Honorary List ... it is time to thank a lot of people for their efforts in the SA Community for 2008!

It is unfortunate that most heroes are never mentioned or known to the world, with them operating under cover, deep behind enemy lines and often unselfishly fighting for everyone but themselves. I am, however, not nostalgic and talking about the war heroes of the many wars that have raged on planet Terra, instead I am referring to the heroes in the information technology world, making a huge difference to the South-African IT communities.

My definition for a hero is a person who goes beyond the expectations, shows relentless passion and energy and are willing to push the boundaries, for the good of the community.

Aftermat ... often the Heroes are the last left, when the going gets tough!

The list is long and I am likely to omit someone ... but as it is more important to start the list and add names until the list is complete, I herewith present my list of heroes in the "South-African" IT communities I am exposed to, listed in no specific order:

Name

Nomination

Almero Steyn

He created all the artwork for our interoperability drive, relentlessly making changes as we requested more and more changes.

Charles Sterling “Chuck”

Located in Redmond, “Chuck”, has supported us in hard times, downloading huge amounts of software, bits and pieces, which we needed but were unable to download in time for local community initiatives.

Henk Du Plessis “Mumbles”
interop

Our very own interoperability “Mumbles”, defending neither the open-source or other trenches, but standing in the middle of no-man’s land and helping us bridge the troubled interoperability environments and making seamless and invaluable integration and interoperability a possibility. He is very active in the academic community and hosting technology readiness sessions, available to SA Architect members. 

Hilton Giesenow
MVP

One of our architecture champions, sharing experience and knowledge with the professional and academic communities.

Jeff Beehler
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Located in Redmond, Jeff has supported SA by managing the “stage coach” disk drive we exchange on a regular basis to solve our limited bandwidth problems. He also publically wore the MVP Interoperability jacket, demonstrating the support for interoperability and giving our initiative unbelievable credibility.

Martin Woodward
image 

Located in the UK, Martin has supported us and our academic  initiatives, allowing us to realise our interoperability vision and bringing the amazing TeamPrise technology to the students of today and IT professionals of tomorrow. Thanks to Martin, we recently received an amazing sponsorship of $20,000 for TeamPrise technologies, which we are able to share with the academic community and promote the development environment in the real world ... an integrated one q;-)

Nicolas Blank
MVP

No event is complete without Nicolas’ smile and enthusiasm. He assisted us with Exchange issues in his own time with so much enthusiasm and professionalism, that one would like to

Robert MacLean

Everyone will know him in the BizTalk and SharePoint communities ... he is freely sharing his brain storage and is actively hosting technology readiness sessions, available to SA Architect members.

Ruari Plint 
P8040206 

Our very own MVP Program manager, making the impossible, possible, worrying about politics, taking care of the MVPs and allowing us to focus on what is important, the communities. Also known to arrange strange competitions at TechED, i.e. hunt the MVPs, which can lead to stressful times ...

Ryan CrawCour

Having a problem with BizTalk? This is the champ to talk to and the pillar behind the BizTalk community in South-Africa.

Willie Roberts

The dude that motivates his students in class, is active in the communities, relentlessly manages the community stand at TechED and more recently busy in bringing the numerous IT communities together ... a difficult, but essential mission. TechED without Willie would not be worth going to if you are part of the communities and next time please visit his community lounge!!!

Zayd Kara 
IMAGE_052 (Henk & Zayd)

Active as the “server dude”, evangelist of automated builds and most recently our very own certified scrum master. He is active in the academic community and hosting technology readiness sessions, available to SA Architect members.

Zlatan Dzinic “Bulldog”
MVP
P8040203

Infamous “Bulldog” ... not only does he write widgets in his spare time for the communities, not only does he host amazing technology sessions and discussions, but he is active in both the professional and academic communities.

People to watch ... will likely join the heroes list soon:

Name

Nomination

Herman Nolte
P8060256 

Our very own UI, WPF and Silverlight evangelist ... if only he would start sharing his wealth of knowledge and information in a blog. Nudge, nudge, ...

Garret Besser

The dude with immense energy and knowledge ... where are you Garret?

Paulo Fereira

The chap at Microsoft South-Africa, supporting us with the interoperability drive and ensuring that the mind set in terms of integration and interoperability evolves with many of the vendors and standards bodies in South-Africa.

"Heroes", thank you for all your efforts, for unselfishly sharing information, for investing an incredible amount of personal time, for caring about the communities and for making South-Africa a better and stronger "IT place".

We bow in front of you! 

If we went beyond the South-African borders we would need to list all of the TFS/VSTS MVPs and the VSTS Product Group members, both of which "rock!",  but for the time being, I will constrain the list to South-Africa.

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Have you also forgotten the SUBST command by any chance?

