It's been a while since I've had a chance to sit back and put some of my thoughts to (e)paper. I don't know quite what it is but for the past few months (even before 2014 began) I've been snowed under with this or that. I know some of this is down to our (Red Hat/JBoss) success meaning that I'm being pulled in many different directions so it's definitely a good thing in that regard. But it's past time for me to make more time and at least write about some of the things we're planning for Summit/DevNation this year. Now of course I won't go into much detail or I'll spoil the surprises, but here's a taster:

• Summit Keynote: once again JBoss will be kicking off the keynotes at Summit and once again we'll be running a demo with a large amount of audience participation. Prizes will also be available but you'll have to wait until the keynote to find out what and how they can be received. It never fails to surprise me how much effort goes into the keynote, with the demo taking up a lot of time and effort from some of our key engineers. All I can say is that there'll be an IoT theme to this!
• Summit session: I'm presentation and moderating a session on the future of enterprise middleware. This should be a very participatory session so come along and hear what we think but also make sure we hear what you think!
• DevNation BOF: Scott Stark and I (mainly Scott!) will be working with ARM presenters to talk about JBoss, IoT, CoAP etc. and then have attendees try out some of these cool ideas. Come along!
• DevNation: there's a hacknight on the Wednesday evening with a number of things going on. One of them is an IoT themed event with ARM, and we'll also be trying to do some cool things with Raspberry Pis. We may even be giving away some of these devices on the night!
• Fuse@DevNation: we've got a few very special activities going on at the start of DevNation if you're interested in Fuse related projects and products!
• DevNation Party: 'Nuff said! Be there and if you find me maybe I'll buy you a drink or have a few surprise give-aways!

That's about it for now. Summit and DevNation will be very busy whether you're a presenter or an attendee. I hope to find time to put more thoughts to (e)paper soon on what we're doing in a number of areas, such as IoT, messaging etc.