I am a technologist with many years professional experience developing & running world-class projects in a number of sectors including finance, gaming, media and third-sector.

My main technical interests are high-performance, scalable architectures & applying cutting-edge tech to provide competitive advantage.

My other driving passion is the creation and development of technical communities - from mentoring and developing junior developers, to running focused, agile development teams, through to organising international events.

I help to organise the London Java Community over 5000 developers, one of the largest Java user groups in the world, and am the holder of a seat on the Java Community Process Executive Committee (the governing body for new Java standards).

I am the author of 5 technical books, including the new edition of "Java in a Nutshell" (O'Reilly 2014) and the new "Optimizing Java" (O'Reilly). I write news and features for a number of magazines and websites. I am an award-winning speaker at technical conferences worldwide and a community leader in the Java / JVM worlds. I was made a Java Champion in 2013, and have won the Rock Star Speaker award 3 times.

Specialties: Performance Analysis & Tuning, Low Latency, Financial IT, Java, Messaging Systems, Mentoring, Staff Development, Community Management, FX, Listed Derivatives, F&O, Technical Architecture