Thoughts on Enterprise Architecture and Project Management

Wow! 2 Months Without Blogging!

I took a break from blogging for the past 2 months, and my article output is less this year than in others - primarily because I have been doing much client work that has taken up more than the majority of my time.

OK, enough with the excuses, as I have been fairly active on Twitter and e-mails with friends and colleagues. Heck, not only have I not been blogging, I got on Google Reader for the first time in about 6 weeks and noticed a lot of blogs that I follow don't have as many new entries as before. Does this mean that blogging is dead, as some have suggested? I think not, since summer and the winter holiday season are notorious for low blogger output (and probably readership as well). Besides, explaining complex things and deconstructing methods, etc. cannot be made in 140-character tweets.

Well, I've had lots of stuff to post build up over the past few months, and I resolve to share most of it with all of you. More to come shortly, and thanks for reading!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrate Thanksgiving in the US tomorrow, and I'd like to wish my US readership a very happy holiday season!

Bob

Can't Wait 'til Wednesday (November 5th)

I very rarely, if ever, discuss things outside of architecture and project management in my blog. Today will be an exception.

I was sitting in the Minneapolis airport last night waiting for a flight to Seattle. Of course, CNN is blaring on the video monitors throughout the terminal and no matter where I tried to sit and get some peace before the flight and subsequent long drive to Portland, the pundits were in full-force - Obama this, McCain that...Biden's latest gaffe...Palin's wardrobe...yada yada yada..and on and on and on...

My oldest turned 18 last week, and she will be voting on Tuesday. Of course, youth is mostly liberal, as I was back in those days (middle-of-the-road now as I aged :)) and she yammered to me on a phone call about Obama. He'll do this, he'll do that, he'll...fix everything.

Youth being what it is - optimistic, is OK. However, I calmed her down a bit with the following factoids from my own existence on this planet:

• I was born in 1958, and have lived through the terms of 10 presidents - the one elected Tuesday will be the 11th.
• In my lifetime, no president ever was directly responsible for getting me a job or paying work of any kind. Come to think of it, no congresscritter was either.
• No president, by his own actions, lowered the price of gasoline or food when severe bouts of inflation hit over the years.
• No president ever put money directly in my pocket. For example, I didn't qualify for the recent stimulus payment because since I work very hard, I made too much money - to the tune of about $9000, not $9 million. Had it been the latter figure, I don't think I would have cared that much...:)
• Lots of presidents, of both parties, were good at taking money out of my pocket...the first president Bush comes to mind here..read my lips...:)
• Polls don't mean crap - it's what happens at the end. In 2004, Kerry was projected in the week before that election to beat GW Bush in enough states to win - and we all know how that ended up.

My point to my daughter is that we expect too much from presidents, and delivered right now. Fix this economy. Get out of Iraq. Pay for proper and good education and healthcare. Protect our jobs. Pay me if I'm unemployed - no matter for how long it takes to find work. Save my house from foreclosure, even if I can't (or couldn't ever) really afford it in the first place. Oh yeah, and don't raise my taxes - make the 'rich' pay. Now. In 100 days. Or less.

The truth is, presidents do not have that kind of power, and never did. If they did, then things would be fixed to the extent possible - pronto. We expect too much, too fast, and presidents really cannot deliver much on the rhetoric they espouse on the campaign trail - that is primarily said to get elected - not as policy after the fact.

We are in the midst of a very deep economic conundrum, and you can bank on things changing in lots of ways over the upcoming months, but I don't believe that the soon-to-be-elected president is going to have much to do with it except for the properly-cued sound bites and talks with foreign governments. Talk, not action.

So is it the media that's infatuated with all of this? It would appear so, since my POVs are shared by a lot of friends, colleagues, and family. We all vote and have strong opinions. The constant pandering back and forth is to appease and assuage our moment-by-moment, out-of-control media..who feeds us with constant breaking-news drivel to retain our attention to the advertising they present to pay their way and make a profit.

I can't wait for Wednesday morning, when the signal-to-noise ratio will skew rapidly to signal...the noise right now is deafening...and yes, I have voted, as I always do since we vote by mail here in Oregon.

And we can get on to the business of the challenges we face, as the people, on numerous fronts. These issues are complex, risky, and people will probably have to sacrifice some things they came to expect in order to make things right. But I have no doubt that we will prevail in the end, no matter who gets elected. That is the continuing beauty of our great American nation - all of us.

I'm Bob McIlree, and I approve of this message. :)

Must Be A New Year

Funny how certain things happen at this time of the year:

- I received a large number of LinkedIn and Facebook invitations over the past week. I usually get one or two a month, but it looks like lots of people resolve to "get more networked" as a New Years resolution.

