2006 Events

Platinum Solutions' Holiday Potluck

Platinum Solutions' Headquarters hosted a holiday potluck lunch for employees to mix and mingle. Honey Baked Hams catered the main event and employees brought in their favorite dishes to share. In addition, a white elephant gift exchange took place to engage in the holiday spirit.

Women in Technology Job Fair

Platinum Solutions attended the annual Women in Technology job fair hosted at the Arlington-Gateway Westin hotel. Platinum Solutions is a sponsor of Women in Technology. Director of Recruiting John Capozzi and Consultant Anne Gregg attended.

Washington Post Defense Technology Job Fair

Platinum Solutions attended their second Washington Post Defense Technology Job Fair to recruit for a variety of cleared positions for area professionals. Senior Consultant Duane Taylor and Director of Recruiting John Capozzi attended the fair.

"Platinum Training Series" Presents Brian Pontarelli

The latest session for our employees and special guests will feature the highly-recommended Brian Pontarelli for a jam-packed day of SOA and related topics.

Brian Pontarelli has 6 years of experience working on large enterprise Java applications. As an engineer at BEA, Brian focused mainly on implementations of BEA Portal clusters. He also implemented an EAI system for US Freightways built using a BEA Portal cluster. Following his work with US Freightways, he was one of the lead architects at Orbitz responsible for the SOA implementation built on the Jini, JBoss and JAXB technologies.

Brian has presented on SOA topics at various Java user groups and at JavaOne. While at Orbitz, Brian implemented a versioning system that allows both clients and services to be updated with zero downtime or to continue to run while other components are updated. Brian is familiar with many varieties of SOA architectures including Jini, JavaSpaces, EJBs, JMS, ESB and WebServices.

You can read more about Brian here.

2006 No Fluff Just Stuff.com (NFJS) Symposium Tour

Platinum Solutions will again be taking part in the 2006 No Fluff Just Stuff.com Symposium Tour. The intimate setting of the NFJS series of symposiums allows for our staff to have face-to-face interaction with many of the leading thinkers in our industry and a chance to review real-world case studies and hands-on code examples.

More information regarding the tour can be found here.

Matt Harrah Presents at the Oracle Conference on the James 2006

Platinum Solutions' Senior Consultant and co-founder of SEVAJUG www.sevajug.org Matt Harrah will be presenting at the Oracle Conference on the James 2006. Hosted by the Hampton Roads Oracle Users Group and the Greater Richmond Oracle Users Group, Matt will be discussing why direct JDBC connections in a multi-threaded environment is usually unsafe and unscalable, and how connection pooling solves these problems. With working code examples, Matt will demonstrate how to use open-source DBCP packages to implement connection pooling in an environment where no application server is present. Additionally, he will show how to use JNDI to use application server-hosted connection pools. Read more about the conference at: www.ocoj.cc/conference.

GIT Rockin': The Industry's First Annual Battle of the Government IT Bands

Platinum Solutions will be in attendance for GIT Rockin': the government IT's first annual battle of the bands. Hosted by Federal Computer Week, this friendly competition allows executives - from government and industry alike - to network with peers, colleagues and spouses in a high-energy, out-of-the-industry-norm environment.

All proceeds from GIT Rockin' ticket sales will be donated to the United Services Organization (USO). That means you'll enjoy a great evening of live entertainment, while raising money and awareness for one of the nation's most deserved charities.

More information on the GIT Rockin' battle can be found at: http://www.gitrockin.com/.

Xbox Tournament

Platinum Solutions Headquarters is the home of our X-Box Tournament, where employees compete to be the best Halo players they can be. Platinum Solutions held their first Xbox tournament in October. The final four players were Richard Vanhook, Robert Settle, Adam Rowe, and Mark Toscano. Richard won the tournament by holding the best score out of three games and winning two out of those three games.

University of Maryland Job Fair

Platinum Solutions headed up to the University of Maryland for the second consecutive year to recruit entry level candidates. Analyst Ben Tse and Director of Recruiting John Capozzi attended.

James Madison University Job Fair

Platinum Solutions traveled to Harrisonburg, VA to attend the Fall Career Fair hosted by James Madison University. Director of Recruiting John Capozzi and Analyst BJ Hunt attended.

Virginia Tech Business Horizons Career Fair

Business Horizons is Virginia Tech's annual, student-run career fair, exclusively for students in the Pamplin College of Business. The college offers full majors in accounting and information systems, business information technology, economics, finance, hospitality and tourism management, management, and marketing.

More information on the Business Horizons Career Fair can be found at: http://www.businesshorizons.org/

Virginia Tech Student Engineer's Council Engineering Expo

Platinum Solutions traveled down to Blacksburg, VA to attend Virginia Tech's annual Engineering Exposition (Expo) for the second year in a row. This career fair provides companies and students with the opportunity to meet on an informal basis and is one of the largest showcases of its kind in the country.

Platinum Solutions Annual Family Picnic

Platinum Solutions hosted its second annual family picnic on Saturday, September 9th. The picnic was again held at the Dulles Golf Center and Sports Park. In addition to the activities offered by the park (driving range, batting cages, miniature golf, volleyball court and basketball), there was also a moonbounce and a s'mores fire pit for employees to enjoy and face painting for the children.

Southeast Virginia Java Users Group (SEVAJUG)

Andy Glover, president of Stelligent Inc., co-author of Java Testing Patterns and the soon to be released Groovy in Action, and speaker for the Fluff Just Stuff symposiums will be the special guest speaker this month. Andy is a nationally-known industry expert and will be talking about Unit Testing Best Practices.

SEVAJUG serves Java enthusiasts of Hampton Roads (Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Newport News, and surrounding areas of Tidewater). Their mission is to educate the general public (and themselves) about the Java programming language and its related technologies through lectures, discussions, forums, newsletters, Internet postings, and other appropriate means.

Admission is free and anyone interested in the Java programming language is invited. More information regarding SEVAJUG can be found at: http://www.sevajug.org/.

Platinum Solutions Paintball

Platinum Solutions took a group of employees on an afternoon paintball adventure. The teams competed in a variety of fields and wooded areas, and although many came away bruised, everyone had a great time.

Northern Virginia Software Symposium

Platinum Solutions will once again be attending the region's premier Java / Open Source developer's conference. We really look forward to the "No Fluff Just Stuff" tour each time it comes to town, and this spring's event promises not to disappoint.

More information on the Northern Virginia Software Symposium can be found at: http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/.

Introduction to the Spring Framework

Platinum Solutions takes its internal "brown bag" series on the road, and will deliver a private session at our Federal client's headquarters in Washington, DC. Both employees and contractors are invited.

"Platinum Training Series" Presents Stuart Halloway

The latest session for our employees and special guests will feature Stuart Halloway of the Pragmatic Studio for a full day of Ajax and more.

Platinum Solutions Annual Winter Gala

Platinum Solutions hosted its annual Winter Gala on Saturday, January 20, 2006 at Lansdowne Resort. The Gala was a semi-formal event and guests were treated to a night of Las Vegas style casino gambling and fabulous door prizes including box seats to a Nationals game. The winner at the end of the night with the highest sum of gambling "money" was awarded a portable DVD player.