In a previous post, I informed you that I would be the Content Chair and Organizer of the 2009 Atlanta IT Architecture Regional Conference (ITARC).  Well I was.  It happened.  Now, it’s over. 

Let’s be clear.  The event was successful.  I believe, the attendees got more than they expected and they got it at a very reasonable price.  We had great keynotes.  IBM’s Rob High presented on SOA.  Robert Lario, from Visumpoint, introduced us to the topic of standards and how they provide the language for Enterprise Architects.  Microsoft’s Jack Greenfield, discussed Cloud Computing and how it affects B2B.  Cisco’s Harvinder Kalsi described successes with SOA. And Neal Ford, from Thoughtworks, rounded out the keynotes with his discussion about future technologies and trends, and why we are bad about predicting them.   We had great local speakers as well.  Their topics were varied, nicely constructed, and well received. 

It was a fantastic event and well worth the effort I, and many others, put into it, but I am glad it is over.  The hours it takes to pull off such and event are numerous and taxing.  Though we started planning this event several months ago, I was able to keep it from affecting the rest of my life fairly successfully until this last month.  Every spare moment, was focused on how to ensure its success.  My stress levels were elevated and my desire to do things like ride my bike, play my guitar, or blog about those things, was diminishing. 

The purpose of this post is to give some sort of explanation to the loyal visitors of this blog, who continued to visit, again and again, despite the absence of new articles.  Today I’m tired, but tomorrow, I should be refreshed and you can expect frequent postings going forward.

Now I’m going to go and wear blisters onto my fingers by playing a little Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze.

And there you have it.

Joe.

I installed Windows 7 Beta 1 last night.  Before I tell you all about it, let me explain a few things for those of you who are not familiar with the term Beta.

Microsoft, like many others, puts its products through several phases during its release cycle before they can be called “ready” to be released.

The first phase of a product’s release cycle is called the Alpha phase.  This is the phase in which new features are being added to the product.  For instance, if Microsoft decided to put a print button on the Windows Calculator to enable users the ability to print out your calculations, that feature could added during the Alpha phase.  Sometimes, Microsoft will release an Alpha to give their customers some insight of what will be in available in the new product or product version.  Alpha releases are generally devoid of many features and are bug ridden.

The next phase is called the Beta phase.  For a product to qualify for beta phase, all major features must be complete.  This is not to say that they all work.  Beta phases are means in which a company gets the masses to test their software.  Many times private betas precede public betas.  Betas vary in quality, and usually their are multiple betas, aptly named beta 1, beta 2, etc.

Once the betas are at a point where the bugs are fixed or otherwise mitigated, the product graduates to the Release Candidate or RC phase.  The release candidate phase is the phase in which the company thinks it has a version of the product that can be promoted to the final phase.  All the features promised, are complete and generally bug-free.  The only thing that keeps a release candidate from moving to the next phase is the presence of “show stopper” bugs – or bugs so impactful, either by size or importance, that the product cannot possibly be released with it.  Show stopper bugs will be fixed and a new release candidate will be published.  Like betas, they are named in order RC-1, RC-2, etc.

The final phase of the release cycle is called Released to Manufacturing or RTM.  When a product has been RTM’d it is considered released.  Any new bugs will be fixed in minor subsequent releases called hot fixes, or patches.

Microsoft promoted its new version of their operating system, Windows 7, to Beta 1 on Friday, January 9th.

I am what people refer to as an early adopter.  I like to get products when they are very new and test them out.  I have been an early adopter of Windows for about 10 years.

When the Vista operating system was made public in beta form, I installed it and tested it out.  Much like I did last night.  In the case of Vista, I was unable to do many things.  Internet Explorer 7 was problematic, there were many applications I had that would not install, and many that did install, did not work correctly.  It was such a miserable beta, that I uninstalled it after a few days.  Then Vista’s beta 2 was released.  Most of the problems from beta 1 were resolved.  The second beta was stable enough that I installed it on my main machine and used it as my dedicated operating system, until Vista went into release candidacy.

Alternatively, installing Windows 7 was painless.  You only have to click on a few next buttons to get through to completion.  You could probably make it through the installation while asleep at the keyboard, as long as you were leaning on the enter key.  I give the installation an A+.

Despite having a somewhat older machine, Windows 7 successfully found all of the drivers needed for my hardware.  I did not have to chase down websites for various manufacturers trying to get the latest driver updates to ensure compatibility.  Instead, my experience was very pleasant.

