Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

Stuart Celarier works here at Corillian (a division of CheckFree) and is not only a Senior Engineer, but a "Placemat Visualization Expert." Just kidding, but handouts are just one of the things that we believe makes an effective presentation.

Presentation Rule: When possible and appropriate, ALWAYS offer a handout. Folks can read faster than you can speak.

Stuart has taken a lot of what makes up our architecture at Corillian and started creating 11x17 Visualizations in the form of what I've been calling Placemats. They're the kind of thing that could teach you all about our design, then you could eat on it. :)

He hangs these mini-posters up all over the company, along with pens, and encourages folks to scribble on them. Someone who knows more than we will walk by, notice a mistake or whatever, and fix it. He's on version 28 of some of these posters - It's Collective Knowledge with an Open Source-style, disseminated in mini-poster form. Anyone can propose a patch, just by scribbling on the poster. Stuart then comes around and collects the changes. So much cleaner than "Reply To All" or even SharePoint. Perhaps not as profound as the most famous visualization: Napoleon's March, but we try.

HOW TO SPREAD THE GOOD WOOD: Get the word about whatever you're interested in getting the word out about. When possible, make posters. Hang them everywhere. Let them soak in. Let folks scribble on them for a few months. Laminate them. Make T-Shirts. Rinse, Repeat.

We're huge fans of NDepend over at Corillian, and working with it more each day. I've done a Podcast on Static Analysis with NDepend and written up a pretty long article about NDepend and what it can bring to software development at your shop. We're just scratching the surface.

In order to get the word out about NDepend (which is a pretty complex thing, especially the underlying Comp.Sci. concepts around software complexity) Stuart created this NDepend Metrics Placemat, suitable for printing at 11x17. 

If you're at TechEd, go see our colleague Patrick Cauldwell along with Stuart "Celery Stew" Celarier at the NDepend Birds of a Feather at TechEd. They'll be passing out high-quality color prints of this poster. The BOF is at lunch, so bring food:

BOF09: Exiting the Zone of Pain: Static Analysis with NDepend, scheduled for Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 12:00 PM, in Room S331 A.  We'll be discussing how and why to use static analysis tools like NDepend.  I'm especially interested in hearing not just how people use tools like NDepend, but who uses them (in their organization) and how often.

Here's the PDF for your download, use and abuse. Thanks to Patrick Smacchia, creator of NDepend for his help and review:

If you are headed to TechEd 2007 in Orlando, make sure you make the time to go to Party with Palermo. Jeff throws an unmatched geek party and you don't want to miss it.

It's free, and I can attest, it's great. You'll meet lots of cool folks, many bloggers, wonks and other geeks. I went to the last one in Seattle and had a blast.

Sadly this year, a very large combination of events, both business and personal, meant that I have had to bow out of TechEd, so I won't be there to join you. It's only the second time ever I've canceled a speaking gig, and I'm bummed, but it was the right thing to do at this point.

But for you who are going, go over to the Party with Palermo Website and RSVP by leaving a comment right now!

It's June 3rd, 2007 @ 7PM - 11PM at Glo Lounge:  http://www.gloloungeorlando.com/
8967 International Dr, Orlando, FL
(407) 351-0361

Enjoy. My giant head may appear via Skype Video Conferencing at some point during the evening. ;)

Jeff's also been kind enough to add Team Hanselman and our Diabetes Walk 2007 as honorary community sponsors of the event, so drink lots of beer and click for a Tax-Deductible Donation.

It's Video #2 in the Hanselminutes on 9 series.

Rory and I did a few videos together a while back to promote TechEd 2005. (Baby Carrots, Designing Software) They kind of worked, but were perhaps a bit forced. We thought they'd be cool at the time because when Rory and I hang out and just riff, we're a hoot. A hoot and a half, even. So, the Rawdawg got the idea for he and I to wander around Microsoft's Building 42 (Developer Division or "DevDiv") and simply pop in to folks offices and ask them "What are you working on?"

For me, I wanted to get back into the "Roots of Channel 9" - raw discussions, preferably with folks who know what they are talking about.

