Nicke Andersson

Being an architect in an Agile World

I recently gave a presentation at a Microsoft event, the Architect Summit in Helsinki on the 4th of October. I talked about two of my favorite subjects; what it means to be an architect, and more specifically, why we still need architects in an Agile world.

I've gotten some pretty good feedback on the presentation, and I'm planning to expand on the material in a series of blog posts, the first one which should appear during  November.

The recording of my presentation is available on codezone.fi. The presentation is in English.

Why not to go to business school

The always funny Fake Steve Jobs blogged a brilliant rant about why you should not go to business school. My favorite quote:

"Could there be anything less creative, less imaginative, less valuable than going to business school? Is there any surer way to become an absolute conformist frigtard than to spend two years being coddled and pampered and fed worthless pablum by failed businesspeople?"

He then goes on to give a recommendation for how to learn how Steve became, well Steve, and it goes like this:

"Quit business school. Go work at some shitty electronics company and learn how to source components. Travel to India and seek enlightenment. Grow your hair down to your ass. Take LSD. Smoke pot. Live on a commune. Sell your van and start a company. Put yourself in danger. Create a situation where if you fail you'll be unable to pay your rent and you'll be out on the street. Struggle to make payroll. Get screwed by suppliers. Learn to screw them back. Bounce checks. Run out of money. Go hungry. Be scared."

Great stuff on how the school of life teaches you to become an entrepreneur. Much more effective than some wimpy business "school". :) Most of us in the business world are way too reluctant and think for ourselves. We, as a horde of conformist sheep all bleat the same truisms. Instead of daring to think for ourselves we fall back on "proven methods instead of trying something new. We rarely ask ourselves how any competitive advantage can be achieved it everyone does the same thing. So even though it was written as a parody I think there's a lot of truth in it. We have to leave our comfort zones and feel some real pressure before any innovation can occur. And drop some acid.

 

P.S. Dear colleagues who studied business or marketing or something like that: the above does of course not apply to you. You're all cool. Please do not toilet paper my office.

I have poo bars!

Or at least so my Tablet PC is telling me. I was trying to write "problems", but apparently this aluminum box knows better. :)

As I wrote in my last post, I'm currently evaluating a Tablet PC from HP. Obviously one of the most critical factors of the tablet experience is how well it understands what you type. My initial Tablet experiences were all on an XP, and while that was pretty good I have to say that it's fantastic on Vista. It's able to learn as I type, and the accuracy is pretty damned good. But, the key to handwriting recognition apart from being able to decipher scribbles, is a good dictionary. Here I found my tablet a bit lacking.

For example, it didn't recognize "Redmond" at first. One would have thought they would here added that one to the dictionary, but apparently not. I wanted to bloy about this and include the word "Problems" in the heading, and that's when Live Writer told me I've got "Poo Bars" with my Tablet. Fair enough, but it turns out Vista didn't know what "poo" was, and underlined it with a red squiggle. So this is a bit like being tutored by a bunch of kindergarten kids; they'll use a bunch of rude words but hare no idea what they mean. Oh well...

 

P.S. By the way. if it's suddenly seemed like my grammar's gone out of whack it's because I'm writing this on the tablet. The one that can't spell.

P.P.S. Today I learned that you can't eat potato chips (or crisps, as the British call them) when using a Tablet PC in slate mode. At least if it's one you've borrowed and not decided whether you're going to return or not.

Blogging my ink

I found a great plugin for Windows Live Writer that let's me blog my scribbles, made by Ed Holloway. Great stuff, will be a fantastic way to insert little illustrations into my blog. Like this:

Trying a Tablet PC

I've been interested in the Tablet PC form factor for quite a while now, and because we're thinking about changing our supplier of hardware at work I took the opportunity to evaluate a Tablet PC from HP, the 2710P. The only previous experience I've had of Tablets was when I visited Redmond about a yew ago, and the kind folks at Microsoft let me play with one for a couple of days. Come to think of it, that was probably an HP too.

Anyway, at a number of TechEd's I've looked at different tablets, and the only ones I've ever liked was the ones from HP or IBM. The problem with all the other ones was that the pen interface simply didn't work well enough. But with those two it simply felt right. While I did know that I couldn't find a tablet with the resolution and power of the Dell 8-series laptop I was used to, I still hoped I would be able to find a machine that would be both portable and powerful enough. Right now it feels like the 2710P might be what  l was looking for. Sure, like all lightweight laptops it uses components that consume as little power as possible, bur it still seems good enough.

However, the pen experience is not without fault. There are some quite annoying issues with this tablet. I've calibrated the pen a dozen of times and still I haven't been able to get it to behave consistently across the whole screen. If I calibrate it so that it is perfectly aligned at the top of the screen it will still be more than 5 mm off at the bottom. As it turns out, that is enough to confuse my eye-hand coordination. And right now, that is ruining the experience enough for me to not want the machine. However, I am hoping that this Is only a problem with the particular unit I have, and that a call to HP or Monday can take care of it (and I can get another tablet). Otherwise I'll go back to my 15,4" laptop.

One thing I'm really impressed with is the design of the tablet. Admittedly, my dream tablet would probably have to be designed by Apple. Steve, please give us a tablet with multi-touch. Made of aluminum. Your fanboys have been anticipating it for quite some time now. But until then I'm quite happy with the look and feel or this HP. Sleek metallic finish, and it definitely feels more sturdy than the Dell I'm used to.

Please HP, tell me that you can fix the alignment/calibration problem when I call you on Monday.

Popfly is in public beta

Yay! Head over right away to www.popfly.com and get mashing.