2010 Year in Review

I learned a lot this year and I thought I’d take a moment to share some of my favorite blog posts, books and newly discovered blogs.

Besides continuing to play with BizTalk Server, I also dug deep into Windows Server AppFabric, Microsoft StreamInsight, Windows Azure, Salesforce.com, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and enterprise architecture.  I learned some of those technologies for my last book, some was for work, and some was for personal education.  This diversity was probably evident in the types of blog posts I wrote this year.  Some of my most popular, or favorite posts this year were:

• SIMPLER Way of Hosting the WCF 4.0 Routing Service.  I wrote this post while researching the book and I think this was the first example of someone trying to do this.  So either I’m a trailblazer, or clinically insane.  Jury’s out.
• Debatching Inbound Messages from BizTalk WCF SQL Adapters. I took a look at how to split messages coming in from the new WCF-based SQL Adapter.
• Top 9 Things to Focus On When Learning New Platform Technologies. I wrote this after attending a conference on Dynamics CRM and thinking about my learning plan for that technology.
• Using the New BizTalk Mapper Shape in a Windows Workflow Service.  This post came around the BizTalk Server 2010 beta launch and showed a neat new way to do efficient data mapping in Windows Workflow.
• 6 Things to Know About Microsoft StreamInsight.  I drank the StreamInsight Kool-Aid this year and really hope that Microsoft-centric developers/architects embrace event processing more in 2011.
• Leveraging and Managing the StreamInsight Standalone Host.  There was very little initial documentation by Microsoft on how to use a centralized StreamInsight processing host so this was my effort to explain that a bit more.
• Using the New AWS Web Console Interface to Set Up Simple Notification Services.  I’m a big fan of Amazon’s cloud capabilities and here was a quick walkthrough of their SNS offering.
• Metadata Handling in BizTalk Server 2010 AppFabric Connect for Services.  There are some quirks with this new feature pack, but overall, I liked the way that we can now  easily expose BizTalk endpoints to the Azure cloud.
• Using Realistic Security For Sending and Listening to the AppFabric Service Bus.  I wish that the release of new technologies from Microsoft came with more in-depth demonstration of real-life scenarios.  This post was a case of highlighting the difference between every Service Bus demo ever, and what you’d actually want to do in real life.
• I can’t pick a favorite interview of 2010 among Mike Stephenson, Thiago Almeida, Mikael Hakansson, Udi Dahan,Aaron Skonnard, Dan Rosanova, Saravana Kumar, Mark Simms, Johan Hedberg, Brent Stineman, and Ben Cline.  I suspect that my stupid questions have gotten stupider this year, but I’m scared to research it.

While I find that I use Twitter (@rseroter) instead of blog posts to share interesting links, I still consider blogs to be the best long-form source of information.  Here are a few that I either discovered or followed closer this year:

• InfoQ.com.  Great site for news and analysis of technology trends.
• ReadWriteCloud.  Good spot for keeping up with industry news about cloud computing.
• Harvard Business Review Blog.  Insightful place for information on leadership and management.
• HighScalability.com.  I love this blog and really like reading statistics and strategies for high-performing websites.
• Windows Server AppFabric CAT Team Blog.  Exceptional content on topics like BizTalk, AppFabric and StreamInsight.

I tried to keep up a decent pace of technical and non-technical book reading this year and liked these the most:

• Event Processing: Designing IT Systems for Agile Companies. Easy read about how to think about, and build solutions for, event driven systems.
• Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.  Wonderful book about an editor of the New Yorker who wanted to learn more about life in the kitchen.
• Adventures of an IT Leader. Interesting fictional story about someone who is thrust into the role of CIO and must learn as he goes.
• Men with Balls: The Professional Athlete’s Handbook.  Crude and hilarious “guide” for professional athletes.
• Beyond Bullet Points. One of my goals for last year was to become a better presenter, and this book helped me focus my presentations and rely less on PowerPoint and much more on preparation.
• John Adams.  Well-written and thorough account of an American patriot.

I somehow had a popular year on this blog with 125k+ visits and really appreciate each of you taking the time to read my musings.  I hope we can continue to learn together in 2011.