Just under a week to go before TechEd in Orlando, Florida. This year, Software Factories has quite a bit of representation and coverage as this space lifts off. The timing for the factories sessions is a little spaced out, not sure if this was by design, but it should ensure you stay on your toes for the whole event. (For the best stuff of course, you'll have to get up early, especially after the party night!).

There are a few good sessions worth noting in and around this space, and you can be sure to run into the top people hanging around them.

•   Monday 10:30-11:45, DEV11-TLC Jack Greenfield, "Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Software Factories"
  • Synopsis: Jack will be sharing with us the present and future of software factories from Microsoft, including a look into how factories will tightly integrate with Team System. You'll get a chance at questions and answers with him to.
•  Monday 13:15-14:30, ARC03-TLC Don Smith, "Web Service Software Factory (WCF) and Future"
  • Synopsis: Don will be opening the floor to demo and discuss the latest advancements of patterns & practices most advanced software factory the 'Web Service Software Factory'. I am sure you will be delighted to see some of the advancements and innovations that are going into it, and pushing the Microsoft Factories forward in the future.
•  Monday 15:00-16:15, DEV08-TLC Doug Hodges, Gareth Jones, Aaron Marten, "Build Custom Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio"
  • Synopsis: The VS SDK lads are going to walk us through the many integration points and extensibility points of Visual Studio, and demonstrate with demos, how you can integrate and customize Visual Studio, including a look at some of the improvements for the next Orcas version.
•  Wednesday 17:30-18:45, ARC17-TLC Tom Fuller, "Planning for Reuse: How an Architecture Driven Process Generates Extreme ROI"
  • Synopsis: Tom will walk us through an 'architecture-driven process' that provides measurable benefits of reuse in architecture, sets up the foundations for a software factories product line approach and moving to successful solution automation.
•  Friday 09:00-10:50, ARC303 Jezz Santos, Edward Bakker, "Build Your Own Software Factory"
  • Synopsis: We will be walking you through what it takes to practically build a software factory of your own (the What and the How's), and showing you some great demos of existing factory implementations and the innovations around that you can leverage.
•  Friday 13:00-14:15, ARC06-TLC Jezz Santos, Edward Bakker, "Build Your Own Software Factory Q & A"
  • Synopsis: This is a chalk-talk to open the floor to you to ask questions about real world issues and share your concerns, perhaps frustrations about building factories today. We should have all the right people on hand to help answer your questions. 

For some of us, getting here has been a long hard road, and we (as an industry) are really only starting down the path of providing practical means to package and automate guided solution based development, into what we call factories. We are hoping you get the answers to your questions, and get a good coverage from different view points of this space; from the conceptual ideas and visions, future innovations, through practical implementations, the tooling and technology advancements, and practical guidance on how to move forward with factories as a strategy for competing effectively in future software markets.

If you have any questions before the event you want us to address, please leave a comment.

We should be hanging around the architecture booth during the event if you want to meet up in person.

See you there.