Roman's miles

IT Regional Architect Conference. Feedback from Atlanta.

As I announced in the past I've attended the conference in Atlanta. It was the first event of a series in US and the organizers plan to have it annually in the same format. Below is my impression.

First off, it was a great success! To my knowledge it's the only conference which is vendor or technology agnostic. Not only it is cross-platform and cross-technology it's focused on the architecture issues and built for architects. Not developers or sysadmins but enterprise, infrastructure, and software architects.

Secondly, for a local conference (by the way, participation cost is just $500 which is absolutely exceptional for such events) there were about 250 participants that again demonstrates success of the first event. It was quite an efficient networking event to rub shoulders with local folks.

Thirdly, the keynotes speakers were real stars and they rocked! Angela, Mike, Scott, and Rick all presented a very valuable topics and were great speakers. A very sound composition of the speaker - another complement to the organizers.

Lastly, I advise you to go to the next event in Atlanta or other cities and wish IASA to rise the bar next time bringing new speakers and more participants.

Technorati tags: IASA, software architect, MDM

Utilizing your day. Rising the bar.

Do you constantly complain about the lack of time? Does your schedule slipper during a day as time goes and you miss some important stuff planned for the PM? It happens often to me and the missing part in my life is often running and workouts.
The always working recipe for me was getting to bed later, trying to V more complete tasks on the TODO list. Often, though, you can't make much at late hours and mind- or muscle-intensive exercise become unachievable at late hours even if you have a few before the day guillotine cuts your productive "today" from "tomorrow".

Ilia, my friend, taught me to swap the day edges for shoving planning and to make the most important (time-sensitive, risky-to-slippery, easy-to-defer, forgettable, etc.) very early. He wakes up at 5am, has first his swimming and workouts, and then starts the day. Very hard for me to do but I'm all envy.

Today my classmate, Kevin, told me he wakes up daily at 4.15am(!), has his run and workout, and starts (continues?) his working day at about 6am. Not that this fact would help me to wake up tomorrow but I'm sure such stories are exciting, motivating, and aspirational. Kevin answered my question "why do you do it?" with a very simple statement - "because I'm an person of achievements and love to get things done". Surely a motivating statement. And he's been doing it for already 6 years...

Technorati tags: wakeup, GTD