Why the blog is of interest:

The title of Rob Salkowitz's blog -- "Generation Blend" -- just about says it all. The subtitle -- "Managing Across the Technology Age Gap" -- offers an ever better clue to its contents. There is something here for everyone, regardless of when you were born.

If you're a Baby Boomer or a "GenX," Rob's blog can give you great glimpses into the digital lifestyles (and workstyles) of the generation now dubbed "Millennials" -- people born between about 1981 to 2000.

"There are 80 million Millennials in the US, compared to 78 million Boomers and 53 million GenX," according to Rob.

If you are a Millennial, you can get useful tips in Rob's blog about how to act as a "positive and proactive ambassador of digital culture" in a multigenerational workplace. "Be a resource, not a know-it-all," Rob advises, for example.

Rob's blog also includes links to information from a report he co-authored for Insurity and Microsoft on "Millennials and Insurance."

Rob delivered some of the results from that study in May at ACORD LOMA, an insurance technology trade show where Microsoft carried a strong presence.

Briefly stated, the study found that technology could serve as a big job recuitment driver for the insurance industry -- which now faces a shortage of new workers, with 60 percent of its current employees aged 45 and older.

Specifically, an overwhelming 91 percent of the Millennials studied said that the ability to work with "newer, innovative" technologies makes them more likely to consider a job.

The results suggest, too, that insurance firms need to turn to newer technologies for luring Millennials as customers -- by letting these consumers communicate their needs over the Web, for instance, instead of only through telephone call centers.

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Why the blog is of interest:

In "BrustBlog," Dave Brust has been delivering "tech industry pontifications, NYC quips, and the occasional political outburst" ever since 2005.

Fortunately for Windows professionals, many of the keen and candid observations in Dave's content-rich blog hone in deeply on Microsoft technology.

Dave -- who is slated to speak at Microsoft TechEd in June -- is also chief of new technology at Microsoft Gold Certified Partner organization known as twenty-six New York. At the Manhattan-based consultancy, Dave provides architectural vision, mentors staff, evaluates solutions, and writes papers, books, and a blog about IT strategy.

Clicking through the pages of his copious blog, you can explore Dave's perspectives on BizTalk, WCF, SQL Server, LiveMesh, and even Microsoft's Xbox, for instance.

Here, for example, is part of what Dave has to say about two Microsoft announcements in May: Microsoft's acquisition of Covast's EDI technology for BizTalk, and Tibco's development of an EMS transports channel for Microsoft's WCF.

"The two moves together are, I think, sensible, shrewd, and even brave. The tacit admission of Tibco's dominance in certain spheres of SOA message bus implementations shows good market insight on Microsoft's part. The investment in BizTalk's EDI capabilities consolidates Microsoft's position in another class of SOA implementation where BizTalk competes very well."

To read this entire blog entry, click on the link below.

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Why the blog is of interest:

A lot of folks can’t get to every important event in the world of financial services. So beyond providing his owns insights into Windows architectural topics, Mike Walker, Microsoft’s finance industry architectural strategist, is leveraging his blog to supply links to slide presentations, reports, and even video clips from Windows conferences from all over the globe.

For example, if didn’t make it to Windows Server 2008 in Los Angeles – or in case you’d just like a refresher on the topics discussed – you can link from Mike’s blog to video presentations from the show about virtualization, kernel advances, power management, and much more.

Elsewhere on Joe’s site, you can access reports and other resources about other recent activities ranging from the Microsoft Financial Services Development Conference in New York City to the Japan Strategic Architecture Forum in – where else? – Japan.

But the offerings on Mike’s site don’t stop with events. In another recent post, for instance, he provides demos around the use of new Windows components in reference architectures for insurance claims processing and capital markets structured procedures, complete with workflow demos.

"Mike Walker's Ramblings about Industry Architecture" is a very resourceful site indeed.

To view the video from the Windows Server 2008 launch, click on the link below.

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Why the blog is of interest:

Although blogs are generally thought of as strictly text-based media, there's no reason on Earth why that always has to be the case, especially when rapid advances in multimedia technology are now unfolding on the Web. With great ingenuity, Joe Cleaver, platform strategy advisor in Microsoft's Financial Services Group, has leveraged this opportunity by starting to audio-enable his financial services blog with a series of illuminating chats with industry leaders.

