Amazing Session.
Norm Judah started it all off with a great vision into 2015, discussing the evolution of Cloud computing. This concept of Cloud and an overtone of software as a field of Engineering were really being drilled home. Norm highlighted how Cloud computing is really going to revolutionize and bring about the 5th generation of computing. (previous generations mainframe, PC apps, client/server, Internet). One thing Norm really got right here is breaking down the word 'cloud'. Making sure we understood that not all clouds are made the same - EC3, Azure, Rackspace cloud, akamai, limelight, etc...
Juval Lowy followed up the concept of Engineering and discussed the inflation of terms from the 1990 explosion of the high tech industry and the boom that brought about an influx of under rated under talented and certainly not properly trained software professionals. His idea - Software Architects are really Software Engineers. Software Developers - really are software technicians. This terminology is radical and for some insulting. But what's in a title? Really it's about what you do. He highlighted that the architect should NOT be the domain expert. I couldn't agree more - that's for SMEs and developers. Architects deal with patterns and processes that can be re-used over and over again to solve problems.
Angela Yochem really inspired me with as my current role as a dev manage for Macadamian Technologies, more specifically as someone who is helping his employees reach their potential through a single statement - "How do you want to finish your career?: Forget about the - what do you want to do in 5 years question we've all be asked.
These three alone were enough to make my mind nearly explode with new energy and ideas. Idea's I want to disseminate within Macadamian as fast as I can. Cloud computing, re-invigorate the role of the architect as the engineer (something I've been thinking about a lot lately, how software developers are the craftsmen - but how I haven't really put words to paper on what that makes the architects).
But there was more...
Jim Wilt went into the details of Cloud computing, how it's new, immature, and the architects out there need to get their hands dirty with it. Like Norm Judah said - this is a new frontier of computing. If you don't make this paradigm shift in how you design software, in 5 years you will be scrambling to keep up. Another interesting topic he went into was how private clouds don't really make sense in the long run, but will help quench the fear of the enterprise of lose of control.
Eduardo Kassner - The only IT Infrastructure Architect of the group - really hit home with a rapid fire overview of a great study about building efficient, well managed IT infrastructures. This is something most start ups don't get right. The report was great, it went into massive detail about the total cost of ownership (something very difficult to explain to customers as it's not something immediate).
Sam Guckenheimer went into some deep dives (and demos). But his key message that really stuck with me had to do with technical debt. More specifically how lean process/enterprises and the concept of Muda, Mura, Muri brought in by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota. These 7 type of Muda (waste) really hit home, the biggest one was absurdity that creates a reliance on heroism to save the day (or build or release). Furthermore, it's great to see that MS is moving towards a solution with testing that Replay Solutions (replay Editor) brought about earlier this year. The ability to log bugs that can launch you directly into a debugger session in VS2010. The caveat is that the easiest way to deploy this is with TFS and Lab Manager as your dev environment. Though he did mention a way to build your own custom tie ins. Can you say plug ins?
Finally Futureist, Ulrich Homann, flew 50,000 feet above sea level and got into some very interesting topics about how some of the leading edge corporations in the world are shedding old paradigms and looking at some very new ways of developing solutions.
And to top this all off. I won a MS Web Camera. This is ironic because the old Creative Notebook Web Cam I have was giving my laptop blue screen's of death when trying to video chat with my daughter. All in all, very happy times.
As a small side note the reason I won the web cam was from a question I asked the panel about Geo Fencing services built into cloud computing services in Azure. With that said, Geo Fencing of clouds doesn't seem to be on the horizon for Azure. What MS is doing is lobbying governments to reduce their views on 'location' of the data storage. The strong argument about how the information using the Internet gets routed to you is key here. It might be stored a block away, but it may get routed through 5 states and 3 provinces before it gets to your computer.
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