New Facilitators

Greetings fellow IT architects ! Many of you will have noticed that Craig S. is in need of a hiatus and has asked for assistance in moving our agenda forward. I, along with James, have accepted the challenge, endeavoring to do the very best that we can to keep our membership learning and growing.

In support of this effort, I would ask that each of you take a few moments out of your busy schedule and tell us what it is that you would like us to discuss in our meetings. Are there topics that you would like to see re-visited? Issues that you would like to see covered that have not been discussed yet? This is your group, and we can only make it as great as you would like for it to be.
Let's hear from you.

- Donovan Johnson

No ColARC until further notice

There will not be a ColARC meeting in May, or following, until I can find someone to organize them.

Family circumstances (good ones!) are preventing me from organizing ColARC or even attending any evening events. Anybody want to help?

April Meeting Announcement: AOGEA 2011 First Quarter Meeting

Please join the 2011 first quarter meeting of The Association for Open Group Enterprise Architects (AOGEA), Ohio chapter, whose purpose is to advance the enterprise architecture profession and professional excellence in IT Architecture in the Ohio region.

The meeting will be on Thursday, April 07, from 6-8 p.m., at 5515 Parkcenter Circle Dublin, OH 43017, in the Ivory Conference Room.

Agenda for the meeting:

• Registration and snacks
• Value of EA, Utilities Industry
  Pablo Vegas, CIO of AEP
• EA experience
  Srini Krish, CTO J.P.Morgan Chase
• A Plan For All Seasons - Achieving Strategic Alignment Through EA
  WebAge Solutions
• Q & A
• Vote of thanks

Tickets for the event are free, but you need to register to attend.

Join Us on April 7th for a Joint Meeting with AOGEA Ohio

The next ColARC meeting will be a joint meeting with AOGEA Ohio on Thursday, 7 April. Location and speakers will be announced soon!

No meeting in February

We will not have a meeting in February due to lack of a speaker. Please feel free to suggest speakers for future meetings! The next meeting will be a joint meeting with AOGEA Ohio, probably in March. The date will be announced here when it is set.

Next ColArc Meeting: February 1st

Many thanks to the 40 or so people who came to our November meeting! Our next meeting will be February 1. Happy New Year!

September Meeting: Architecture *is* the Business

What would you do if you were CEO for a month? What if you suddenly had to answer directly to your customers, your stockholders, your board, your employees – what would you do first, then what would you do next? If you are an IT architect and several major business initiatives and various impact scenarios didn’t just run through your mind, then perhaps you should consider broadening your perspective. Forward-thinking companies hold architects accountable for business progress and impact well outside of the IT domain. Because the practice of architecture crosses organizational and functional boundaries, architects are uniquely positioned to drive investment strategy, identify revenue opportunities, and reduce cost/risk for the enterprise. In this session we’ll explore a model designed to help IT architects expand their role to optimally drive business and technology strategy, describe the steps architects need to take to jump-start business transformation, and provide lessons-learned along the way.

This presentation is a recording from the 2009 ITARC conference in New York City. The speaker, Angela Yochem, will be joining us via Skype to answer questions after the presentation.

ANGELA YOCHEM is an executive in a multinational technology company, a thought leader in architecture practices and large-scale technology management, and the author of “Event Driven Architecture – How SOA Enables the Real-Time Enterprise”. Angela has held senior leadership roles in Fortune 50 companies where she drove technology transformation based on business objectives. Prior to her executive roles, Angela specialized in design and delivery of large-scale distributed systems and solutions to complex integration and convergence challenges. She has extensive B2B and B2C commerce implementation experience, with a foundation in systems design and network design and management of multicampus networks. Angela is the author of J2EE and WebLogic Server, 2nd Edition and is an IASA Fellow and an US Patent holder. Angela serves on executive boards and is a regular speaker at events and forums in the United States and abroad.

The presentation will be on Tuesday, September 7th, at 6:00 p.m, at ICC, 2500 Corporate Exchange Drive, Suite 310, Columbus, OH 43231, on the third floor. The meetings are always free, and we usually give away books and other door prizes.