Time to do my sporadic updates on this blog again. I have been making quite a few presentations on Business Intelligence recently and my next presentation will be together with Panoroma on the 17th August 2011 in Microsoft Singapore. Title of the presentation will be "Generate Actionable Insights and Increase Efficiency with Intuitive Business Intelligence"

With my usual presentation style of decorating the business of analytics with an interactive storyboard, I will be dotting the presentation with some bits on SQL Server "Denali" as well, highlighting on Project Cresent and PowerPivotv2. It should be a fun event. Come on down if you are around.

It has been a long time since I spoke in a usergroup meeting. This time, I will replicate what I did in Microsoft TechED Asia 2007 in KL in the Dec 2007 SgDotNet Usergroup meeting.

Languages, Frameworks and Architectures
New language solution frameworks are emerging to make solution development less cumbersome. For example, AJAX for building rich, interactive, internet applications, SCA for composing components into services, Ruby-on-Rails for building web applications, and Blinq for generating ASP.NET websites based on a database schema. This session will look at how these languages are evolving to include architectural constructs and where that evolution will go.

If you are free, do come drop by with an open mind, dont take any notes and get ready to interact.

It was a good session I had in our Singapore Government Public Sector day 2 weeks back, where I talked about "Aligning Business and IT for Greater Corporate Agility".

Here are the slides (xps and pdf) for download. If you should want to hear about about this again, together with Nick's talk on our Web 2.0, Software + Services strategy, which can form a good end-to-end soution pitch on the Microsoft application platform, please do not hesitate to let me know.

This is targetted at our Singapore Government Public Sector customers and obviously this blog post is targetted at those customers who are reading this post. .

I will be speaking at the above event, which will be held at our office premises. As to the topic I am speaking about, this area is something which I have been focusing of late and it really is all about architecture and the alignment of it through businesss and information technology.

Aligning Business and IT for Greater Corporate Agility
For long, IT and Business has communicated. While they may be speaking in the same language but are they speaking in the same "dialect”?  In this session, William Tay will share his field experience as well as explore Microsoft's vision for service-oriented architecture:

• What are the best implementation approaches so that instead of being led by the business, IT strategies are driven by business needs
• How Microsoft supports this vision by way of an integrated platform, etc.

If you are coming for my session at the Enterprise Architecture Summit 2007 (18th Oct 2007), which coincidentally, is also targetted at the Public Sector customers (regionally, of course), the above event on the 22nd Oct 2007 will be a good sequel to my Enterprise Architecture Summit pitch where I will be discussing in greater details on the value of the Microsoft platform to implement those business capabilities.

To keep up with the little legacy I have with the Annual Enterprise Architecture Summit in Singapore, I am speaking in this year's event as well. This year, I am honoured to be sharing the same event with John Zachman, whom most of us know, is the originator of the “Framework for Enterprise Architecture” which has received broad acceptance around the world as an integrative framework, or "periodic table" of descriptive representations for Enterprises.

I will be speaking on Enterprise Business Architecture in this event. Interestingly, from the looks of the agenda and the speakers, it looks like I am the only ONE representation coming from a technolgy principal while the rest are representatives from the industry practice. It will be interesting to see how this pans out and of course, the pressure mounts. Do come by and say "Hi" if you are interested.

For the 4th year in a row, I will, again, be speaking in Microsoft TechED 2007 Asia in KL, Malaysia. I have spoken on a goodbreadthof topics for the past few years. This time around, I will be focusing on 2 architectural tracks. Here are my session topics and agenda:

• Languages, Frameworks and Architectures
  New language solution frameworks are emerging to make solution development less cumbersome. For example, AJAX for building rich, interactive, internet applications, SCA for composing components into services, Ruby-on-Rails for building web applications, and Blinq for generating ASP.NET websites based on a database schema. This session will look at how these languages are evolving to include architectural constructs and where that evolution will go.

