This is a project that can help bryce justify his playmobil collection which is considerable.

HEROES HAPPEN {HERE} was not only about Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 it was about celebrating the people who keep things running.

It is often easy to forget about the people that maintain the systems we expect to be running (except when the sky falls) when we are so focused on new and shiny technologies and systems.

Microsoft acknowledges that making maintenance simpler and more agile so that IT staff can focus on solving problems and add real value is what everyone wants whether you are an IT professional or the business that hires IT professionals. They call this strategy Dynamic IT.

Kevin told us a story of two heroes.

Now, let me tell you a story. I want to tell you about a couple of heroes, just to bring this theme of this launch to life. And I want to start by telling you imagine it’s November 12th, 1999, and you’re in Istanbul, Turkey. And it’s the middle of the night, and an earthquake hits, 7.2 on the Richter scale. So you get in a doorway with all your family, buildings are shaking and collapsing around you, and all of a sudden all the lights go out and it’s completely dark. After several hours, the shaking and the crumbling stops. You somehow find a way to make it outside. When you finally get outside, you look around and it’s total devastation all around you.

Now, most of us can only imagine this, but this was the reality for Omer Celik. Along with everyone else in the region, they had to live and eat in the streets for five days before help arrived.

This challenging time, that five-day period, sparked an idea, an idea that Omer said, you know what, there’s got to be something we can do with technology.

So, he wanted to create something that could help tell rescue crews what was going on in the areas that they couldn’t reach or get to, somehow create a tool that would allow them to see just what they were facing and where help was needed right away.

So, over the next 24 months he and a friend partnered, and it’s his childhood friend, Oguz they’ve been friends since they were 10 years old, they partnered and using Microsoft Robotics Studio, Visual Studio 2008, which we’re going to talk about, Virtual Earth, Windows Server 2008, with IIS 7.0 and Silverlight, they’ve created something called RoboTurk a robotic helicopter used in disaster situations to fly into areas that are so badly damaged so that you can stream video back to the rescue crews, so that rescue crews can get real time feedback on who and where they need to provide help.

Now, Omer and Oguz are two developers, but they’re also two developers who decided to make a difference, and they’re heroes, and we’re celebrating them today, because today the Turkish government and Microsoft are investing with Omer and Oguz to bring this technology mainstream.

That is so cool. I need to get more info on that soon. I have been doing a bit of research lately into how technology can help in catastrophic situations and there is some fascinating work being done. I know it sounds cheesy but if anyone has ever worked with a government agency or body you know that they can be a little slow sometimes. Work like RoboTurk and projects like JEPRS from Infusion are like very exciting because in an emergency time is of the essence.

Here are some photos of some Heroes.

There were many more exciting things announced like: built in virtualization in Windows Server 2008 and where that is going; PHP support for IIS – that will be exciting for enterprise applications and JavaScript Debugging and IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2008.

I think that one of my favourite case studies that day was one from Sorin Manta, Manager of Windows Server Infrastructure Technology and Operations at BMO.

“Just by eliminating the need for infrastructure, we save about $150,000 in capital costs for every office that we open… and we’ve opened four so far. That’s more than half a million dollars already.”

Sorin Manta, Manager, Windows Server Infrastructure, Technology and Operations, BMO Capital Markets

See him tell his story.

I have been working on a mindMap that illustrates the kinds of activities, research and technologies that me and my co-workers do in our everyday practice. While I realize that this is somewhat specific to our company and the work that we do I thought it would be interesting to get feedback on it. I hope to refine this as we develop the practice.

So if you have anything that you’d like to share, please comment on Flickr.

Everyone should go check out the capabilities section of the idea couture site. I personally find it very inspiring but I know it would not work for us. Mind you we are a stogy software development house not a hip design shop :-)

Got to hang out at the first Toronto SharePointCamp and have a bunch of developer friends ask me, “What are you doing here, you’re not a developer”

Matthew Milan & Sam Ladner

Download the MP3 of the presentation ( 28 megs )

A mashup of scenario development and social learning, backcasting is a strategy framework that allows practitioners to successfully conceptualize, scope and structure multiple future states. It also provides a framework for successfully negotiating obstacles and threats to achieving those states. Originally used in the environmental planning field, backcasting has been hacked and refined for use in web strategy discovery activities.

