Articles Archive for January 2008

Traditional music at dinner
Posted in Food, JimPhelps, Life in Madison on 29 January 2008

We had traditional Chinese and Mongolian music at dinner. It was really cool. I won’t guess at the instruments other than to say, there were three musicians: a woman playing something that looks like a hammered dulcimer, a guy who played bowed stringed instruments and guy who played flutes.
I was listening to [...]

EA Practitioners - EA Best Practice Management
Posted in Enterprise Architecture, IT Architecture, JimPhelps, The Open Group, Work on 28 January 2008

Several speakers this afternoon.
Seven Traits of Effective Enterprise Architecture (EA)
Speaker number 1: Mark Denne, Partner, Accenture
Business Alignment - Must define its value in terms of the business measured in the business’ currency. You must show that there are savings when you do EA.

EA Practitioners - SOA Reality Check Panel
Posted in IT Architecture, ITANA, SOA, The Open Group on 28 January 2008

The panel is reitteratng that you cannot buy SOA in a box. It is an architecture, a long term process and transformation of the enterprise. It is beyond the scope and capability of the I.T. folks but really has to come from business leaders - the C-Level executives.
What impact with the economic downturn [...]

Keynote from EA Practitioners: SOA and EA - in the real world
Posted in Enterprise Architecture, IT Architecture, JimPhelps, The Open Group, Work on 28 January 2008

David Linthicum of Zapthink is speaking. http://theopengroup.org/sf2008/linthicum.html
Conference materials live at http://www.opengroup.org/conference-live
David Linthicum wrote, “Enterprise Application Integration”
Dysfunctional architectures that are currently deployed have led to enterprise that are locked up and unable to really improve because of the complexity. The activities ahave all be driven by tactical needs not strategic needs.
Enterprise Architecture are raising [...]

Enterprise Architecture as an Academic Study
Posted in Enterprise Architecture, IT Architecture, JimPhelps, The Open Group, Work on 28 January 2008

From the Open Group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference in San Francisco.
I had breakfast with David Jackson from Boston university. David is working on building a consortium of business schools who will offer something like an Executive Master’s of Enterprise Architecture degree. This would be similar to Executive MBA programs in that students would [...]

Dinner out at a local restaurant ups my belief in humanity
Posted in Featured, Food, JimPhelps, Life in Madison on 28 January 2008

Last night I ate dinner a local Japanese restaurant. I was walking from the hotel down to North Beach. It was nasty, windy, raining so I was thinking that maybe I should turn around and eat at the hotel. I went past this little Japanese restaurant - Hotaru (1059 Powell St, Google [...]

Etsy - On-line store for hand-made items
Posted in General, JimPhelps, Life in Madison, random stuff on 22 January 2008

Etsy (http://www.etsy.com) is a store where crafters can sell their objects to the public. Etsy also supports spaces for the crafters to work and share their skills and ideas.
The Etsy website also has cool navigation methods for finding objects. There is a color search system that lets you pick a color to start [...]

Evening skiing with Scott and Erik
Posted in JimPhelps, Life in Madison, photos on 3 January 2008

Had a beautiful late afternoon / evening ski outing with Scott and Erik.
Here are a few pictures from the outing.