSc, Mathematics

    University of Warwick

    • Algebraic Topology
    • Catastrophy Theory
    • Lie Algebras
    • Group Theory
    • Dynamic Systems
    • Commutative Algebra
    • Geometry of Curves and Surfaces
    • Fractal Geometry
    • Development of Mathematical Concepts
    • Complex Analysis
    • Topics In Algebra
    • Geometry and Topology
    • Metric Spaces
    • Differentiation
    • Galois Theory
    • Geometric Integration
    • Qualitative Theory of ODEs
    • Modelling Natures Non-Linearity
    • Russian For Scientists
    • Problem Solving
    • Functional Programming
    • Relativity
    • Quantum Mechanics
    • Experimental Mathematics

  • Postgraduate Diploma, Advanced Computer Science

    The University of Manchester

    • Future Multi-Core Computing (COMP60011)
    • Automated Reasoning (COMP60121)
    • Knowledge, Representation and Reasoning (COMP60161)
    • Machine Learning (COMP60431)
    • Semi-Structured Data and the Web (COMP60372)
    • The Semantic Web: Ontologies and OWL (COMP60462)

  • MSc, Interdisciplinary Mathematics

    University of Warwick

    • Geometric Group Theory (MA7150)
    • Profinite Group Theory (MA7190)
    • The Construction Of Mathematical Knowledge
    • Advanced Mathematical Thinking

Robert Burrell Donkin's Education

The University of Manchester

Postgraduate Diploma, Advanced Computer Science

2009 – 2010

Graduated with Distinction.

When I resigned to take a break to study a Masters in a leading school in a top 50 (global) university, I expected a challenge and I got one. Advanced Computer Science is a great course but a really intense one. Towards the end of the first semester, I started developing hand and wrist issues. These forced me to take medical leave towards the end of Semester Two. At the end of autumn 2010, I accepted my physical incapacity and the Diploma.

Semester One 88.75% (first in year)
- Automated Reasoning 88%
- Future Multi-Core Computing 85%
- Knowledge, Representation and Reasoning 88%
- Machine Learning 94%

Semester Two (incomplete)
- Semi-Structured Data And The Web
- The Semantic Web: Ontologies And OWL

Activities and Societies: Cricket, Tai Chi, Capoeira (Afro-Brazillian martial art), Squash (beginner), The Burlington Society (postgraduates), Swimming, Pilates

University of Warwick

MSc, Interdisciplinary Mathematics

1994 – 1995

Graduated with Distinction.

How people learn mathematics interests me, and why many find the subject tough when a few find it easy. My undergraduate scores won an EPSRC Studentship, and the IMRP programme offered a chance to add mathematical education into the mix. Warwick's specialist education library allowed me to indulge interests in psychology, sociology and anthropology.

Geometric Group Theory 73% (1 alpha)
Profinite Group Theory 92% (4 alpha)
The Construction of Mathematical Knowledge 73%
Advanced Mathematical Thinking 72%

Dissertation: Study on the Thinking of Mathematicians
Supervisor: David Tall

Until I tried it, I never appreciated the challenge of research. Organising, recording, transcribing and analysing semi-structured interviews (using qualitative methods drawn from psychology, sociology and anthropology) was almost - but not quite - too much.

An intense experience.

Personal Tutors - Stewart Stonehewer (maths) and Eddie Gray (education)

Activities and Societies: Rugby League

University of Warwick

BSc, Mathematics

1991 – 1994

Graduated with honours, 1st class.

For as long as I can remember, maths has come easily to me. It seemed the natural subject for me to study. The open, friendly atmosphere of the Mathematics Institute at Warwick attracted me, and the new mathematics studied and researched there. I was fortunate to be offered a place here at my first choice.

I enjoyed my time.

First Year 80.4%
Second Year 71.02%
Final Year 79.31%

Some Areas of Study
- Algebra and Group Theory
- Analysis
- Catastrophe Theory, Dynamic Systems and Fractal Geometry
- Geometry, Topology and Metric Spaces
- Problem Solving and the Development Of Mathematical Concepts
- Functional Programming
- Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

Personal Tutor - John Rawnsley

Activities and Societies: Rugby League (player and secretary), Nam Pai Chuan (martial artist and treasurer)

Titus Salt School

Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Russian, Biology, CDT, English, Geography, Music

1986 – 1991

Comprehensively educated across the river and park from historic Saltaire.

'91 5 A Levels@A
- Chemistry
- Further Mathematics
- General Studies
- Mathematics (distinction in special paper)
- Physics (grade 2 in special paper)

'90 GCSE General Studies@A

'89 GCSE B@Russian, 8@A
- Biology
- CDT
- Chemistry
- English
- Geography
- Mathematics
- Music
- Physics

Educated metaphorically - if not figuratively - in the shadows of a mill. Thanks to the hard work of my teachers in a sometimes trying environment, I had a good education.

Activities and Societies: music, brass band (player), Euphonium (player), woodwork, science fiction and fantasy (reader watcher and roleplayer), programming (BASIC and Z80 assembler), science (popular), chess, rugby league, karate, swimming

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