A lot to do about Architect roles these days. As I mentioned before there's a site Skyscraper where you can find out more about the different types of Architect roles you can find in an enterprise: solution, infrastructure, strategic and industry.
What I've read on blogs so far has been centered around the question: Which type of architect am I. Jelle Druyts puts himself in the triangle as shown in the picture below as suggested by Simon Guest.
Pasted from <http://jelle.druyts.net/2006/05/30/TheTechnicalSolutionsArchitectRole.aspx>
I'm deeply convinced about the value of architecture . I've written way to many applications I'm not proud of because of no-design or bad design (1. data model 2. middle tier 3. client) so I won't be stating that the importance Architecture is being overstated, it isn't!
What I do want to rant about though is about the usage of the architect title. It's like everyone needs to be one. Especially the top developers seem to be targeted. If you are a lead developer then you stand a big chance of being labeled an Aspiring Architect by some folks within Microsoft. IMHO, you don't need to be an architect to be architecting. I would even say that probably most of the good architectural work comes from Lead Developers who have a deep deep udnerstanding of what software is all about.
That's why I would like to add a bit to the graph Jelle put on his site. If would still be a developer, I would love to have grown to being a Lead Developer. Great in writing code, designing software/solutions but staying clear from the business (political) side of things.
That said, skyscraper still rocks and Tech Ed: Developers is going to be THE place for all Lead Developers and probably a few Aspiring Architects too :-)
software architecture, Tech Ed, Tech Ed: Developers
If Scoble isn’t Mini himself, he is definitely sharing a bio-rhythm. While Scoble is out there questioning everything and buying BMW’s, Mini is doing more or less the same.
What’s going on? Is Mini, Robert’s alter ego? If that’s the case then Robert/Mini got some serious schizophrenia going on. The Scoble persona seems to think he’s an evangelist while the Mini persona seems to be deeply into product development. Their writing style is also very different which makes it even seem less likely both are the same.
I guess the only thing to conclude is that mini must be somewhere between 39 and 50 and having a midlife crisis too. Don’t worry guys it might just be stress and buying stuff will probably help. So go over to http://expo.live.com and create a listing for something you always wanted but never dared to buy. Can’t come up with something? Then you’re in deep poo poo.
Anyway it’s a good thing Mini is taking it slower. IMHO, much of what he wrote should have been kept within the firewall. The one thing he did enable was the collection of feedback from those who have already left the company. That was the value, what would not have happened without him.
This brings me to a request I would have for the Office Team, for Office 14 since I understood there won’t be an Office 13. RSS feeds stay interesting as long as they produce interesting posts to me. Now Mini is likely going to be less interesting so I will need to retire the subscription to that feed myself.
What I would like is to be able to rate my posts in the RSS feeds I subscribe to in Outlook. And then I want to create a rule that says ‘if there hasn’t been a post rated 4 out of 5 within the last 4 weeks, then delete this feed’. Rules on RSS feeds would allow me to have a much more dynamic feed list. I would have some other rules too like:
I’m convinced I would pick up good blogs later on anyway. Good stuff always floats?
Mini Microsoft , Scoble and Office 2007
I don’t know why but today I saw quite a few announcements of some new sites or Microsoft technologies or new community sites.
I particularly like the Skyscraper site. This site is about everything the developer wanted to know about architecture but never dared to ask. I really thing this rocks. Especially the ARCast section. Ron Jacobs is real star. Is till remember very well the first presentation of him I attended. It was at the Windows Server 2003 DevCon in Seattle. During his session, Ron said at least 20 times ‘oh, and my name is Ron Jacobs’. That was hilarious. So good I never dared to repeat that joke in one of my own presentations – yes, all the other ones were stolen, all of them.
This post is about: IIS7, ASP.NET and software architecture
Just got a message from MTV's music store URGE that it has launched. I first heard about the service at MIX and today I got the launch email.
I just installed Media Player 11. This is a fantastic improvement over MP10. The visuals, search, etc... it's slick. You can install it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/download/download.aspx
Now I'm heading over to URGE. Let me know whether you get it to work and what your thoughts are.
This message is about: URGE and Media Player
So let's see what this brings. I'm typing this in OneNote since I read that I can select anything in OneNote and then 'send to blog' and then OneNote will use the Word 2007 blogging functionality to allow me categorize and post.
Read this if you are interested. Man, this will be sweet once I got the picture publishing working too!!!
And now I can continue editing in Word. I Love it!
Again added this manually because I don't have my picture uploading configured properly.
This post is about: Microsoft Office 2007
I’ve gotten my hands on what could be the beta 2 build of Office 12 Then I read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_affronti/archive/2006/05/12/596301.aspx while I was looking how I could export my RSS subscriptions to OPML from within Outlook. My goal is to publish my opml(s) on http://share.opml.org/ which is a service I really like to decide what I should be looking at based on my current interests.
This blogging from Word is really cool. I just configured my blog account and hopefully when I will press Publish, this will actually be successful.
I still haven’t found how to get the OPML file from within Outlook or IE7 for that matter but I’m quite excited by this feature!
Yes, that worked. I'm just adding a screenshot here by using the community server admin utility url because I don't know how to configure my picture gallery.
I'm so heads down on planning for our next fiscal year these days that sometimes, I need to find some disctraction on the internet. Fortunately I don't need to look far or don't need to wait.
On YouTube there's always something to see. Like this clip where the BBC accidentally interviewed a taxi driver on the verdict in the Apple vs. Apple case. The look on that guys face is priceless.
Someone at the BBC must have shouted Craprr! Or ouch!