What's Richard Monson-Haefel up to in 2004?

Now that the J2EE Web Services book has been published and I'm wrapping up work on the 4ed of the EJB book, I can talk a little about what I'm planning to do in 2004.

So what's next? I've wanted to write a book on J2SE for a couple of years, but since this space is already crowded I've put it off. Recently, however, I've decided to test out some material for such a book - I may post it on the Internet. The purpose of the book, tentatively titled This is Java, is to explain how Java works under the hood. If all goes well, the material will be easy to read and accessible to intermediate developers and Über-wonks alike.

In addition to working on This is Java I'm going to be very involved in the JCP Executive Committee this coming year. There are a lot of specs going through the process now and probably a lot more to come, so this will take up a fare amount of my time. I'm also working on JSR-220 (EJB 3.0) and the Apache Geronimo and the OpenEJB projects. Of course all these efforts are more or less philanthropic since they don't pay cash. To earn a living I'll be spending about 20 hours a week consulting and/or doing some training – nothing solid to report on that end yet.