Well, we have just sailed past the 3/4 mark of the course – I want to thank Jelena for an interesting presentation, which sparked a lot of discussions around it. Of course, we all are experts in basketball and GIS 
I hope she will share the slides with us. Let’s also thank Giedrius for providing 3G connection
Anyway, we have got two months to kill (2 more Saturdays booked – 21st and 28th of April, mark your diaries) and two more are in the pipeline (tentatively) for May. However we must also think about the prizes (exam marks) and we want to make the process of getting them enjoyable, don’t we?
So… in the spirit of this course where we try to turn many tables around, we wanted to discuss the ideas how YOU get marked with YOU 
And we did so, as the picture testifies:
Now, what’s this? Well, this is the blueprint of the contract – our common agreement about what we think is fair when it comes to showing your capacity & skills.
For full clarity and especially for those who were not with us, let me translate (again, this will need to be discussed/approved):
The exam mark will consist of:
- A reward for attendance – 2 points
- A reward for activity – posts/comments – 1 point. Blasting me for wearing the FR football scarf may very well set you back by minus 2 points I may wear the LT scarf in Nantes – come and join me
- A reward for a team project – 5 points
- A reward for making a presentation – 2 points
The project reward consists of:
- Soundness of the business vision -1 point
- Excellence of conceptual and technical architecture – 1.5 points
- Completeness of implementation – 1.5 point
- Overall marketable value: look and feel, description etc. – think in www.strikeiron.com way about your service – 1 point
In addition:
- Excellence of the project “process” site, such as project wiki – 4 points to share between the team members – you will decide yourself how you will split that
- Peers’ praise – i.e. if other teams think your project is cool, they can award other teams giving maximum 4 points for a single team (out of 6 points total “team prize fund”, which each team is given to show their appreciation of others’ work). No team cannot use the prize fund to award themselves of course.
And more:
- Within a team, it is possible to give up to 3 points voluntarily if someone feels he or she was slacking and was getting a free ride by the rest of the team. And vice versa – a “troika” (three members voting unanimously) have the powers to strip the fourth member by 3 points maximum if the latter will have underperformed yet thinks “well, no big deal…”.
The idea of the project is to think of some added value, which can be sold to some customers by providing them with a service (simple or aggregated/composite), which takes some data/functionality from somewhere and presents it in an SOA way (WS/SOAP or REST) in a clean and marketable way. Let me repeat – there must be a realistic business-value component involved in your solution. The more real – the better.
You are free to choose the platform + tools, as long as they adhere to the WS/REST standards.
Each project needs to be implemented by a team of 4 people, please team-up and set up a point of contact (blog, wiki etc) to make the project transparent. Make sure you will be using social software to communicate – this is NOT optional. Please be quick to avoid being left behind and work in an incomplete team, which will mean less fun and more work for you. Unless you are a die-hard individualist, of course, but then you will face some problems anyway.
Additional rule: if someone is left behind to work alone (imagine that we have 29 people) then the last full team to register will need to ask someone from their ranks to volunteer and join the poor lone soul Translation: be quick to team up.
There is also a “qualifying prerequisite” (or the final seal, if you want) to be eligible for the mark:You will need to write a thoughtful post, which would shed some light on your thoughts about:
- What is the added value (if any) of attending this course for you, as a future software systems architect (please maintain this longer-term perspective)?
- What is the immediate benefit for you (if any) in your current professional situation?
- How do you see SOA being helpful in your professional environment? Please elaborate what would you suggest if you would become the chief systems architect of your company for a day.
- How do you see SOA in 5 years from now? Please take both the “local” (LT) perspective and global one.
- What are the pros and cons of “totally online” computing? Think of the Yahoo Pipes – you basically depend totally on the connections.
- How would you use Web 2.0 in a commercial projects? Web 2.0 is, in short: social computing + data mash-ups + rich interfaces.
- How would have you organized this course if given a chance? Please think both from the contents and the form perspective.
- What the lecturers were good at?
- What the lecturers did wrong?
- What topics would you want to include into the remaining sessions?
Please address these points and feel free to add anything you would think YOUR PEERS (and the lecturers) would enjoy reading. The last point is not only for the final “essay” but also for now – we got some seminars ahead of us, as you know. Do shape them!
So you need to register at www.edublogs.org and then ask me, Justinas or Jelena to enable you at soamif.edublofs.org as Authors.
I hope this makes sense, your comments are welcome.
My pleasure was to meet you all earlier today, have a nice Sunday and Easter holidays thereafter.
