A few months ago Microsoft annonced first contest for Architects - TechEd Iron Architect. As I am member of local IASA chapter and participate in developing and review IASA Foundation Reference Model I am interesited in this event. Actually I am most developer and solution architect.
Profesion IT architect is to be developed at world level. More about this later when we prepare course about this for IASA.
Back on TechEd Iron Architect. I pasted the problem here as there was message at http://blogs.msdn.com/ironarchitect/ that winners would be listed from June 20, 2006 to July 20, 2006.
"The final winner will be voted on by the distinguished panel of judges and awarded a free Architect certification(valued at $10,000). (Winners must go through application process for the certification program and be accepted in order to receive the paid certification)."
So the task was:
Problem Statement:
Have you ever been to a conference where you find it takes so long to walk between rooms for sessions – even though they are on the same subject? Have you then rushed to the room only to find that it was over capacity? Do you wish for a more dynamic way of allocating rooms for sessions based on popularity and location?
Now you have an opportunity to change it! The Iron Architect competition this year is about creating a new experience for TechEd session management. Here’s how it works…
The Requirements:
You have been asked to create an architecture that dynamically allocates sessions for presentations at TechEd 2007. Aware of the people’s presence throughout the conference, the new system must dynamically allocate the rooms for a session 30 minutes before it’s due to start based on:
· Location and number of attendees in the area
· Attendees that have registered their schedule
· Location of speaker
· Availability of suitable room for session
For example, if 55 of the 70 attendees that pre-registered for DEV101 are on the 2nd floor on the convention center, and the speaker is somewhere close by, the most appropriate course of action would be to allocate a room on the 2nd floor. You have to work out how to perform this allocation, and how to notify both the attendees and the speaker of the room allocation.
Assumptions:
· The system must be technically feasible using today’s technology.
· Next year’s conference is also at the Boston Conference Center
· There are a 100 sessions across 5 days. Total 500 sessions.
· The timetable follows a similar format to this years.
Proposed Solution can be found here. (They are donwloaded from http://blogs.msdn.com/ironarchitect/ and the only reason for this is to preserve them in case http://blogs.msdn.com/ironarchitect/ decide to remove them)
And of course.... THE WINNER - The Iron Architect prize goes to Steve Land, Pricipal Architect, Codesic Consulting. (download his solution)