Geeky

As I may have mentioned before, I have an unseemly fondness for geeks. By this I really mean anyone who has a boundless and unselfconscious enthusiasm for arcane subjects, but because of the industry I work in, that mainly translates to Silicon Valley-style software developers.

So I was obviously very excited last night to attend a seminar in a swanky Central London hotel, where a renowned uber-geek had been laid on to address a crowd of techies about the latest efforts to standardise the development of service-oriented architectures.

Much of the evening was dedicated to pondering a long-standing problem that IT types have, which is that no one ever understands what they're going on about. This resulted in the following lovely bit of monologue:

Uber-geek: If we can just find a way to talk to business users on their level, all our problems will be solved.

Audience: Hear hear!

Uber-geek: They'll soon realise that this new service-oriented architecture will be the saviour of modern business.

Audience: Oh yeah!

Uber-geek: We just need a simple way of explaining what we do, then they'll be queuing up to buy it.

Audience: Tell us what to do, o wise one!

Uber-geek: Well, we could start with WSDL. It does provide a completely mathematically robust system for describing services and interaction. But of course there are elements of the SOA system that escape mathematical description, because it's cybernetic.

Like I said, I love geeks.


INSTANT UPDATE: So long then, chaps, I'm off to the Isle of Wight for a spot of birdwatching. With champagne. Apparently.