I've been on Technet for quite a while now so thought it worth trying somewhere new:)! However, I've not gone far ... just across to
http://blogs.msdn.com/matt_deacon. See you over there if you'd like to stay in touch!
The slide decks used at the last architect forum can now be found at the new location:
www.microsoft.com/uk/architectforum
Hopefully this will be the location for all future events!
Been a bit of fun but I've finally submitted the .NET track agenda for QCon (well it's 90% complete)!
The line up I've organised from my colleagues at Ms UK is the best I've seen for a while!
http://qcon.infoq.com/london/tracks/show_track.jsp?trackOID=97
Never heard of SAF? You're an important Microsoft Customer and you've been invited before? Well you need to sort that out! It's about the best thing we do when talking about architecture in my opinion (besides Architect Insight of course!).
Well either way it's worth checking out some of the sessions that were run - great content, speakers invaluable!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/saf
Picks for me include:
- Amazon S3, SQS & ECC, Charlie Bell
- Leading Geeks, Paul Glenn
- MySpace, Aber Whitcomb
- Future of the datacenter, Debra Chrapaty
- Mining Lightning For The Cloud, John Dwyer
However, these were just the 'informationals' - none of the roundtable sessions are recorded and some of those were fantastic - some of these guys will be at Insight as a result of meeting with them out there you can be sure of that!
OK - probably old news - in which case so why didn't anyone tell me?
So if you've got as many mates as I seem to have then book mark October 27 – 30, 2008 in Los Angeles and keep an eye on http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc2008 !
The Entity Framework Beta 3 runtime and the Entity Framework Tools CTP 2 that work with the RTM releases of Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 have just been released with a pile of new features this is definitely worth a detailed look and you can bet we'll be covering some of it at QCon next March.
I've just been invited to run the .NET track at QCon next year (10-14 March 2008) which is a great honour and responsibility I guess! I was invited to attend as an IASA sponsor last year and was amazed at the quality of the speakers and people who were there. This is a must visit conference to get a broad view right across the stack including .NET, Java, Ruby, Agile, Architecture - you name it it's there!
I'm still working on the details of the .NET track but it wont be the same theme as what is printed up there now that's for sure.
Insight the two day Microsoft Conference dedicated to architecture that I've run for the past two years will take place again next year on the 28-29 April so save the date!
The theme this year is "The Future of IT" where we're looking out at next generation architectures. What's 'Oslo' all about? Well we're planning on giving as much early coverage on this as possible!
I'm putting the agenda together as we speak and will post the agenda first thing in the new year when we kick off registration:)!
Oh yes - location; we're coming to sunny Windsor this time around, Beaumont House - looks like a great venue!
I went over to Essex University the other week to give the 1st year and post-grad computer science students a lecture that focused on something I called “IT Mega-trends” in the afternoon I held a workshop to discuss what implications these trends might have on the students.
We split them into 4 groups each to focus on one of the following topics of population, jobs, education and information along with a set of statistics relating to each topic.
“If you’re 1 in a million in china then there are 1,300 just like you”
“Today’s learner will on average have 10-14 jobs by the age 38”
“Top 10 in-demand jobs by 2010 did not exist in 2004”
“At the start of a 3 year degree half of 1st year material will be out of date by the end of the course”
“40 exabytes (4x1019) of unique new information will be generated this year”
These statistics were meant to act as a disturber to make the students uneasy about their potential futures and included facts such as:
At the end we came back together and drew a mind-map from their output. Iain Langdon, their lecturer re-ran the workshop later in the with some other students from the university and pulled together the following combined mind-map.
I was worried initially that the students wouldn’t engage but to be honest I was struck by how much of what we talked about they were already aware of and that they readily accept that a “career is not for life” that they will be expected to retrain and deal with enormous “rates of change”and what they learn now is really the skills of “learning how to learn”. “Life long learning” was a key phrase that struck in my mind.
I felt pretty good about things on the whole when I left. This wasn’t the ugly mob of disgruntled coders that I’d been expecting to greet a bloke from Microsoft but people who understand much more about the life we are moving towards than I had really given credit to.
[Click image to enlarge]
So following on the back of some major announcements around exchange, sharepoint and communications
online services it was fun to hear about the
Microsoft Asset Inventory Service announcement at IT Forum the other week.
