What's Rockin' in Singapore

So here I am at Blog out 2007 and what a turn out!.  Lots of smiling faces and engaged audiences.  The venue is packed and is so new that I not only smell the fresh paint...I saw someone painting

Hi All,

Just had an all hands meeting here in Singapore with the local employees.  He is pretty much what you expect in person.  Here is my photo from the cheap seats.  Not much new, even when prompted about Yahoo! 

Yesterday I ran a workshop for a local SI on Emerging technology and MS vision in the Web 2.0 world.  Slides for the presentation can be found here. Part 1Part 2

Since I joined MS last year, I have been amazed at the range of new services and technologies that are being released.  The latest that I have discovered in a new platform for non programers to develop Web 2.0 Mashups.  Previously known as "Springfield", it is now being branded under the name Popfly ( Who came up with that one?). Utilizing silverlight as a plaftorm this solution allows users to dynamically connect services in the cloud to build applications.  Check out the video that decribes some of the features.  Here are some pictures of the development environment.

Sign up for the Alpha now...but be patient I believe there is a bit of a line.

Yesterday it was my great privilege to host Michael Platt, The Director of Web Strategy for Microsoft, while he was here in Singapore visiting with a number of customers.  I felt I was in the shadow of a giant as we talked to customers about the future of MS Web Strategy and his vision of Web 2.0.  Here are some of the thoughts he shared that have resonated with me:

·         Web 2.0 is not about technology, it is about communities coming together in organic ways to create new business value.

·         The browser has reached is reaching its limit.  Soon applications will blur the boundaries and whether the application is hosted on the browser or desktop will be transparent

·         Education is the space that will be the most disruptive and next year that is all we will be talking about.

At one visit he had 20 + bubbling with excitement as we left and at another he had a discussion with a senior government leader on the growth of social communities.  Here is a copy of one of the presentations he delivered.

All and all a wonderful experience that I am still digesting.

Well its looks like the event was a success as our venue was filled to capacity.  Our guest speakers were great and the audience seemed to appreciate the content.  I understand that the speaker slides will be posted shortly at a common website and I will share that when it becomes available.  In the mean time here is the link to my slides on Business Architecture and one of Michael’s sessions.

The flagship event for architect for the year is ON! I'm sure all the attendees will be charmed by the rich contents and delivery of our MS Corp speakers!

May 16^th, 2007
Intercontinental Hotel / Singapore
Ballroom, Level 2
Dear Architects,
Please join us for RAF07, the Microsoft Regional Architect Forum Southeast Asia, which will be held on May 16th, 2007, in Singapore.
RAF is Microsoft's premier gathering of strategic architects and other key influencers from enterprises around South East Asia. The Regional Architect Forum SEA promises to be an invigorating and lively event, with key technology leaders from Microsoft sharing their vision with you and listening closely to your business needs and business vision.
The theme for SEA RAF07 is Software + Services.
Services are everywhere. Global business collaboration is driving organizations of all sorts - from manufacturers to logistics providers to telecoms to governments - to become business service providers. Business applications - the software that integrates these services into manageable processes - are sourcing business services from an increasingly heterogeneous network of providers. To embrace the Software + Services model, we must understand how to both provide and consume business services. What do business applications that consume external services look like, and what do they need from their service providers? How can an organization become a trustworthy business service provider? How do we manage and govern a service portfolio that extends beyond the boundaries of the organization? How will S+S foster people-driven productivity, and what new metaphors are emerging to make the power of S+S available to everyone?
Join us at RAF07 to explore this new direction both for technology architecture and for the collaboration between organizations around the globe. This event showcases key learnings from industry specialists brought to you by Microsoft Corporation.
Service Oriented Architecture, Enterprise Service Bus, Software as a Service.'85 it is hard these days to find an Architecture concept that is not about services. Whether you are interested in decomposing your business in services, gaining agility via services or reaching new opportunities by aggregating services, this track will explore Services from many angles through many lenses, all accruing to this year's theme of Software + Services.

or

We look forward to seeing you at the event!
Yours sincerely,

Marcos Pinedo
Director - Platform Strategy
D&PE Asia Pacific

Agenda

TIME

ACTIVITY

09.00am - 09.30am

Keynote Address

09.55am - 10.15am

SOA: The Road Ahead
Lawrence Lim
Director. SOA Business Development
NYP-SITF SOA Centre

