SevenX - The Secret Ingredient for .NET success

As you can probably tell, the pace of things has picked up. My project is a product evaluation so I am coordinating getting version from all the vendors, demos, test licenses etc. In addition, I have been developing criteria and a standard set of ratings so I can compare the products equally. Also, the evaluation criteria, processes and results will be saved so future versions of this and/or other products can be compared using the same methodology. Doing something in a repeatable fashion and documenting it for whoever happens to come along behind. What a novel idea.

I have also been practicing my project spiel for eventually delivery to our alliance partners and senior management. We all had our first go round yesterday so the first hurdle is over. Monday I have a brown-bag seminar with my wingman. So far we have about 160 potential attendees. Common wisdom is a 30-50% actual turnout so that should be interesting.

The gang has also been diligent about keeping the local restaurants happy. You gotta love a place named The Eating Factory. Don't you? And the Crab Pot really serves it just like the picture.

My birthday also came and went since my last post. This year's present to myself was tickets to the Cowboys game (though for some reason the locals thought it was a Seahawks game). All I can say is:
row II is very high
the boys need to go ahead and play the whole 60 minutes instead of 55 or 58 like they have a couple of times this year
Seahawks funs are pretty rude

I'm going home this weekend on the redeye. I'll be working though, so it's not all fun and games. I'll try to post again on Sunday. And for the 3 amigos: I'll be there on 23rd so save me a seat. For you potential gunnies, note the time into the program when the load starts to build.

I met via phone with one of the vendors this morning to go over the project and how they can help me. It's a short day as I'm going to airport to go home for the weekend. I have updated most of my required documentation for this week and posted it to the project collaboration site for my wingman and coach to review. I got a first draft of my project scope which I will firm up with my wingman Monday. Early morning, you have to use your building ID badge to make the elevator take you to the 17th floor.

First time flying Alaska. Yuk. No power outlets in the seats like American. Plus they're way overbooked and I had to sit for 5 hours in a center seat.

The weekend sure goes by fast. A little bit of shopping and a block party Saturday, church on Sunday, then back on the plane for 6 more hours to be back in Seattle.

I downloaded the apps that I will be evaluating from the vendor sites. Most of them are pretty straightforward. One is giving me a little heartache about getting a 90-day evaluation as it's outside their normal 14-day looking period. All look like they will fit the bill so it's going to be an interesting evaluation. Part of the project involves establishing a common set of criteria for evaluating and ranking the products.

On the personal side, I received tickets for the Cowboys game next Sunday. It'll be fun with 2 Aussies and an cricket fan. The only down side is the tickets are in the nosebleed section.

We began today with a field trip to one of the many Microsoft buildings in Redmond for a tour of the office of the future. Lots of whiz-bang ideas that are at least 3-5 years out. But it helps us get our mindset around thinking for the future on this project. After that, I met with my wingman. He happens to be in Vancouver so it's possible we may have a chance to meet some time during the project. More research, prep and writing today to produce the documentation required by the project.

The US guys are looking forward to going home in a day or two. The Aussies are looking forward to having the vans and driving on the wrong side of the road for a weekend. Here's a brief overview of my classmates:

Mark "Pillsbury" Pope from Plano, sales support. Ace navigator, chief cook and bottle washer.
Jose "Winky" Manuel De Sales Zunino from ABN Amro UK. An only child so he has enough names for 2-3 siblings. Currently residing in London with his wife. Apparently he's been to all 50 states and most countries on the globe.
John "Irvine" Mervine: another Plano guy. Already in class for a week.
Normal "Bruce" Lee from Australia. Still confusing football with futbol.
Steve "muscatel" Mushkat from Troy. Really. Our own personal Gizmo guy with a 300Gb external drive.
Paul "McCartney" Simm from Miramar, home of a slightly better known Top Gun program.
Matthew Carr "Dundee", another down under guy. His time zone is so far ahead, they're already on the Q106 program. As he's counting down the days to the program, he's also counting down days as a single man. He's going to be married early next year.
And, of course me, 7x, the secret ingredient.