• Real World SOA with Microsoft Technologies
  In this session I will show a very interesting look, from different perspectives, on what SOA in the real-world really is. Hear about whether one of the biggest IT buzzwords  in recent years has delivered what it promised and why. We will also hear the different implementation approaches to institutionalize a good SOA practice inside your organization and let the audience decide on what approach best suits their environment.  After that, he will share what the Microsoft platform can offer, in terms of value, to help the customer achieve their end-goals.

The latter topics will be very interesting as I relooked at how "SOA" has performed in organizations and if it has really lived-up to its promises. If not, I will offer some different perspectives on how Microsoft can help in that. I had, orginally, intend to talk about Event-Driven Architecture but decided against putting my audience to sleep, literally and figuratively . As usual, I will see what I can dig up to give away during the event. Do swing by and say "Hi" and attend the sessions for an interesting look from another perspective.

I am very honoured to be invited to present in a prestigious event organized and supported by our Singapore Government (Ministry of Home Affairs - MHA) as well as the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). It is really an honour to be amongst an elite speaker line-up with some really great security tracks and programs in store.

GovernmentWare 2006 has always been a great event and has been (and still is) evolving towards an improved and better positioning and I am sure this year's event will be significantly different from the previous iterations.

After all those years of speaking on Microsoft technologies from an external vendor's perspective, this will be the first time I am speaking "from the other side". I guess I will know by then how different it will be.

My topic ? No surprise ... It will be in the Electronic Identification (e-ID) track

Title: Federated Identities and the Metasystem
Synopsis:
What are the basis forces driving the concepts of the Identity Metasystem that has the world watching and waiting? How do we plug the missing gaps of the Transactional Internet today? Can we imagine the WWW without passwords one day? How can this be possible and even be more secure and assuring? One of the things people don't know about is how this entire secured infrastructure setup can be extended beyond authentication purposes to include other value-added business functionality.

Hope to see some of you there !

I will be speaking in The Enterprise Architecture Conference 2006 to be held in Singapore on 25-28 September 2006.

And no - for once, I wont be speaking on Web Services or anything Service-Oriented. Instead, I will tackle head-on a topic that not many people would not like to go near: Enterprise Architecture Security

I will be speaking on the second day (27 Sept 2006: 1430-1530) and quite a few of my governmental clients will be there as well in the audience.

The title is: Security Planning and Strategies In An Enterprise Architecture. The agenda is as follows:

• Outline of the key Enterprise-based security issues and counter-measures, that is technology-agnostic
• An examination of general security threats and how to plan and implement security policies and controls for often-performed computer security activities
• Key best practices in terms of security that can be applied to practical real-life scenarios and implemented solutions such as IP and Data security
• Auditing and monitoring of systems within an Enterprise

If you are in need to spend SGD2,000 , I hope to see you there.

What a great turnout and what a great rousing response I got for my 2nd Microsoft TechED South East Asia 2006 session titled: Developing Web Services: Tips and Tricks.

I love the Malaysian crowd. It has shown so much technical maturity and passion over the years I have spoken there and I appreciate all of you very very very much.

Thank you for all the mail you have sent me over the past few years

• on your generous compliments for my presentations
• on your Thank Yous for the topics I have taught and the issues I have raised that all of you could identify with
• on your appreciation for my work I put in my topics and sessions because I work on the field - just like you and not just another Microsoftie
• last but not least - on the numerous questions (via hands and emails) that were asked over the years - which I hope I have helped and answered.

After domain registration, the most important hosting task is to ensure the dedicated hosting and then upload the website design pronto.

I have received numerous requests for my code demos for this second session and here is the download for that.

I hope this is NOT the last I hear and see from the Malaysian Tech.ED crowd. Thank you all again.

For the 4th year in a row, I will be speaking in Microsoft TechED 2006 Asia. This time, the event will return to its original roots back in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Unlike the previous rounds, I wont touch base on any Level 400 topics and going nitty-gritty into details of <angleBrackets/> messaging or gnarly-XSD'isms. From previous experiences, it doesnt sit too well with the asian crowd. Instead, I am going with a couple of very interesting topics. One focuses on a specific implementation of identity and service-orientation, the other is for the audience to have a better idea on what Web Services are all about first before embarking on that journey.