10.15am - 11.15am

Software + Services: Microsoft's Vision for SOA, SaaS, Web 2.0
Michael Platt
Microsoft Corporation

11.15am - 11.30am

Refreshment Break

11.30am - 12.30pm

Office Business Applications - The Wave is Here
Khawar Ahmed
Senior Product Manager
Microsoft Corporation

12.30pm - 01.30pm

Lunch

Breakout Track 1 - Architecture/Software + Service Track

01.30pm - 02.30pm

Why Business Architecture is so Important to Enterprise Architecture
John Eldridge
Microsoft Singapore

02.30pm - 03.30pm

Architecture Implications of Software as a Service
Fred Chong
Microsoft Corporation

03.30pm - 04.00pm

Refreshment Break

04.00pm - 05.00pm

Web 2.0 and SOA: Architectures and Technologies
Michael Platt
Microsoft Corporation

05.00pm - 06.00pm

Architecting SaaS Applications
Fred Chong
Microsoft Corporation

Breakout Track 2 - Web/Office as a Platform Track

01.30pm - 02.30pm

Web 2.0 in the Enterprise
Michael Platt
Microsoft Corporation

02.30pm - 03.30pm

Building Composite Applications
Atanu Banerjee
Microsoft Corporation

03.30pm - 04.00pm

Refreshment Break

04.00pm - 05.00pm

OBA Examples
Khawar Ahmed
Microsoft Corporation

05.00pm - 06.00pm

Anatomy and Patterns for an Office Business Application
Atanu Banerjee
Microsoft Corporation

06.00pm

End

*Agenda is correct at the time of printing. The organizer reserves the right to make changes to the Agenda.

Supporting organizations:

www.IASAhome.org

bits & bytes

· Get silverlight

· Telerik RadControls – 3d virtual rooms using control based framework

· DLR & IronPython

· Silverlight developer reference “poster”

· Forums – installation, troubleshooting

· Electric rain harmony (coming summer 2007) – flash to silverlight converter

· Silverlight 1.0 Beta QuickStarts

· Silverlight 1.1 Alpha QuickStarts

sites

· Main Microsoft site. 

· Community site. 

· Mix conference

experiences & demos

· Getting started with silverlight - Scott Guthrie demos how to build an app from scratch

· "How Do I?" with Silverlight 1.0

· "How Do I?" with Silverlight 1.1

· Using Blend with Silverlight 1.0

· Community gallery

· Top 3 samples in community gallery

o Silverlight Pad

o Page Turn

o Video Library

· Beijing Olympics Use Silverlight

· Channel 9 screencasts

· Watch movie trailers & videos via Silverlight

· How to do Rich media advertising - example using eyeblaster

blogs

· Scott Guthrie – no intro needed

· Jim Hugunin - chief architect of the DLR

· Mike Harsh – silverlight team

· Lutz Roeder – Expression Blend team

· Delay  of silverlight airlines demo

· Ironpython

tech talks

· All recorded mix07 sessions

· ScottGu’s mix keynote and great overview

· ScottGu’s Channel9 interview

· Building Rich Web Experiences using Silverlight and Javascript for Developers

· Deep Dive on Silverlight Media Integration

· Developing ASP.NET AJAX Controls with Silverlight

· Creating and Delivering Rich Media and Video on the Web with Silverlight, Expression Studio, and Windows Server

· Building Silverlight Applications using .NET (Part 1)

· Building Silverlight Applications using .NET (Part 2)

· Extending the Browser Programming Model with Silverlight

· Just Glue It! Ruby and the DLR in Silverlight

papers

· Getting started whitepaper

· Silverlight Architecture Overview

The Web 2.0 world is one that embraces the collective knowledge of the community as a resource to making individual buying decisions. Marketing can be defined as the science/art of influencing these decisions.  Traditional approaches have embraced mass marketing as the primarily way to economically address the consumer with this messaging.  These traditional campaigns sometimes claim to be “Segmented” by the fact that they differentiate their message based on demographical information but ultimately they share the common thread of mass distribution of one way communication to a large audience base.  This is becoming less effective as the Enterprises ability to influence a single consumer is becoming overshadowed by the effect of communities on their members buying decisions.

Enterprises need to start thinking about how they engage communities of interests with their products and services.    This level of engagement needs to be more than simple messaging; Enterprises need to be seen as part of the community and share in its overall well being.  Enterprises that merely “prey’ on these communities with differentiated messaging become a disruptive “noise” to the general collective.  This “noise” may have the reverse affect and too often results in the general collapse of the initial community that it is targeting.

