Pat Helland is an architect at Microsoft. He has worked on a lot of deep technology, including the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC). The late, legendary Jim Gray was his mentor. He wrote the reasonably popular article Metropolis, "a metaphor for the evolution of information technology into the world of service-oriented architectures," which appeared in Microsoft's Architecture Journal 2 (April 2004). A while back he left Microsoft and went to work at Amazon, and now he is back at Microsoft.

One of his recent talks is The Irresistible Forces Meet the Moveable Objects (1:15:37) recorded at TechEd EMEA in November 2007. The thesis of this talk: "the way technology is going, we will be changing the way we build our applications." He describes several forces that are or will be driving our future, and then looks at where they are driving it, namely a world of moveable objects where there is no one true record.

Some of this technology is here today. Eye-opening technology, like buying a datacenter in a shipping container. Current and future vendors include Sun, Dell, Google, Rackable, and others. A key concept is that you never open the container: if one or ten or a hundred servers fail, you just leave them in place and continue operations.

Helland sure gives you one helluva lot to think about here.

My brother is looking to hire someone with a pilot's license (need not be current) and general purpose database and computer skills. He works at a large aerospace company in Seattle. Interested? Click the E-mail link and let me know.

Whoops!  Here's a photo of the display in the elevator at my hotel at TechEd 2008. You know, the hotel across from the convention center filled with hundreds of developers and Microsoft employees. I guess it is running (or not) on Windows.

I couldn't figure out how to click the Send Error Report button. For all I know, it is still there waiting for input.

My friend Patrick Cauldwell will be talking on The Code Is The Easy Part on June 12, 2008 at 7 PM at OGI in Portland. His talk addresses of continuous integration in theory and practice. The talk is free and open to the public, please register at the above link.

The Code Is The Easy Part
Patrick Cauldwell
Sponsored by Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN)
OGI School of Science and Engineering, Wilson Clark Center
6:00 PM networking and pizza, 7:00 PM seminar

Patrick is also the recent author of Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software on Wrox Press. To get a sense of where the book goes, read Patrick's post This I believe... the developer edition. Scott Hanselman wrote the forward to Code Leader and blogged some comments on the book.

With the TechEd 2008 Developers conference next week, Microsoft has announced the agenda for PDC 2008 including sessions and unsessions (don't ask questions, just go there.) PDC 2008 happens October 27-30, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. There is an early-bird registration discount of $200 until August 15, off of the full conference price of $2,395 USD.

Start making plans now.

Microsoft DreamSpark is a program for students at accredited colleges and universities in 11 countries to get free copies of Visual Studio 2008 Professional, Microsoft Expression Studio, Windows Server 2003 and the XNA Game Studio.

Get started with DreamSpark today and spark your own dream.

DreamSpark is hosted on Channel 8, Microsoft's site specifically for students. It is a sister to Channel 9 and Channel 10. There are some great resources, as well as serious fun to be had on these websites.

Here is a blog from a US student who is studying in Chengdu, China, the provincial capital city near the epicenter of the massive earthquake on May 12. He's in an exchange program between the University of Washington and Sichuan University. His first-hand accounts of what is happening there add an interesting perspective that complements what we hear in the news.

He has also helped create China Earthquake Aid (CEA) at chinaearthquakeaid.org for collecting donations to deliver aid to the communities most affected by the disaster. They are working through the Foundation for International Understanding Through Students, and the University of Washington Combined Fund Drive. Visit their website to find out how you can help.

This weekend I was one of the judges at the Oregon Game Project Challenge 1.0 (OGPC). This state-wide competition had teams of high school students presenting games they had created using GameMaker around this year's theme of energy. The competition was held at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, and sponsored by the TechStart Education Foundation in affiliation with the Oregon University System.

The range of work we saw was amazing, and some of it was simply astounding. The competition was arranged in five categories — programming, user experience, presentation, research and development, and teamwork — with trophies awarded to the top two teams in each category, plus first- and second-prize champion awards. The first-place champion award winner was PHRED (Philomath High Robotics Engineering Division) which scored very well across the categories. As their team name belies, they also competed in the Oregon regional FIRST Robotics Competition. They took home two awards from that competition, and a flier announcing the OGPC 1.0 competition. Way to go, Philomath!

