In.Search.Of.My.Voice

Finally got to deliver the version 2 of my Application Architecture workshop to a customer - it was a solid two weeks delivery. I had previously put in a lot of effort in building the content of the workshop and was *very* disappointed when my previous customer had decided to cancel it due to schedule clashes.

Not giving up hope, I have been patiently waiting for a chance to deliver it. I had kept the materials updated despite there were no immediate audiences. This time round, it finally hits the road. The materials were not actually meant for a ten day delivery, so, I had to throw in some Enterprise Library 2.0 Hands-On-Labs and Windows Workflow Foundation.

Last Friday was the last day of the workshop and I had to bid farewell to my students *Sobs*. It was a good ten days and I must applaud them for their patience in listening to me talk for the entire duration. The best part of the workshop for me is to see all of my students apply what they have learned in a small fictitious application that we all cooked up for practice. I'm glad that one of them even applied it in his real-world application.

The students were also the first few who saw my Expense Workflow prototype which I had built for educational purposes. The only regret I have was that the prototype was built in C# and it was a little difficult for my students to understand it because they were Visual Basic developers. Nevertheless, I tried my best to explain to them and the implementation exercise had proven that they have learned most of what is needed. I hope they will continue to apply what they have learned in their future projects and become good architects.

Being in this engagement had made me realised again where my strengths and passion are. It has always been in the area of application architecture and frameworks (.NET or no .NET). It has always been in developing 'things' that will improve the work of developers. The positive comments I have from my customer had reinforced my believe that my true value lies in my software development (and project management) experience.

I am still very excited when I look at code and I somehow believed that my code is my voice. I should not be just limited to promoting 'recipe architectures' but instead, I should be developing them. If only I am given the chance .....

Anyway, I know what I should be doing now and as for the Application Architecture workshop, it is just like what I said before, you can only get it from me. ;)