This is a pretty content-free post, but I needed to at least write down the various things I’ve been thinking about or doing over the last few (err.. several) weeks:
· I was on the speaker circuit for our various architect forums (fora?) , after coordinating the “Industry Architect Forum” in New York on 03/15. I hosted roundtable discussions on Microsoft’s patterns and practices work, plus I gave an “informational” session on P&P. Overall, it was great – our customers always have great feedback for us, and the areas of patterns description, tool support, governance, and so forth, are particularly hot right now. I owe Harry some thoughts on patterns repositories (among several other things – like a write-up of the Lightweight Architecture Alternative Assessment Method … but that’s a blog for another day).
· I attended the META Group/DCI Enterprise Architectures conference and co-manned the Microsoft booth there (with Marley Gray, another Architect Evangelist on my team). We handed out P&P materials and talked about architecture with folks from all over.
o Note that the conference was in New Orleans … if you take the trolley down St. Charles avenue, and get off where it makes a sharp 90 degree right turn, there’s an amazing diner. Have the “Mexican Omelet”. Wow.
o Marley is an excellent instructor at Golden Tee. Let me know if you’re visiting New Orleans and I’ll tell you where to drink … err… play.
o Marley is also an excellent oyster-eating instructor. Visit the Acme Oyster Company. If you need the exact proportions of cocktail sauce, horseradish and Tabasco to put on an oyster (then on cracker, of course), let me know.
· I’ve actually been doing my day job … I’ve been interacting with a number of our customers lately on architectural topics ranging from modeling (enough blogging on this one, mostly by Mike) to mobile development (see next bullet) to a free-for-all 20 person “beat up the Microsoft guy with your questions” roundtable. Smart clients are top of my list for hot topics right now, though – I’m doing smart client architecture work with customers in financial services and healthcare.
· I actually got to write some code last week – demonstrating how to build a simple browser-like client on the .NET Compact Framework. Good fun.
Extreme kudos go to the folks at Dynamic Events – they ran all of the architect forums, and one of their staff did all of the logistics support for our booth at the META/DCI EA conference.
