elemental links

A small action on Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty

As I considered what to write for today’s blog action day on poverty, I couldn’t help but think of how fortunate I am to be contemplating ‘poverty as an issue’ from behind a keyboard as opposed to as a life circumstance. Going down that path for a minute, I’m grateful my grandparents had the foresight and fortitude to reach Ellis Island and that my parents instilled in me the importance of education, working hard and living within means (savings good, debt bad). Essentially, my family provided me the circumstance and tools to reach towards success. 

At this point, it became clear to me what my blog action day ‘action’ should be. Give others an opportunity to create their own success. This led me straight to Kiva.org, a micro-lending site that brokers loans between individuals and (working poor) entrepreneurs in the developed world. 

I just made my first loans, one for bigger fishing nets and another to transport a child to school. Check it out, do what makes sense for you.

elemental links spring blog clean-up

As I've been waiting for the grass to get dry enough to mow, I did some spring clean-up here at elemental links.  The two things that will be noticeable to blog visitors (not feed subscribers) are a long-overdue category consolidation -- it was as tedious as it sounds -- and the posting of my delicious links on the site.  Hopefully the link-post job will work, because I removed all duplicate link splices - Feedburner and FriendFeed.

In addition to the clean-up activities, I also pulled some posts over from my Business-Driven Architect blog.  You could say I'm working on my 'source of record'.  I don't think those posts will show up in the feed, because I posted them here using the original post date.  The new old posts are:

• Tammy Erickson: Taking the offensive in recessionary times
• Six Sure Fire Ways to Sink your Enterprise Architecture
• Business-IT Integration Continued: IT Geeks on the Front Lines of Innovation
• Enterprise Architects, Professional Escalation, and City Planning
• From the Archives: IT Fundamental Truths

I think that's it for now.  If you are curious how the lawn mowing went, follow me on Twitter.  I do tweet (converse) about business and IT as well.

My Time Between Airports

Obviously, I've been remiss in my blogging.  I spent the majority of May and June on the road.  During that period, my writing was limited to the specific engagement, or email to business associates and friends of the following pattern: "Delayed at [airport code] waiting on [crew, plane, weather, parts]".  My favorite was Cincinnati when we couldn't take off because of a hole in the runway.  A hole that "mysteriously appeared" in the time between boarding and pulling away from the gate...

Between airports, I attended InformaticaWorld and IBM's Impact, delivered SOA training and workshops in Ohio with my friend Beth Gold Bernstein, facilitated a roundtable discussion on business architecture and SOA at ArchitectureGov, and ran the SOA Consortium's Inaugural European events in Brussels.

Yes, I've been busy.  At the moment, I'm heading to San Francisco, to represent the SOA Consortium at BPM Think Tank.  My upcoming events include:

Agile2007 in Washington D.C. - I'm still looking for perspectives, practices and stories of Agile and SOA

New England BEA User Group in Cambridge, MA - I'm excited to hear my friend Annie Shum's latest thinking on IT, Innovation and the (messy) Human Factor.

SOA Consortium meeting in Jacksonville - As SOA-C Program Director, I plan and facilitate these meetings

Enterprise Architecture Conference in Las Vegas - I'm speaking on SOA and Business Architecture

OOPSLA 2007 in Montreal - I'm participating in a panel discussion on the Future of SOA

Of course, it's not my intent to attend these events and then hoard the knowledge.  I've been meaning to share insights from each of my travels, amongst other things.  But, I can't seem to find the time, or perhaps focus.  Two factors to blame there.  One, the Maine summer.  When I am home, I find myself drawn to outdoor activities.  Two, I tend to scribble my ideas on paper, note cards, etc, which doesn't lend itself to quick posts.  As for the latter, I'm experimenting with TiddlyWiki as a way to capture and organize (through tags) my field notes and random thoughts.  Hopefully, this will lend some much needed structure to my process, and result in more frequent and timely posts.  It certainly can't make it worse!

In the meantime, I do plan on looking back, and sharing insights from the last couple of months.  You can also find some SOA related writing from me at the SOA Consortium blog.  As well, the SOA Consortium's first Executive Summit whitepaper is now publicly available.

If you are going to any of the future events I've listed and want to connect, email me - bmichelson at elementallinks dot com.

Oh, I picked TiddlyWiki because I wanted something simple that I could install locally.  If you are evaluating Wikis, I recommend this comparison site. 

I've been "blog-tagged"...

Sunday, Jeff Pulver started a game of "blog-tag" in which participants are asked to share 5 little known things about themselves, and then tag 5 people on their blogroll.  This morning, I saw that Anil John tagged me.  So, in the spirit of continuing the meme, here's my list:

1. I started in technology as a COBOL programmer.  My first "hot-skill" was IDMS/ADSO.  I could probably still traverse an IDMS database network if pressured.

2. Prior to IT, to pay for school, I was a waitress, short-order cook, and an inventory service counter.  Imagine the fun of hand counting bins of razors in department stores!

3. In high school, I was an all conference tennis player.  I now use that "lollipop" shaped racket to hit tennis balls to my golden retrievers.

4. One of my goldens, Blaze, was an L.L. Bean catalog cover dog.  He was part of a "dogs sell" test in 1996.

5. The one monthly print publication I always read is Vanity Fair.

And now, my tag victims from my blogroll...  Sandy, Jeff Schneider, JT, Patty, and Steve Jones.

Trying out Amazon's Omakase Links (beta)

Update 1/07/2007 - I've replaced the Amazon Omakase ad with auto-generated product ads for books in Amazon's Internet and Computing Category.  Not sure what influences the product selections - best sellers, blog content, buyer history, or overstock :)

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I'm trying out the beta of Amazon's Omakase ("Leave it up to us") product advertising.  See the lavender bordered ad box (below the google ads) on the right side bar.

Amazon describes the Omakase program as: "Omakase - leave it up to us! Omakase links will show an Associate's visitors what they're most likely to buy based on Amazon's unique understanding of the site, the user, and the page itself."

In quick - completely unscientific testing - I noticed that "the user" influence is strong.  On my machine without Amazon cookies, I was offered books on service-oriented architecture, information architecture and enterprise architecture.  On my machine with Amazon cookies, in addition to the geek tomes, I was offered fiction and an X41 docking station that I looked at recently. 

Right now, the only configuration offered is the ad display.  So, the products offered might be from any category (cheerios anyone?) or even from a competitor (Service Orient or Be Doomed!). 

While trying this won't expedite my retirement, the best way to understand something is to participate. I'm interested in hearing from readers - are the offers presented matches, complete misses, or just annoying.