When it came time to install software on my newly adorned machine, I found only a few hiccups.  I normally use a program called Daemon Tools which allows you to use CD/DVD ROM image files like they were actual disks in the drive, but it would not install.  Instead, I used a different program called Virtual Clone Drive.  So far, I like the replacement program better, and it installed without error.  The only other trouble I found was with my Cisco VPN application.  However, it turned out that I wasn’t installing the latest version.  Once I acquired the correct version, it installed and worked just fine.

I worked from home today.  I did my normal job, using Microsoft Office products, Visual Studio, and several other programs on Windows 7.  I did so without hitch, delay, or incident.  At no time did I have to revert to using a pre-Windows 7 machine to get something done.  The transition from Vista to Windows 7 was seamless and delightful.

I will post again on Windows 7 exploring its new features, but for now know that it is very stable and usable.

And there you have it.

Joe.

Addendum

I was reminded that I haven’t posted the link to download Windows 7 Beta. 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

As a professional technologist, I spend more time than the average person working with new technologies.  As a passionate technologist, I spend more personal time than the average technologist learning about new technologies.

One of the podcasts I listen to is Scott Hanselman’s “HanselMinutes“.  One fo the episodes I was recently listening to had a discussion between Scott, the host, and Rod Conery, the guest host, about Domain Driven Design (DDD).  Apparently, Rod does not know DDD, and is doing research in order to learn it.  In this podcast, both guests describe their openness to learning.  What I mean by that is that they are very open with the public, via their blogs and/or other mediums, to what they don’t know.  More importantly, they are very open about the way they go about learning new things and invite others to join them in their learning process so more can benefit from their experiences.  This was very inspiring to me.

I have had a great time blogging this year.  It started out this time last year as a New Year’s resolution.  I had started blogs several times in the past, only to have them fizzle and die.  I think I have been successful in my resolution as it is the end of the year and I am still blogging.  There were a few rough spots during the summer, but I bounced back and am now stronger than ever.

Now I am turning the corner.  I have decided to take on three blogs next year.  I will continue josephdecarlo.com with similar content, but will add two new blogs: one I will be launching today and one that I will save to talk about in a later post.  The new blog I will be launching today is my vision of open learning that Scott and Rod practice.

This will be a very technical blog.  On this blog, my technology articles are about technology subjects, but are not, themselves, technical in nature.  My new blog, located at http://www.technicalmatriculate.com will be completely technical in subjects and content.

My first topic I will be learning and, thus, covering with a series of posts, will be Microsoft’s Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).  This is a topic that I have needed to wrap my head around for a long time, but have never made the time for it.

Hopefully, contrary to the title of this article, my new blog will not feather my reader base, but provide more content rather than act as a substitution for this site.  So techheads, please join me, on my new site (Technical Matriculate), as I learn about WF.  And to everyone, techheads and otherwise normal people alike, please continue to visit this site.  I will continue to post new articles here regularly.

thanks for your support.

Joe.

Everyone that attended the Strategic Architect Forum (SAF) this year, received a free copy of MindManager 8 from MindJet.  This is my new favorite piece of software.

To explain MindManager, it would probably be helpful to first explain mind maps.  Mind maps are diagrams that represent thoughts or ideas surrounding a central topic.  They are commonly used to record in brainstorming sessions.  They are built by starting with a shape in the middle of the writing surface.  This could be a circle, square or line.  A word or words is written with the shape that declares the central topic.  From then every idea that stems from the topic is recorded in a shape that is connected to the topic.  Ideas can also stem from other ideas.  These child ideas are represented in shapes that connect to the idea it stemmed from.  This is more difficult to express in words than by a picture, so let me provide an example.

Notice that in the center of the map, lies the topic of the map (In this case the topic is entitled “New Course Design”), and how each subtopic is connected to it by a line.  This is a great way to loosely organize your ideas.

The example above is a mind map that I found on the web.  I didn’t create it and can only speculate what it is for by reading it.  But to show the power of MindManager, I decided to recreate the map above.

I have found MindManager to be a quick and easy way to take meeting notes, layout complex ideas, and even plan my son’s 6th Birthday party.  MindManager auto places each node and reshuffles as you add more.  You have the ability to manually move them or force them into different layouts that it provides, but I find the default auto layout to be the best.

Another extremely useful feature of MindManager is its very rich web 2.0 UI.  To be clear, there is a rich client for Windows or Mac, and there is a web interface.  However, the web interface is dependent on my favorite feature -> Mindjet Connect.  Mindjet Connect is the S+S (Software plus Services) feature of MindManager, so you can save your map files in the cloud.  If S+S  or Cloud computing means nothing to you, no worries…in this case it just means that you don’t save your MindManager files on your computer, they get saved on Mindjet’s servers so you can access them from any machine.  Much like Gmail - you don’t save your emails on your computer, they are saved on Google’s servers.

