David S. Read

I delivered a webinar on May 11, 2011 exploring workflow and business rules automation. I discussed the value created from "real" process automation and provided real life insight into how to succeed with your own business process automation projects. I described the various challenges businesses run into, along with Blue Slate's technique of evaluating which automation technique to apply to different business needs.

Topics discussed include:

• The benefits of service oriented architecture
• When to automate business rules, workflow or both
• Understanding the importance of work flow structure and organization
• When to leverage industry specific point solutions that leverage pre-built workflows and rules
• The unique value of a rule engine which you might be overlooking today

I presented at the Capital District Java Developer Network (CDJDN) meeting on Thursday, April 21. My topic was Android programming, which expanded on the Albany BarCamp talk I gave back in February. During this session I introduced the Android API, focusing on the creation of an interactive application. The XML configuration files and Java code that make up a typical Android program were described and explored. The session detailed UI layout options, widget interactions, lifecycle events, persistence, internationalization and application packaging. I also reviewed the process which is followed to make your application available on the Android Market.

My Android programming presentation (PDF format, 6meg) was based on a game that I wrote for the Android platform and have released as open source and made available as a free download in the Android Market. Feel free to download the source from github if you are looking for some help getting started with Android programming.

All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
-Arthur Schopenhauer

… well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can think for you. Consequently, even if a tool did everything except the thinking for you – if it wrote 100 percent of the code, wrote 100 percent of the documentation, did 100 percent of the testing, burned the CD-ROMs, put them in boxes, and mailed them to your customers – the best you could hope for would be a 30 percent improvement in productivity. In order to do better than that, you have to change the way you think.
-Fred Brooks (from No Silver Bullet found in The Mythical Man Month)

Computers are nitpicky, precise, literal, unimaginative and disinterested in your project’s success!
-David Read