Gianpaolo's blog

After almost 18 months in Seattle, I finally managed to spend a week-end in Whistler . It was fantastic. Of course, how could I have gone to Whistler without going to the mighty Longhorn Saloon after which the next release of Windows Server is named ...

I was archiving my emails and I realized that I have sent just over 1000 emails since Jan 1 2006 (and 6 blog posts) 1) am i doing anything else other than sending emails?? 2) do I have my email/blog priorities right? very scary...

The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant teaches a great lesson: although the six blind men in the story were partially right, they were all in the wrong. They were wrong because they assumed that the partial view they had of the elephant was the...

If you are an architect and you are going to VSLive this week, check out these sessions: John deVadoss's day two keynote on Software Architecture on the Edge: Moving Beyond SOA . Ron Jacobs on Integration, Service Orientation and Pattern Driven...

Not too long ago, executives wanting to communicate with their staff, would press on their big, clunky, beige interphone and tell their secretary: "I need to send a memo". The secretary would promptly enter the executive office, write (in short hand)...

Flipping channels in my hotel room, I caught a re-run of "The Usual Suspects" just when Kevin Spacey (Keyser Soze) was saying that the greatest trick the devil achieved was to make people believe he didn't exist. Without entering in any of the religious...

Is a crazy idea, only powered by a blog, word of mouth and clever PR, generating $1M (yes, 1 million dollars) in less than 4 1/2 months, a sufficient proof of the unbelievable power of work of mouth, blogs and clever PR. I think it is. Have a look...

It’s time to care about the Fortune 5,000,000 . I did not come up with it, I read it here as part of my mini-thinkweek . Solutions architecture is often complex, it addresses the building of complex applications, Global 1000 companies spend huge bucks...

I spent a big chunk of my week off doing my own “mini thinkweek lite”. (No I am not trying to emulate mighty Bill). I have to say: I LOVED it! The #1 thing I learned? There are soooo many extremely interesting technology areas that I don’t spend...

It's been around since 1997 but I have to confess that I didn't know that... From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q261186 SUMMARY During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly...

Today I took my parents (visiting from Europe) and my kids to Redmond Town Center. While they were having pastries whose sizes only exist in the US, I quickly went to Border’s. While I was walking towards the Computer section and see what latest book...

After going public on July 12 2004 and a fresh start on June 1 2005 which did not last long, here is my 3rd attempt to start a blog. What was the trigger? 3 things actually: (a) Classical, late night, New Year resolution type of thinking. Resolution...

To better illustrate this pillar I will use the registration at TechEd as an analogy. When you go to the registration desk at TechEd you are asked a picture ID (this can be your driver license, your passport etc.). The picture ID, contains a irrefutable...

Based on TechEd Europe pre conference attendees' votes, my session (ARC315: the 5 Pillars of Connected Systems) has been placed in the keynote room. This obviously adds some "pressure" but I am very pleased to see that this topic (which will be at the...

> In the next following days I plan to write a series of short articles What I meant was: sometime in a few weeks, I will be writing a few posts provide additional information about the pillars… :-); I suppose next time I will not to mention when...

TechEd was for John and I the " 5 pillars of Connected Systems coming out” party, as we both talked about them in our respective sessions. The premise is quite simple: Although absolutely fundamental; the next generation applications that enterprises...

Here are 2 sample feedbacks I received from my session at TechEd 2 days ago. 8 8 8 9 8 This was a good architecture talk. I wish some of my firm's enterprise architects had been there to see it. The concepts...

Want to contribute to the 5 pillars of Connected Systems? The Windows Server Evangelism team in Redmond, is looking for an architect driving the early adoption of Longhorn server application platform to the enterprise. This person will engage with...

Today Paul Flessner in his keynote at TechEd talked about the evolution of applications from the monolithic app of the mainframe era to today's connected system applications. I was very pleased to hear him talk in front of a packed TechEd audience...

SRV205 powerpoint presentation? check x64 demo? check x64 movie? check WS-Management demo? check Infocard demo? check IIS7 demo? check backup of all that on external USB hard drive? check Looks like I've got all I need for my Monday presentation in...

After almost 1 year since my first post (and only a very abysmal 3 posts overall) I decided to have a fresh start at blogging... I could say that in my current role in the Longhorn Server evangelism I could not disclose any "secrets" and this was the...

Volker posted that 64bit is inevitable. A few people commented that they weren't so sure... I for one am 100% convinced that Volker is right, I will be running 64bit (as soon as there will be a 64bit Tablet around) In the 80’s I was very happy with a...

As you can see with 1 post (2 with this one), 1 comment and 1 trackback I’m far from the top of the bloggosphere... but all this is about to change. On Friday I had this great conversation with Volker , a colleague of mine; we had just participated to...

[...]i've googled but he doesn't seem to have a blog. *Bummer*[...] I found this comment after a google search on a talk I gave during one of my tours on Connected Systems. This was my tipping point... I have maintained a private blog for some time...