Pat Helland is the newest member of my team to start a blog. Back in the day, Pat was a co-founder of the Microsoft Transaction Server team. These days, he’s using the Metropolis analogy to help predict and explain the evolution of architecture. You can catch his Metropolis presentation as part of the Architecture Strategy Series). Subscribed plus I’ve added him to my teammate blog OPML file.

In addition to revealing his love of PEZ, Pat’s got a great dissertation on the multiple meanings of the term “service”. One of the issues with SOA is that not everyone agrees on what a “service” is. From what I can tell, the most common definition is “something you build with [insert your favorite vendor]‘s technology”. Having a vendor-independent description seems like a pretty good idea.

I don’t want to be a human aggregator, but these blogs are just too cool

• Keith Short, Architect for VS.NET Enterprise Tools. Check out his post on DSL and MDA.
• Mary Cullinane, School of the Future Technology Architect. She’s blogging about the “opportunity to build a School of the Future for 800 kids in grades 9-12” in Philadelphia. My wife’s a teacher and I used to work closely with the Education Solutions Group. I can’t wait to see how this evolves.

At least one person was interested in an OPML of MSFT .NEAT and AE bloggers. So I hacked them out of my full blog roll and posted it on my site. I will be keeping it up to date, so check back every once in a while. I added a link to it in my nav bar so it is always available.

I love dasBlog. I was able to make one small change to the web.config file and now the OPML file is addressable while still being easily managed via dasBlog’s blogroll editor. Sweet.

Noah Horton, former teammate who has gone on to become PM in the Peer Networking Group, has started a blog. Of course, with the new aggregated feed of MSDN bloggers, you probably already knew that. However, I am compelled to blog this as Noah is a friend, works in the next building over from me and I’ve got a special interest in P2P. I’m looking forward to his promised tips and tricks. Subscribed.

Say hello (and subscribe) to John deVadoss, the latest .NEAT team member to start a blog. John’s the Lead Solutions Architect for .NEAT, which means he’s technical plus he manages people. He’s got his “Hello World” post out of the way where he lists his interests. I spend a lot of time hounding talking with John, so I’m looking forward to his future posts.

I think my extended team (.NET Enterprise Architecture Team plus the Field Architect Evangelists) are really starting to get into this blogging thing. Besides John and myself, we’ve got David explaining “what makes a Smart Client so smart?”, Ram on SOA and OO, Mike on modelling and Simon on interop and Outlook programmability. Maybe I should start a .NEAT / AE blogroll? The blogrolls on my weblog are woefully out of date anyway, might be time for an overhaul.