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Just come out of an interesting set of round table events for ‘community influencers’ at TechEd. These are people who are active in both the online and face-to-face communities from all round Europe (and Australia - the reach of TechEd Europe!) attended. In the sessions I went to the general discussion was on the point I posted about a few weeks ago and that had been a running conversions on a number of UK blogs. I was refeshing (or sad?) to find the problems we have seen at home over attendance are the same around Europe: ...

I am now sitting in the keynote waiting for the session to start - they have graffiti artists on the stage - I wonder if it is a homarge to that great Palm Pilot handwriting text entry language? Or is my my chance to say that that ’this keynote I could actually watch paint dry'? Oh… the paint fumes are starting to get to me……………………….

What an awful journey I have had since my last post, the trip back from the USA was fine; the problems started getting from the UK to Spain. Basically fog at Liverpool stopped all flights so we had to change airline and airport to get here in time for the TechEd conference. Should have been here by noon on Sunday and actually got here nearer 9pm, so no sigh seeing for me. ...

Seems quiet here today at the SOA conference, less people about. I wonder how many have sneaked off early for flights? It does seem to be mostly Europeans left, judging by the languages I have heard. This does not mean parking was easy this morning, as in the same conference center Bill Gates and Bill Clinton are speaking at an MSPAC event. Now a bit of google’ing shows MSPAC is either: ...

When at Mix07 I posted about Robby Ingebretsen’s excellent session on the relationship between developers and designers in the WPF/Silverlight world. Channel9 has just posted an interview with him on the same subject, well worth looking at if this is the type of project you are involved in.

There is more to Seattle than the Space Needle and flying fish at Pike Place Market. At the end of the SOA conference today I persuaded Robert to embark on a tourist adventure, to brave the Seattle traffic and go to Archie McPhee “Outfitters of Popular Culture” . It should have been a 20 minute drive… hour and half later of nose to tail traffic we arrived. Now I had come across Archie McPhee years ago when my ex wife had been on the Clarion West SF writers camp, and she came back with the strangest plastic frog in fur white rabbit suit; I always wonder what the person who made it in China think of the west? ...

As with all conferences you tend to flag part way through, you start to think of the flight home and not having to sit in yet another session (no matter how interesting it sound on paper). It starts to seem all sessions are either in a cold draft or tropical atmosphere. At this point I have to say I am not looking forward to another conference next week at TechEd Barcelona, I could do with a holiday! Now I am sure some will say a conference is a holiday, but I rarely find them so, holidays do not involve PowerPoint (with maybe the exception of Triathlon training camps, but many people would say they are not holidays either) ...

I have focused on the the more developer end of SOA today. In the morning excellent sessions by Aaron Skonnard and Matt Milner on using WCF in BizTalk and best WF practices respectively, both provided an interesting set of gotta’s to look out for. Check their blogs if this is an area you work in. In the afternoon I went to a session on the Microsoft Managed Service Engine (MSE), a set of tools to allow versioning of services using in effect a WCF based proxy broker. Not a solution for every site, but in an ESB SOA world it could really save the day if you want an Agile development model, where you have to change WDSL contracts as a system evolves. My only worry would be how far it can go with the XML transforms to keep old clients working with new contracts. You still need a depreciation model which might be an issue - but even if this is the case a potentially very useful tool I am sure I will be revisiting. ...

Not a great day for new buzzwords to me at the SOA conference today, so just the one: POX - Plain Old XML, as opposed to XML data with extra META data

Since arriving in the Bellevue/Redmond area I have been struck by the lack of people. Wherever I have gone it seems like the place was built for at least twice the number that are present, whether it be the shopping centers or restaurants. I wondered was it because: the others are soon to arrive half the people left Now after traveling in to the conference for a couple of days and watching the local news I have the answer, It is option 1. - they are all stuck in traffic. ...