RAF 2008 , a touching experience
Last week I
had the pleasure to attend a RAF 2008 [Regional
Architect Forum] for South Cone organized by Microsoft. This event is
done once by year and gathers the most important architects of the region from
mid and large clients and ISVs. It was carried out at Sheraton Pilar hotel in
Buenos Aires [nice place, by the way J], there were approximately 100
people and it was my first RAF J.
For me, it was a touching experience as I had
the opportunity to meet a lot of nice people and experienced .net guys [some of
them I only knew by blogs or forums], share experiences, discuss technical and
not so technical aspects and be up to date with last releases and Microsoft
strategy.
I am really
surprised about the networking and
how as human beings that shares some things, being isolated from daily work, we
can meet and become friends. I strongly
feel I have more friends now
that I can count on and vice versa.
Apart from
networking, there were delivered some
presentations, which were very good level ones. I had also the pleasure to deliver a
presentation with my folk Gabriel
about Enterprise 2.0, a very young concept based on
Web 2.0 concepts, focusing on our humble experiences within Infocorp [the company we both belong to]
and a few clients.
Despite the
key areas of the presentations were S+S, SaaS
and SOA the most outstanding
presentations for me were:
·
The biggest enemy: a very interesting presentation
delivered by Luis Avalos who
talked about the human side of the IT
companies and the problems we face almost every day. In a nutshell, some key points:
o
Do not make assumptions. Do not behave as if others should
guess what we are thinking of. Make it
explicit!.
o
Ask
for feedback
o
Give
motives. Motivate your people
o
Have
a perspective vision.
o
Be
on others’ shoes
And last but not least ..
o
Listen,
listen, listen, listen, listen…
·
Case study of a Mobile application: some guy from Chile with long hair
[sorry I do not remember his nameJ] delivered a presentation that
basically described a mobile solution he had to architect and implement, sharing
some best practices, some learnt lessons after that experience.
It was a pretty clear presentation; this guy also commented about a mobile
framework he built for building applications on top of it.
He also mentioned an article at the architect journal that has several
practices in common and by coincidence I have read some days ago. Here is the
article:
Best
Practices: Extending Enterprise Applications to Mobile Devices
·
UX for Architects: maybe the most funny, clear, concise,
interesting and useful presentation about user experience / usability I have
never seen, typically a boring and forgettable area for architects. Diego and
Sergio from Iconograma showed two
completely different designed applications to solve the same problem, in this
case study, a simple video rental application.
o
They
introduced the ‘Operation time’ [the time it takes the user for
example to point with the mouse or to change between mouse and keyboard]. It is
amazing how the design and usability of our applications can increase or reduce
those times, simply by taking into account some tips.
o
They
showed some samples of useless intrusive messages, such us ‘The data has been successfully saved.’ Sounds familiar?
J
o
‘Search 2.0’- an agile and architecture-challenging
way of implementing search within our applications.
o
Prioritization of options – just display what is frequently
used
o
Etc, etc, etc..
Some
technologies that were shown and/or commented during the event were:
-
OSLO
-
Microsoft
Office Live Workspace
-
Microsoft Office Live Small Business
-
Web Service
Software Factory: Modeling Edition
Well, this
is a very fast glimpse about RAF. There is a lot of information to share and I will
be pleased to share it as well as the PPTs and code when delivered to me.
Of course, I hope to be present on next RAF, I want
to meet some friends I made, make new ones, discuss with the experienced .net
guys and be in touch with the last Microsoft technology.
Thanks,
PP