Mike Walker's Blog

Presenting at TechEd 2009

Hello all! I will be presenting at this years TechEd on The Role of the Architect in Turbulent Times.  If your around swing by or if you would like to get together at the event to chat let me know.

Here are the details of the session:

Title

Role of the Architect in Turbulent Times

Abstract

With faltering economies and the resulting shifting of priorities, architects must be ready for change in their role. Innovative new technologies such as Cloud Based Computing, Software as a Service and Virtualization open up new and exciting opportunities for architects to show value in their organizations. In this session we discuss how the role of the architect has changed, introduce new architectural patterns and show how to "do more with less".

 

Technorati Tags: TechEd,Microsoft,Economy,Architecture

My Blog has Moved

I just moved my blog to www.MikeTheArchitect.com . The RSS should still be the same so if you have linked to my blog through the blogs.msdn.com/MikeWalker address you will need to update your links.

Finally Made it to the Top

A teammate and I were chatting about search ranking and I was telling him about how I am battling it out (maybe battling out is a bit of an exaggeration) with other Mike Walker’s in the world especially the one from the National Enquirer. 

I am happy to announce I have done it! After many years of being second to Mike Walker from the National Enquirer I have finally moved up to the #1 position, but for how long. I won’t last past the next movie star scandal.

Thanks everyone that have linked to me and subscribed to my blog!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mike+walker 

Results 1 - 10 of about 17,700,000

Technorati Tags: Mike Walker

Two New Walker's Join the World

I am excited to announce a new Microsoft employee product, two new Walker's. On Thursday January 22nd the proud mom and dad (me) delivered two healthy baby boy twins.

 

As some of you may of noticed, my blogging has dropped significantly over the past two months. My wife (wonder woman) had a really tough time and needed to support her through her long and difficult pregnancy. Now with the twins born, will have my hands full over the next month so you will not be seeing too much blogging from me.

Thanks to all that read my blog and will be writing soon.

Regards,
Mike

Presentations Uploaded

As followers of my blog know, I do many speaking engagements. Often times I get requests for those decks from the conference or event. Instead of sharing with a select few I thought I would share with everyone. You can find some of the major presentations under my Slideshare profile:

http://www.slideshare.net/mikejwalker

Here is a quick list of the presentations:

• Enterprise Architecture Toolkit Screenshots
• Improving on How Architectures are Described
• Enterprise Architecture Toolkit Scenarios
• Enterprise Architecture Toolkit Overview
• Enabling Lending Business Imperatives with Office
• Loan Origination Reference Architecture Deep Dive
• Office Developers Conference - Financial Services O...
• End to End Vertical OBA's
• Composite Applications and OBA Architecture
• Composite Applications Speaking Tour - Lap Around O...
• Composite Applications Speaking Tour – Keynote
• Office Business Applications in Financial Services
• Microsoft Insurance Solutions Keynote Presentation ...
• Enterprise Architecture Toolkit – English
• Financial Services Component Library

More to come…

Technorati Tags: Presentations,Enterprise Architecture,Composite Applications,OBA,Financial Services,EA,EATK

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Updates - Where has Mike been?

Just wanted to give the readers of my blog a quick personal update. Some of you may of noticed that my postings have been a bit sparse these past few months. Thanks to those who have stuck around...

Well the first piece of big news is that my lovely wife is pregnant with twins. Yes, you heard it right, I hit the "Daily Double" (game show reference). It's has been a busy time for me at home due to some normal but nevertheless time consuming hiccups. So many of my late night blog postings have been put on hold for a little while till things settle down and then ramp back up in a few months...

There are a few areas in which I started and will be expanding upon over the course of the next few months. These include:

• The Enterprise Architecture Toolkit (EATK) - There has been an overwhelming response to the toolkit and will be providing more information on the toolkit which will include how to get it.
• The Strategic Architecture Forum - I am the track owner for the Enterprise Architecture track and will be giving more updates on this as we get close.

I will be also traveling to a few industry conferences in the coming months. If anyone wants to meet up and chat while at the event I would love to have the opportunity to meet and collaborate with you on your ideas or projects.

Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit (London, England)
I will not be presenting at this one but will be working with the folks at Infosys to show the EATK. I will be at the Infosys booth where we will talk about the Microsoft and Infosys EATK partnership.

 

20th Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference (Munich, Germany)
I will have a session here where I will be talking about changing the way architects consume and use architecture assets and guidance. More information forth coming on that session.

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Architecture,Events,EATK

Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post Gates-Era

There is a new book out called Microsoft 2.0: How to Stay Relevant in the Post Gates-Era written by Mary Jo Foley. There has been some buzz about this book so I thought I would check it out and take a read. Plus, I heard that I was in the book in some capacity so I thought I would take a look. It turns out that Mary Jo has some of my quotes regarding Office Business Applications.

So far I have only made it through the forward (by the famous mini-microsoft blogger) and skimmed a few pages but I am definitely looking forward to reading the rest of the book over the weekend.

For me this is really cool because the book includes friends and colleagues of mine at Microsoft. Dan Fernandez has put together a review on his blog as well. He also has a complete list of Microsoft people in the book.

Check out Dan Fernandez's Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2008/05/05/list-of-microsoft-employees-mentioned-in-microsoft-2-0.aspx

Japan Strategic Architecture Forum

Hello everybody! For those of you that read my blog and will just so happen to be in Japan for the Strategic Architecture Forum on the week of April 7th come by my two sessions at the event! I will be talking about Enterprise Architecture at this one.

At this event I will be announcing something special for the enterprise architecture community! BE sure to stay tuned to the blog and the EA portal on MSDN over the following weeks.

If you have never been here is a look at last years event: マイクロソフト アーキテクト フォーラム 2007.

I will be presenting at the Open Group EA Conference

If you are at the conference I would love to see you at my session (http://www.opengroup.org/sf2008/walker.html) on Monday at 5:00pm.

A Practitioners Guide to SOA

In this session you will learn how Microsoft technologies enable enterprise architecture practices to be successful in Service Oriented Architecture. We will explore both the technologies that enable SOA and the tooling to govern the complexity in the enterprise. Introduced in the session is the flurry of new technologies released that integrate governance, reduce the complexities of integration and unify the workflow across all Windows applications. This session will demonstrate how Microsoft plays in today's more practical SOA world.

Don't Mess with the Chief

On my trip to Vegas last week I ran into Master Chief. I guess I said the wrong thing to him because he just snapped. Something about how I could kick his butt on X-Box live, well he had no sense of humor about that... :)