The Alchemist

If you know Moongate Technologies, you know that we do consulting based on the principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) - which is a philosophy of breaking business processes down into discrete messages sent between services. This enables a better alignment of business with technology and ultimately offers the business more agility to change its processes to meet new challenges while using it’s existing technological systems. Whew. That’s a mouthful, but trust me, it’s a “Good Thing(TM)”. At Moongate, however, we’re taking this idea a step further and are applying the SOA philosophy not only to technology, but to the running of our business itself.

As you know, in running a business certain things need to get done for the business to operate. These business processes in turn rely on certain services to be performed. In the abstract, it doesn’t matter who or how these services are provided, just that they are available and that they can be relied on to be performed in a timely fashion when called upon.

For example, perhaps we define an “Event Planning Service (EPS) as part of our business.” This service could then be called upon whenever we need to plan an event for the business. From the business standpoint, we can just define the goals and constraints of the event and then pass a message to the EPS telling it to get going on the work. Once that’s done, we’re (generally) out of the loop and on to other things. Now obviously, somebody or some organization has to take care of actually fulfilling the request, but the responsibility for that service can be given to an employee or to a vendor and can change over time without affecting the business.

For this to work, we need to define a service contract that determines what information the service needs (inputs), what the desired outcome is (outputs), and a service level defining the necessary reliability and timeliness of the service. This is all independent of who or what performs the function. So then, given the constraints we just defined for the service, we can decide who or what can fulfill the service.

That said, for the most part this will generally map out to traditional roles and responsibilities of individuals within our organization. The greatest immediate benefit I hope to gain from this process is better clarity of expectations for the individuals within the organization and better overall service to each other because of it. And, even if we can accomplish only that, we’ll have accomplished a lot!

As recently named V. P. Operations for Moongate Technologies (you know, that Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) consulting company I work for ;)), I’ve got a lot to keep track of at work these days. Recently, I’ve come across the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and have found it very useful for organizing my self a bit better. I’m still learning, but it is a fairly simple system that seems well thought out and easy to follow once you commit to it. Being a traditionally less than completely organized person, but definitely needing structure for my new position, I have high hopes for it. I even brought it up in a meeting and everyone decided they wanted a copy of the book, too. Perhaps our whole company will be on the same process soon…? Could be interesting! I’m looking forward to it.

Last night was our first full run-through of Damn Yankees off-book. It also happened to be the first night on the actual stage that we’ll be performing on. Not to mention the first night working with sets. Hey, all things considered, I imagine it could have gone much worse than it did! But still, it was not pretty. Lines, singing, dancing, blocking… they all need work. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times the word “line!” was called to our poor Stage Director… who, in the end, had to read much of the show back to us.

Truth is, it’s all just part of the process of learning and polishing a show. And it was a good wake-up call for us. We still have plenty of time to make it great, but it’s time to really start kicking it to the finish line!

My very good friend Keri from Decatur, IL just invited me to go see The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy with her. Well, if you know me, you know I loved the book and was pleasantly surprised to see that there’s a movie version coming soon (April 29)! The trailer looks good, so I’m hopeful for the movie. Good or not, though, I’ll definitely enjoy the company of a friend that lives far too far away…

I just got back from the The Forever Plaid audition. It was totally cool. The folks from ATI Entertainment were very nice and very professional… although the auditions ran late. Very late. Part of it was that I was immediately called back to read a side and learn and sing the a part in the 4-part harmony of “Scotland the Brave.”

Actually, that was the really cool part. Of the 10 or so of us that were left to learn the song, we were able to learn and then sing the song (a cappella!) in 4-part harmony in the span of about 10 minutes… and it sounded good! That was very neat.

Of course, it also made me worry about my ability to hold my own with such talent. I felt really good about my audition this time. I sang my songs well. I read my side well. I did decent (if not perfect) in learning and singing my part of Scotland the Brave. And so… if I don’t get the part I have to believe that I didn’t do as well as the others. Guess that’s par for the course in theatre. Still… it bugs me. Worst part is, I won’t know until the 3rd week in March if I’m in or out…

Just to catch up for the week:

• Was chastised by my Damn Yankees choreographer for not having memorized the dance after being shown it once
• Researched ancient runes and wrote Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) marketing papers for my employer Moongate Technologies
• Auditioned yesterday for a local martial arts revenge movie (Called “Blood” something (of course…)
• Will audition this afternoon for Forever Plaid

Fun fun! And I’ll hopefully find time to blog in more detail about some of this soon!

This is just cool. Have you ever been curious how popular your name has been each year? Or, given somebody else’s name, what’s their most likely age? There’s over 5000 names in the database and the popularity of any of these names from 1900 - 2003 is dynamically graphed using Java as you type. Check it out, it’s just fun!

As so many have done before me, I end up half naked as an actor. It turns out that in at least two of the scenes in Damn Yankees, I will be clothed by no more than a towel. Douglas Adams noted in his fantastic masterpiece The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” All things considered, I have to agree!

My little sister, Naomi, made her local paper today in Gainesville, FL promoting her “Green Map” project, The Green Scene! It’s quite an ambitious project that she’s undertaking for the local area that she says “will help residents and visitors explore the region’s rich fabric of environmental and social offerings, and alert them to potential sources of pollution.”

It’s great to see her passion for civic development and environmental awareness being expressed so eloquently through her project. We should all be so lucky to have someone working on creating such a resource for our home areas.

I wish her the best!