Beat Schwagler and Ingo Rammer spent a few days here in Israel this week, doing both a full day architect's seminar and Beat also spoke at the Architects User Group.
One of the interesting points to mention really had nothing to do with the topics of their talks. The fact is that most developers and architects in Israel aren't aware that there's an Architecture Journal for Software Architects from Microsoft, just like there's MSDN Magazine for developers. It hasn't been alive long, but it has interesting topics and anecdotes for Architects.
It's the Microsoft Journal. You can freely subscribe to it (even for a printed magazine delivered to your home in Israel) without any cost (except for a survey you have to fill).
Now, if you've already got a chance to read though one of the journals, I suspect that you had one of two reactions:
- "This is waaaay over my head - very high level!"
- "Looks good!"
Why is the first reaction possible? let's looks at this month's subjects and find out:
Some of these topics look rather scary to lots of people who call themselves "Architects", who mostly deal with a little more "down to earth" sort of materials - design patterns, application design architecture, security etc.. and not these big analogies.
There will always be these very high level analogies, but perhaps the Journal magazine needs to take into account that most of its potential readers need some more down to earth data, coupled with high level theories and analogies that map directly to that real world.
That said, if you take the time and try to read through the things that seem the most interesting to you, you may find a treasure chest of knowledge and new kinds of thinking. It's just hard to start. Think of it like a long novel where you have to get at least half way through for things to finally start coming together.
I encourage you to give it a try.