Hey, I want to apologize for being absent for so long.  I have a lot of stuff to write about and I’ll be getting it out in 2008.

Will you be at RSA?  I’m giving a talk on Game Theory and how these patterns can be applied to IT Security.  Check your program and don’t be shy – come over and say hello.

—tk

Check out http://sxsw.org/

It is South by Southwest time again and Austin Texas is completely consumed by inventors, designers, artists, gamers, authors, and any other category that describes a creative class.  The beauty of this conference is that it brings together many creative disciplines and everyone shares their passion.  It is the intersection of software, film, and music. 

Today was registration and as you can see by my badge, I’ll just attend the technical sessions this year.  If I sound a little bummed about that it is because there are a few bands this year that I really wanted to see but things are just too busy at work.  Oh well.  This afternoon, I sat in on a good talk about Javascript patterns and tomorrow I’m looking forward to some great design sessions.  I’ll blog some of my thoughts. 

—tk

At South-by-Southwest I attended talk given by Jennifer Fraser on Vitruvius who was the first Roman architect to write about the craft.  I saw some invariant patterns of good design that could be useful as we design information systems.  The warning I must underline is that building physics-based systems are different than building information-based systems, at least this is true in March of 2008.  Rival goods are not the same as non-Rival goods.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was born ~80 BC and died 25 BC.  Regardless of his abilities as an architect, he lives today because he was the person who wrote about the craft and documented the essence the architecture of his time.  If being referenced some 2000+ years later is not enough of a value proposition to get you to document your contribution,  I don’t know what is.

Jennifer referenced De architectura (Latin: “On architecture”) which consisted of 10 scrolls and “The Ten Books on Architecture” which is the translation and available on books.google.com.  Vitruvius said that well-designed buildings must exhibit three qualities: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas.  Respectively, utility, attractiveness, stability.

Looking at information system design, these qualities are also beneficial.  What is interesting in Jennifer’s presentation is that applications at some moment in time can be mapped to a vector in a firmitas, utilitas, and venustas space.

For example, an application can be at position ‘X’ when it is in demo format and ultimately its goal is to move to position ‘Z’.  There are times when an application would be not as attractive or has low utility but is ultra stable like ‘Y’; its goal over time is to get to position ‘Z’. 

Another thing that was clear was how Vitruvius understood his users.  He had an intimate understanding of who would occupy the dwelling and what tasks they would perform on a daily basis.  Up front in the design was a serious considerations for private and public spaces.  I can see how this has a parallel with information system. 

Vitruvius is quoted as saying “The eye is always in search of beauty” and who can argue that.  We should set our design goals high and demand beauty, utility, and stable system. 

—tk

Xbox LIVE will be unavailable for approx. 3 hrs on April 1^st from 2pm PDT

Huh?  With all that virtualization, load balancing, and other service abstraction strategies we have today, why do we still have to deal with scheduled downtime?

I understand that we cannot plan on ever getting rid of an unscheduled outage because “stuff happens” but we certainly have at our fingertips methods that can avoid scheduled downtime once and for all.

I’m just bitter because it may take a bite out of my Halo3 Team Slayer.  The Master Chief would never allow for scheduled downtime!  It must be the work of the Covenant.  The fight continues…

—tk