• ARC323 Federated Identities and the Metasystem \ Architecture & Team Development Track

This session, I will explain the basis forces driving the concepts of the Identity Metasystem that has the world watching and waiting. How do we plug the missing gaps of the Transactional Internet? Imagine the WWW without passwords. Not only that, I will explain how this infrastructure setup can be used for business transactions other than for authentication. See demos that are not  seen anywhere yet in this region. [Level 300]

• DEV243 Developing Web Services: Tips & Tricks \ Developer Technology Track

What exactly are Web Services and When and Why do we use them? William explains the basis of SOAP in clear concise terms and coins up some tips to help you in your Web Services Development today and tomorrow. [Level 200]

Of course, there are a whole hosts of reasons for you to attend this mega-event with tons of great speakers talking on some great topics gracing this event. KL has always been a very dynamic city and it should be a good time for all.

And even if browsing through the event site doesnt attract you enough yet, how about this?

I will be giving away 2 FREE MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio Team Suite that is worth US Dollars 30,000 each to 2 lucky souls who will be attending my sessions. I may also give away other goodies like cannot-find and hard-to-get Microsoft Product Platform T-Shirts and NEW books.

So - c'mon - what are you waiting for ? Sign up today and "Change your Destiny" ...

It has been quite a while since I hit the speaker circuit for our Singapore .Net Usergroup (which I had helped co-founded).

However, I will be there on the 6th July 2006 speaking on the Federated Identity Metasystem. Do register yourself and I hope to see you there.

Here I am - proud to announce that I will be doing a MSDN Redmond-hosted Webcast right from the other side of the hemisphere in Singapore.

I will be speaking on concepts of Reliability in Soap:Web Services, why its needed, as well as the context of it in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously - Indigo).

More importantly, a 40GB Creative (another homegrown Singaporean product) ZEN MP3 player is at stake here waiting to be won. So, do sign up quickly for a chance to win this. Rules here.

If you are one of those insomniacs in Asia-Pacific, do try to tune-in. I hope this blazes a trail for the other community leaders in Asia-Pacific to follow suit and show that we are right on par there with the best in technology.

Click here for more details on this webcast.

I have received some emails inquiring about some of the agenda regarding this, and the answer is : Yes, I will be covering Microsoft Cardspace and the concept of Federated Identities and its Metasystem as well. Why wouldnt I be since I have covered so much WS-Security Specificationstalks over the last couple of years ?

If you miss this, I will be doing it again in end May and other countries in APAC as well. Stay tuned.

If you would like to get down and dirty with me with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously - Indigo) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, come visit me in end April and end May where I will be spending 3 days each drilling deep into the plumbings of both WF and WCF.

If you are interested in the above, speak to your Microsoft Malaysia contact.

However, if you are not into deep dirty wrestling with <angleBrackets /> or <wf:Activities />, you may opt to go for something lighter here.

I will be speaking in Kuala Lumpur in a security symposium organized by Microsoft Malaysia on April 4th 2006. The event details can be found here and the agenda here.

I will be touching on Web Services Security: Locking down the wire - Today and Tommorow.

Some of my agenda items include:

• What is available today to build secure web services on the Microsoft technology stack
• What the up-and-coming Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously - Indigo) in Windows Vista will provide in terms of Security
• Some prescriptive guidelines on how to move forward
• ...

Registrations for the IT Pro track is here while the Developer track is here. I would love to see you there.

Even though it is a mini-TechED scale-wise, I have a feeling it is going to be BIG nonetheless.

I will be presenting in this event on, what-else but Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously - Indigo).

I hope to see you there as it will be a good time there.