Tomorrow I hope to get out of typing mode and into full program mode. With today's announcement that Yahoo and MS are going to put down the gloves and share IM, it looks like I may have to join the revolution. Been holding out cuz I have a pretty good system for archiving and searching all my email. Ho hum.

Coach Napalm also turned me on to OneNote. It's like an electronic rolodex. No need to remember to hit the save button since it's saved all the time. I'm gonna try it but after a day, I already like it a lot. Still having trouble with the wireless connection and Virtual PC.

Mostly administration. I started versions of my documentation and began working on my brown-bag seminars. Gotta deliver two during the program. I made contact with my sponsor finally and will be meeting with him the next couple of days to ensure the project delivers what he's looking for. He's in Vancouver so at least it's the same time zone. Some of the team has sponsors in less convenient time zones.

Trying to set up virtual PC and having some network problems. For some reason it doesn't want to share the wireless connection. The wired connection works fine (and is faster anyway) but I'm tied to the desk if it need the VM to do any network access. Probably not necessary for my particular project (except demos I guess) so it probably won't be a big deal. Zipping up a VHD file shrinks it about 50% but it's still 1.8Gb in size. (WHOA!)

Seems our public connection to the internet is still a little be secured somewhere between the office and out there. I can't connect to my personal FTP site. Works fine from the apartment. Turns out it didn't have what I thought anyway.

Lunch was the Chinese place across from Subway. They say "dine in our carry out" (takeaway as the mates say) but since they only had 4 chairs and there were six of us, we "took away" and ate back in the lunch room. After work Mark and I went on a little adventure to Redmond. The houses are nice. Found a store reminiscent of shopping in Texas: Fred Meyer. If you need it, he sells it. If he doesn't sell it, you don't need it.

Nearly everyone has met with their project sponsors. Lunch was an adventure as Freakboy led us on a tour of closed or overcrowded restaurants. Jose and I finally broke off and went to my first choice for lunch, subway. Work for me today was spent reviewing the products I will be evaluating and prepping my VM for the tests. Sounds simple, but took quite a while. I installed Visual Studio 2005 as part of the test. About 3 hours elapsed time. My particular project has been a little delayed getting kicked off as the contacts are in various stages of unavailability.

For training, I hope to get a class that will meet the final requirement for my MCT certification. Depending on how the schedule works out, I may be able to attend this course near the end of the project. This would be a great personal accomplishment for me as it would allow me to deliver training using Microsoft curriculum. This can benefit both EDS and my current account.

It's amazing to me that in our small group of 8, there are a couple of folks with connections out here. Mark's father works with a pastor of a local church. He and I got up and went to the later service. And now, I'm dressed in workout attire and ready to go to the gym finally. As soon as the Cowboys finish smacking the hated and despised Eagles, I'll go work off some more of those calories that are hunting me down. Tomorrow the real work starts. Probably be a day or two before I can make another update.

All 8 of us went to Mt Rainier. Once again I am amazed by the beauty of nature. Mark brought his video cam and several of us had our regular cameras. I think it's safe to say we photographed the journey in full. It was a long day of walking, driving and riding but well worth the effort. Surprisingly, Seattle is north of the mountains (Rainier and St. Helen's). Stereotypes imply the mountains are all bigger to the north. Check back later for pix.

I heartily recommend the hike to Grove of the Patriarchs. I've never seen the redwoods so these are the oldest living trees I've every been around.

We ended up splitting into 2 groups, one that made an assault on the summit and another that took the kinder, gentler, "nearly level" route. All in all, a long day but one that convinced me I could easily live out here as my career unfolds.

Back at the ranch, Mark invited us over for dinner (baked spaghetti) and a review of the video. A few "domestic Don" chores and that wrapped the day.

Another full day. After some more administrative stuff and another meeting, we get assigned our projects. Due to the nature of them, I can't really go into details in a public forum. However, I can say I will be doing some very interesting work in an area of immense interest to me personally. I am looking forward to spending time learning about some of the in's and out's of how some of the client engagement procedures work. Based on my prior assignments, I haven't had any experience doing that so it will be a beneficial opportunity. We have one team of two on their project, the rest of us are singletons as far as the quarter's projects.

