Sehmi-Conscious Thoughts : TechEd

TechEd EMEA 2008 Developers - Introducing the Windows Embedded track

asehmi — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:46:52 GMT

Catherine Heller, Technical Evangelist on my team, has been working hard to put together a great Windows Embedded track at TechEd EMEA 2008: Developers in Barcelona, Spain | 10-14 November, 2008. She's provided a comprehensive write up of the track on her Blog - "We believe there's a huge opportunity for developers in this space, especially as solutions begin to span devices, the PC, and the Web."

I'm presenting at TechEd too, in the Architecture track. My session is:

ARC313: Decentralized Software Services in Action: Architecting Integration and Grid Patterns using the CCR & DSS Toolkit 2008

This talk will provide a brief introduction to the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR), Decentralized Software Services (DSS), and Visual Programming Language (VPL). They ship as part of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio and the newly announced CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008. These .NET technologies are being used in non-robotics applications ranging from business processes, major web sites, retail automation, command and control systems, scientific computing, sensor-nets and much more. At the core of CCR/DSS lies a powerful concurrent messaging engine plus a REST-like protocol. This enables users to easily build applications that require coordination of messages between loosely-coupled service-oriented components within and across distributed nodes of the application spanning embedded and traditional client/server systems. To explore the applicability of these technologies to distributed systems computing we describe a couple of simple frameworks. The first shows how enterprise integration patterns can be built on DSS and composed with VPL. And the second is a system to host and dynamically deploy autonomous connected DSS services. Both can run across the full range of Windows embedded, server and client operating systems.

Day 5, Friday, November 14, 15:15 - 16:30, Room 117

Hope to see you there!

TechEd Developers - 05-09 November 2007, Barcelona, Spain

asehmi — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:15:09 GMT

ARC01-IS Capability Mapping: A Foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture

Next week I'll be in Barcelona at TechEd: Developer to present the same interactive session I did at TechEd US 2007.

Please join me and come over to say hello - I very much look forward to seeing you on Mon Nov 5 17:45 - 19:00 Room 114.

P.S. I'll have plenty of A3 size posters of the Capability Mapping process to give away. At TechEd USA I totally underestimated the demand and ran out of them!

P.P.S. Interactive sessions are supposed to be small intimate affairs for up to 50 people, but I hear 300+ people have put this session into their agenda planners! That's amazing. This subject is really hot. Anyway, though our organizers have assigned a big enough room to seat this many people, I fear "interactivity" may suffer a lot. Nevertheless, you can be assured I'll try my best to make you feel involved!

Content for my TechEd US 2007 Talks

asehmi — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:38:00 GMT

Capability Mapping: A Foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture (ARC09-TLC) Service-Oriented Architecture is a very interesting concept to many, but until it is clearly linked to business needs its rate of adoption is likely to be slow. This challenge...(read more)

TechEd US Talks & Blog Migration to MSDN

asehmi — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:13:00 GMT

After a dormant blogging period of a year and a half I've moved over to MSDN. My good friends and colleagues say I need to start talking again so hopefully this move signals a new start.

I recently spoke at TechEd US 2007 in Orlando in the interactive theatre sessions which were rather good fun if a little overcrowded. We certainly didn't anticipate the popularity of this new format and several customers complained they couldn't get in to stand let alone be seated. Sorry for that!

My talks on "Service Capsules: A Language and Patterns Perspective on Service Design and Implementation" and "Capability Mapping: A Foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture" went down a treat and I'm very pleased with the encouragement and responses I have received from some you. Thank you. (Go here for more info on TechEd sessions.)

Many of you who attended my talks would like me to upload the content and elaborate on the different topics I introduced. So, I am hoping that this revived Blog will help me do just that!

Talk to you soon.

Architects Bootcamp at TechEd Europe 2005

asehmi — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:37:00 GMT

Originally Created: 2005-06-27

In the last year I've been holding Architect Bootcamps all around Europe - at some great locations I must add! The idea was to huddle up with 15-20 like minded individuals in great surroundings and just talk "architecture" for a couple of days, eat, drink and be merry. Wow, did we learn a lot! So much so that Beat Schwegler and I decided to hold a compressed version of this Bootcamp as a pre-conference workshop at TechEd Europe 2005 in Amsterdam which starts in just over a week.