[Update:] Some comments on the event:-
http://www.geekswithblogs.net/tariq/archive/2005/10/12/56777.aspx
http://mahasen.blogspot.com/2005/10/first-day-of-teched-2005-sri-lanka.html
http://mahasen.blogspot.com/2005/10/second-day-of-teched-2005-sri-lanka.html
http://jinath.weblogs.us/archives/032674.html
http://lkdeveloper.blogspot.com/2005/10/tech-ed-srilanka.html

Another speaking assignment that landed at my desk is for me to talk about "Web Services Security: How to track along the Security Standards Jungle" on the 21 October 2005

Somehow, I tend to attact the dry topics . This event is owned by OASIS and XMLOne Usergroup. More information can be found here.

If you are around the vicinity, do feel free to drop by and catch up.

As timeline nears for Microsoft TechED Asia 2005 in Singapore (24th-26th August 2005), I have managed to firm up my topics. Besides the usual rather cryptic session topics and synopsis (Sessions [1] and [2]), I have added 2 of my own pre-packaged flavours into the mix (Sessions [3] and [4]). I hope the latter 2 sessions will be able to provide a cool new refreshing look at distributed computing (Web Services, ESB, EAI, WS-*) to the audiences and hopefully draw in some good crowds.

...so, 4 topics for the Softwaremaker. It is time to get to work on that.

I have been invited by the Ark Group to speak in one of their major technology management conferences in Singapore on the 27th July 2005.

This conference is themed around Planning and Implementing Service-Oriented Architecture : Developing SOA to Reduce the Cost of Integration, Leverage Legacy Systems and Improve Business Agility.

My 45-min presentation is titled:

Design and Security Notes from the Field

• Distributed Computing
  • Thoughts
  • When to use What
  • More Thoughts
• Distributed Security
  • Thoughts
  • When to use What
  • More Thoughts

As usual to my presentation style, I tend to keep my topics interesting and a refreshing experience. The conferences in this field has always been dominated by the academics, researchers and technology vendors who sometimes lose touch of whats happening on the ground. I will go against this bias and inject some field experience in there. It should be an interesting conference for attendees and delegates. I think it will even be much more interesting when I sit down with them for networking lunch.

I hope to see you there.

Right off the heels from speaking in Software Development and Architectures ASIA .NET Conference, I am speaking in XML Asia 2005 conference this week.

I will be covering 2 topics, one under a business track and the other a technical one.

The technical track will be highlighting on SOAP Message-based security and its related specifications such as _WS-Security Specs_, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, etc

The business tracks will touch on Moving towards Service-Orientation: What is it actually and is it right for you?

This session will cover the facts behind the marketing hype of Service-Orientation and why it is more than just a focus on standards and interoperability. Get a better understanding of one of the hottest buzzwords in IT today as the speaker debunks the myths associated with SO(A).

The guiding principles of Service-Orientation and the impending steps needed to embrace this architectural idea and philosophy will also be explored.

Notice that I highlighted the words highlighting and touch. The speaking sessions are all presented in half an hour slots which really doesnt give much time for demos and such ... and this is a challenge. One of my favourite tagline is this:  “I didnt have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you this long one instead”

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not easy to cram all important points and concepts into a 30 minute session and expect to spread the same message to the audience as a 90 minute one.

This ought to be interesting.

With reference to my earlier post here, more details on the conference (SDA.NET 2005) are now publicly available here. This is a paid event and it is rarity in Singapore as technological conferences are usually presented free. BUT I am sure attendees can find a lot of value here as top notch speakers from all over the world will be flying over here to share their industry experience and knowledge.

Who are these speakers, you ask ? There is the famous Ingo Rammer and Clemens Vasters and of course, moi .