For me, I spent some time working with Virtual PC. I will be using it to setup evaluation environments. Looks like a pretty cool product, if a little quirky yet in this release. I am reminded of early versions of MS Windows (aka Window) that struggled to run more than one concurrent application. Now our PCs run multiple concurrent operating systems. Incredible but very useful.

I'm putting together a training plan. They are allowing up to 10 days of training as part of the program. It doesn't have to be directly related to your assigned project so I'm thinking of getting some training that will help me get my MCT. I really only need to "train the trainer" class and will have it met. I was told that if I could find the class near my home, I could take it there and have a week of home-cooked meals. Gotta look for that soon so I can get it scheduled.

For lunch we met the man for lunch, another local tradition. I've had better food so probably won't be going back there. We wrapped the day by planning our first weekend. Then I did a little shopping and retired to my apt for the evening.

First full day in Bellevue. We all got the tour of the office and the general lay of the land. The view from the 17th floor is spectacular! We're on the side of the building facing the Cascade mountains. When it's been clear you can see for miles. Everyone got setup in their temp desks, 2 to an office. Later we all got our project PCs. A little short on memory but more is promised soon. Due to administrative delays, we did not get our projects so we spent most of the day reviewing the output from prior classes. Lunch at a local hamburger joint and dinner at Rock Bottom for a local tradition: pint night.

Another travel day. After wrapping up presentations and a very brief trip to the company store, it's off to the airport again. Five of us on the Microsoft track are on the same flight to Seattle. After baggage claim, we find it's cheaper to take a limo than other mass transit for 5 so we, of course ride in style to the apartments. They're pretty nice, all the amenities (i.e. cable TV and wireless internet) plus various left over goodies from the previous graduate. Each of us has our own apartment so after a long day, we can "get away" from the rest of the team if desired. We're within fairly easy walking distance to work, the mall and tons-o-retail outlets. Some of the non-US guys are getting their phones setup. Tomorrow we meet with our coaches, get our hardware and assignments. Hopefully everyone made it here, home or (in the case of those SUN guys) to Sunnyvale.

Looks like t+4 is where the rubber will meet the road.

Everyone met in the hotel lobby for hot breakfast. Then we took a short tour of Plano to the employee entrance at EDS. It's changed a lot in the past year and half, less stark and maybe a little more people friendly. Everyone has showed up which is good.

Monday and Tuesday are the TopGun version of "death by powerpoint" as we get in depth presentations on EDS's Multi-year Plan, The Agility Alliance and the TopGun program itself. Monday evening we all had team building event a La Hacienda in Frisco. Tuesday team building continues at Dave and Busters.

A lot of info about the innovation center and TopGun are available to EDS employees at https://register.edsic.com/ and then http://www.edsic.com.

Information on Alliances is available to all at. Presenters included EDS executives , program sponsors, EDS Fellows and TopGun alumni.

The presentations were intense but informative. A lot of it I had already seen from the Developers Conference that was held earlier this year in sunny San Diego. A second pass through some of them helped clarify many aspects of the agility alliance and what it means to us as a company. It also helped make it clear that my part, as a senior technical leader, is to ensure that our client (my client in particular) is aware of how we can bring best-in-class solutions to their business problems.

Sunday October 2, 2005 is a travel day. After church, my wife dropped me off at DCA for the flight to DFW. Mostly uneventful except I had to sit in a middle seat cuz the flight was 100% packed and oversold. Dallas is still hot in case anyone is wondering. A long ride on supershuttle to the hotel. At least it's nice.

Sunday October 2, 2005 is a travel day. After church, my wife dropped me off at DCA for the flight to DFW. Mostly uneventful except I had to sit in a middle seat cuz the flight was 100% packed and oversold. Dallas is still hot in case anyone is wondering. A long ride on supershuttle to the hotel. At least it's nice.