Here is a list of my all time favorite songs. (In no particular order)
The Angry Penguin has a post about the death of Johnny Carson. I loved the Tonight Show. I didn’t call it The Tonight Show I called it the Johnny Carson Show. Johnny Carson was the brand, sorry Ed. Today, The Tonight Show as it is called, is a change in focus, a change in Brand strategy in my opinion. I am a member along with the Angry Penguin of the “Not since May of 92” club. I have not watched since it was no longer the Johnny Carson Show. Jay Leno to me is New Coke never bought it, never will.
The Johnny Carson Show was one of the few television shows that both my Grandparents and I enjoyed to watch. So when I was at their house (which was often) I always got to see the Johnny Carson show.
So long Carnac The Magnificent….
I just finished “Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business” by Patrick M. Lencioni. The book was of a manageable length and provided an interesting insight into meetings. Building upon the 5 dysfunctions of a team, this book was worth the effort. It provided at minimum a process managing and participating in meetings. The book is written in a fable format similar other books by the author. I would recommend the book to anyone who is trying to improve how they hold and plan meetings.
Well it took me a bit of time but I was finally able to get my SiteBar server running. I had some issues with untaring the files but I was able to get beyond it with some help from the Angry Penguin.
SiteBar for those of you that don’t know, provides a service similar to the bookmarks feature in the Yahoo toolbar. Now my friends can have one central location to store their links and access them from any computer.
Another wonderful open source product.
I have spent the last week at SAP Teched in San Diego. I’m not going to review the content of the conference but I will comment on the amenities of the conference. The SDN Lounge was OK. It was short on seating and comfort in general. The conference in general was short on non-session seating. The conference needed a place where people could just hand out.
The San Diego Convention Center was nice and extremely spacious. The chairs used in the sessions were not very comfortable. I found myself standing more than sitting. Similar to the last Teched I attended the snacks were pretty good. Lunch was ok and there wasn’t anyone yelling at me about taking an extra slice of cheesecake (Java One style).
This conference had by far the best Internet connectivity of any conference I have ever attended. The connectivity was sponsored by Intel. Sun would be served well by asking Intel to sponsor connectivity at Java One, maybe it would help.
One a scale of 1 to 5 the conference amenities rates a 3.5. More casual seating and more comfortable seating during the sessions would rate at least a 4.
I was given the Price of Loyalty by a friend who is well read and no friend of 43. I must say that this was a compelling read and worth the time and late nights. I found the evolution of Paul O’Neill’s contempt for the circle surrounding 43 to be the most interesting part of the book. The book does not portray Dick Cheney in a positive light. The treatment of Cheney is not surprising and may be the result of Paul O’Neill’s long personal history with Dick Cheney. The book also discusses the first discussions in the NSC focusing on Iraq. I can see why the administration made such a stink when the news of this book surfaced.
I can say that this book left me feeling as if 43 lied to us from the start.
A must read before you vote.
I have spent some time thinking about SOA and the possibility of an adaptive well defined enterprise. In my discussions with people I continually hear SOA and WS used interchangeably. While I understand why WS can be mistaken for SOA, SOA is not Web Services and Web Services are not SOA. SOA is a architectural style that encompasses more than just services. If consumers of technology are going to be successful the architectural style of SOA must converge in a way that allows business people to drive change across the enterprise. The implementations of SOA may include the use of Web Services but there is nothing requiring them.
Oh and one more thing WSDL was NEVER meant to be read by a human. Business people should be looking at contracts not WSDL.
I have now completed my second reading of The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. I found the book fascinating and insightful. The book provides a great deal of support for the idea that given the proper conditions a crowd will almost always be smarter that any individual over time. For a crowd to achieve the highest intelligence it must be diverse, be composed of independant parts, decentralized and provide for aggregation of group knowledge. One of the examples given in support of the wisdom of crowds was the search for the USS Scorpion conducted by John Craven. The story of craven and his search can be found in more detail in “Blindman’s Bluff” by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew and Annette Lawrence Drew.
It was a great trip while it lasted. Moveable Type is a good commercial product. It may well be the best commercial product, but it is not free. I am not opposed to commercial software. I like products that provide the lowest barrier to innovation.
I also feel that Six Apart distributed Moveable Type like a drug dealer distributes to prospective customers. Thats just my opinion. It was shrewd marketing but not very comfortable.
It was a nice ride.
I wish Moveable Type well and future sucess.
Tom The Architect 