Forwarding this to the mailing list. I also figured it out as I discovered I had to specify the type to be a topic. This is what I did previously:
./spout test.fanout This is where I got the NPE. After some trial and error plus Alex's tip from below, I was able to get it working with this command: ./spout "test.fanout; {node:{type:topic}}" Alex already raised a JIRA for the NPE (see his email below). Thanks for everybody's help with this one! Regards, Jeremy