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