It’s now day two of SOA Jam and it’s has been running for about 48 hours now. While the overall rate remains the same as yesterday, it feels like there’s more going on in the Jam.
As of today, we have 44 ideas and 146 comments. It look like the Jam will produce about 20 ideas and 70 comments a day. I still think this number is low for a conference with attendance this large. I wonder if IBM could have done a better job quantifying exactly what they are going to do with the ideas once the 72 hours are complete.
Also ThinkPlace itself isn’t exactly easy to understand. We have ideas in the first “Peer Review” stage. I don’t understand what exactly is required for someone to claim themselves as a catalyst in order to get to to stage 2 “Accepted by a Catalyst”. It’s even more unclear what the elusive stage 3 is as no ideas have made it that far. It’s great that IBM wants to solicit ideas from the field, it’s bad if they’re just shuffled into a database to die.
As for my own ideas, the momentum that they generated originally has fallen off. The external community idea has 6 comments, 58 views (top 15% in views) and has been accepted by a catalyst. What I’m supposed to do with it now is unknown. I’d love to have the ability to work with IBM and see what can/can’t be done in this space and I plan on maintaining contact with the catalysts (from IBM and Wells Fargo), but I’m uncertain of what real change will be brought.
The “Too many ESB product” idea originally began as “No really, theres too many ESBs, simplify them down to one” but as the comments came in I realized that it’s not the runtimes that need to be ‘immediately’ normalized but rather the tools. There’s little logical reason why mapping messages is a different tooling construct for all five products. This idea is currently languishing on page 2 with 9 comments but 90 views (2nd or 3rd most views in the Jam). But it’s still stuck in the “Peer Review” state with no catalyst. This issue isn’t quite something a non-IBMer can pick up and run with.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, head over to the Impact 2008 SOA Jam and go vote for my ideas participate in the community. The Jam ends Thursday at 10am pacific.
