Tim Rayburn's Blog - Personal - Connected People make Connected Systems

My heartfelt, sour throated from cheering, congratulations to the New York Giants and especially my friend Dave O'Hara's brother Shaun O'Hara on a gripping victory of the 18 and 1 New England Patriots.

I'm absolutely awestruck at the quarterback crushing machine of the Giants defense, and the pocket protection perfection of the offensive line.  Congratulations from a former New Yorker, graduate of P.S. 88 in Queens.  I would have preferred this to be my Dallas Cowboys, but I will sleep soundly knowing that they were defeated in the post season by the Super Bowl Champions.

So the word if officially out that Amazon will start shipping, on November 29th 2007, their new eBook reader called "Amazon Kindle".  The device is very compelling if you are looking for an eBook reader, here is are just some of the vital statistics:

• White background, black text "ePaper" screen
• 10.3 ounces in weight
• Runs 2 days with Wireless turned on, a week with it off.
• Recharges complete in 2 hours
• Blog reader (or at least some blog feeds available)
• Full Wikipedia access
• Read Microsoft Word documents and images (JPG, PNG, BMP and GIF)
• 88,000 books available now, 100 of the 112 New York Times Bestsellers
• Wireless access to data without the need for WiFi

*blink Hold on there, run that last point again for me... Yes, you read correctly you get access to the Amazon data services directly from the device using Sprint's wireless broadband network and without a monthly charge.  How?  Amazon is absorbing the charges, the control the platform, you go to them for data, and simply do it over the Sprint network.  That is absolutely incredible and the single most ground breaking concept within this device.  With a $399 price tag, is definitely a niche market right now, but if you consume 20ish books a year, then you'll make back the money within a year on the savings over "dead tree" versions.

But my question to you, dear readers, is that if there was a cell phone company willing to let a company "Pay Per Download" on devices in the field, how is it that Jeff Bezos found them, and not Steve Jobs!  Just imagine if you will an iPod, not an iPhone, with the ability to download new songs literally anywhere, anytime, at a small 25 cent upcharge on the cost of the song for the download.  This could be huge, and I'll bet you money that someone from Apple is already talking with Sprint about this concept right now.

The good news for everyone else in the portable music industry is that this is a chink in the armor of Apple.  If someone can jump on this bandwagon fast, and cut a deal for the same services for music, they could vault themselves over the iPod in popularity because it would still be tethered to WiFi spots.  Now, it can't be the "TimRayburn.net Music Player", it would have to be someone with a name in hardware already, and someone with enough money to make the deal happen fast, and who has a vested financial interest in seeing the iPod tumble.  Is there such a person?  I think so...

Since Monday, October 8th 2007 the record industry has lost : Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, Jamiroquai, and now the "Queen of Pop" Madonna.

The Music Revolution is officially started.  The recording industry had more than enough time to get their act together and give bands what they wanted, their unwillingness to change with the times is what has brought us to where we are.  Much like other revolutions, a people can only be pushed so far before their comfort with their current circumstances overcomes their natural human aversion to radical change.

But we should take a moment to recognize what will be recognized as where this started by history, Radiohead.  Much will be made about Radiohead's announcement last week that they were ditching the record labels to go independent, and correlations to the historic battle of Lexington and Concord are inevitable (at least in the U.S.).  The comparison is fair, as long as you realize that even in the American Revolution many patriots fought the British well before Lexington and Concord.  Likewise, many brave bands of lesser name have broken away, or just never started, with the recording industry.  The key of the phrase "The shot heard 'round the world" is not shot, it's heard.

The dominos are falling, and I predict you can expect the next steps to be more bands (obviously) followed by top Recording Industry executives beginning to parachute out to promotion firms like Live Media (who Madonna is using) and others.

As I've mentioned several times here already, I spent the last week at Microsoft's TechEd 2007 conference.  It was great, but this is the story of finding my way home from TechEd.

After a very long taxi ride to the airport because of rain on the road, the weather cleared and I found myself finally at the Orlando Airport.  It was 5:45pm, and our flight was scheduled to take off at 7:50pm, hence boarding at 7:20pm.  Well our flight suffered a 20 minute delay of departure, and then didn't start boarding until 8:05pm which meant at 7:38pm I was in an airport terminal of mostly glass walls, with CNN running the countdown on lots of monitors, as the Space Shuttle Atlantis took off from Cape Canaveral just 60 miles away.

It was, and is, an ambition of mine to see the shuttle (or it's replacement) take off from a distance close enough to see the pad, but this was still a special moment to stand around with about 150 other people just in that terminal and watch the orbiter rise on the horizon.

