TNT

Introduction 

Welcome to the ArchitectHer “Technical, Not Technology” (TNT), a forum for the community that focuses specifically on the technical aspects of “doing” good architecture e.g. use of principles and patterns, and not technology specific topics like “how to build microservices using vendor-solution X”. 

We hope that you’ll be able to be a part of this initiative – bringing your expertise and experience and using it to help facilitate fruitful conversations amongst participants.  

Got an topic you'd like us to cover?  Let us know!  Contact us at events@architecther.co.uk 

Want to contribute as a presenter? 

We'd love to hear from you - contact us at events@architecther.co.uk, including information such as:

• The name of your topic.

• What's in it for the audience (why will they want to attend, how will it help them?).

• A short abstract about your topic.

• Some information about you and your experience presenting.

Contributor Guidance 

The following guidance lays out what the TNT series is hoping to do, how we see it working, and how you can contribute. 

Event Goals 

To spark conversations amongst participants (attendees), that provide an opportunity to share ideas and experiences, in relation to the events topic. 

For contributors to lead and help structure this conversation, whilst also sharing their hard-won expertise. 

Normally, a presentation primarily aims to share pre-formulated ideas, with “conversation” / Q&A as a secondary by-product.  With TNT we want to try flipping that – contributors should absolutely still come prepared to present great ideas – but the conversation should become more central – ideally we’d like to see a 60/40 split, where the conversation makes up around 40% of the event. 

Topics 

As mentioned, TNT is intended as a forum that focuses specifically on the technical aspects of “doing” good architecture.  This includes (but isn’t limited to): 

• Architectural methodology – processes and techniques for how we do architecture: developing architectures, develop and reuse patterns, options analysis, document and communicate architectures, estimating architectural effort, estimating delivery effort or solution complexity, and so on. 

• Communication: how to describe your architectures verbally, using written words, diagrams, view models, at the whiteboard or in tools, stakeholder management. 

• Architectural topics, such as system quality attributes and non-functional requirements, technology selection, integration, estimating an architectures operating costs, developing strategies. 

You’re free to cover any level of architecture: software, solution, domain and enterprise; and any domain where architects may participate, including application, business, data, infrastructure, integration, security – to name a few. 

As the name “Technical, Not Technology” suggests, TNT isn’t intended as a place for vendors to push their wares.   You can definitely discuss specific tools, technologies and products, but this should in support of the main topic, not be the main topic.  For example, if you wanted to talk about integration patterns, a good approach would be to talk about technology agnostic patterns and then give some real-world examples using specific vendor products if that helped elaborate your ideas.   

If you do need to discuss a specific technology, product or vendor, a good way to make sure you’re not being too biased is to make sure you talk about more than one technology, product or vendor. 

Got any questions on this?  Ask someone from the ArchitectHer team, we’re here to help events@architecther.co.uk.

Basic Event Format 

TNT events are online events, that run roughly every 2 months, usually around the end of the month.   

Events have a target duration of about an hour, give or take; usually timed to occur “after work”, typically midweek (Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursdays) London UK time.  There is also the possibility of a “fast-follow” event, the same time the following week – more on this below. 

We’re aiming to make the sessions relatively informal and interactive as possible.  Rather than the stereotypical one-way “presentation” format, where questions are only taken at the end, we want to see sessions that spark conversation at multiple points during your presentation. 

You should come with some sort of plan, which could be in the form of a presentation deck or other digital materials, and use this as the basis for the session.   

Assuming an event duration of ~1 hour, and allowing 10 mins for welcomes, etc, a 60/40 split would mean ~30 mins of presentation and ~20 mins of discussion.  Timing on the day is likely to be plus-or-minus 5-to-10 mins.   

Fast-Follow Events 

“What happens if there’s lots of conversation, we run out of time, and we’re only halfway through the presentation?”  Great question – someone from the ArchitectHer organizing group will be with you to help run the session; with their help and guidance we retain the option to schedule a “fast-follow” event – probably same time the following week, where the second part of your topic can be covered. 

When volunteering and preparing for your event, think about your material – what ideas you want to share and what conversations you think might arise; then consider how this might fill ~50 minutes of time, with the roughly 60/40 split.  The ideal is to keep the event to a single session, but the fast-follow option exists in-case the conversations prove too engaging and there is sufficient consensus that a fast-follow session is desirable.  Keep that time commitment in mind when volunteering and preparing for your event. 

Event Preparation Timeline 

• Day +7: TNT Fast-Follow Event held (if needed). 

• Day +1: TNT Fast-Follow Event announced. 

• Day 0: TNT Event held.

• Day -14: TNT Event announced. 

• Day -21: TNT Event locked-in. 

• Pre-flight checks, walkthroughs, etc.

• Events Penciled-in.

Event Delivery 

TNT events are a little different – and something we’re still experimenting with ourselves! 

Rather than presenting a 30 min lecture format presentation in one burst, we’d like to encourage active discussion throughout the presentation – not just at the end.  There’s a couple of aspects to this you might like to consider: 

• Presentation structure – think about ways you can structure your presentation so that you can intersperse “presentation” and “discussion”.  E.g., cover a topic and then provoke discussion on it, for example: 

• “Has anyone here had similar / different experiences...” 

• Pose a question based on your material, like a real-world scenario, and get the group to discuss how they would solve it, based on the ideas you just presented on. 

• “Are there other useful techniques that anyone here has used in the past?” 

• Facilitation – cognitively, it can be a lot to both present and facilitate open discussion.  There will always be at least one member of the ArchitectHer team on hand to help run the event (handle housekeeping, introduce you, and so on) - they can actively help facilitate the session if you like.  Be sure to discuss how you’d like the event to be facilitated with the ArchitectHer team as we prepare for your event. 

Supporting Material, Licensing, etc 

ArchitectHer is seeking to build up a collection of TNT materials to serve as a knowledge base for the community.  We’d really appreciate it if the materials presented can be located somewhere for the community to access after the event – ideally forever. 

• We suggest you think about how you want to license your materials – it's your intellectual property, so you should take care to protect it.   

• ArchitectHer recommends using Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org) as a great way to clearly mark and protect your work – whilst also making it available to the community. 

• By contributing within TNT, ArchitectHer assumes you are granting us, and the ArchitectHer community, with fair use of your materials for non-profit use.  Reach out to us if you’re not sure what this means.  We can also discuss the best approach for sharing event materials, so that it works for you and ArchitectHer.