Barcelona

I am spending my first session here listening to some old colleagues discuss the new version of SMS—which is now called System Center Configuration Manager 2007. I think that, given some of the figures that I heard yesterday about management maturity model, that deploying SMS at the University could result in some significant cost savings in the long term.

Ensuring that all PCs connected to the network have the right software updates applied; providing reports that indicate how many instances of how many applications we are using, and therefore require licensing; operating system deployment (avoiding the visit to every desktop to deploy Vista…

Yesterday morning, Mark and I went to see Sagrada Familia (church of the holy family) a church that was architected by Antoni Gaudi. The church is still being built and has been under construction for over 100 years. Gaudi dedicated the last fifteen years of his life to its construction. It is incomplete now, and, from the knave you can look up in places and still see the sky. As you walk around the outside of the church, you can see the different eras during which construction has continued—with different styles of statuary, different styles of column, window shapes and so on. Inside, it becomes even more clear how the very construction materials of the church have changed. The famous spires are made of solid stone; but the columns in the knave (styled after trees) appear to be made from concrete forms. We saw pieces that, from the external faces, looked like they were solid sandstone, but from the internal faces, could tell they were made from molds—creating the façade of solid sandstone…

But there is a grand plan—and that grand plan has been updated (in fact the grand plan needed to be re-created after Anarchists destroyed Gaudi's original models and drawings during the war). Still, the church continues to be built. Dan and I joked later about the church as metaphor for software… but maybe it is not so much a joke. As we do our daily work, when we ensure that that work is in line with our strategy, we end up, over a very long time, and over multiple iterations of long term plans, with something bigger than the sum of the parts…

Anyway, back to the conference… Later in the day I will be listening to Microsoft IT talking about how they do identity management; Active Directory rights management; SharePoint governance and Vista application compatibility. I am hoping also to have lunch with Dominic Watts from Microsoft (from the Higher Education department).

More later.