To Commander Rick Sturckow, Pilot Lee Archambault and Specialists Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson, Danny Olivas, James Reilly and Clayton Anderson as well as Specialist Sunita Williams whom they will be collecting from the International Space Station, god speed, good journeys and safe returns.  To often we forget these heroes because for some reason, to the American public, the mystique of space has worn-off.  But at least this tech geek is continually impressed by the heroism displayed by all those in the Astronaut Corps.

(Photo Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Alright, I'm in final preparations mode for TechEd 2007, if you're looking  to chat or just want to tell me that I'm all wrong about something, then you should be able to find me at one of the following locals/events:

• Saturday
• (tentative) INETA Leadership Summit (Only third and fourth sessions due to flight times)
• Sunday
• Jon Flanders' Pre-Conf training on WCF and WF
• Party with Palermo
• Monday
• Lots of Connected Systems track classes
• Moderating the Birds of a Feather : "BizTalk, WCF and WF" at 3pm
• Tuesday - Friday
• Lots of Connected Systems track classes

I may also make appearances at other less publicized events ... if you've got a party going on ... let me know.  If you've got a party going on and some good vodka? Definitely let me know.

As usual, Tim@TimRayburn.net will buzz my blackberry throughout TechEd.  Or you can send me a Direct Message via Twitter.

As you likely know if you read this blog, I'm employed by Sogeti as a Principal Consultant.  I'm part of the Microsoft Practice and focus on BizTalk and overall "Connected Systems" architecture.  Living in the Dallas area, the name I most often hear after "BizTalk" from a clients mouth is "SARK".

"SARK" or Software Architects as they are properly named is a 500+ employee consulting firm with a large Dallas area contingent.  They have alot of BizTalk brain-trust working for them.  I've worked with some of their consultants for a short time at CitiFinancial Auto when I was an independent and was impressed.  I've said before that if I ever were to leave Sogeti that SARK would be high on my list of companies I'd like to work for.

Well I was thrilled the other day to hear the announcement that Sogeti has purchased Software Architects!  This is nothing but incredible for everyone involved, it brings the Microsoft Practice in Texas alone to over 300 consultants.  I'm thrilled to have the guys I know from SARK join the Sogeti family. 

So Mike, Jonathan, and Ben welcome!

So what does it take to get me from blogging every day to not blogging for a month?  Quite alot actually!

• Major Product Release : What started it all without a doubt was the release at the end of October of a major update to my client's software.  It meant alot of crazy hours to make that happen.
• Problems with the Release : This was followed on by a wide variety of problems with the production release, some related to code, many more related to humans.  That resulted in 50-60 hours weeks for a month.
• Trip to South Dakota : I had the pleasure to visit a client's site in South Dakota and give 3 days of training on Service Oriented Architecture to some very bright folks.  The trip went well but preparing my slides for that and then presenting those at the client's site took yet more time.

All that said I'm back and will be posting much more regularly.  There are some major problems with the CustomFunctoids that need to be addressed thanks to a commenter for pointing that out.  There is work to be done on the BizTalk Users Group and more.

I've long been a fan of The Daily WTF, if you're a professional developer you owe it to yourself to take 3 minutes each day to read the posts there.  Fabulous stuff.

Alex, the man in charge at The Daily WTF, is kicking off a new service called Hidden Network.  The idea is using blogs as a recruitment area for technology positions because those who read blogs are generally the "top talent".  I'm keenly interested in participating in this experiment because I agree with Alex that this is the key dillema in our industry.  A paradigm shift has to happen, and with any luck this could become such.

I agree with those who posted in the comments that the key to making this work is transparency though.  The company has to be willing to step out into the open by name so you know who they are and can examine their reputation before responding.

So a fairly major change has happened in the last few weeks which I let pass without commenting here. A week ago I started a new position as a Principal Consultant with Sogeti USA. It's been a good several years making it on my own as a consultant working with my wife's company Tech-Knights, but it was time for a change. Sogeti is focused on a regional practice, which is really what I was looking for, but with global reach. My first assignment is with HealthMarkets, formerly UICI, which is great because I used to work for their sister company InsurData before it merged with HealthAxis. It's fun to see some of the same faces I used to work with in '99-'00.

After a week getting settled and helping with some small problems, I'm off for a week on vacation to visit Virginia and then go down to Charolette, North Carolina to attend the wedding of my brother-in-law Chad. It's been a while since I could take a vacation so it's nice to get away and clear my head.