- I was shopping at my local Costco warehouse store a few days back, and these folks are experts at putting well-timed impulse-buy items in the space immediately past the store entrance. With difficulty, I can usually resist the high-definition and plasma televisions, slick digital cameras, and video recorders, and I'm about 50-50 when it comes to certain clothing items. What struck me when I walked in recently was the "New Years resolution" items: vitamin and diet supplements, weight-loss aids, stop-smoking remedies, and similar goods for people that make promises to themselves once per year.

- Various and sundry pundits, bloggers, and IT-technology publications make their predictions for 2008.

The only thing I can predict with any certainty are that the number of invitations I receive to social and networking sites will decrease in short order (until a year from now); and the impulse-buy displays at Costco will change very soon, if not already.

What gets substantially trickier is how IT and technology will fare in 2008. If monitoring the junk e-mails I routinely receive from IT publications and websites are any indicator, about half think there will be an economic recession and IT will be subject to cutbacks circa 2001-2003, and the other 50% feel that while there will be a recession in 2008, IT (and its budgets, spending, and hiring) will be spared, and may even increase. Not a set of definitive statements across the industry, that's for sure.

Although we're one week into 2008, the holiday season has concluded in the US and everyone's back to work today, including me. I wish my readership success and prosperity over the coming year, and keep those predictions next to the salt shaker, as the grains can be highly useful during this and any year...:)

Happy Holidays!

I'll get back to the serious stuff after Christmas, but for now, I'd like to wish all of my readers and others a very happy holiday season! It never ceases to amaze me regarding the amount of folks who try to squeeze in 'just one more' e-mail, meeting, or presentation before "the holidays." I have received 5 work-related emails already before noon today on Christmas Eve. I really hope that I don't get any more after noon today, or all day tomorrow - folks doing this need to seriously get a life. 

Anyway, I'm not checking voice mail or responding to any email until the 26th - maybe - so again, kiss your spouse/significant other and your children (if any), and tell your friends and family that you love them.

And have a safe, enjoyable holiday! :)

A Legend Passes

Noted on MSNBC yesterday that Don Herbert (a.k.a. "Mr. Wizard") has passed on at the age of 89. Being of the baby boom generation, I was an avid fan of the "Mr. Wizard" TV show as a kid, as it not only provided fuel for my interests in science and technology, it had the larger motive (and result) of sharpening one's critical thinking skills, which is the real gift he brought to us.

Other than news, sports, and the occasional Food Network or HBO binge, I don't watch much TV. When my kids were younger, there were a couple of science-oriented youth shows that I recall seemed to be lost in the sea of absolute crap that TV networks and marketers routinely pitch to children. "Mr. Wizard" was entertaining, unique, and in a subtle way, very powerful in arming a generation of children with not only the capabilities to ask "why," but to start finding the answers immediately around them.

R.I.P.

Every so often...

...clients decide to "go dark" on planned projects - i.e. work that is booked is delayed or canceled for various reasons. Sometimes, a number of clients go dark simultaneously. While this doesn't happen very often, it's happened to me over the past few weeks. I reckon that it was finally "my turn."

Usually, I don't discuss my personal & specific business affairs here on my blog. However, I asked Chris Petrilli how posting availability for employment on his blog last summer worked for him. His answers convinced me to give it a try.

I act primarily as an IT architect (enterprise, data, system) and as a project manager - and am comfortable in either role, but not both simultaneously. Although I've been a consultant for many years I'm willing to take a serious look at FTE positions as well.

If you would like further information, please send an e-mail to robert (dot) mcilree (at) gmail (dot) com and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks!

5 Things About Me

I got blog-tagged by James Tarbell and Tim Johnson recently, so I guess it's time to cough-up 5 things not commonly known about me...

1. I started my computer career in high school, writing BASIC programs (mostly games) on a Model 33 Teletype (the ones with the paper tape as an I/O device) connected by a 300-baud acoustic coupler to the mainframe at a local university. Yeah, I'm that old...:)

2. I was born and raised by a very liberal Democrat  of a mother and promptly turned into a near-right-of-center conservative at about the time Reagan was elected president. Now I have 2 daughters who have quite liberal political views - go figure....:)

3. I'm a huge fan of football (college and professional) and college basketball. March Madness usually has me deeply involved in "bracketology," although I would not rely on any of my prognostications along those lines for gambling purposes...:)

4. If I wasn't in this line of work, I would be a chef in a fine-dining establishment. I love to cook and the Food Network has become a staple on my TV in addition to news and ESPN.

5. In 2001, at the ripe old age of 42, I had, for lack of a better term, a 'cardiac event' (the docs never did call it a heart attack directly) and left the hospital 3 days later with my very own stent inserted in my right coronary artery which was 100% blocked at the time. Needless to say, a number of lifestyle changes were made in response to this and coupled with medication and exercise, life is fine and so am I.

I need to think about who to tag in response to this...everybody I can think of has already been "fingered..."   :)

Happy New Year!

I'll have more posts and thoughts over the next few days but I wanted to take the time to wish all of you a happy, safe, and prosperous 2007!