Here's video #2 in our travels through Building 42 on the Microsoft Campus. We didn't plan anything, nor did we warn folks we were coming.

In this short video, we interviewed Vance Morrison, an Architect on the .NET Runtime Team, specializing in performance issues with the runtime or managed code in general.

We actually stopped and bothered Vance because he had a trebuchet on his desk that we saw through the window. We had to stop.

Vance does some pretty amazing stuff around Managed Code Optimization. Take a look at the micro-optimizations around typeof() calls over at his blog. Vance is a busy guy so this video is only six minutes long. 

The first video in this series is still over here: Hanselminutes on 9 - #1.

 It's hard to decide what to spend one's training dollars on. It's hard to justify spending US$2000 or more on a conference. If a conference is nearby, or hosted in your town you can save money. I also use my frequent flyer miles a lot to get where I need to go for conferences. Using your own frequent flyer miles and doubling-up/sharing hotel rooms with friends in the Blogosphere are good ways to justify the financial part of your trip to your boss.

Many feel that it's the company's responsibility to pay for everything, travel, attendance, hotel, etc, but if you want to get as broad a view as possible, and maybe attend multiple conferences, being flexible on how you get there, eat, and sleep can make a difference. Also, trying to go to conferences that happen on the weekend, and making sure your boss knows that he/she's not going to lose you for an entire week - perhaps just a few days - can make a difference.

I'm also careful not to think of conferences as vacations, as you're being paid to absorb as much as you can, so I tend to fly in, attend, and fly out, fairly aggressively, unless my wife and son are along and we have explicitly turned it into a Vacation.

• I'll be at RailsConf, partially because it's here in Portland, partially because my Boss is a RailsHead, and partially because I think that the mantra of Convention over Configuration is an important one that can be applied regardless of language or environment.
• Cleverly, this conference is a Thurs-Sun deal, so while it takes up a weekend, it only takes up two work days. Again, a way to get virtually a week's content while only encroaching on work for two days.
• This year, I'll be going to MIX - a User Experience conference in Vegas. There's an early bird discount if you register before March 15th, so the conference itself is $995. If you're going to Mix, let's meet and have a Diet Soda, eh?
• Mix is a short conference, but very dense in content, and because it's in Vegas the flights are cheap. Plus, because it's a three-day conference you could go and still work 2 days, or possible that following Saturday and get a good work week in as well.
• Here's some gravy - every conference attendee gets a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (this qualifies for the Vista Family Discount, so you can get two more Home Premiums for $49 each, so that's potentially three copies of Vista for $100, or just keep the Ultimate for free).
• I'll also be at TechEd 2007 giving a pre-conference with Ron Jacobs (of ARC Cast fame) on Architecture. This is the same pre-con we did in Europe last year. I may also do a session on Mobile applications and AJAX support in PocketIE, but that's still up in the air.

Hopefully I'll see you at one of these conferences!

While in Spain this Autumn at TechEd:Developers Europe, I had the good fortune to do an ARCast with Ron Jacobs (mirror). The episode is up now on Channel9; hopefully it's not complete poo and I provide some value. I tried to come up with a topic, but Ron said, well, just start talking, so we did, and this is the result. We had a fine time, even though I've known Ron for over 10 years and he still misspelled my name. :P

What do you give to the architect that has everything? How about a grab bag of really good advice an interesting discussion with a very smart architect and fellow podcaster Scott Hansleman [sic]? This episode defies a single description because we covered so much ground but if you have ever listened to Hanselminutes you will know what I mean when I say that Scott is a very interesting guy to listen to. Scott and I led a pre-conference seminar at Tech-Ed 2006 in Barcelona called "Introduction to Software Architecture" and we caught up for a quick chat while in Spain.

Links

• Take the ARCast Listener Survey
• How to subscribe to ARCast
• www.arcast.net

Thanks to Brian Windheim, a fellow architect at Corillian, who came up with the tagline "All non-software artifacts should approach zero" that I've been talking about lately.