I will be making 2 presentations in the VIP Tracks, namely

If all things should go positive, I will be addressing the Malaysian Independent Developers (MIND) Usergroup Community on May 7th 2005 in Microsoft Malaysia, which is located in KLCC Petronas Twin Towers (which incidentally are the world's tallest towers)

This is the first time INETA APAC has activated any member of its Speaker Bureau out of their localhost(127.0.0.1)-application-domain (sorry for the geek slang...) I am preparing a 4-hr marathon session on nothing BUT Web Services. Some of the sessions are deep technical 400 series and it is definitely not a session for the faint-hearted nor the casual observer on a Saturday afternoon. This would definitely be an angle-bracket fest.

My proposed topic abstracts are as follows:

WS-Yesterday - History and Evolution - by William Tay

• SOAP vs others as a Distributed Computing protocol
• Service-Oriented Application Programming
  • Lessions Learnt
  • Applied Principles

WS-Today – Demystifying WSDL and Best Practices (Part 1 and 2) - by William Tay

• What is WSDL ?
• Critical role in Service-Orientation
• Core Elements and Definitions
• Discovery Views
• Best Practices
• Coming soon to a parser near you:
  • WSDL 1.2 ?
    …or is it…
  • WSDL 2.0 ?
  • WSDL concepts in Indigo

WS-Tomorrow – Service-Orientation, Indigo and you - by William Tay

• Indigo in Theory
• Core Indigo Concepts and Principles
• Indigo Messaging Model

The slides are here. Go geek out.

Singapore is a hotbed for a lot of great technology conferences this year. I am invited to present in quite a few of them this year. Of course, most of these presentations are very centered around XML Services, Service-Orientation and Distributed Systems. These are a couple of the events that I will be presenting in the second quarter of this year. I am looking forward to SDA.NET Conference 2005 as I will be presenting a couple of sessions on Indigo and I am also very excited to have 2 mysterious internationally-renowned speakers (whom I will disclose later) whom will be presenting alongside me as well. All 3 of us will be bringing Indigo to the plate during this event. If you are around Singapore during the 24-27th May 2005, please do not miss it.

I will update on the details of the synopsis once I have it.

If these events are not enough to whet your geek passion, there are a lot more great ones coming up in the second half of this year. Stay tuned to this space for more.

I am invited to present in the MSDN Briefing on 31 March 2005. This quarterly-held event usually generates a fair amount of interest and the theme for this event will be focused on Security - Secure to Survive Conference.

And since it is focused on security, the most natural thing for me to talk about would be "How to secure your Web Services". Of course, I would be using Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 for this talk. Since this will be a Level 200+ session, I will hold off asking the audiences to drill down deep into the security headers with me. I will focus more on the principles and concepts and some demos to get audiences interested in securing their Web Services via a message-based approach rather than a transport-based approach such as HTTPS/SSL.

If time permits, I will spend a little time near the end of the session to do a quick demo on Indigo, focusing on the WSProfileBinding of Indigo and how easy it is to secure their Indigo Services in the future. Indigo is "secure-by-default". This will be the first time Indigo demos will be shown to the public on MSDN Briefing. Do NOT miss it.

If you are around the area, do drop by and listen in. More details can be found here.

I had done a very successful presentation on "Demystifying WSDL" to our Singapore Professional DotNet Usergroup a couple of weeks back. It was a deep technical session that touched base on WSDL and Best Practices of Web Services Deployments.

Needless to say, I couldnt finish all these wonderful technical sesssions on time. There were so much to cover in terms of extending and versioning your Web Services. However, I had time to talk a bit about some of the ways to build a much-more interoperable Web Service and one of the ways is to use Christian Weyer's WS-ContractFirst (WSCF) tool. There are a couple of big events/conferences held later in Singapore this year and I will be able to talk more in details during those events. Stay tuned to this blog for the announcements of the events.

Actually, the tool is just a means to an end. The approach is the one thing that needs to achieve buy-in first. I had rambled about that here and here and finally, I had a chance to demo this to a good crowd of core techies who were definitely intrigued by what I had presented and shown and stayed throughout the session till 2200 hours so they can catch up with me.

All in all, it was a G-R-E-A-T event. Everyone was happy with what they had seen and learnt that night and I would say it was the best meeting we had with the best turnout since the founding of the usergroup.

