My name is Tim O’Brien. I’ve been writing about Java and Technology for the past decade. In that time I’ve written a few books for O’Reilly, worked on a number of interesting projects, and worked as a technology “journalist”. When I’m asked what I do I’ll usually answer with one of the following answers depending on the person asking the question:

• If another programmer asks me “what I do” I tell them I usually focus on evaluating emerging open source technologies and that I’m a generalist.
• If someone in management asks me “what I do” I tell them I focus on “architecture” and “developer communications”.
• If someone at a wedding or a coffee shop asks me “what I do”, I usually tell them I work in “Sales”, this way I don’t have to help them fix iTunes.

If you are wondering what Discursive is, it is the entity through which I do most of my work. Over the years Discursive has been many things to many clients. I’ve had decade-long engagements supporting startups and projects, and I’ve had one-week projects providing focused help on smaller projects. In recent years, Discursive has been focused on the intersection of development and operations and on efforts to foster open source communities.