I got interested in computers when my dad started bringing home a terminal to access his companies mainframe over a 300 baud telecoupled modem. The first terminals were paper-based, then we moved-on-up to a VT100. I got interested in programming because I wanted to be able to build my own game like Adventure or Zork. The rest as they say is history and some 20-25 years later I work for Microsoft. I never actually built an adventure game, but if I still wanted to, apparently Rory is teaching a sesson on Inform which apparently is a language for building Interactive Fiction.

Sounds like Code Camp is going to be a blast. Note to self, bug Rory for his slides.

After a six month silence, Dad posted about what he called Business Oriented Architecture (BOA?):

If I had to guess what a service oriented architecture will eventually look like, I would guess that it would reflect the business architecture – Business Oriented Architecture (BOA). Business organizations have evolved over many centuries into a number of common “departments” – sales, accounting, personnel, etc. Perhaps that is a good starting place for services.

John forwarded me a post from Richard Veryard where he comments on Dad’s post:

The issues addressed in my book are now becoming mainstream as the technological agenda of service-oriented architecture (SOA) starts to converge with the strategic agenda of the service-based business (SBB). This implies an approach to business strategy that involves dynamically managing the geometry of the business. (To achieve a fully adaptive enterprise we typically need to implement a variable geometry.) We can find elements of this thinking in some of the methodologies coming out of IBM and Microsoft, although from what I’ve seen so far I don’t think any of these methodologies go far enough.

Hal calls this Business Oriented Architecture. If anything, I’d prefer to call it Architecture-Oriented Business. As Hal indicates, this calls for architectural thinking at the business level, which need to be aligned with architectural thinking at the information/software level.

This comes back around to the whole SOA top-down vs. bottom-up argument. Something I’ll comment further on when I’m not up to my armits in moving boxes.

Jim Newkirk has released an alpha version of a utility to convert NUnit tests to VSTS tests. What he doesn’t mention in the post is that he’s using GAT to integrate this conversion functionality into VS05. Basically this conversion is an “unbounded recipe” which means that any time you right click on an item in the solution explorer, the NUnit Converter uses Visual Studio’s CodeModel functionality to analyze the contents of the file. If the file is a C# file and has any NUnit test fixtures in it, NUnit Converter adds a “Convert NUnit Test Code” item to the context menu.

From a cursory glance at the code (which Jim was kind enough to send me) it doesn’t look like it took very much GAT code to integrate into VS. Of all the files in the solution, there are only three that relate to GAT – the Conversion Action (i.e. the code that initiates the NUnit -> VSTS conversion when you select the context menu item), the Conversion Recipe Reference (i.e. the code that determines if the conversion menu item should be added to the context menu) and the Selected Project Item Provider (i.e. the code that retrieves the selected file from the Solution Explorer). There’s also the XML file that defines the recipes. Everything else as far as I can tell handles the conversion itself and has nothing to do with GAT.

It’s cool to see a real-world usage of GAT and that using GAT is a pretty low-impact effort given the VS integration benefits it provides.

So after doing community and marketing for the Architecture Strategy Team in the last two years, I’m changing roles on the team again. I’m going to work for John deVadoss as a solution architect. In other words, I’m going to actually do architecture work for the Architecture Strategy Team. Go figure. 😄

Seriously, I’ve actually enjoyed working for Norman and with Tanya. This has been in the works for a while and I chatted about it with some of my friends who I saw at TechEd. Someone quipped that I was “getting my brain back”. Maybe I’m not getting the whole brain back, but I don’t really see it that way. Marketing is very very very different from technical jobs like development and architecture but it’s just as hard. However, it does use a different part of the brain. So while I’m excited to moving into a role that plays to my strength, I’m walking away from my marketing experience with a new respect and understanding for the job. John wrote about SteveB talking about “selling what we build, AND building what we can sell”. I feel that spending time in marketing has made me a better equipped to build what we can sell. Frankly, I think more (all?) technologists should spend a stint in marketing so they understand what it’s all about.

Anyway, I’m still going to be involved in community and Norman considers me a “stealth” marketing technologist (plus, he replaced me with an experienced marketing person) so I guess I’ll also do some marketing stuff. So I’ll continue to be involved with stuff like Architect MVP and TechEd ARC track, which I’ve really come to enjoy. But I’ll also be involved in projects, doing customer briefings and I’ve got a bunch of other things brewing. So it should be fun.

However, before I make the switch I’m going on paternity leave for four weeks first. Ahh, four weeks of rest and relaxation…yeah right. We move into our new house on Monday so I’m looking at four weeks of heavy lifting, sorting stuff in boxes and changing diapers (it is paternity leave after all). I’ll try and post occasionally, but I’m going incredibly busy and have spotty network access. I’ll probably post pictures to my MSN Space on occasion since I can do that with my phone. Otherwise, I’ll see you on the other side.

Actually, this quote is from Tuesday – I’m just way behind on blogging.

“The benefit of being despised is that you have carte blanche. They can’t hate me any more than they already do.” – Norman Guadagno