Andrea Provaglio

Andrea is a independent consultant, mentor and author in the field of enterprise applications, Web applications, object-oriented programming and software design, with a special focus on the Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform.

He has about twenty years of professional experience; during that time he worked with a number of different technologies and platforms. He currently assists large corporations and financial institutions with building effective solutions using the J2EE technologies and principles; he also helps development teams to operate better as a group.

Andrea has been a frequent speaker at major international IT conferences (occasionally in front of audiences of 1000-2000 people) and contributed to a few books and publications. His activity is driven by his passion for languages and for sharing knowledge.

In 1999 Andrea received approval for a U.S. O-1 visa, for "extraordinary ability in Sciences". He moved to San Francisco in 1999 and worked as an associate of Bruce Eckel's MindView Inc. until the end of 2003. During that time, Andrea taught Bruce's and his own courses to a number of relevant companies and institutions in the U.S. and Canada (see below) and he was a regular speaker at major IT conferences (below). He moved back to Italy at the end of 2003 to continue his training and consulting business in Europe.

Between 2004 and 2007 one of his main clients was Unicredit – a major European bank. Andrea was the main provider of Java and J2EE training, on a population of about 300 students, and provided technical consulting on the bank's J2EE architectures.

Prior to his consulting and training career, Andrea worked as a professional developer for the industry and for research projects. Today he doesn't do contract programming anymore, but still enjoys writing code during his consulting jobs, or for projects he develops to experiment with the most recent technologies – projects that then become the basis of his seminars and presentations.

Along with Java, Andrea has experience in object-oriented analysis and design methods (UML, Design Patterns, CRC) and in other programming languages, including but not limited to: Ruby, C++, Python, Object Pascal, Smalltalk, Pascal, Fortran, C, PL/1 and some Assembler languages.

Andrea has also been using and teaching CORBA and, in a previous life, he was a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Solution Developer, helping his clients and students to get into the messy world of (D)COM(+)/OLE/ActiveX, Visual C++, ATL and MFC.

Clients

Among the others, Andrea has provided training and consulting services for these notable clients:

Finance

• Algorithmics Inc. (Toronto, Canada)
• Barclays Capital (London, UK)
• UniCredit Global Information Services (Italy)

Government

• Federal Reserve Bank (San Francisco, CA - USA)
• State of Alaska - Department of Revenue (Anchorage, AK - USA)
• CSI Piemonte (Turin, Italy)

Defense

• U.S. Army TACOM (Warren, MI - USA)

Insurance

• Coface Assicurazioni (Italy)

Manufacturing and Retail

• Datavantage Corp. (Cleveland, OH - USA)
• HK Systems, Inc. (Seattle, WA - USA)
• Procter & Gamble (Cincinnati, OH - USA)
• RR Donnelley (Chicago, IL - USA)
• Trane, Inc. (La Crosse, WI - USA)
• Armature Ltd. (Leeds, UK)

Software and Consulting

• Amaio Technologies (Prague, Czech Republic)
• OSI Consulting, Inc. (Costa Mesa, CA - USA)

Networking and Infrastructure

• Kabira, Inc. (San Rafael, CA - USA)
• Transdyn, Inc. (Pleasanton, CA - USA)
• WindRiver Systems (Alameda, CA - USA)
• Fabbrica Digitale, srl. (Casalmaggiore, Italy)

Short Bio

Andrea began his career as a trainer and consultant in 1990, and has since given hundreds of presentations and seminars. He has assisted a number of mid- and large-sized companies with object-oriented analysis, design and programming issues, especially during the adoption phase of the object-oriented paradigm. He has also given lectures at several conferences in Europe and the United States (see below).

In 2004 Andrea moved back to Italy after four years in the U.S. and he started working with large corporations and smaller companies, providing training and consulting on J2EE. He also started putting together a small and selected team of high-profile professionals, with whom Andrea is able to provide a wide range of services for his clients.

In 1996 he started his cooperation with Bruce Eckel for the development of training events. In the years from 1999 to 2003 Andrea has been teaching virtually all public and in-house Java classes for MindView Inc., Bruce Eckel's company. Specifically, he taught Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java Hands-on Seminar" and Andrea's "Java2 Enterprise Programming Seminar". Andrea also contributed a technical appendix to Bruce Eckel's best-selling book " Thinking in Java" and wrote the EJB chapter for "Thinking in Enterprise Java", currently under development.

From 1994 to 1999 Andrea has been part of the teaching staff at Mondadori Informatica Education (http://education.mondadori.it), the main Italian training company for Microsoft products. Andrea has taught many classes for Mondadori in ANSI C++, MFC/ATL, COM/ActiveX and Java. He also was the technical editor for the Italian translation of the Microsoft Press Book "Inside COM," and he wrote articles for the Italian edition of PCWeek.

In the years from 1992 to 1993 he worked with Borland Italia, giving several seminars nation-wide on Borland C++ development techniques, and providing technical on-site consulting to Borland clients.

From 1990 to 1992 he worked with the Institute of Phonetics and Dialectology of the Italian National Research Council (CNR; a government organization that promotes, co-ordinates and regulates scientific research and technological progress in Italy). He was chief of software development for two research projects: the first, founded by the EEC (ESPRIT-ACCOR 3279), studied co-articulation similarities in seven European languages; the second, a CNR Special Project, developed a Macintosh-based multimedia station to teach reading to normal and handicapped children.