I have been busy debugging and implementing workarounds for a toothache I experienced with Visual Studio and had to create a few directories on the D drive ... which I do not have on my laptop. Being pragmatic, I attached my external drive and created the directories ... fortunately Philip Kelley dusted off a few of my spider webs by saying "It’s easier to use the subst command".

Blue Einstein Man Pointing a Stick at a Presentation of a Flying Saucer Clipart Illustration

In case you have also forgotten this useful command, let me demonstrate its use:

  1. Assume you need a path d:\silly\cool\command ... Note to Herman, this is an arbitrary, non-meaningful path, used for demo purposes only.
  2. Problem is that you only have a c: drive.
  3. Fire up the command line, Start -> Run -> Cmd -> Enter
  4. Type in the following command: Mkdir c:\demo\silly\cool\command
    image
  5. Type in the following command: Subst d: c:\demo
    image
  6. Now for the acid test, run the command dir d: /s /ad, which would have failed before step 5.
    image Blue Businessman Standing by a Large Exclamation Point Clipart Illustration

To summarise:
image

Thanks for pointing out this great DOS command Philip! We should spend far more time on the command line ... there is so much power we take for granted these days and a lot of power we have unfortunately forgotten.

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SAArchitect - News and request for member registration!

image Traveling Blue Business Man Sitting Under an Umbrella at a Table Using a Laptop Computer Clipart Illustration

If you have been, are or would like to become a member of the SA Architect community, then please register yourself on our new community site (see point 3 above).

We are displaying the SA Architect hosted events or events that SA Architect members have access to on the home page of the new site (see point 2 above). Please keep an eye on the events and advise as to what is good, bag or ugly ... q;-)

Lastly if you are in the academic world, please have a look at our latest academia initiative (see point 1 above) and download the academia program flyer for more information.

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Back in the trenches ...

After 4 days of holiday at the coast at Sodwana Bay, I am trying to reboot my humanoid central processor and replace the vacation processes with business processes ... if ever you need a break and you enjoy Scuba Diving, go to the Sodwana Bay Lodge and enjoy a few dives on 5 mile reef. On our last dive, my son and I recorded Humpback whales, Whale sharks, Potato Bass, Firefish, Scorpion, Turtle,Octopus and many, many, more.

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We saw so much on our last dive that we literally stopped diving for the rest of the holiday, vegetating and relaxing at the beach, tumbling in the waves and enjoying the bits-and-bytes-less beach life.

PA030133 PA030145PA040163

 PA030141 PA040160 ... we were "moeg" at the end of the day q;-)

Blue Man Diving Into Water Clipart Illustration

The best part ... I left my laptop and mobile phone at home and was therefore not tempted by the Centrino Duo devils to "quickly" fire up the laptop.

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MVP ... breaking news q;-)

I have just been notified that I will be part of the MVP community for a while longer, remaining a proud member of the greatest community, madMVP_Horizontal_FullColore up of  the VSTS product group, the VSTS MVPs and the South-African MVP communities q;-)

Thanks to the VSTS Product group for such a great product, the VSTS MVPs for being such awesome professionals and evangelists, my South-African community colleagues and our MVP "Boss", meneer Ruari Plint, who is juggling the whole of MEA. You are the very best and it is a great honour to work with you all!

Blue And White Robot Holding His Own Head in His Hands Clipart Illustration A special thanks to Henk and Zayd, who have worked with me on the numerous academic and interoperability initiatives in South-Africa. This award is also for you, because your commitment, passion and support was a huge part of my renewal. You two are very special!

I am now off to the coast, to take my oldest son to the Indian Ocean for some relaxing Scuba diving. See you all next week.

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Community Academic Program

October 2008 we are visiting Rhodes university (www.rhodes.ac.za) for another technology awareness program, as shown on the following flyer:
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For this battling with the image and information hidden within the flyer, here are a few extracts:

ACADEMIC TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM SERVICES

  • Planning and Proposals for IT Environments
  • Hardware Sponsorship
  • Hardware installation
  • Software installation.
  • Evangelism and Mentorship for
  • Software development concepts
  • Software development technologies
  • Application Life Cycle (ALM) Management
  • Technology Readiness Training (“Boot Camps”)
  • Programming Tools, i.e. Visual Studio, Teamprise, …
  • Programming Languages, i.e. C#, …
  • ALM Solutions, i.e. TFS, …
  • Frameworks, i.e. Silverlight, Moonlight, Mono,

Interoperability – a difficult word to say, an easy concept to understand

Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate), taking into account social, political, and organizational factors. (Wikipedia).

We strongly believe that interoperability has and will play a strategic role in real-world solutions and we advocate the right technology for the job. Stop the vendor wars, start collaborating, integrating and make interoperability an ally, not a difficult technology term.

