Michael Carducci

Mastering Software Architecture Deep Dive

Monday, 9:00 AM EST

In the rapidly evolving field of software architecture, the difference between theory and practice has never been more pronounced. Despite a wealth of knowledge, architects and systems designers face an alarming rate of project failures, underscoring the need for a more nuanced approach to architecture and system design.

We invite you to embark on a transformative threeday journey with this upcoming “Holistic Software Architecture masterclass,” designed for those ready to significantly enhance their effectiveness in the realm of software architecture, leadership, and system design.

This workshop transcends traditional patterns and fragmented methodologies, focusing instead on a holistic strategy that addresses the specific needs of complex software problems. We delve into the core of software architecture, moving beyond the surfacelevel patterns and technologies to explore the hidden and external factors that influence project success. The piecemeal, statusquo of software architecture methodologies are unified into a new, holistic approach with the TailorMade software architecture model.

What You Will Achieve:

Mastery Over Complexity: Learn to navigate the multifaceted challenges of software architecture, from deriving tailormade solutions that meet unique project requirements to conducting tradeoff analysis for informed decisionmaking.
A New Toolbox: Arm yourself with new tools, models, and techniques aimed at reducing risk and uncertainty, transforming constraints into enablers for robust and valuable software systems.
Strategic Insights: Gain practical insights into architectural styles, distributed systems, and the interplay between business needs and architectural decisions, all while aligning your enterprise's objectives.
RealWorld Application: Engage with realworld case studies and exercises that bring theoretical concepts to life, enhancing your practice with actionable knowledge.
Communicative Excellence: Elevate your communication skills, ensuring you can articulate your vision clearly, build consensus across teams, and navigate the complex terrain of software engineering.

Why Attend?

Innovative Approach: Our workshop offers a fresh, practical perspective that cuts through the traditional solutioncentric methodologies, providing a roadmap to deterministic results and highly predictable outcomes.
Comprehensive Understanding: Delve into the architectural process, acknowledging organizational and environmental considerations for a rounded perspective on design and execution.
The Architect’s Toolbox: Beyond imparting knowledge, this workshop equips you with longlived mental and problemsolving tools, empowering you to make impactful architectural decisions.
Communicative Competence: Learn to effectively communicate your architectural vision, aligning with business needs and facilitating smooth implementation.

Whether you’re an aspiring architect seeking to broaden your horizons or an experienced practitioner aiming to refine your skills, this workshop is designed to arm you with the mental models and tools necessary for success in today’s complex landscape.

Join us to elevate your role to that of an Architectural Artisan, skillfully navigating the challenges of modern software design. Your journey towards mastering tailormade software architecture starts here.

Digital Knowledge Management for Architects

Tuesday, 8:30 AM EST

“Humans became behaviourally modern the moment they committed to storing abstract information outside their brains.” —Lyn Wadley

As architects, we often bridge the gaps that exist between all of the teams and stakeholders involved in the success or failure of a system. Because of this, information is hitting us from every direction. How we capture, organize, distill, and express this information is critical to our own success or failure.

Unfortunately, while excellent at abstract thinking, our brains are equally terrible at random recall. What we need is a second brain that excels at providing us with the right information at the right time. In this session, we're going to learn Digital Knowledge Management workflows and tools that will help us build and use that second brain.

An Architect's Approach to API Strategies

Tuesday, 1:00 PM EST

Integration, once a luxury, is now a necessity. Doing this well, however, continues to be elusive. Early attempts to build better distributed systems such as DCOM, CORBA, and SOAP were widely regarded as failures. Today the focus is on REST, RPC, and graphql style APIs.

Which is best? The goto answer for architects is, of course, “it depends.”

In this session, we look at the various API approaches, how they attempt to deal with the challenge of decoupling client from server, evolvability, extensibility, adaptability, composability.

The biggest challenge is that needs change over time, and APIs must necessarily evolve. Versioning is challenging, and breaking changes are inevitable. You'll leave this session with a highlevel understanding of these approach, their respective tradeoffs and ultimately how to align your API approach with your architectural and organizational goals.

Holistic Software Architecture

Tuesday, 3:00 PM EST

Architecture is often described as “the stuff that's hard to change” or “the important stuff (whatever that is).” At its core, architecture defines the very essence of software, transcending mere features and functions to encompass vital capabilities such as scalability, evolvability, elasticity, and reliability. But here's the real question: where do these critical capabilities truly originate?

In this session, we'll embark on a journey to uncover the secrets behind successful architectures. While popular architecture patterns may offer a starting point, it's time to unveil the startling truth – both monolith and microservicesbased projects continue to stumble and falter at alarming rates. The key to unparalleled success lies in the art of finetuning and tailormaking architectures to precisely fit the unique needs of your organization, environment, and the teams delivering the software.

Step into the future as we introduce a groundbreaking, problemcentric approach to defining and evolving system architectures. Our practical techniques will empower you to transform constraints, both architectural and environmental, into powerful enablers of robust, valuable, and longlived software systems.

Join us and elevate your architecture game to new heights!

