Chris Clark, Managing Director of Prosperity 24.7 recently met with ‘legendary’ International Software Architect and Prosperity 24.7 Associate Simon Brown over a coffee on his return to the Island having successfully delivered one of the keynote speeches at the ArchSummit conference in Shenzhen, China in August 2012. Some of Simon’s experiences are captured below.
“My trip to China was awesome” states Simon who achieved several firsts in his Global tour, not least was his first experience of ‘live translation’ which was an experience to behold “there were two guys squeezed in a booth that looked like it was barely big enough for one” he laughed. “They took it in turns to translate whilst I ran through my normal presentation. One of the items which surprised me was that despite the obvious cultural differences, the questions I received from the 900 strong audience were nigh on identical to those I receive at European conferences, namely about ‘non-functional requirements gathering, governance in agile projects and architecting for an agile project etc.’ There was a lot of great feedback and I don’t think I have ever been photographed as many times in a day since I got married”.
The other unique experience was their method of ranking speakers. “There were pictures of all the speakers and the attendees placed stickers on your image as a voting system to identify the talks they enjoyed. Thankfully I seem to have been fairly well received!”
When asked about how the invitation came about it is quite obvious as to why Simon was asked. In the last eighteen months Simon has either presented at conferences or delivered training in all of the following countries which form part of his ‘circuit’ – England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Poland along with Sweden and Ukraine in November (he adds casually). Due to other commitments Simon has had to reject some invitations to talk in the US, Europe and India which is unfortunate but Simon is pragmatic “I am flying off later today to deliver my software architecture training course to a multi-national financial services business in London and I’m presenting the opening keynote at both the “Agile Software Architecture Symposium” in The Netherlands later this month and the “Software Architect 2012” conference in London in October, so I am pretty busy!”
Obviously when you are in so much demand you have a problem ‘There is only one Simon Brown in the World’… But again, Simon is working on mitigating this ‘bottleneck’. “My training materials have been licensed for delivery in New Zealand through a local consulting company and several organisations in Europe now use my training course when ‘skilling up’ their development team capability, including one of the largest consulting firms in the world”.
So after the upcoming conference talks, plus a range of European training sessions that you already have lined up, what’s next on the horizon of interest to you?
“I have been approached to deliver training in a number of countries off the back of recent talks which will add to my regular circuit, plus I have regular requests from the US which I sadly cannot deliver due to visa regulations. As well as this, my book ‘Software Architecture for Developers’ is doing really well with nearly 1,000 readers and I’ve received offers to have it translated into Chinese and Japanese. Since I’m using an iterative/incremental approach to writing though, translating a living, breathing eBook isn’t the best thing to do yet, but hopefully I’ll make this leap next year when the main bulk of the content is in place”.
On the subject of translation, Simon wanted to thank Wayne Gallichan of Locate Jersey, the States of Jersey’s Inward Investment team, as he provided assistance and guidance regarding Chinese etiquette which resulted in Simon having his business cards and slides translated into Chinese which went down incredibly well. “This was really appreciated and well received so ‘thank you’ Wayne”.
For more information regarding Prosperity 24.7 – please contact us on 01534 877247 or enquiries@prosperity247.com for an informal chat regarding how we can assist your company realise maximum benefit from your technology investment.
For further information on Simon’s seminars, courses and most recent book – please see the various links below:
http://www.archsummit.com/
http://www.codingthearchitecture.com/presentations/archsummit2012-the-frustrated-architect
http://www.codingthearchitecture.com/presentations/archsummit2012-how-to-design-a-secure-architecture
https://leanpub.com/software-architecture-for-developers
http://avisi.nl/symposium/speakers/
http://www.software-architect.co.uk/