South-African MVP’s & Community Leads take the lead …

Microsoft Most valued Professionals (MVPs) and Community Leads are vendor agnostic evangelists, with the following

characteristics:

  • A technology specialist
  • An influencer
  • A community participant
  • An independent expert
  • A super passionate person
  • A Technology Leader

The MVPs and Community Leads, in collaboration with proud sponsors are engaging with technical communities and academic institutions nationally and internationally to share their knowledge, their experience and their passion for technology and solutions.

The academic technology program is an opportunity for these passionate evangelists to ensure that the next generation of students will become the evangelists and leaders of tomorrow.

What is Teamprise?

Teamprise is a suite of client applications for accessing Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server from outside of the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Teamprise enables software development teams to use the source control, work item tracking, build, and reporting features of Team Foundation Server from within the Eclipse IDE, and from other operating systems, including Linux and Mac OS X.

Program Phases
Blue Man Holding a Pencil and Drawing a Circle on a Blueprint Clipart Illustration

We typically approach the academic program with three major phases and an optional fourth, which includes support. The other three phases typically entail:

Phase #1 - Evangelism

The core objectives of the initial phase are to introduce the evangelists and the academic program to the academic institutions. Typically a 1-2 hour workshop demonstrates interoperability options. The core deliverable of this phase is a proposal to the academic institution on the way and options going forward.

Phase #2 - Deploy

The “deploy” phase is about installing and configuring an application lifecycle management solution at the academic institution, which delivers a value add to Microsoft and Java focused development environments, introducing typical development environments and more importantly the seamless integration and interoperability between different development environments.

Phase #3 - Embrace

During the “Embrace” phase focused technology workshops and boot camps introduce state of the art and strategic software solutions and development environments to students and lectures alike. The workshops and boot camps are tailored to the academic institution.

Interested?

If you are interested in us extending the program to your academic environment, please contact one of the SA Architect leads. Refer to www.saarchitect.net for contact details.

Watch this blog for a report of the event next month ... we will report on the good, the bad and the ugly! We will also enjoy and report on the infamous Klipies Coffee in Grahamstown q;-)

Event is proudly sponsored by:

saa_LogoBBD.Logo.01 teamprise-logo MVP_Horizontal_FullColor

In addition, we have received amazing support from Ruari at Microsoft South-Africa, as well as Jeff and Charles (Chuck) from the VSTS product group. You guys "rock"!

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.NET Enterprise Books for the Connoisseur ... all available in PDF!

We have just released the PDF, soft copy, eBook style books for the following three books on www.drp.co.za and www.saarchitect.net. On the later server find the books here and remember that www.drp.co.za is geared at American region and www.saarchitect.net for the MEA region.

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.NET Enterprise Solutions ... Best Practices for the Connoisseur
ISBN: 0-620-33013-9, published September 2004.
Authors: Willy-Peter Schaub, James Pereira

Information technologies change frequently and rapidly, but the principles, experience and best practices of system analysis, design, construction and deployment remain timeless. “This book is a small step towards making the toothpick of experience a reusable commodity”.

Topics covered:

  • Fundamentals of technical architectures
  • Analysing business requirements and envisioning a solution
  • Designing an enterprise solution
  • Constructing an enterprise solution
  • Testing the solution
  • Deploying the solution
  • Office Integration
  • Java Integration
  • Mobile Devices
  • Share Point Web Parts

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.NET Enterprise Solutions ... Interoperability for the Connoisseur
ISBN: 0-620-34680-9, published August 2006
Authors: James Pereira, Willy-Peter Schaub

Our new BB&D DRP book 2, entitled “.NET Enterprise Solutions … Interoperability for the Connoisseur”, ISBN 0-620-34680-9, is complete and currently on the printing press. We thank the authors, the contributors, the coordinators and the reviewers for sharing their knowledge and experience. The book continues the discussion and sharing of best practices we introduced with book ".NET Enterprise Solutions … Best Practices for the connoisseur, ISBN: 0-620-33013-9", focused specifically on interoperability and integration of similar and dissimilar (heterogeneous) solutions. Rather than specialising on any one concept or technology, this book presents a "broad scan" introduction to a variety of technologies within that scope.

Topics covered include:

  • Interoperability decomposed
  • Technology chatter,
  • Exploring technology used in the space of interoperability and integration
  • Interoperability challenges and countermeasures
  • Technology journey simplified, looking usage of common technology
  • Indigo in easy steps
  • Introducing Windows Communication Foundation
Reference blueprints and building blocks

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.NET Enterprise Solutions ... Software Engineers on their way to Pluto

ISBN: 978-0-620-38514-5, published September 2007.
Authors: Willy-Peter Schaub, Geoff Bruce

This book continues the discussion and sharing of best practices we introduced with the books ".NET Enterprise Solutions … Best Practices for the connoisseur, ISBN: 0-620-33013-9" and .NET Enterprise Solutions … Interoperability for the Connoisseur, ISBN: 0-620-234680-9.

