Mark Edgington

In short fantastic. I’ve attended many larger conferences and I found the smaller size more enabling for communication, both with the speakers and conference attendees. I attended tutorials on Agile management and DSL’s (Domain Specific Languages) and followed tracks on cloud computing, effective design and architectures. Each of these had a great set of speakers and there was only one session in the whole week that I felt was weak. I left the conference armed with lots of ideas and inspiration and a handful of excellent contacts. I also have a stack of notes that I am digesting and hope to put some clearer views together than my short blog posts on sessions from my N810.

Jim Webber and Martin Fowler where fantastic. Humorous and poignant from beginning to end. You really had to be there, go to InfoQ and hope they filmed it.

I was not quite sure what to pick today, after almost going for Java Performance i opted for the Agile route. The session was not quite what i expected from the title or excerpt, but still very enjoyable. David Anderson came at agile almost from the standpoint of standard problem software projects. He looked at how these could be edged towards the agile world through clear identification of the value stream (process) and the examination of metrics around this. His key take outs that quality should be the focus and reducing the work in progress (WIP) leads to efficiency: in effect shorter cycles or sprints work far better than large batches of work. Having concentrated on agile methodologies, this viewpoint of how to get to agile inspired lots of thought; it is often the case that a covert agile approach must be followed, where a full and open method such as Scrum, cannot be taken.

My favourite comment from David ‘ the sign of a poorly managed department is one where the manager is always complaining of being busy’ this leading to a lack of change; see my previous post on the book Slack, which this comment ties into nicely.

written on my N810, so please excuse grammar and spelling

I like simple ideas and Chirp is one of them. We all have an ever growing list of social network sites and Chirp aims to bring these together in one place. The thing I like about the idea is it’s a screen saver. I think this is smarter than trying to be a web page or true desktop application, as people are more willing to try a screensaver. Also I think it may be a great time to get an update on your networks; just when you return to your machine.

At the moment it only links into Flickr and Facebook, but more are on the way. I’m not biggest fan of Facebook, but many are, so this screensaver may be popping up on a desktop near you.

I am happy to announce that my team have just launched the new Sky Travel site . It is a complete re-development form the ground up and integrates with multiple providers to provide a breath of product offerings.  It has been built using open source Java technology (Tomcat, Mysql, Apache) and uses the Spring and Hibernate frameworks.  The site is fully content managed and uses the open source Incendiary Blue CMS.

Its the new year and I’ve not posted for  while, why? lack of slack, so after finishing the excellent book ‘Slack’ by Tom DeMarco,  I have decided to make myself and the people around me some.  The book is a must for anyone involved in running projects and it should be compulsory for anyone who is involved in the running of a business.  Like many books of this type and in this case time (2000-2001, a time of downsizing)  there are cringe worthy moments; when its all a little to American focused.  But, throughout there are gems for the taking.  Rather than list them i just give one that sets the tone for the book:

‘ Slack at all levels is necessary to make the organisation work efficeintly and to grow.  It is the lubricant of change.  Good companies excel in the creative use of slack.  And bad ones con only obsess about removing it.’

Google immediately springs to mind, i would not be surprised if they had read this book

 My team have just launched the new Mazda 6 pre-launch site.  Its written in .Net 2.0, using Episerver as a CMS to create an HTML site feeding into a Flash component.  It’s integrated into a Sieble Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.  It is rolling out across 21 countries and will be enchanced in the coming months to become the launch site for the new Mazda 6.

You know that saying that all PR is good PR? Not sure it always works.

Never before have I seen such an abysmal start to an operating system release. For almost a year, people have been adopting Vista and becoming incensed by how poorly it operates. Not only does it cost too much, it requires more to run than XP, there is still poor driver support, and that draconian licensing scheme is a by-product of Microsoft picking on the wrong people.

The road ahead looks dangerous for Vista and Microsoft must realize that. With Mac OS X hot on its tail, Vista is simply not capable of competing at an OS level with some of the best software around. If Microsoft continues down this path, it will be Vista that will bring the software giant to its knees–not Bill Gates’ departure.

Of course, categorically dumping an operating system is quite difficult and with millions already using the OS, chances are Microsoft won’t find a good enough reason to do it. And while I can understand that argument, there’s no reason the company can’t continue to support Vista and go back to the drawing board for its next OS. Even better, go back to XP–it’s not nearly as bad as Vista.

As a daily user of Mac OS X, XP and Vista (i removed it after 2 weeks), I’m keenly aware of what works and what doesn’t. Mac and XP work.

Read the full article at - Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself

I have recently released content management system that i co-wrote. It’s a lightweight content management system that uses standard data and data structure formats to represent content structure and content. It is Java for platform independence, and utilizes tags or Java objects to incorporate content into HTML pages. It has some great feature for relational content and a rich security system. It’s been used on sites for Daimler Chrysler, Disney, St Gobain and more recently Essent and is soon to be deployed on Sky Travel.

The sourceforge project can be found at Incendiary Blue on Sourceforge infromation will grow and a site created in the coming months.

My team have just launched a site to show off the new Mazda2 . Its written in .Net 2.0 feeding in XML content to a Flash video and integrated into a Sieble Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system across 21 countries.