With INETA APAC's support, I will bring the same topic and theme to Malaysia and hopefully Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand later this year

...and Christian...if you are reading this, you owe me coffee next time I am in your neck of the woods

The bottom line says "Grandfather - Certified Web Services Professional". Technology can make you a Grandfather without becoming a father first...

Staring at Angle-Brackets

Introducing WSCF

Christian Weyer's baby...

extensibility:any

Go read the specs to find out something you may not know about WSDL...

For the hardcore: William attempts to dig into WSDL 2.0

A strong finish to end the wonderful session. Everyone stayed till the end...with NO enticement of free pizza ! Maybe it is because I showed some WSDL-Indigo concepts right at the end ?

I have spent some time preparing on a topic on WSDL and I will present this in our March 2005 SgDotNet gathering.

Synopsis:

With all the power of abstractions that most major IDEs to today offer, inner technical plumbings are often ignored and worst - Misrepresented and Misunderstood. This can lead to choosing the wrong technologies and solutions to solving specific problems. When it comes down to troubleshooting the nooks, crannies and crevices at crunch time with no extra help, nothing beats a dirty pair of hands, a hammer and a screwdriver. William attempts to get everyone's hands dirty with a detailed look at what transcends within one of the most core and matured XML Service Technologies of today.

Some of the things that will be covered:

1. What is WSDL
2. Critical role in Service-Orientation
3. Core Elements and Definitions
4. Discovery Views
5. Best Practices (Interoperability, Extensibility, Versioning)
6. Coming soon to a parser near you: WSDL 1.2 ? …or is it… WSDL 2.0 ? >>> If we have time
7. RPC-Encoding Vs Doc-Literal WSDL Concepts in Indigo >>> If we have time

If you are available or around the area on the 10th of March 2005, why not drop by Microsoft Singapore and sit in ?

The difference between this presentation and the ones I had done before for our own usergroup is that I am representing INETA APAC in this event. Thus I will be speaking in the context of a speaker from the INETA APAC Speaker Bureau. I really hope that INETA APAC can sort out some of their administrative details in time and be able to subsidize some of the pizza money for the food we intend to have. Heck, this is the only way I know how to keep some of them awake while staring at the monotonous angle brackets...

Register yourself here.

I have done quite a few presentations and demos this year. The most fun was the one in MS TechED Asia 2004 in Malaysia where I did 2 sessions on Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 and 1 on UDDI where I met so many cool people.

I will close out my presentations of the year 2004 with a presentation on MSDN Technology Day here in Singapore (Dec 15 2004) on a topic which I have been doing some research and work on.

• Category : Architecture
• Topic : Moving towards Service-Orientation: What is it actually and is it right for you ?
• Short Synopsis :
  I will attempt to explain the facts behind all the maketing hype behind Service-Orientation and why is it so focused on standards and interoperability. Get a better and clearer picture of one of the hottest buzzwords of IT today as I debunk the myths associated with SO(A) today. I will also explain on the guiding principles of Service-Orientation and the impending steps you need to take to embrace this architectural and idea philosophy in moving forward.

Register yourself here.

I will be presenting on Web Services Roadmap in Microsoft's Architect Forum on the 3rd Dec 2004 Friday (yes, short notice...Thanks Microsoft Singapore ).

The topic of the forum is ".NET Architecture for Enterprise Agility". This forum is divided into 2 tracks namely ".NET Enterprise Architecture" and the "Service-Oriented Architecture".

I will also meet up with Enterprise Customers who are considering more extensive use of Web Services and who are interested in finding out more as well as to understand what is in the pipeline from Microsoft for Advanced Web Services, its plans and progress.

I hope to be able to answer questions from the architects from the enterprise organizations on the suitability of this growing standard for each specific scenarios.

If I have the time, I would really hope to be able to touch on the offerings of Indigo as well to the audience.

My previous blogs on MS Tech.ED 2004 Asia

My previous Presentations