Unlike its predecessors this book is not focused on technology, but instead takes a critical look at how we are typically building information technology solutions, the way we define the modus-operandi of the team and the product life cycle.

  • Why are so many solutions failing before they reach a "happy" client?
  • Why are so many solution teams stressed before they ship their solution?

We do not have all the answers and will probably never find the necessary oracle … but we will nevertheless take a look at four typical teams, building their own spaceship and flying to Pluto therein.

If you are like me and appreciate the printed copy, refer to http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2007/08/21/bb-amp-d-drp-books-what-are-they-availability-cost-and-ordering.aspxfor details.

Sponsor for this eBook (PDF) initiative is Barone, Budge & Dominick, supporting the local and international IT communities!
BBD.Logo.01

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Goodbye SAArchitect, welcome SAArchitect!

Thanks to some amazing work from two our our SAArchitect leads, Robert MacLean (who still has not uploaded his own profile and mugshot) and Zayd Kara, we are finally able to say goodbye to the old SA Architect site:
image Blue Man Jumping For Joy While Breaking Away From a Ball and Chain, Getting a Divorce Clipart Illustration

... and welcome to the new community site: 
  imageHappy Blue Man Partying With a Party Hat, Confetti and a Bottle of Liquor Clipart Illustration

The new site allows registrations, contains the same value-add content and much, much more in the future and boasts the infamous "Bulldog" aggregator control to aggregate a number of community lead RSS feeds, applicable to SA Architect. Give us your views on the new site and please register as soon as possible, so that we can give the SA Architect community a quantified face again in the future.

Thanks leads, the site is looking great!

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Visual Studio 2010! Yes, yes, yes...

The news is out ... the next version of Visual Studio, code named Rosario, will officially be known as "Visual Studio 2010". This kind of give a hint to the release period, I think, and you canBlue And White Robot Holding Hands And Standing With His Son Clipart Illustration get more detailed information at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc948977.aspx.

The best news, however, is the merger of  the Visual Studio Database Professional Edition and the Developer Edition. THANK YOU Microsoft, for listening to us and making it happen! I have oicked up the following sentence and I quite, which brings even more good news and I quote: "In recognition of the increased need to integrate more of the lifecycle members together, we will provide a unified Development and Database product in Visual Studio Team System 2010. Beginning October 1, 2008 Development Edition and Database Edition MSDN subscribers will have access to both products."

Note the text in bold ... Yes, yes, yes ... we are on a winning path here q;-)

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South-African IT Community servers ... stats to be proud of!

A colleague asked me today for some stats on quick reference poster hits and downloads. Well after looking at the two community servers we are responsible for, namely www.saarchitect.net and www.drp.co.za, I found that the statistics are actually very promising. So much so, that I am posting some of the stats in this post, so that everyone can see the "value-add" the two environments are bringing to the local and international community.
a Blue Man on Another Man's Shoulders, Holding up a Bar in a Graph Clipart Illustration

To all the Community leads and MVPs feeding these servers, THANK YOU very much for your efforts and keep it up!

SA Architect Statistics
saa_Logo

www.saarchitect.net

  • The top ten favourites in terms of downloads from this site are:
    1 3006 light weight scrum process template poster 878
    2 rosario_ctp12_evaluation whitepaper 540
    3 0013 csharp formatting poster poster 267
    4 0202 microsoft team system teamreview poster 188
    5 tfs guidance whitepaper whitepaper 136
  • We have a total of 9368 downloads of value-add artifacts to-date.
  • We currently have an average of 419 poster downloads per month on the SA Architect website.

Developer Readiness Program Statistics

www.drp.co.za

  • The top ten favourites in terms of downloads from this site are:
    1 Team Foundation Server (TFS) Guidance Whitepaper Technology whitepaper 1297
    2 0202 Microsoft Team System Project Planning poster 1192
    3 0004 Best Practices Poster poster 1136
    4 0006 CSharp Poster poster 1116
    5 0000 System_NameSpace poster 1070
  • We have a total of 74566 downloads of value-add artifacts to-date.
  • We currently have an average of 2787 poster downloads per month on the DRP website
  • In terms of demographics the picture for the past three (3) months looks like:
    map
    With the details as follows:
    Rank Country Page Views Visits Hits Bandwidth (KB)
    1 United States 40448 12435 88683 5153835
    2 N/A 34146 9358 80924 3639200
    3 Germany 8028 483 12174 559238
    4 Russian Federation 7116 301 14909 551838
    5 United Kingdom 5465 341 14452 648777
    6 South Africa 4547 657