It’s been quiet around here as the last three weeks of October are insane for me this year. Two weeks ago was Strategic Architect Forum as well as the second face-to-face meeting of the Microsoft Architecture Advisory Board this year (the first was reported in the February Architecture Center Update newsletter). I’ll have much more to say on the MAAB later, but having SAF and MAAB the same week is tough – I worked seven days in a row including four 12+ hour days.
This past week, I was in leadership training with a bunch of teammates and p&p folks. Spent quite a bit of time “in the circle“ with Ed, Ward and Jim from p&p plus David, Chris and Javed from my team (note to self – lean on Javed to get a blog). The sessions were intense and I learned quite a bit. I agree with Norman (who was also in the training but not in my group) that we’re very fortunate to work for a company willing to invest so much in it’s employees. However, it was two more 12+ hour days and a total of six over nine days. That’s now I’ve started re-reading Software for Your Head, which seems to share many of the same learnings from the leadership training course. Maybe we can start using SFYH in practice in my team – last time I read it I was part of a distributed team working more as a collections of lone wolves.
Next week, of course, is OOPSLA in Vancouver. I’m driving up Sunday morning and working the booth in the afternoon. I’ll be there all week and in the MSFT booth off and on during the conference, so stop by and say hi. I hear you can get flu shots in Canada, so I’m worried traffic going across the border will stink. It’ll be a long week, but at least I get next Friday off.