Monday, May 07, 2007
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This is Lou Carbone from Experience Engineering talking about “The Emotion of Customer Experience” at MIX07 in Las Vegas. It's one of the best sessions that I've *ever* seen. I highly recommend it. Check it out
here. The rest of the sessions can be found at
http://sessions.visitmix.com.
Friday, January 05, 2007
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It has been an eternity since my last post (more on that later) so I thought it only fitting that this post is a continuation of my last post. And that is around the wonderful MIX conference that Microsoft started last year (cleverly titled MIX06) and is running again this year (cleverly titled MIX07). I went last year, and thanks to the great folks who run the Regional Director program (you know who you are KS), I'm heading off again. If you like the Web 2.0 space (technology and/or business/entrepreneur and/or User Experience) this is the place to be.
Definitely, check it out here - www.mix07.com.
Now, the other question hitting me is should I check out Mesh. Apparently it's “Canada's Web Conference”. I heard mixed reviews on it last year - some raved about it, some didn't. Is it possible any of the 3 readers of my blog attended?
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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As I've mentioned, the O'Reilly/Gates discussion at the end of Gates keynote was really a highpoint of the MIX06 kickoff yesterday - some good coverage can be found here. As I've mentioned in previous postings, O'Reilly has one of the best veins of thought around what Web 2.0 is and what it means. A good starting point (that is a must read) can be found here. If you haven't read it, stop now and read there. I've also posted my own, shorter version about what I think Web 2.0 is which can be found here.
Anyway, O'Reilly was an outstanding 'interviewer' and really -- but very tactfully -- pressed Gates on a number of points. O'Reilly worked from his “What is Web 2.0? Principles”, of which there are 7, and asked a specific question for each of his 7 principles. One of the most interesting thoughts that came out was around Principle 4 (End of the software release cycle), and the question lead to a discussion which centered around “Can Microsoft compete with companies whose core business isn't software?” I thought this was a really interesting theme - for sure, Microsoft has demonstrated that it is dominant in the world of software and has many products that have enormous market share (SQL, Exchange, Windows itself both client and server, Sharepoint, Excel, Word, ....). There's no doubt in my mind that when Microsoft chooses to compete on the software side, it will be a fierce competitor and a solid bet to be the eventual winner. And yet, in competing with the likes of say Yahoo!, Microsoft isn't really competing with a software company and it remains to be seen (I think) if they can do it. Wait and see, I suppose.
Anyway, it was quite an interesting discussion.
There were two very good quotes from day 1 of MIX that stuck with me:
The first was from Bill G., who when pressed by Tim O'Reilly about Microsoft having crushed competitors like Netscape, who said “some of our competitors knocked themselves out.” It was a high point in their tete-a-tete, and they both had a good laugh.
The second was from a panelist in one of the breakout sessions - he said simply that “the next generation of the web will be built by the next generation.” I thought that was a very powerful and simple way of stating something that is, when you're looking at it, fairly obvious.
Monday, March 20, 2006
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So the keynotes are done, and I'm sitting in breakout session #1 on Microsoft adCenter. Keynotes were very good - CTO of www.myspace.com, bbc.uk, and others. And of course we got to hear from Bill G. himself. I think Bill G. took some of the excitement out of the audience. I'm here with one of our UE gurus - and I don't think she found Bill G. too great - as soon you start saying things like:
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Atlas
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Certificates
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API
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Windows communication foundation
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DHTML
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WS-*
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Javascript
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Libraries
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"Asynchronous programming"
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"super valuable"
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"complicated message exchange"
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"rich forms interaction"
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"programmable web"
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"xmlhttp capable"
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On atlas: "make it work super well with ASP.Net"
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"windows presentation foundation" takes a lot of the graphics pipleline… GPUs, drivers,
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"we use the declarative model"
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"vista has this gadget-bar so we expect people to take advantage of that"
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"making something super-simple"
well, lets just say you lose your designer & BDM audience. Anyway, the Q&A with Tim O'Reilly and Bill G. was really good. The highlight was Bill G's response to prompts about Netscape with “Some of our competitors knocked themselves out.“ It was a highlight moment.
Anyway, they launched the much-anticipated Go Live license for Atlas. Check it out here - http://atlas.asp.net.
/s.
Just sitting in the big 'ole ball room waiting for the keynote for Mix06 (Bill G and I think Tim O'Reilly). Should be an awesome event.
Maybe it's becase we're in Vegas at the Venetian, but there really seems to be an awesome buzz here.
Strangest thing though - the wack 'o stuff they gave us at registration included a 200 page hard-bound notebook - sort of weird for a Web conference no?
More to come.
Friday, February 17, 2006
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{This is sort of using a blog as a discussion forum, so if you haven't watched the toronto.com Architecture webcast I suggest not proceeding further}
During the webcast, we highlighted an issue that we had around dynamic compilation and app restarts. Some resources and external links are posted here (scoll down to the section on the dispatcher).
A question was posed here about the possibilities of offloading page compilation to another server.
While I do think that it might be possible to do this, I don't think that the work required to do this would provide a good return architecturally speaking.
Lead Developer (on the imason side) and all-around good guy Nariman Haghighi puts it this way:
“Personally, I don’t see tier 1 performance (in terms of compilation overhead) as a top 5 issue and I think the application restart issue needs to be approached from an entirely different prospective: lower your reliance on it and let it happen.”
I agree with him. Our problems really stemmed, quite honestly, from not fully investigating the page compilation process in the initial designs of the Dispatcher. It was only during the Load Testing stages that we uncovered the app restart issues. Refactoring (and to some extent doing some minor redesigning) of The Dispatcher I think will make it very easy to reduce our reliance on app restarts and to reduce the number or restarts as well.
/s.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
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If you watched the webcast, you'll have noticed that there were a bunch of links in the deck. Here they are:
My coordinates:
toronto.com
- Toronto.com home page - www.toronto.com (seems obvious, no?)
- Torstar Annual General Meeting (May 4, 2005) in which toronto.com is quoted as the “second only to New York“ in terms of best city sites and announced the launch of Torstar Digital
- Yahoo Biz information on Torstar
- Site that provides statistics on toronto.com “unique visitors“. Note this is a paid service, but I did want to reference where they get their statistics from.
On the top-level Approach
- Gartner report that puts Microsoft as a leader in Web Services
On WebParts
On Front Controller Design Pattern (The Dispatcher)
Tuning and Testing
Indispensible Tools
This RSS feed is specifically for people who want to engage in a conversation about the architecture webcast (February 16, 2006 at 1PM EST). The registration can be found here. The session will be recorded, and when I have that information I'll be sure to post it here. A great landing point for all things “Architecture“ with a Canadian spin is here. So, how to interact?
I'll be kicking off threads based on the areas of interest that people express to me. I encourage and expect people to post comments and questions - I commit to answering each and every one. If you want to have a private conversation with me, or would like a new thread started - don't hesitate to drop me an email. If you don't get a response within a business day, odds are that our spam filter singled you out (undeservedly, of course!). In this case, post a comment to the blog and I'll make sure to “un-junk it.”