Thought I would drop a note regarding the Architecture Clinic which I attended last week in San Jose - it was FANTASTIC, and everything that I wanted to be. My only regret is that it was over too quickly, even though we worked most days from 8AM to 11PM. (No we were not in class after 7PM - and yes we DID work until 7PM - but after class we all stuck together and simply continued the discussion.)
That was the point of the clinic however, discussion. The exchange of ideas, and how to structure and convey those thoughts via diagrams at a high level. That made this clinic, in my opinion, priceless. How often do you (an aspiring architect) get to review 4 systems, in 4 days (+1 day for an intro), and define an architecture for them. This type of experience in the real world would take many years! There are very few architects working in large corporations that would see 4 systems per year, let alone have the freedom to architect those systems without any restrictions (politically, environmentally). On top of all that, there is a room of Architects exchanging ideas across these systems – the learning in this environment simply is exponential!

Richard Reukema
Solution Architect
Ontario, Canada

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The Architecture Clinic was an exceptional week designing systems in a highly collaborative and fun environment. It was great to be involved in robust discussion about all aspects of system design and architecture. It was amazing how Juval steered us towards the right conclusion while not giving away the answer but really providing the tools and thought processes that you must go through to solve the same problems for any project. Probably most of all, I really enjoyed spending time with the other participants and IDesign staff. I find it always good to get different views on application design and architecture and often the company environment does not allow the kind of discussion that takes place during the clinic. Either due to lack of qualified peers or the general political environment. It was awesome how everyone had an open mind - there was a lot of challenging stuff thrown at us and most of it was not easy! It was really interesting to see a design evolve as we discussed different aspects of the system, threw the design back and forth and (yes really!) disagreed on some of the decomposition. You can't learn this stuff from a book... Evening discussions were another highlight - we talked all angles of software from the future of enterprise systems, mega style corps all the way to startups, managing teams and careers. Thank you to all the participants and the IDesign people for putting on the clinic.

Peter Nieuwenhuizen
Software Engineer
Call Design

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In the Architecture Clinic we had great people, weather, food and a hard work. I did expect it though based on format of the class: 12-14 people designing and reviewing 3-4 projects plus training sessions at night. We had two instructors, Juval Lowy and Michael "Monty" Montgomery. I have seen Monty's astute discussions on the IDesign Alumni, and in person I found him to be a very bright guy, smart as you could never imagine. And Juval? Juval is a God, a true master. Would you like his personal attention, here is your chance. Both were there just for that, listen, understand, help us in turn to listen and understand, show us the right way of designing the systems. We were like a big family that week, I missed you All. If you are going to the clinic, be prepared, bring your questions, bring your project and be ready to participate. Just as important, bring an open mind. You'll get out of this clinic everything you'd like to get, but you have to know what it is. It's different from any other class because you have to put yourself to work in the environment with the projects you are not familiar with, with people you just met. Raise your concerns about your work, life, everyone would love to hear them because we are all have similar ones and would like to know how to fix them, as such, the this class will benefit any level of people, from developer to a Senior Architect.

Leila Koziy
Iron Mountain

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I found the Architecture Clinic to be a really unique opportunity for gaining condensed hands on experience on designing a variety of real world systems. I liked the concept of putting strong emphasis on practicing the proper decomposition of software systems. Providing feedback on every system from experienced architects was extremely valuable since it really revealed the reasoning and thought process behind architectural decisions. Mixing up teams for every new system also was definitely a very good idea that you should stick to. All in all a great week with a lot of work and fun and a bunch of very interesting people – thanks!

Thomas Blome
Bitflag IT-Consulting GmbH

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