From 1983 to 1990 he worked with Center for Computational Sonology of the Padua University, Italy, where among other activities he implemented a voice synthesizer on an IBM 370/MVS mainframe, and created several utilities for digital sound processing. He also taught classes on sound synthesis techniques, and on digital voice processing.

Presentations and public seminars

• Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) Events
  January 16th, 2008 in Johannesburg, South Africa
  JRuby: the benefits of mixing Java and Ruby
  January 17th, 2008 in Johannesburg, South Africa
  Social Networking and the New Internet Cultural Trends
  January 29th, 2008 in Cape Town, South Africa
  JRuby: the benefits of mixing Java and Ruby
• Polish Java User Group (PJUG)
  December 5, 2007 in Krakow, Poland
  Seeing Aspects in Web Application Architectures
• Software Development West 2003
  March 24-28 2003 in Santa Clara, CA
  Full-day Hands-on EJB Tutorial
  Java Data Objects for the Enterprise presentation
• Software Development West 2002
  April 22-26, 2002 in San Jose, CA
  Java Data Objects for the Enterprise presentation
• Software Development East 2000
  October 30-November 3, 2000 in Washington, DC
  Python tutorial, Python/COM presentation, Java multithreading presentation.
• Windows Professionals Conference Spring 2000
  May 9-11, 2000, in Milan, Italy
  COM Multithreading, Java/COM and Python/COM presentations.
• Software Development West 2000
  March 19-24, 2000 in San Jose, CA
  Java/CORBA tutorial, Python tutorial, Python/COM/CORBA presentation, Java multithreading presentation.
• DevWeek 2000
  February 14-18, 2000 in London, UK
  Five Java/CORBA presentations.
• Software Development East 99
  November 8-12, 1999 in Washington, DC
  Two day Java/CORBA tutorial. Two Java presentations.
• Windows Professionals Conference 99
  October 5-8, 1999 in Milan, Italy
  Four COM/COM+ presentations.
• WEB Conference 99
  June 27-28, 1999 in San Francisco, CA
  Two day Java pre-conference tutorial.
• Thinking in CORBA with Java
  June 21-25, 1999 in Crested Butte, CO
  Five day public seminar with Dave Bartlett and Bruce Eckel.
• Software Development Conference West 99
  May 9-14, 1999 in San Francisco, CA
  Java exception handling talk.
• Thinking in CORBA with Java
  April 12-16, 1999 in Philadelphia, PA
  Five day public seminar with Dave Bartlett and Bruce Eckel.
• Windows Professional Conference 98
  October 27-30, 1998 in Milan, Italy
  Nine COM Presentations.
• Microsoft DevDays 98
  September 10, 1998 in Milan, Italy
  VC++ 6.0 and VJ++ 6.0 presentations.
• Software Development Conference East 98
  August 17-21, 1998 in Washington, D.C.
  100% Impure: Connecting Java with the rest of the World.
• Bruce Eckel’s Intermediate/Advanced Java Seminar
  June 8-12, 1998 in Crested Butte, CO
  100% Impure: Connecting Java with the rest of the World.
• DevWeek 98
  February 23-25, 1998 in London, UK
  Four Java presentations.
• Software Development Conference West 98
  February 11-13, 1998 in San Francisco, CA
  100% Impure: Connecting Java with the rest of the World.
• Windows Professional Conference 97
  October 7-10, 1997 in Milan, Italy
  A Java pre-conference tutorial. Seven presentations on VJ++, VC++ and COM.
• Software Development Conference West 97
  April 2-5, 1997 in San Francisco, CA
  Two presentations on Java containers and Java exception handling.
• Microsoft DevDays 97
  March 20, 1997 in Milan, Italy
  Three presentations on the Developer Studio 5.0 suite.
• Windows Professional Conference 96
  October 23-25, 1996 in Milan, Italy
  Eight presentations on MFC, Java and OLE/COM.
• Visual C++ Developers Conference
  July 22-25, 1996 in San Francisco, CA
  Getting the most out of the MFC Doc/View model.
• Windows Professional Conference 95
  Sep 27-29, 1995 in Milan, Italy
  Five presentations on MFC and OLE/COM.

Publications

• 2000: "Fast, free Prototyping in Python". Article on Software Development Magazine, March issue
• 1998: A technical appendix to Bruce Eckel'’s book "Thinking in Java," on interfacing between Java code and non-Java code.
• 1994-1995: Articles in PCWeek Italy on object-oriented development tools and techniques
• 1992: Conference papers for I.C.O. Graphics 1992, Milan, Italy, on the multimedia station developed for the CNR Special Project described above
• 1992: Conference papers for the IX and X Symposium on Computer Music, Milan, describing a C++ class library for digital sound processing and a real-time application for live computer music performance, both developed by Andrea Provaglio
• 1991: Farnetani, E. and Provaglio, A.: "Assessing variability of lingual consonants in Italian." Quaderni del Centro di Studio per le Ricerche di Fonetica del C.N.R., Vol. X, 117-145.
• 1990: A contribution to the book "Scritti in onore di Lucio Croatto" ("Writings in honor of Lucio Croatto"), published by the Italian CNR, describing part of the research work for the above-mentioned CNR/ESPRIT project
• Papers from the several European and US conferences listed above