My 2010

In 2010 I have posted less entries in this blog, relative to 2008 and 2009, 128 postings, roughly once every three days. Maybe I've been busier, and maybe I've been lazier - probably the combination of these two. 

The happiest day of the year was surprisingly the day in August when I've returned from a family vacation in western Canada and found two things that got by mail:   

12 copies of the book EPIA that fresh out of press (I have already gave 10 of them as a present, left 2 for myself - one at home and one in the office); the EPIA book was a major task for 18 months, so I was relieved to see it in print, at some points it fell like never-ending saga. 

 

The second item that arrived it the same day is a plaque designating the fact that I've received an IBM corporate award, which is the highest award that IBM gives,  the order of the events was somewhat funny: first I got the plaque in the mail, two weeks later I got a letter signed by IBM's CEO, which notifying me that I am receiving the award, two weeks later than the list of awards was publicly published, and then after six more weeks there was the award granting ceremony, giving me again the plaque I got in August.

Another notable event was the Dagstuhl seminar on event processing in May 2010.   We are now in the final phase of editing the end result of this team work.  Dagstuhl is a wonderful place, and we had a very good team there spending  5 days in dealing with the present and future of event processing.

I had some trips abroad - both business and pleasure.   Unlike most years I spent only four days in the USA in October, for the OMG financial market conference,  spent two and half weeks in a family vacation in Western Canada,   here is a picture with my daughter Daphna somewhere in the Canadian Rockies.

Another trip was to VLDB in Singapore, with a couple of days vacation in Hong-Kong on the way, and several days vacation in Singapore.

Here is a picture from Hong-Kong's wax museum,  where I am photographed with an old friend.

Here are two pictures from Singapore, one from a zoo that resides in a rain-forest in the northern part of the island, and the second in a spa where you can get your feet cleaned by fish

Another conference I have participated in was DEBS 2010 in Cambridge, UK.

 This year I have also started the work on a new project that deals with proactive computing, and will write more about in in 2011.    

Overall --  interesting year,  the leaves a lot of unfinished challenges for the future.