In the case of Mindjet Connect, you can invite others (non-MindManager users) to your virtual workspace and allow them to interact and contribute to your map files.  This is a really nice feature if you are interested in using mind mapping as a collaboration tool.

This is a very geeky post, I know, but for those of you who take lots of notes and have tons of Word docs littering up your hard drive… you should check this out.  And since I mentioned Word, I should probably mention its extensive integration with Microsoft Office products.  You can link in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Access, and OneNote.  You can export to them as well.  Exports…well there’s another interesting topic.

You can export to many things…PDF, many image formats, MPX, and Office documents including a limited export to Outlook.  You can also export to one or more web pages, and to a PDF that has a “Mindjet Player” built in that allows the consumer to collapse and expand the notes on the map.

There are a ton of features that I am leaving out, so let’s just say… try it.  There is a free trial that you can get from their site.

Note: You don’t have to be a computer geek like me to like this software.

And there you have it.

Joe

Addendum

In light of Michael Deutch’s comment, I thought I’d link to an eight part blog series he did on MindManager 8:

Post 1:  What’s Great in MindManager 8: Introducing the Mindjet Player

Post 2:  Tackling Tough Tasks: MindManager 8’s Top Task Management Enhancements

Post 3:  Context Matters: Edit Office Files Within MindManager Maps

Post 4:  Browsing Within Your MindManager Maps

Post 5:  Serving Up Web Services

Post 6:  Visualize Your Data with the New Database Linker

Post 7:  3 Ways Search with MindManager 8 Just Got Better

Post 8: Get Connected and Share Your Maps

And there it is again…

Joe.

Though this is the second day of SAF, it is really the first official day.  Yesterday was actually a pre-conference day.

Today, we had three keynote speakers.  Neil Leslie and Tim O’Brien from Microsoft, and Bob Pearson from Dell.  One interesting thing about the keynote speakers at this event is the that they were all limited to 30 minutes.  When hearing this, I initially felt that they would be too time constrained to be able to deliver a complete message, but all three were successful.

After the keynotes, the follow-on break out sessions, and lunch, we all gathered together for an Open Space session led by my friend, Steven “Doc” List.  This was my favorite part of the day (excluding some one-off conversations that recurred throughout).

Open Space, in a nutshell, has gets everyone together to nominate topics for discussion.  Once the topics are decided and organized (I am REALLY skimming over this part), everyone attends the topic discussions that they desire to hear or participate in.  I don’t know how many formats Open Space “supports” during topic deliberations, but I experienced two.  One topic I attended, the use of social networking in the enterprise and the challenges it presents such as privacy and security, was setup as chairs in a circle for discussion.  This was a good and productive session, but it was nothing compared to the first one I attended.

The first session I attended, “I don’t get Twitter”, had too many people to put all the chairs into one big circle.  So it was arranged with a “fishbowl” in the center.  The fishbowl consists of four chairs are placed in the center of the room in a circle facing inward.  There are some very basic rules here.  No one is allowed to participate in the discussion unless they are sitting in the fishbowl.  Only three people are allowed to sit in the fishbowl, meaning that there must always be one empty chair.  As someone wants to enter the discussion, they enter from the audience and sit in the empty chair.  One of the original three, usually the one that has been there the longest, must exit the fishbowl.  Once out of the fishbowl, you return to being part of the audience and can no longer participate in the discussion without reentering the fishbowl.

The “I don’t get Twitter” session was packed!  There were 10 topics run in parallel for a conference of about 300 attendees and there were over 50 people in this session alone.  There were many interesting questions posed during the session.  “What about security/safety of our children as they expose personal and geographic information about themselves?”, “How is Twitter monetized?”, “Does Twitter detract or enhance the work environment and should employers care?”, “What happens when a company is built on Twitter and Twitter ‘goes away’?”. 

They were all very good topics of discussion and there were many participants.  I personally, was addicted to the fishbowl and found myself reentering it several times during the session.  As you may have expected, the Tweeps in the audience were tweeting about being in an Open Space discussion about Twitter during the discussion.

The session lasted 50 minutes and was exhilarating.  I have asked Doc to facilitate our Open Space at the Atlanta ITARC in February and now that I have participated in Open Space, I am extremely excited.

I was the last person in the fishbowl (go figure) and I announced, as everyone left, that Doc had just tweeted to me “have you explained Twitter yet?”

To follow me or Doc on Twitter our aliases are jdecarlo and athought respectively.

And there you have it.

Joe.