Agile Architecture

Tuesday, 5:00 PM EST

Agile has become an overused and overloaded buzzword, let's go back to first principles. Agile is the 12 principles. Agile is founded on fast feedback and embraces change. Agile is about making the right decisions at the right time while constantly learning and growing.

Architecture, on the other hand, seems to be the opposite. Once famously described by Grady Booch as “the stuff that's hard to change” there is overwhelming pressure to get architecture “right” early on as the ultimate necessary rework will be costly at best, and fatal at worst. But too much complexity, too early, can be just as costly or fatal. A truly practical approach to agile architecture is long overdue.

This session introduces a new approach to architecture that enables true agility and unprecedented evolvability in the architectures we design and build. Whether you are a already a seasoned architect, or are simply beginning that path, this session will fundamentally change the way you think about and approach software architecture.

Architecture Patterns for AIPowered Applications

Wednesday, 1:30 PM EST

Since ChatGPT rocketed the potential of generative AI into the collective consciousness there has been a race to add AI to everything. Every product owner has been salivating at the possibility of new AIPowered features. Every marketing department is chomping at the bit to add a “powered by AI” sticker to the website. For the average layperson playing with ChatGPT's conversational interface, it seems easy however integrating these tools securely, reliably, and in a costeffective manner requires much more than simply adding a chat interface. Moreover, getting consistent results from a chat interface is more than an art than a science. Ultimately, the chat interface is a nice gimmick to show off capabilities, but serious integration of these tools into most applications requires a more thoughtful approach.

This is not another “AI is Magic” cheerleading session, nor an overly critical analysis of the field. Instead, this session looks at a number of valid usecases for the tools and introduces architecture patterns for implementing these usecases. Throughout we will explore the tradeoffs of the patterns as well as the application of AI in each scenario. We'll explore usecases from simple, direct integrations to the more complex involving RAG and agentic systems.

Although this is an emerging field, the content is not theoretical. These are patterns that are being used in production both in Michael's practice as a handson software architect and beyond.

Architects must maintain their breadth, and this session will build on that to prepare you for the inevitable AIpowered project in your future.

Architecture Patterns for AIPowered Applications

Wednesday, 3:15 PM EST

Since ChatGPT rocketed the potential of generative AI into the collective consciousness there has been a race to add AI to everything. Every product owner has been salivating at the possibility of new AIPowered features. Every marketing department is chomping at the bit to add a “powered by AI” sticker to the website. For the average layperson playing with ChatGPT's conversational interface, it seems easy however integrating these tools securely, reliably, and in a costeffective manner requires much more than simply adding a chat interface. Moreover, getting consistent results from a chat interface is more than an art than a science. Ultimately, the chat interface is a nice gimmick to show off capabilities, but serious integration of these tools into most applications requires a more thoughtful approach.

This is not another “AI is Magic” cheerleading session, nor an overly critical analysis of the field. Instead, this session looks at a number of valid usecases for the tools and introduces architecture patterns for implementing these usecases. Throughout we will explore the tradeoffs of the patterns as well as the application of AI in each scenario. We'll explore usecases from simple, direct integrations to the more complex involving RAG and agentic systems.

Although this is an emerging field, the content is not theoretical. These are patterns that are being used in production both in Michael's practice as a handson software architect and beyond.

Architects must maintain their breadth, and this session will build on that to prepare you for the inevitable AIpowered project in your future.

The Illusion of Logic: Technology Through a Magician's Eyes

Wednesday, 7:30 PM EST

“What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. "
-Morpheus

The world of technology seems logical, objective, and to operate by consistent rules. Reality can be illogical, subjective, and even random at times. Yet we accept subjective reality as-is; our single perspective is all we can really know.

In the end, reality constrains engineers and magicians reshape reality. Perhaps reality is not what it seems.

Join Michael Carducci, magician and software architect, as he takes you on a journey through the marriage of the logical and the illogical, the intersection of magic and technology. Discover what each has to teach the other, and how you can apply the lessons to transform your skills and your career.

With over 25 years of experience in both fields–and a lifetime of successes and failures–Michael shares his deeply reflective, unique, and authentically honest perspective on both careers, dealing with problems, challenges, wins, and losses.

This talk combines illusion, engineering wisdom, life lessons, and the stories that connect them. You'll be astonished, engaged, and leave with an entirely new perspective on technology and life.

DataCentric in Action

Thursday, 11:00 AM EST

In 2017, an organization known as The Semantic Arts published their “datacentric manifesto” leading with this paragraph.

&gt “We have uncovered a root cause of the messy state of Information Architecture in large institutions and on the web today. It is the prevailing applicationcentric mindset that gives applications priority over data. The remedy is to flip this on its head. Data is the center of the universe; applications are ephemeral.”

While the vision and ideas of this manifesto are compelling, implementation details are scarce leaving the potential out of reach of many busy developers and architects.

Datacentric is a major departure from the current applicationcentric approach to systems development and management. Migration to the datacentric approach will not happen by itself.

This session is full of practical and actionable examples, insights, and approaches to this new paradigm. If you’re ready to consider the possibility that systems could be more than an order of magnitude cheaper and more flexible, then check out this session to see firsthand a new way to think about software and information systems.