Sometimes, when something new comes along, the best way to see it being useful is to see it being used.  Think about it.  If I went back to 1960 and visited a family somewhere in the midwest of the USA, and explained a “computer chip” to them, would they see value?  Maybe.  Probably not.  Life is just fine as it is, thank you. 

But if I showed them how I could use a computer chip to make a simple and useful device, that could do the trick.

Oslo is a new technology for modeling, and many Microsoft-platform developers are unfamiliar with model-driven development in general.  I don’t think the best thing is to say “it’s cool” but to say “here is how you use it to solve a problem.”

Microsoft IT is looking to adopt Oslo in a big way, and along the way, we will be going through all of those same growing pains.  We use modeling tools in many areas, and some teams are quite sophisticated in their use of modeling, but Oslo is a major step forward for the Microsoft platform, and we are excited to be adding this new tool to the arsenal.

As we do, I hope to be able to come back to you, in this forum or in some other one, to talk about the useful problems we were able to solve using Oslo.  I believe that “showing” is better than “telling.”

But for those of you who are still curious, please jump over to the Oslo Developer site and download the CTP or read up on some excellent material.  I especially like this blog post (Oslo == 42) for helping to put Oslo into context.