In contrast to most other industries, financial services is one where IT (information technology) departments often find themselves scrambling to keep up with the needs of business users, Joe Cleaver notes.

In Industry Chat #1, he and colleague Joe Rubino, a Microsoft architectural evangelist, have created a quickly downloadble MP3 file that gives you a far reaching overview of how Microsoft's is helping different types of company decision-makers to implement .SQL Server, Silverlight, and other NET technologies for coping with various sides of the financial services equation.

When played back with Windows Media Player, the audio soundtrack is accompanied by computer-generated fractal design animations, in suitably MP3 style.

Beyond folks who specialize in business strategy, the Microsoft financial services team also includes evangelists and other experts in .NET architecture and the technical "bits and bytes" of development and data center issues, according to the two Joes.

By clicking on another link in this multimedia blog, you can tune in on Industry Chart #2, where Daniel Chait, managing director and co-founder of Lab 49, jumps aboard to deliver intriguing details about how technology is spurring quantum leaps of change throughout the capital markets.

Although some traders are still shouting to each other across the exchange floor, more and more of them enter into their jobs these days with backgrounds -- and even advanced degrees -- in mathematics, engineering, and computer science.

Computers are capable of processing incalculably more information than human beings -- and also unlike people, they can work around the clock, points out Dan, whose company has been building financial applications for customers ever since its inception back in 2002, when the .NET platform was just leaving beta testing. 

Dan tells Web listeners that upshots of the recent changes include algorithmic trading, grid computing, large databases, advanced 3-D visualization applications for traders, and P&L (profit and loss) statements that are now done in real time -- whenever you want -- instead of once a week.

But still, he says, human beings need to be sitting in the cockpit to direct the computers in the desired directions, obtaining results around various combinations of parameters related to trading speed, costs, and impact on financial markets, for example.

Dan likens old style financial trading to a Wright Brothers plane and contemporary trading to a modern commercial jet, where pilots need to handle control mechanisms around diverse and often abstract systems dealing with everything from air navigation to playing a motion picture for passengers on the flight.

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Why the blog is of interest:

Risk management is a multidimensional and increasingly global discipline, and Microsoft’s Sai Sireesh is particularly well suited to shine a light on its manifold aspects.

Fortunately for his readers, that’s exactly what Sai is accomplishing in a blog first launched in April of this year on the PRMIA (Professional Risk Managers' International Association) Web site.

“Sleepless in Seattle, I start this blog to share, discuss and most importantly learn about the New Frontiers in Risk & Compliance,” wrote Sai, who serves as the global lead for Microsoft’s Risk Management & Compliance Solutions.

In keeping with his title, the Microsoft executive addresses these frontiers with a decidedly international flair, whether he’s talking about regulatory climates in the US and Australia or forays into online virtual worlds by banks and insurance providers in northern Europe.

“As more and more financial institutions get creative about reaching out to the youth market by establishing presence in 3D virtual worlds, it is going to be interesting as to how the traditional risk management practices will evolve to keep up with this new online presence and associated risks,” he observed in one blog entry, penned in June.

Sai then proceeded to outline the virtual world activities of organizations ranging from banks in Germany and the Netherlands to the Belgian financial services group Fortis and a UK-based financial concern known as the Yorkshire Building Society.

Subsequently, in a pair of entries in July, Sai turned to the topic of Basel II, juxtaposing the progress of initiatives in the US against those in Australia.

Blogging from Barcelona during October, just before a Risk Management and Excel Bootcamp in that Spanish city, he jotted down his thoughts about European risk management practices related to transparency and risk control.

“These are expected to have wide ranging implications for the markets guidelines and the rest of the world, too,” predicted the Microsoft risk management specialist.

Sai explains that, on the whole, he’s focusing on ten different areas in his “New Frontiers in Risk Management & Compliance” blog: Risk Visualization; Next Generation Risk & Compliance Architectures; Risk Pricing Clusters; Risk & Compliance Taxonomy; Pan Regional Risk Data Grids; Digital Assets Management; Cross Industry Risk Management Practices; Incubating Centers of Risk Management Excellence and Practices; Risk Management Career Options; and Embedding Risk Management and Compliance in Organizational DNA.

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