Managed World

I was watching ESPN the other day when I saw this product name: “Elephant Beautiful Balls.” I’m serious, this is no joke. Is it just me, or do any of you think that this is quite an unfortunate product name?

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). 

This is a quote directly from Don Box when he was asked to describe himself for a video that Mike Hall was making for Tech Ed (in the middle of his session). It was actually kind of eerie because Mike and two cameramen came running in from the back of the room and ran all the way up onto stage. It was almost like watching a very geeky version of Cops. Anyways, here’s the quote:

[Don Box describing himself]: “Consider me a representation of an ideal”. Classic! What a great quote! I was laughing any time I thought about that today. Way too geeky!

Chris mentioned tonight how he was linked from Coding4Fun on MSDN (although it might be gone already for some of you following that link). Congrats Chris! I’m proud of ya’ man! And keep up those articles .

I noticed a quote from a recent post by Julia Lerman (aka Julie Lerman (right Julie? HA! (I’m just glad I finally know what the whole “Julia” vs “Julie” thing is all about (I can’t tell you how long that was bothering me for (I lost several nights of sleep over it for a matter of fact (not really, but it could have happened)))))). If you’re two lazy to click through to that link I will post the quote here:

“Tech Ed for me is more about catching up with people and meeting new folks”.

After having a chat with Julie on the bus ride back to the hotel today, I realized that I totally agree with her. Where I have gotten the most value out of Tech Ed this year is the social networking aspect. The amount of people that I’ve been able to finally meet or to spend time hanging out with has been great (it’s funny how difficult it is hanging around with someone when you live across country from each other). I think it might just be the sessions that I’ve been going to, but I was hoping to get a lot more details and content from the presentations than just a twenty thousand foot overview. I must say though that I did attend some enlightening sessions (like Don Box’s discussion on “Metadata Soup”). The way Don Box looks at different development paradigms is quite refreshing.

But back to the social networking aspect of Tech Ed. Tonight I was able to spend some good time having a blast with Chris Williams (aka Blogus Maximus (that never gets old for me!!!)) from GeeksWithBlogs. Some of you might be surprised since it seemed like Chris and I exchanged some words over the whole “Signal To Noise” ratio thing. Well, I have to say that Chris is HILARIOUS and I absolutely enjoyed spending time with him (hopefully we’ll get some more time, eh Chris?). I’m proud to call Chris my homie! And while I’m on the matter, I was also able to spend some time chilling out with Jeff Jullian. What a great guy!

And now that I think about it I was able to have a great (albeit short) conversation with both DonXML and SqlDiva. What a hoot! I look forward to seeing more of those two in the future. I also got to spend some time with Chris Goldfarb, Rich Claussen, Cory Isakson, Stuart Celarier, Jason Mauer, etc. The list goes on and on (too many people to mention!!!).

It continues to amaze me the number of connections with people that I make simply because of blogging.

I’m posting this here for me more than anyone, but if any of you haven’t heard of these applications you have to check them out. I must give a quick thanks to Scott Hanselman who I was exposed to these utilities through.

SlickRun

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