Well it’s been a while since I was last at TechEd. IT was 1998 in fact, in Nice, but enough said of that! So here I am as a speaker this time! Who let him in I can hear you say. However, enough of all that. I guess by the time you read this all the announcements during Soma’s keynote will be old hat to most by now but here are the ones that sparked my imagination.
MSDN goes Web 2.0 and user generated content with the introduction of a promised two-way wiki!
Patterns & Practices will start delivering Blueprint Software + Services building block patterns.
The Ms Sync Framework CTP will introduce key support around offline and peer 2 peer networking.
VS08 split screen working between the browser design surface and the underlying HTML code.
Ajax enablement of ASP.NET controls looks pretty compelling (as long as you stay within the limits of the control I’d imagine).
Popfly explorer supporting search and publishing between ASP and Popfly
Thanks to everyone who took part in a really great architect forum yesterday! It was our first forum at the new Microsoft London offices and so there were plenty of teething problems including the light switch which kept on getting pressed descending the audience into darkness!
Not to mention the wrath of the demo gods trying to sabotage my machine in particular!
You will be able to pick up the slide decks for this and all architect forums off www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/events/postevents.aspx
And I have been promised they will be there on Monday 17th September so appologies for any delay.
Here's the latest on the UK Architect Forums we have planned. Looking at numbers it seems that the news is already well out there so I'd suggest registering now as space is running out.
Office Business Applications Architect Forum - 13th September, London
Office Business Applications are an emerging class of application that helps businesses unlock the value of their line-of-business (LOB) systems and turn document-based processes into real applications. Office 2007 has expanded off the desktop embracing the concepts of SOA and leverage the fundamental shift to combining software plus services. In this forum we will discuss the architectural elements of the Office Technical Platform and discover how these elements can be applied across several business scenarios.
Windows Security Architect Forum - 11th December, Reading
Security alongside reliability and interoperability is central to Microsoft’s software design philosophy. Yet it is still an area where Microsoft is perceived to continually under achieve. However, security is a very broad term that can be used to describe a great many number of IT scenarios. In this forum we will discuss the central role of security in the architecture of Windows Server 2008 (codename Longhorn) in relation to a number of Systems Management scenarios.
The Services Revolution Architect Forum – 19th February 2008, Reading
Today, we face an exciting shift in our industry. Technology breakthroughs are transforming the way technology solutions are created, delivered, and used. The line between consumer and business use of technology is continuing to blur, and people have come to expect the same functionality and user experience at work and at home. The cause of this transformation is the combination of ever-more-powerful devices, expanding data storage capacity on devices and in massive data centres, and the near ubiquity of broadband networks.
The first such Internet-based services were delivered over the Web and consumed in a Web browser. However, every day it becomes clearer that market demand exists for both on-premise software and hosted services—and that such an approach is necessary to deliver the seamless computing experiences home and business users have come to expect. This approach, which Microsoft calls Software + Services, is an additive model that goes beyond packaged software to give customers increased flexibility and choice in deployment options.
When he/she is not certified!
Ok - so this isn’t the case today. But it won’t be long before it’s the case so mark my words!
I’ve spent quite a lot of time working with the IASA and on our own Microsoft Certified Architect program over the past year or so discussing the question of how do you recognise an architect! I wrote an article for International Developer and someone mentioned that this had been referred to by Adrian Bridgewater in his ‘Architectural Angst’ ZDNet blog entry last month too.
I got a bit of a bidirectional kicking when I was quoted (not quite correctlyJ) by Jason Stamper when he suggested that Microsoft was calling for a consensus on architecture certification. Not totally true – but not a bad idea IMO hey? A single way to recognise an architect – got to be worth thinking about.
So there are the stirrings of a debate... or it may be just down to me and my mild paranoia – or perhaps not!
What really got me thinking was a comment from Andy Hopkirk at the NCC who explained how the government ‘is getting enterprise architecture!’ through a talk on e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF ) and Cross-Governmental Enterprise Architecture (xGEA). Now this stuff is fascinating and I thoroughly recommend you look at it:)!
And then the jigsaw puzzle started to fall in place – why are the NCC looking into architectural professionalism? It’s because if you want to do business with the government then the government wants to ensure you know how they work.
Ok, not a problem if you don’t work in the government space, but it’s not long before one can imagine this pervading to all corners of the IT landscape. After all if this is how government IT works then it makes sense that's how we all should work - no?
So watch this space – coz if guy’s like these don’t get it right we could find we’re stuck with a professional definition that doesn’t reflect what we actually all do!
