MikeZand

Do you know that feeling? An exciting sense which is commonly caused by an impulsive recognition of correlation? An association which seems significant or at least insightful?

Yesterday evening, I was reading the last pages of “The Philosophy of the Art of Living” by Wilhelm Schmid. It is an appealing paperback with a nice blending of ancient philosophy, like Plato and Socrates, with relative contemporary thinkers like Nietzsche.

Concurrently, I’m also finishing “Does IT Matter?” from Nicholas Carr. I’m not sure if this is a twist of fate, but those two books have a remarkable analogy about commodity input. Let me quote this (self translated) phrase from Schmid’s book:

“Both with conditional as autonomous habit shaping, the power of habits is founded by the principle of inertia. Slow inertia is the core of the habit. It requires absolutely no effort to hold patterns; everything simply remains unaffected. The antithesis however, every attempt to change a habit requires considerable strength. And if the change really occurs, sooner or later this change will inevitably turn into a habit again. This even applies for changes which are considered revolutionary.”

Just think about this phrase when you are reading, writing or discussing the widespread, fascinating discussion initiated by Nicholas Carr. Does IT matter? Is IT revolutionary? Consider IT as revolutionary and here you have the future direction of IT: old habits die hard.

Let me start by saying that I feel much honored today: I've been added to the Dutch .NET Developers Alliance, so thank you for that! Although I'm not a developer at all (so even don't get me started by writing me some C# code), I am pleased to be part of this .NET alliance. I think it’s great to see enthusiastic people having their valuable community and especially with this initiative since it is smothered with Dutch scent *wink*

As a matter of fact, I hope to spend some spare time designing a fancy top-header-banner to demonstrate my Dutch roots. I was rather provoked to get such banner after reading this interesting article. If you’re curious, take a look at my first try and send me your suggestions. I guess it needs more tulips, wooden shoes and windmills … ;-)

The very first question which comes to my mind however: where the heck are my local Microsoft coworkers in Holland? Am I going solo here or what? I even asked Shawn to promote their participation on the MSDN blog while he is at the European TechEd anyways. I mean, we all know that Holland is a small country, but being proud of TechEd held in Amsterdam again and our soccer team in the EC semi-finals (sorry Sweden, thank you Czech Republic); I really hope that many more Microsoft people from Holland will join me in participating in this global community.

Veel plezier! (have fun!)

Michael Platt recently posted an interesting (possible future) scenario of DSI/SDM. It's uncertain if application developers will really require power specifications, but you'll never know. I’m absolutely convinced that Dynamic Systems Initiative is and will be the next prodigy. However, I haven’t seen very concrete scenarios lately, but the picture Michael Platt is illustrating at least gives more clarity.  On top of this solution to bridge the classic gap between Development and Operations, automated deployments can and will also be leveraged by DSI. The Automated Deployment Services (ADS) is probably one of the most substantial technologies currently available today within this initiative.

DSI and the future of Dynamic Data Center (DDC) will definitely result in a big smile for all those infrastructure architects living on this planet today, so keep on watching for more posting and articles on DSI, SDM, DDC and architecture.

Probably also a great momentum to elaborate on all the TLA’s –ahum- Three Letter Acronyms we use at Microsoft. CLM is most likely the only TLA missing in this index *wink*

<think of Disney tune playing>

It's a small world after all -especially in IT- isn't it? During my previous engagement, I met this guy who was in the same class during my Computer Science study in The Hague (The Netherlands). My primary contact at this exact same engagement used to be working at the same company I started my tech career.

Today, I had a Windows XP Service Pack 2 talk for another customer. My primary contact used to be working for one of my close friends and the other SMS2003 techie appeared to be the brother of one of my Dutch Microsoft colleagues. When I was heading for the exit, leaving the customer site, I bumped into my manager during one of my first jobs as system engineer (back in '98).

Yesterday, I was phoned by a friend of my spouse. She started babbling about how she met one of my direct colleagues during at a birthday party. This great colleague is actually leaving to Microsoft Australia this year, that's why they start talking about Microsoft. She was like “Hey, I have a friend working there, do you know him?“ And he was like: “Darn well I know him, he is my direct colleague at MCS, what a coincidence!“

All of this just happened this month, so I'll spare you the details about all other occasions. Is it because Holland is such a small country (~16 million inhabitants) or is this just common in the IT scene? Well, starting my own blog at MSDN.COM is sure an interesting method of discovering more potential acquaintances around the globe, isn't it?

I hope you will enjoy reading my upcoming postings and articles about a mixture of Technology &  Business (and perhaps some personal stories as well).