Architecture Enforcement and Governance Using Aspects - ITARC Conference Presentation

I was at IT Architect Confrence (ITARC) 2009 in Atlanta last week. The conference was a great event. It offered a great opportunity to talk to other architects (of all specializations, Information, Solutions, Data, and Enterprise) about their architecture experience and frameworks and technologies they are currently using in their projects.

Here are some of the highlights of the conference:

• It was a non-vendor driven event organized by IASA (a non-profit organization focused on the Architecture profession). Paul Preiss and his team at IASA are helping the architecture community through education, consulting, and conference events such as ITARC.
  
• Conference main focus was on Architecture and Architecture only, so there were no different tracks on Java, Ruby, SOA, and Agile topics to attract as many people to attend the conference as possible.
• It was also more than just one kind of Architecture conference. The key-notes, technical sessions and round-table discussions included other architecture specializations like Data, Information, Infrastructure, and Enterprise Architecture which helped the attendees to put these specializations in perspective and see architecture as a whole solution for the enterprise business and IT needs.
• There was a dedicated Architecture Career Mentoring track which I thought is an innovative idea and real help to the architecture professionals who are looking for some guidance from the experienced architects. Architecture is an art, not a science, so the advice from a senior architect is of a great value to the new architects.
  
• And finally the Open Spaces track, hosted by Steven "Doc" List included two 1-hour open spaces sessions. This was a conference in itself and very informative; I learned a lot of new "open spaces patterns" in attending this event. I will be blogging more about those patterns in the future blog entries.

At the conference, I gave a presentation on "Architecture Enforcement using Aspects" topic. The presentation was very well received. There were both JEE and .NET IT professionals in the room and there was good interest on the topic of using Aspects and AOP to enforce the architecture and design policies.

I have uploaded to SlideShare web site. If you want to check out the presentation slides, here is the link. Let me know if you have any suggestions and feedback for improvement of the presentation.

This presentation has also been accepted for the upcoming No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) New England Software Symposium. Check out the symposium schedule.

Let me know if any of you will be attending the NFJS symposium.