The judges were divided into panels, with different panels judging the technical and presentation categories. With 21 teams attending (there were a few no-shows), each panel saw about one-third of the teams. After judging the teams, all of the judges gathered to deliberate. The challenge here, as head judge Chris Brooks put it, was to try to bring some objectivity into a highly subjective process. It was hard to level-set the judging, and absolutely fascinating listening to what the judges had to say about the teams they saw. We made some difficult decisions, and I was really satisfied with the final results.

Great job to all of the teams who took part, and to everyone who made OGPC 1.0 come together in a few short months. I am looking forward to seeing next year's competition.

Here's a little C# quiz for your brain bones. What will happen when the following code is executed? Explain why.

Do not compile the code, just use your gray matter.

This came up during a conversation last week. I wouldn't want to bet on everyone getting the correct answer, and purely on that basis alone this should probably not be a recommended practice. It's still a gem of a thought problem.

<FunnyPages source="technorati.com">

They have created a monster!

Here's an error page from Technorati that tickled my funny bone. Looks like a server is unavailable.

And, yes, the page title really is "Technorati is borked right now!" On page refresh, they seem to have unborked the great Technorati, and all is once again well with the world.

</FunnyPages>

If your TechEd 2008 plans include arriving the day before the conference, then there's a party with your name on it.

For the TechEd Developers 2008 conference, get down with Party With Palermo: TechEd 2008 Developers Edition on Monday, 2 June 2008. This is the pre-conference party that started it all, hosted by affable MVP Jeffrey Palermo. Visit the website and submit your name so they know you are coming. I'll be there.

For the TechEd IT Professionals 2008 conference, say hello to Party with the Pros: The IT Pro Party on Monday, 9 June 2008. Your sponsoring host is Doug Spindler of Pacific IT Pros, and independent nonprofit association. Visit the website and request a Golden Ticket if you want to get in.

Both parties will be held at the fabulous Glo Lounge, just blocks away from the conference venue.

And if you are with a corporation or organization that wants to be seen, there are sponsorship opportunities available for both of these high-profile, high-visibility shin-digs.

I first saw Seattle-based Tableau Software a few years back at a conference expo, and ended up spending about an hour at their booth. Then I dragged friends over to their booth. Being a big fan of Edward Tufte and his beautiful work on data visualization, I was instantly impressed with what Tableau is doing. If your job includes analysis of data, or creating visual representations of data for others to analyze and draw their own conclusions, then you need to look at this company's award-winning software.

They now have a page of interesting examples of data visualization created using Tableau. It is well worth exploring even if you aren't interested in their product. You can drill into the details of each example, including downloading the data behind each visualization. What better way to convince someone of your analysis than to show them the data?

<warning>

I had a bit of trouble with the dynamic popups on the examples page. When you hover the mouse over an example, a detail window is popped up. If the popup window is displayed so that the mouse is in the window, it immediately closes the popup window. The net effect is an annoying flash — now you see it, now you don't. No, you can't move the mouse fast enough to get it out of the way, and I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to where the page decides to pop up each window.

That's a real UX bummer, Tableau. Can you get that fixed, please?

For now, you can just click directly on the example for a detail page.

</warning>

From what I've seen, Tableau has been hard at work evolving their capabilities and offerings, including a free Tableau Reader. Nice.

Want more? Take a product tour, download a free trial, watch on-demand web seminars, or make plans to attend their first customer conference 20–22 July 2008 in Seattle, Washington.

Time sure has a way of creeping up on you when you're not looking. This Friday, 2 May 2008, is the last change to save $200 on TechEd 2008 conference registration.

If you're just waking up and smelling the coffee, due to the popularity of this conference in recent years, this year TechEd is two separate conferences on two subsequent weeks. TechEd Developers 2008 is 3–6 June 2008, and TechEd IT Professionals 2008 is 10–13 June 2008, both in Orlando, Florida, USA.

I am looking forward to the new split-week format. The last few TechEds have so large it's been easy to feel lost in the vast sea of attendees. While I am certain that this year won't exactly be intimate, it will be more approachable and on the whole a better experience for all concerned.

Join in the fun at BarCamp Portland 2008 this weekend. It is a free developer event for people to share and learn from each other. The content is determined by the attendees at the event. Friday evening is a kickoff reception, session planning and networking. Saturday and Sunday are the real-deal BarCamp sessions.

All activities are at CubeSpace, 622 SE Grand, Portland, OR, 97214. Be sure to register at Upcoming.