The paper I had been working on went a little off the rails. I got into a groove and was cooking with gas, but in the process of writing I went off on a tangent to my original topic and the result just wasn’t right. I’m not happy about it, but the process did help me think through some of the details of the work I need to do, so I think I’ll be able to reuse some of the content or concepts at a later time. And the conference I was targeting was a bit of a long shot anyway, so I guess it’s just as well.

But I got some excellent news this week. My boss asked me to submit an abstract when we got a call for submissions from a SOA symposium sponsored by The Association for Enterprise Information (AFEI). I was pleasantly surprised that my submission was accepted, and I’ll be speaking at the 3rd Annual DoD SOA & Semantic Technology Symposium.

Now comes the hard part — get my research into good enough shape to present to that audience. But I’m glad to do it; nothing focuses the mind like a deadline.