This is exciting news for those of us interested in
SOA...
Attendees gathered at the fifth annual Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference today, where the company shared its vision and road map to simplify the effort required to design, build, deploy and manage composite applications within and across organizations. Microsoft Corp. announced “Oslo,” the code name for the set of technical investments that help customers realize this vision.
The WCSF guys have just released a new reference implementation for responsive web sites.
The reference implementation is an executable sample Order Entry application that demonstrates integrating the Web Client Guidance in to create a responsive composite solution. The implementation of the reference implementation follows the same project structure generated by the Automation Guidance Bundle. You can use the reference implementation in different ways. You step through a running example that demonstrates application-specific code built on reusable guidance. You can also copy sections of the source code that implements any particular guidance into your own applications.
Find out more
here.
Well I've given up trying to get the Web Client Software Factory, VS2005 and VS2008 all running together on my laptop so I decided to delete VS2005 and the WCSF. First I uninstalled VS2005, which as you see, was a mistake. Why do I have to install a piece of software in order to uninstall another? Grrr!
Colin Mackay has a great run down on his site of all the cool stuff that was going on at this year's MVP summit at TVP in Reading. As its only open to MVPs I wasn't there, but was I jealous...? Nah of course not (well maybe just a little <grin>).
Technorati tags:
Colin Mackay,
MVP
I'm giving my Web Client Software Factory presentation at the North East Scotland .Net User Group meeting this Wednesday, the details are below if you want to come along.
| Wednesday, October 31, 2007 |
| 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM |
Web Client Software Factory Presentation
Gary Short will be giving a presentation on the Web Client Software Factory, to be followed by geeky chat in a local pub. :-)... |
| Queen Mother Building |
The Web Client Software Factory provides comprehensive architecture guidance to help developers build composite web clients using the Microsoft platform including ASP.NET 2.0 and Workflow Foundation. In this talk I will provide a brief overview of the WCSF before embarking on the creation of a demonstration web site.
I received the delegate feedback for my presentation at the VBUG conference. I have to say it was pretty positive
| Item | % Good or Excellent |
| Content | 87 |
| Relevance | 87 |
| Delivery | 95 |
Technorati tags:
VBUG,
Community
On the last day of work before I left on my holiday, I forgot to bring my season ticket with me, which meant I had to buy a rail ticket for that day. No problem though, because if you have a season ticket for that day then you can get a refund on the ticket you had to buy. So today I went down to the station to get my refund and ended up having one of the most bizarre conversations of my life; it went something like this...
CSR: Can I help you sir?
ME: Yes, I left my season ticket at home one day and had to purchase a ticket, I'd like a refund please.
CSR: Certainly sir, do you have the season ticket there?
ME: Yes here it is.
CSR: Thank you sir, and do you have the ticket that you purchased on the day?
ME: Erm no of course not, the ticket barrier keeps them when your journey ends.
CSR: Ah well sorry sir, without proof of purchase I cannot offer you a refund.
ME: Oh that's okay I do have proof of purchase, I have the receipt.
CSR: Oh sorry sir, we don't accept a receipt as proof of purchase.
ME: Pardon? You don't accept the receipts that you issue to customers as proof of purchase?
CSR: That's right sir, we don't.
ME: Your own receipt?! You don't accept them?
CSR: No.
ME: That's ridiculous, a receipt's only purpose is to prove purchase.
CSR: That's as maybe sir, but we don't accept them - its the ticket or nothing!
ME: Well why do you issue receipts then?
CSR: As proof of... *cough* its policy sir.
So it turns out I now have to write a letter to the Customer (no)Service Department explaining how stupid I was to suppose that the receipt I was given when purchasing my ticket was actual proof of purchase and if I ask really nicely, they might (just might mind) offer me travel vouchers to the value; but no cash refund!
As promised, you can now download my Web Client Software Factory presentation from here. The download contains the slide deck, the Visual Studio 2005 solution and a back up of the database used.
Well I gave my presentation on Web Client Software Factory today at the VBUG conference. It went okay, but there were more questions along the way than I had anticipated and that meant the demo was a little rushed. We'll just have to see how it went down once the feedback is in - I'll let you know. Next up its DDD6
DDD6 voting is now open! So pop along and vote for the sessions you want to see.
Technorati tags:
DDD6,
Community
I've been busy since I came back from holiday working with the organisers of a conference trying to sort out travel and accommodation. It's been a bit of a nightmare, I'll not name the conference as I think it's unfair as I expect all conferences face the same problem - hence the title of this post. So, what's the problem? In short, it's money and the fact they, like most conferences I expect, don't have much of it. The venue is a 900 mile round trip from my home so my travel and accommodation costs are larger than the average speakers' who, I assume, are centered around the south of England.
Now, if the conference organisers could charge large per head fees for attending this conference then there'd be no problem. There'd be money for speaker's expenses and enough left over for the organisers to make a profit (or to re-invest if they are a not for profit outfit). But they can't charge what they like, people just wont pay it. We live in an age of DDD events, screencasts and online tutorials meaning that the expectation is that education should be provided free (or extremely low cost) at the point of consumption.
I'm not saying that is a bad thing necessarily, as a (spare time, unpaid) evangelist the more people I can demonstrate great technology to, the happier I am. But it shouldn't cost me money to do it. I believe that this means the days of large, central conferences are numbered. Conferences will become more local, focusing on the interests of the local tech. population, utilising speakers from the local area; and that is a pity as it means that the number of people that evangelists, such as myself, can reach will be diminished, and the circle of speakers that people can see will constrict to include only those within a reasonable traveling distance.
It's not just the price attendees are willing to pay to come to conferences either, there is another problem breaking conferences today and that is, unless you are a full time, paid evangelist then speaking at conferences, writing white papers etc has to fit in with your employer's needs, sometimes that's not a problem, and sometimes it is. Now me, for example, I work for a great consultancy who really support my evangelism work. However, my evangelism not only has to fit in with my employer's needs but also those of whichever client I am assigned to at the time. This means that the effort involved in just getting permission to take the time off can be quite high. I believe this must be the same for a lot of people and this will be putting them off getting into community events and the tech. evangelism scene and that is a pity, as we are always on the lookout for great new speakers.
So how can this be fixed? Should it even be fixed, or should conferences be allowed to die a natural death, to be replaced by targeted local seminars and online (read web 2.0 type) content?
Well, from a personal point of view, I can see two solutions. Firstly, I could go independent (a la Julie Lerman). That way I can decide when I work and when I evangelise, and I could write my travel and accommodation costs off against my tax, that way everyone's happy. The other solution is for big companies, like Microsoft, to step in and help out. Now, they could expand their evangelism team and suck up all the talent out there, but that may not be a good idea. Some attendees will always be members of the "tin foil hat brigade", thinking that speakers employed by big companies will only be speaking because they are paid to and not because they believe in the technology. No, perhaps the idea is for these companies to sponsor the speakers. The speakers would be evangelising the technology because they were passionate about it and the big companies would be picking up the tab because their technology would be getting show cased.
Well that's my ideas, what do you guys think? Can conferences be save? should they be saved? How can we save them?
... and some numpty goes and makes my mate Barry Dorrans an MVP. Yeah, can you believe it?! I come back from holiday to find I now have to address my fellow Charterite as Barry Dorrans MVP; as if he wasn't insufferable enough already! :-)
Joking aside, it's a well deserved award - congratulations Barry!