Coming home after the MVP Global Summit is a moment of reflection, or better the trip home is. The Summit is a time of intense interaction with peers who are very varied bunch of experienced technologists. Next to their hands on Microsoft stack expertise they also bring their experience with other technologies and companies. This gives us the opportunity to talk to each other and exchange knowledge and views. Poor in the feedback and the discussions with the Microsoft Program Managers and their management. This goes on from sun rise to sunset. It pays to come early and stay an extra day. It opens time for more meetings and discussions in and around Redmond.

The end result is a truck load of information and impressions we need to parse. That can take some time. And we need to filter our conclusions for our management. The content of the MVP Summit and all talks around it are strictly NDA. The insight and ideas we harvest from that we can leverage, but we cannot expose the information.

On Microsoft’s side they get a reality check, open and honest feedback, they get our opinions and ideas. They learn about our successes and challenges in the real world. If that was not helpful to them they wouldn’t want us to show up on their campus disrupting their work week.

To me it’s also a reality check. What am I doing. How am I doing that and why? Even more importantly where am I doing this things and is what I use the best choice. It show my own strengths and weaknesses. That’s valuable as well.

Well the good news is that judged by some requests and opinions of my peers I’m an valued expert and architect. I do have some weaknesses but I’m on track to address those. The balancing act here is that we have to avoid wasting time on dying opportunities that are sill needed but are heading down hill fast. Not as much due to the technology being obsolete or no longer needed but mostly due to politics and a bad understanding on how to deliver IT cost effective and efficiently. The amount of self inflicted wounds and pain can be shockingly high. The trick is to avoid those projects as that’s wasted time, time that should be spent on moving forward. Sometimes this looks like the nineteen nineties all over out there.

One thing is very clear. Those that seek a single solution, a one size fits all approach, just for the sake of simplicity or perceived economies of scale will fail. A bipolar approach without a place for the vast amount of “stuff” in between, let alone a realistic and sound technical plan to integrate it all are going to fail. Ask any plumber . Learn how to think independently and don’t grow too dependent on industry analysts. Do what’s right for your needs.