The reason why I write this post is to tell you that our workshop has attracted 356 registrations. This is the highest attendance of all the pre-conference events so far at this TechEd! The number two is the Activce Directory workshop standing at 338 registrations.

Think about it, Teched is a developer conference but an architect depth training workshop is the most popular! Go figure that one out? Beat and I are absolutely thrilled about this and we can't wait to share our thinking with all of you that have registered, and at the same time we're curious as to why there's so much interest?

Anyway, if you haven't already, please sign up and join Beat and me in a few days.

Architecture Bootcamp at TechEd Europe 2005

asehmi — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:31:00 GMT

Originally Created: 2005-06-12

Beat Schwegler, Architect on my team, and I are holding a preconference training day at TechEd Europe 2005 entitled: Architecture Boot Camp for Building Connected Systems.

We're amazed at how many people have signed up for this - nearly 250 and rising last week! Please join us too if you can.

The Nerd, The Suit, and the Fortune Teller

asehmi — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:09:00 GMT

Originally Created: 2004-07-27

I just had to alert you to a recording of The Nerd, The Suit, and the Fortune Teller which was amongst the finest sessions of the Architecture track at TechEd Europe 2004. As the track owner, I can't say I was overly confident that this skit would work since the speakers, Clemens Vasters (the Nerd), Rafal Lukawiecki (the Suit) and Pat Helland (the Fortune Teller) had only the bare bones of an outline and some cue slides to help them navigate a potentially humongous space of concepts and ideas. All of this in front of an audience of more than 1,500 people. But, with superstars of such caliber, I should never have doubted the outcome.

The friendly synopsis is:

The Suit and the Nerd begin with the conflict between the businessman who is struggling to see the value he is receiving from his technology investments and the technologist who is confident in his use of the latest technology in implementing the solutions his boss has requested. As the tension between them unfolds, the fortune teller arrives to describe the ways in which service oriented architectures offer hope for meeting the needs of both the businessman and the technologist as they both strive to meet their goals. This session offers a light hearted and fun exposition of the latest technology trends in enterprise computing.

And the official synopsis we wrote for the TechEd agenda goes like this:

Object Orientation promised to deliver us from all IT evil and to ensure longevity and reuse of software. With today’s business requirements changing faster than it takes to compile an application and an ever-present call for integration, even that approach does not seem to work. However, it seems that Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Operational Service Orientation of IT departments (MOF, ITIL), Service-Based Interoperability (WS-Guidelines) and Service-Based User Interfaces (messenger, wizards) are quietly converging onto a new paradigm in IT. For the lack of a better name, we call it “Service Oriented Convergence”. Come to this session and see if this concept has any merit and value to you. Rather than endure a typical PowerPoint presentation, you will observe a discussion between: an experienced developer, an unforgiving businessman in charge of IT and a visionary technology innovator. On your behalf, they will battle out their differing points of view and leave you with useful guidance on ways to handle this very important issue that will affect your job, work and future. Oh, and we hope this session is unlikely to be boring.

Catch the video on Pat Helland's site under the videos section. Oh, and that's 'yours truly' doing the short intro, but don't let that put you off!

If you need the direct link it is here.

UPDATE: This slide show is well-worth viewing. Many thanks to Bjarne Gram for making this available.

Bye, Bye Mr. CIO Guy

asehmi — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:53:00 GMT

Originally Created: 2004-07-05

Bye, bye Mr. CIO guy...
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry...

Pat Helland debuted his latest song at TechEd Europe with Don Box and David Chappell playing backup. He received a 2 minute standing ovation at the end of this Architecture Track session. Being the ARC track owner I am especially pleased with the end result and the buzz it created for this subject area during the conference.

The lyrics were written by Pat in response to Nicholas Carr’s Harvard Business Review paper "IT Doesn’t Matter" in which Mr. Carr proposes that businesses reconsider their IT investments. This is a "speculative retrospective" in which we examine what happened "The Day That IT Died".

The video is available on Channel 9. The lyrics are also available.

Pat, together with Rafal Lukawiecki and Clemens Vasters performed a theatrical comedy session entitled "The Nerd, The Suit and The Fortune Teller" on the last day. That session had nearly 2000 in the audience! As soon as I get a link to the video you'll hear about it first here. In the meantime, here are some pics taken by Bjarne Gram.

Enjoy!