ian glazer's tuesdaynight

Mark was kind enough to recommend a few new watering holes in San Francisco. He also made his own mashup to create Cataclysmic Catalyst. In that vein of thought, I give you a snigglet: Paracatalysis - the identity market-wide halt during Catalyst. Paracatalysis continues into the week after Catalyst as well. Given that the following week is also July 4th week and that the 4th is a Wednesday, pretty much puts the identity market (at least here in the States) to sleep for two whole weeks. As one who will be at Mark’s dinner, I am thankful that there will be no kilt involved. Having seen it once was plenty.

I really love my neighborhood. I can walk to almost everything I need. Granted, it has its problems. The grocery store situation could be better. The restaurants and bars could be better. But, all in all, its a great place to live. The following is taken from my neighborhood listserv and nicely sums up the greatest threat we face here in Cleveland Park:

Unkempt Shrubbery Hazard A local homeowner has allowed his/her shrubs to grow unbridled. The hard, unyielding plants now block a corner forcing strollers and wheelchairs to jump the curb and use the street. The intersection is a busy one … very busy … and the shrubs now are endangering lives. Notes to the owner have been to no avail. What City Department is best suited to handle such complaints? (PS, a manhole is also blocked by this towering, unkempt growth.)

Read this in the Post; the Jefferson Memorial (or at least the walkway near it) is sinking. I’ll save you a trip to DC. Check out my photos of it without having to fight traffic and other tourists.

Rarely when the Gourds appear in press to do they a) look this good and b) have an article this well written.

Anyone got the new Self-Service user interface working for ITIM. I’ve got it installed properly, I think. When I try and log I get:

An error occurred while processing the attempt to log in.

Any ideas?

I just finished a very good intro to digital photography class at the US Department of Agriculture. (For those of outside DC, USDA has a killer language and other continuing education program here in DC.) I have uploaded most of the pictures from my final, a portfolio of the assignment I went on over the course of the class.

It’s Catalyst season once again. And once again I’ll be holed up in the lovely Hilton on O’Farrell. This will be my fourth or fifth Catalyst and my umpteenth trip to San Francisco. And knowing a bit my readers, I know that this is pretty much the same for you too. Having been to Catalyst this many times you end up in a bit of rut. Yes, having drinks at the Clift Hotel is always amusing. I mean, who doesn’t like the giant chair? I like the bar in the lobby of the Westin Saint Francis as well, but drinking into hotels is getting kinda tired. Friends, Romans, traveling identity wonks - I ask you to open up your black books of travel and share with the class a suggestion or two for new places to have a drink. I’ll throw two out to start. I’ll start by saying, I’ve been to neither yet. First, Bourbon & Branch seems interesting. I saw it on Gridskipper; anyone been there? Second, Tunnel Top. Back when Tuesday Night was centered on the regular Tuesday Night beer at Toledo Lounge, there were actually two Tuesday Night factions. When friends moved west, they started up Tuesday Night West in Tunnel Top. They described the place as a yard sale with liquor, and let’s face it, that can’t be a bad thing. See you in a few weeks.

My in-laws live in western Oklahoma. After the requisite tour of town, I find myself with a decent amount of time on my hands. I usually pack a few books along to fill the time. I’m not sure how I came to buy Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander. I thought I’d give it a try and see how it went. It was a real page turner. Seriously. It is a very dense read that is surprisingly approachable. At its core, Notes presents a system for decomposing complex design problems. Alexander builds up to this system by examining two types of cultures: unselfconscious and selfconscious. Unselfconscious cultures approach problems with a rich set of traditional solutions in which the builder (problem solver) is reduced to an agent implementing a solution learned by imitation, an informal form of apprenticeship. These cultures’ designs evolved over a sufficiently long period with their environment as the primary constraint. To become a repeated solution, the solution had to fit well within all aspects of the culture’s environment. Selfconscious cultures, in contrast, exist outside of any environmental feedback loops or environmental constraints. These cultures approach design problems with a learned set of principles that impose rules of design. The system Alexander lays out (and I am paraphrasing greatly here) relies on the decomposition of the problem into subsets of related features. These subsets, or subsystems, must be as independent as possible to accommodate misfits (problems). Misfits within the subsystems must not impact the design as a whole, but be contained within the subsystem. Alexander writes:

On one hand I can’t say I am that surprised. SAP has been itching to get into the IdM market. There was speculation that they were going to build their own. It is interesting to see that they have chosen, as many others have, to buy instead. I am, however, a little surprised in who SAP purchased. MaXware was known, primarily, as one of the three major meta/virtual directory companies out there. Maybe SAP saw wisdom in Oracle buying OctetString? (I’d be feeling pretty lonely right now if I was Radiant Logic.) Maybe SAP really just needed the connectivity that MaXware could provide? I wonder what this means for corporate SAP partners who are already in the identity management space? If I am a provisioning vendor who has spent resources developing integration to SAP and the Virsa bits, I am going to be pretty annoyed that SAP just bought a provisioning technology. Integration partner one day, direct competitor another. The real reason SAP made this move is the continuing SAP – Oracle War. SAP needs to be able to check the boxes off in an RFP that they have provisioning and identity management services. If SAP is looking to even the playing field, there’s at least one more acquisitions they have to do. They need to buy a large services company likes of Accenture or Booz Allen Hamilton. Granted, doing that will agitate their service partners, but that being said, it would round off SAP and enable them to go toe-to-toe with Oracle. In closing, I wanted to include a few insightful thoughts from Jackson Shaw. I just discovered his blog… good stuff. Jackson writes:

Apologies to Lewis Carol and the Cheshire Cat. Mark MacAuley makes me laugh. He is a funny guy, but that’s not why he makes me laugh. He makes me laugh when he finds situations like this one:

I spoke to a non-US Government Agency yesterday about their Identity Management initiative. Turns out they are hung up on an architecture. Why? Because there is no identifiable (or identified) business process for them to build for. The business users are saying - Just buy a tool and it’ll take care of it that’s what their workflows are for’. Those of us who do this for a living are probably smirking or laughing out loud at the comment. Typical, but one of the leading causes of unsuccessful projects.