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Friday, June 12, 2026

People at Work

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Saturday, February 21, 2009
2:09 pm

The Big PictureThis post on boston.com provides a series of 45 photographs of people at work, doing many different jobs and locations around the world.  I found it inspiring to consider my brothers and sisters in the human family going about their work, wherever they might be, to provide for their families and loved ones.
Enjoy!

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140×3! A Lesson in Optimism

Sports
Author: Mark Dixon
Saturday, February 21, 2009
2:14 am

After yesterday’s heartbreaking news about Amare Stoudemire’s eye surgery, my pessimistic vibes cast a dark shadow over the rest of the Phoenix Sun’s season.  It’s good thing the Suns believed in themselves more than all us doubtful folk.  Last night, Leandro Barbosa poured in a career-high 41 points and Jason Richardson added 34 to lead the Suns to their third straight game of scoring at least 140 points!

Go Suns!

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GAG, AI, SOA and TLA

General
Author: Mark Dixon
Saturday, February 21, 2009
1:43 am

I stumbled across a wonderful bit of prose on the blogosphere today.  Jim Butler mused:

There’s a place where good acronyms go to die.  I call it the GAG (Good Acronym Graveyard).  It’s a dark foreboding place where over-hyped acronyms lie interred separated from their perfectly valid and useful living legacies.

Jim then went on to write an enjoyable piece about the burial of “AI” (Artificial Intelligence, not the movie) and the recent demise of “SOA”.  Commenting on AI’s passing, Jim wrote:

The principles and techniques of AI have been staggeringly successful, but the over-hyped term and its unreasonable expectations rest in peace in the GAG.

He then prefaced his remarks on the passing of SOA by quoting Anne Thomas Manes:

SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession.  SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other architectural approaches that depend on “services”.

I particularly enjoyed Jim’s final thoughts:

Requiem

And so we gather together on this cold day in January of 2009 to lay to rest the body of SOA, but not its spirit. We do not mourn this passing as untimely or empty. Rather we rejoice in the opportunity to move past empty promises and impossible expectations.

Perhaps now that the GAG is sporting yet another tombstone, we can attend to the real business of enterprise transformation through service orientation. Perhaps we can even throw in a little AI for good measure… D’OH!!!

So, what is TLA? “Three Letter Acronym,” of course. Should we carve a tombstone for it, as well?

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