When Software Attacks!

TechEd 2009: Finding technical content

Whilst TechEd this year has been rich with interesting content, most notably on SharePoint 2010, I’ve found it sadly thin on the ground when it comes to deep technical sessions. What exceptions to this rule there have been, however, were excellent and worthy of mention.

Mark Minasi delivered an explanation of Kerberos and its usage in Windows which was both extremely informative and wildly funny. His engaging delivery and use of cartoons, animations and humour made what could have been a dry subject all the more informative and memorable. If you can get hold of the recording, I would strongly urge you to watch.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, November 12, 2009

@media Day 2 - Afternoon

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but Andy Budd has a very similar presentation style to my own. He’s incredibly enthusiastic and passionate about what he’s speaking about, and he wanders around waving his arms in an extremely animated way. Snap!

The topic of usability testing is an important one. I always try to impress upon our clients the need to see how the systems we build for them are used and tweak and fix accordingly. Andy’s approach to low-budget, formative testing to identify and solve usability issues during development as part of an agile approach struck a chord with me. I think that it’s important to have a dialog with ‘average’ users (i.e. not involved directly with development and therefore too close to a project to notice the problems) and to feed back into the development process what you find and the pain points you identify. Far better to find and fix during development than to force your product to fail testing or, even worse, to hit issues during rollout that hinder adoption.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, June 26, 2009

@media Day 2 - Morning

It’s a muggy day today. With thunderstorms expected, the morning air was thick as we walked over to the South Bank Centre.

I found Douglas Crockford’s opening session thoughtful. It wasn’t what I was expecting – I had anticipated a focus more on methodologies and approaches to improving quality. instead, it was an interesting and sometimes humorous examination as to why quality in software is such a difficult area, with an informative walk through the history of software thrown in.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, June 26, 2009

Joining in the background noise: I am now on Twitter

One of the reasons I enjoy conferences like @media is that I can be persuaded to change my mind on things. After a persuasive argument from Nick I’ve decided to alter my stance on twitter and give it a go for a while.

A few others recently have suggested that I should sign up to the microblogging system even if I didn’t plan to use it, just to make sure I got the nickname I wanted and nobody else could use it. I’ve never really bought into that kind of approach, and sometimes I wonder if that is as key an indicator as to the lack of importance I have personally come to place in social networking tools. I’m old enough that my first instinct if I want to socialise is to pick up the phone and arrange a pint with a mate.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, June 26, 2009

Places to eat on the South Bank in London

A set of conference posts wouldn’t be complete without a run down of the local culinary delights. We haven’t strayed far from the South Bank Centre for the past few days, but we’ve had a great variety of meals.

Wednesday night and Thursday lunchtime was Wagamamas. I love Wagamamas. There’s one in Leeds as well, and whilst Fuji Hero is perhaps more authentic, I just love the deserts at Wagamamas. I also have at least one of their recipe books, so I can try it at home! Busy though – we arrived just shy of seven in the evening of our arrival and the queue to get in didn’t really die down until after nine. The new teppanyaki soba is to be recommended.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, June 26, 2009

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Rik is CEO and Co-founder of Zure in the UK. He is a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award and a Microsoft Regional Director. He is a member of the admin team for the Global Azure worldwide community event.

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