Saturn 2014 Review

I had many thoughts returning from SATURN 2014. I am afraid if my speech was not well prepared or if my presentation was done unnaturally. I was also concerned about how the people from US felt during my presentation. However, it was very clear that SATURN is a great place to learn and it gave me many opportunities for my growth. Now I would like to summarize what I think SATURN is.

1. A place where Practitioners gather

At the reception place, even though I studied English for more than ten years and have lived in the US for a while, it was difficult to get every idea of what native speakers talk in such a non formal occasion. I happened to chat with people from an insurance company from Ohio and they seem to attend SATURN every year. To continue to be an architect, they seem to think that this is a very useful conference. The reason is that SATURN is a place where practitioners gather. In other words, they can learn how others succeeded in applying architecture-oriented methods, tailoring them for their organizations. They also could hear what the outcome looked like and what the lessons learned are if they failed. On top of that, they said that it costs lots of money and time to follow the SEI's guides but here other architects share how they found the optimized solutions for their organizations; therefore, they can be inspired to create their own methods for their organizations.

2. A place where the best architect gather

In fact, nowadays many people think that the architecture-driven approach is opposite to agile and for that reason the architecture-driven approach is not well accepted. However, personally I do not think that they are against each other. Software architecture is a blue print; therefore without it, a good product may not be developed. During a SATURN tutorial class that I took, I heard that SEI is researching how to combine scrum and architecture design sprint and develops its own solution. However, I think that another trend accelerates this phenomenon is that cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Service is prevailing. I mean that more and more people are depending on Amazon for their system's performance and availablity. Especially, if they are developing based on a pre-defined, well-known framework, they don't have to be concerned about software architecture. However, if this is not the case, the more complex the system is, the more likely we will encounter architectural issues. Let's get back to the point. At SATURN we can discuss this kind of trend with world class architects and learn the solutions from the discussion. We can hear their insights as well. SATURN 2014's keynote speech and speaker materials are on this page:

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/saturn/2014/keynotes-and-speakers/#speaker_keynote 

3. A place where we learn

It is so natural that you can learn many things in different forms at SATURN. It includes SEI's tutorials, 30 min presentations, and 1.5 hour lectures with lab. Also, they have 'open space', where every person can invite anyone who are interested in some subjects. Keynote speeches and panel discussions also provided great learning opportunities. On top of these, networking opportunities such as reception give you unexpected learning.

4.  A place that widens your network

I believe that SATURN provides the best networking opportunities around software architecture. In fact, I met a person that I want as a mentor and authors who wrote my school's text books. Also, I met many people from Korea. I think that it would be great if I can do some researches with the people that I met during this SATURN and prepare next presentation.