Other recorded talks from the 2007 IA summit

• Enterprise IA methodologies: starting two steps earlier – James Robertson
• Systems Thinking, Rich Mapping and Conceptual Models – Matt MIllan & Gene Smith
• Project Touchstones how to bridge competing viewpoints and build vision consensus and innovation – Jess McMullin
• Using Search Analytics To Diagnose What’s Ailing Your Information Architecture – Lou Rosenfeld & Rich Wiggins
• Real information Architecture – New Mighty Deeds – Margaret Hanley, Lisa Chan, Tom Coates and Matt Biddulph
• Information Architecture and Ethical Design – Olly Wright

Matt Milan and Gene Smith introduce Rich Mapping and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to information architects. SSM is a holistic problem solving framework that can be used to design and model interactions between organizations, people, environments, products and services.

Download the MP3 of the presentation ( 22 megs )

The expected outcome for session attendees will be an understanding of the key tenets of Soft Systems Methodology, how these concepts can be applied “off the shelf” to information architecture problems, and how soft systems thinking could be used to drive the development of new IA tools and practices.

Other recorded talks from the 2007 IA summit

• Backcasting: or how I learned to stop predicting and help my clients – Sam Ladner & Matthew Milan
• Enterprise IA methodologies: starting two steps earlier – James Robertson
• Project Touchstones how to bridge competing viewpoints and build vision consensus and innovation – Jess McMullin
• Using Search Analytics To Diagnose What’s Ailing Your Information Architecture – Lou Rosenfeld & Rich Wiggins
• Real information Architecture – New Mighty Deeds – Margaret Hanley, Lisa Chan, Tom Coates and Matt Biddulph
• Information Architecture and Ethical Design – Olly Wright

[tags]IASummit, IASummit2007, InformationArchitectureSummit, GeneSmith, MattMillan, SoftSystems[/tags]

Now while watching this video I didn’t know if EDS was attempting to illustrate how agile they are
OR
commenting on how rediculous agile development can be.

I don’t know if you can equate building airplanes to building software because I presume that an airplane builder knows what an airplane is, how it should work and they have built one before. How do you do iterative builds on a flying airplane? If a wing doesn’t work while flying can you rip it off and rebuild it? Is EDS that good??? WOW!

I like agile, but I am not a true believer, some of it still feels like bullshit to me. The one assumption that has always bothered me is that your project has smart experienced developers building your software who can make educated guesses on interactivity and results based on their tacit :-P knowledge.

I work in a world of software development that has a new domain with new business practices, governance models, acronyms & language terms and regulator rules for almost every project.

NEWSFLASH
Many (not all) programmers are NERDS and therefore may not understand things like aesthetics, business practices or even everyday software conventions. Everyone knows at least one brilliant developer that can shell script a full length ASCII animation of Star Wars but could not buy penicillin from drugstore.com to save their dying chicks.

I think I once heard Ken Schwaber talk about how he was on a panel where he was asked by a CMMI guy how he planned to not make Scrum into the bloated beast that CMMI is because when they started they did not want a lot of process either. That is a bad recounting but I can’t find the reference, but what I am trying to say is that optimum processes tend to require optimum inputs and environments things get messy when you need to ensure predictable success while accounting for variants.

I truly wish I could depend on my teammates to make the correct assumptions but I can’t and that kinda depresses me… later.

So what do you do when your company is about to tear up an old telemarketing office to make way for a new floor of developers… you hold a BarCamp that’s what.

We are going to do a more specialized BarCamp this time one whose focus is on enterprise development and solutions.

So if you are in the Toronto area and are sick of holiday cheer come out and join us for some inperson knowledge sharing.

Check out the wiki to sign up and for more details.

… oh and ok-cancel rules.

Download this video in High Quality Windows Media or in High Quality MP4

This was a video I used to introduce a session that I conducted. The session was about using puppets (or if I was Oscar Wilde, masks) as a way of allowing ourselves to say things we might not normally say. Acting for Introverts. The content of this video is meant to be a light commentary on general issues in copyright and how entertainment will be consumed in the future.

After the video we tried to do an impromptu session with the puppets. It was a lot of fun but we didn’t get a lot of solid thoughts. That was ok because I think that lightening up the event a little was cool because there was so much great ideas at the event. Below are some pictures taken from the video we took of the session.

Also posted the presentation I did for the Speed Geek.

Check out my filckr photos

Check out everyones flickr photos

[tags]IA Summit 2006, iasummit2006, informationArchitecture, design+business, Web2.0[/tags]