Come join us for Architecture Friday in Antwerp on 26 June about next generation enterprise architecture, as seen by two Australians and a Dane: Peter Bernus (wp) and Pat Turner, and me. If you want to participate, get in touch (you may get a discount code!).

Peter Bernus chairs IFIP WG5.12 Architectures for Enterprise Integration, and arranges the ICEIMT Workshop Next Generation Enterprise Architecture on 23-24 June in Leiden, which I have just registred for (unfortunately only last day). Themes on the agenda:

• Next Generation Enterprise Architecture (NextGenEA): what is it, what does it need to succeed and what does it include: Interoperability, ‘Cloud Computing’, new ways of Visualization, Enterprise Integration, Enterprise Resource Management, Enterprise Data Consolidation
• Role of the senior Decision Maker: What is the role of the senior decision maker? What types of information and tools do they require to be effective? Can NextGen EA make a difference or indeed add any value to the day to day activities and key decisions made by senior business managers within a modern Organization?
• Decision Support Tools: What are the current EA tools on the market? What are the current management decision support tools available to senior decision makers? Is there a gap or a cross over point between the two or is the current marketplace effectively being served by existing product offerings?
• Enterprise Architecture Frameworks (practice and theory): What do existing EA frameworks say about the role of senior decision makers in the architectural process and what is the role of architecture in the making of critical business decisions within the modern Organization?
• Interoperability: ­ present and future trends & standardization across Organizations? How do these trends support or refute the case for NextGen EA as a tool for senior decision makers within the modern Organization?
• NextGen EA: New theories and techniques, interdisciplinary approaches for combining Management Theory and traditional EA topics, such as Enterprise Modelling / Enterprise Engineering / Enterprise Integration
• Which Research Frameworks are appropriate for the investigation of the above questions?  Human understanding and communication as a condition of interoperability. Suitable social and organisational structures that create the motivation and the opportunity to achieve common understanding and consensus and the potential need for new organisational forms and cultural change

Being a ICEIMT workshop means it is part of the International Conference on Enterprise Integration and Modelling Technology, a series of landmark conferences held since 1992. ICEIMT originally started as a strategic initiative of NIST and the European Union to review the state of the art in Enterprise Integration (EI) and to make recommendations to industry and research, creating roadmaps for EI research and product development. I’m proud to say that I have just joined the ICEIMT’2010 Steering Committee.

Before the actual ICEIMT’2010, which is not yet scheduled/placed, the will be another workshop, on 14-16 December in Bled in Slovenia. The main objective of this workshop is to bring together management scientists, engineers and enterprise architects to hold an open discussion on the future synergies of these disciplines.

• business design and business management — the use of enterprise architecture practice in various transformations
• coherency of decision making — from senior management to low level control
• whole of life and complete life cycle approaches to enterprise engineering — the systems science of EA and management
• decision support tools — enterprise modelling, business process management & analysis, and business intelligence
• the fusion of the management and engineering disciplines
• the enterprise architect as a profession: skills, education, training and accreditation
• unifying theories and enterprise ontologies
• architecture frameworks and their use in managing projects, programmes, enterprises and networks of enterprises
• case studies
• open research questions
• etc.

The Leiden-workshop is part of ICE2009 conference on “Collaborative Innovation: Emerging Technologies, Environments and Communities”. ICE stands for International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising. The term Concurrent Enterprising is

an amalgam which brings together the paradigms of Concurrent Engineering and Extended/Virtual Enterprising: The Concurrent Enterprise is a distributed, temporary alliance of independent, co-operating manufacturers, customers and suppliers using systematic approaches, methods and advanced technologies for increasing efficiency in the design and manufacturing of products and services by means of concurrency, parallelism, integration, standardisation, team work and more for achieving common goals on global markets.

Sounds interesting, but I only have time to attend the NextGenEA workshop. Actually, only half of it.