Communities cannot be “created”.  They can be grown, facilitated, enhanced, and disrupted but communities by they’re nature are organic to a central idea or concept.  Enterprises interacting with these communities need to respect the boundaries imposed by the social system at work and seek to enhance the general experience rather than capitalize on revenue opportunities presented.  Enterprises that find ways to embrace these concepts will ultimately find revenue opportunities in these interactions that will be seen as adding value rather than detracting from the general experience.  The challenge for enterprises to do so is to find means to economically support these types of interactions by leveraging technology in innovative ways.

In future posts I will try and explore how Enterprises may use emerging Web 2.0 technology to achieve this goal.

I have been asked to provide some prescriptive guidance on how to get up to speed on the latest technology introduced at Mix.  I thought I would post this information in my blog to spread the word (I am an evangelist after all)

1)      Install Silverlight version 1.1.

2)      Install Orcas Beta 1.  This is strictly not necessary for all the technology but is a great place to get started using LINQ and new WCF features.  The read me suggests that you have to repair VS 2005 so ensure that you do that afterwards.  FYI the two have been coexisting on a couple of my machines for a couple of weeks now and I have not noticed any problems.

3)       Install the orcas Alpha tools.  This will give you the templates for Silverlight projects.

4)      Install the ASP.Net Futures.  This will give you some cool Silverlight AJAX controls.

5)      Install Expression Media Encoder.  Note the 180 license key (YVJ79-XQ8CM-8YKWF-GKRKH-83X8G).  This tool is great for encoding your video to web compatible standards.  Note the template option that gives you out of the box Silverlight controls.  This is a great place to start to learn the platform and has all the pieces you need to upload into the Silverlight streaming environment.

6)      Install Blend 2.  This integrates well with Orcas.  I would also install the Blend 1 version as well.  They seem to coexist with no problems. Note the 180 day trial key for Blend 2 J9RVG-FJM6D-2Q9HC-296MR-PHC2M.

7)      Install Expression Design.  Now you can cut and paste XAML Designs into your projects.

8)      Install Expression Media.  Now the option of selecting a group of assets and creating a website with no code.

9)      Install Expression Web

Now you are ready to start coding awesome RIA Apps.  Let me know about your experiences and if you want maybe we can profile them at some of our events.

Check out this review:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2107839,00.asp

Thank you to everyone who attended yesterday's CyberSecurity and U event run by SiTF.  It was really fun and great talking to a number of you during the break.  As promised, I'm attaching my slides used to this post.

And remember, security is NEVER an afterthought!  ;-)

Mix sessions are now on line for viewing Check it out!For more exciting news from MIX07, including on-site interviews and videos featuring partner demos, be sure to check out http://www.visitmix.com/

Skyscrapr is Microsoft site for architecture content and community.  It’s hard to believe how quickly the first year has passed since we first created the site, and during this time we’ve been exploring many new ways of connecting with people who want to become architects – or as we call them, aspiring architects.

To help the site grow further, we have moved the site to MSDN, where our community will benefit from stronger links to the content on the MSDN Architecture Center and links to other developer centers.   The MSDN Architecture Center has released over 1500 articles over the past year, and we want to bring this rich set of material to the aspiring architect audience.  In addition, this move follows a similar migration of http://www.architecturejournal.net, the site for the Microsoft Architecture Journal, the positive feedback for which has been overwhelming.

What can you find on the new MSDN Skyscrapr site today?

· Architecture Content Map – using some dynamic features available through WPF, this new search tool provides users with a means of searching MSDN architectural content with multiple views of topics, authors, and articles. The content map provides a unique view of how different pieces of architecture content relates to each other.

· Articles and Media geared specifically towards the aspiring architect audience.  In collaboration with Microsoft Learning we have created several sections on the site dedicated to the materials required to become an architect.  This includes “101 x level 101 articles” to get started in the discipline.

· Career Profile of Architects – a series of interviews with luminaries and architects on their thoughts on architecture, and a dedicated series of videos as part of Ron Jacobs’ ARCast series.

· Architecture Blogs and Forums – where you read thoughts from others, and ask questions of other architects in the industry.

· Archipedia – an online dictionary of architectural terms you may have heard, but never knew the meaning of!

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/04/30/daizovi/index.php