Managed World

I just finished this track presented by Ted Neward (of TheServerSide.Net) and Gregor Hohpe (author of “Enterprise Integration Patterns”). I have to say (and this may surprise some of you that have been reading my prior Tech Ed posts) I totally enjoyed this session. Since I’ve been focusing on the presentations and such, why stop, eh? Gregor obviously knows what he’s talking about. I find myself, especially after the first day, enjoying seeing presentations where the presenter isn’t just reading off the power point slides. Quite a bit of the presentation was more conversation, architect to architect, which I also enjoyed tremendously.

Although I’m sure there are others that might not like Ted Neward’s presentation style, I am not one of them. I like how personal he is. I like how, as a presenter, he talks with/to his audience (rather than reading to). I think with some of his jokes, there might be people that get offended which is too bad because it’s nice anytime seeing a presenter who has a sense of humor. I’ve lost count of how many dry presenters I’ve seen over the years. The act of presenting and listening can be awkward enough, let alone when the presenter isn’t making an effort to relate to or interact with the audience.

I found that this presentation basically drove home a lot of points that I’ve been thinking about lately. I like messaging patterns. Not only for their scalability but also for their ability to lower the coupling within an existing system. Today I plan to attend the cabana so I can chat with Gregor and Ted. I basically want to get their opinions (with their experience) about some of the ideas I’ve had. Mainly, the idea of using a messaging system (or messaging patterns in general) in order to lower coupling between subsystems within the same application. I personally feel that messaging patterns just don’t shine in distributed applications. I think that when applied properly in the right context, they can be very powerful within a single application also. Any of you who have read my prior game articles have possibly seen the lean towards messaging structures that I’m starting to take, when applicable.

Hopefully a couple more of the sessions I attend today and tomorrow are this good (perhaps I did just wake up on the wrong side of the bed Monday). I give this one 9/10 IBM Thinkpad X41s (just because the new X41 is THAT sexy).