The "Golden Hammer" anti-pattern strikes again, with echoes...

Don XML - in his From The What Were They Thinking Department post - wrote about what a poor idea Fawcette's Enterprise Architect Summit was. Robert Scoble and bunch of other "MS'ers" (apparently, .NET developers) climbed on saying yeah, how can it possibly compete with the PDC, they're idiots, won't they ever learn, blah, blah, blah.

Really? Do these "MS'ers" seriously believe that someone interested in (guessing here) "De-compiling MSIL" would also be interested in Fawcette's "Best Practice: Managing Enterprise Storage Needs"?

My favorite way of expressing the "Golden Hammer" anti-pattern - which I was using long before I even heard about design and analysis patterns - is "if all you've got's a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Well, apparently if you're an "MS'er", every software related conference should like like the "ur conference" or else it's pointless and sucks dead wombats. Rather than the PDC, a more valid comparison would be to the META Group and DCI's Enterprise Architectures Conference. Were any of these "MS'ers" there? Well, I was at META's NYC event last month and I can confidently report that attendees there were a lot more familiar with John Zachman's framework than they were with the .NET Framework

So these "MS'ers" get an email come-on to an "invitation only" event for enterprise architects. Of course, these same guys (and gals, of course) also routinely get email to enlarge their male members, get rescued from impending bankruptcy, and view online video feeds that satisfy their every sexual desire. Do they have just as much trouble their distinguising content that's truly going to meet their "unique needs"? Wake up "MS'ers", you're not enterprise architects, no matter what it says on your business cards.

Disclaimer (of sorts): While I am the conference chair for Fawcette's VSLive/VBITS events - and am responsible for the Guided Design .Summit - Architecture and Design for .NET event on Microsoft campus, also in October - I don't have anything do to with their Enterprise Architect Summit.