Review: Soul Music

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My copy of Soul Music has been read and re-read so many times that it is fluffy edged, lacking corners and badly faded. I think this pretty much sums up how much I enjoy reading this Discworld novel. Admittedly, the first time I read it when I was little I didn't get many of the jokes as I'd barely heard of rock and roll. Even now I think a few fly over my head. Here, though, is the main reason that Soul Music isn't one of my favourite Pratchett books - it relies slightly too heavily on puns, parodies and pastiche (saw alliteration, couldn't resist, guilty as charged). The plot is simple enough, to allow space for enough jokes: while Death takes a career break, handing over to his granddaughter Susan, The Band With Rocks In introduces rock and roll to the Discworld. A couple of perennial favourite characters get involved, including the Librarian, Death of Rats and C.M.O.T. Dibbler.

This is the first book to introduce Susan, one of my favourite Discworld characters. It's fun to see her reacting to the general weirdness of the Discworld in the way that anyone from a sensible world like Earth would to such things as Death of Rats and floating horses. And Death of Rats of course makes the whole book better - how can "SQUEAK" manage to be such an expressive phrase? It's a good outing for the wizards as well and their general susceptibility to weirdness allows Pratchett to cram in a few tasteless jokes (OK, so I giggled lots at them).

My only real problem with Soul Music is that it doesn't quite all hang together as well as some of Pratchett's later Discworld novels. Things seem a bit haphazard and good plot is neglected in favour of getting in all the possible rock and roll references. That said, it always makes me laugh and it does manage to send up some of the most notable and funny aspects of the music industry. And it introduces the idea of a shop that appears only when you need it, then disappears again, which I have found invaluable for everyday use, like so many of Pratchett's well observed details.

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Interning as an Enterprise Architect

I've been shadowing the enterprise architect at the University of Bristol, trying to find out a bit about one of the more unusual job titles I've seen so far. Some time spent on Wikipedia and Google gave me an outline of what the job was yet that didn't really explain how it was done. I'm guessing that this is partly because it is going to work differently depending on the type of company and where it is in the lifecycle of having an enterprise architect; as Bristol is one of the first universities in the UK to have an enterprise architect they are pioneering how this job fits into the way a university works. So I did see a more unusual enterprise architect role, however it is interesting to get a glimpse at how these sort of organisational projects are worked out - especially from my viewpoint as having been an undergrad and postgrad.

An enterprise architect produces artifacts that map out the systems of an enterprise (from small projects to large departments). These artifacts include seemingly endless numbers of documents, presentation slides, and notes from meetings that detail all the information available as well as the ArchiMate models that represent this information. In particular, the enterprise architect is looking at how the technology and applications involved in a system are used. ArchiMate is a modelling language and provides a standard way to describe systems, making communication clearer.

While I was there I was attending meetings, learning how to use the Archi software and having a go at creating a model based on information provided in one of those meetings. Because Bristol has only had its enterprise architect for about half a year, everything is still in the very early stages and so a lot of time has to be spent researching, collecting information, and constructing models from scratch. And in the process information that isn't known is discovered and it seems that lots of people find out about things that they hadn't spotted before. I certainly knew nothing about how the university ran beforehand and it was quite daunting at meetings when acronyms were flying across the table, though it makes meetings more interesting and quite like detective work. By the end of it all I'd got just enough of a grip to have a go at making my own models and was able to contribute a little bit of a student's perspective of university IT systems to the process. I wrote up a report comparing two modelling systems used by the university and this really got me thinking about the various advantages of different ways of creating diagrams.

A practice model (not about Bristol) in Archi.

 The free software Archi allows you to create models which are like a hybrid of flow diagrams and mind maps. Mine often involved a confusing number of line, but with practice it's a great way of representing complex systems. I love diagrams and ways of representing things visually; I'm so used to writing and essays that changing to a model allows a whole new way of thinking and draws out elements, particularly problems, that wouldn't otherwise be noticed. Also, I find a model can be much easier to understand when learning about something. Archi allows you to make simplified versions of complex models so that you can show someone the basic version or only the bit that interests them. By the end I had a odd compulsion to try to make diagrams for all sorts of things!

What really struck me about enterprise architecture, at least in this case, is how much of it is able communication. Beyond just communicating the information available, which is the basis of the job, it involved so many people skills in working through problems and getting the details clear at meetings; language skills in knowing how to rephrase technical language; and visual skills as the diagrams make use ways of organising information that can't be done in words.

I thought enterprise architecture would be all about the technology but so much was about understanding people; about how they use technology and about how to communicate best with them. Gathering together all the information into one place, through the enterprise architecture, also creates links between people through the liaison of the enterprise architect themselves. They provide a human connection between different groups and between people and technology.