Life's Big Mystery: Who am I and why am I here?

My name is Chris and I spend most of my days for my employer working on a myriad of projects and systems in the criminal justice arena.  I work mainly in .NET (VB to be specific) but I am no longer afraid of things like C# and Java.  Somewhere along the line I told someone I knew something about XML too. 

Most of my days are split between being a "product/project leader" for one of our mobile solutions and also as the interfaces guy.  I get to spend a lot of my interface guy time lecturing about SOA, SaaS, and S+S and why we need to change everything right now.  That also means I spend a lot of time with Web Services (ASMX and now WCF) and NIEM - the National Information Exchange Model.  If you're not familiar with NIEM you can think of it as a huge XML dictionary that can be used as a basis for information exchanges.  For those of us in the Government and Justice side this is a huge thing because it is a federally adopted standard and going forward, no one will be sharing information without it (especially if you get a DOJ grant). 

One thing I do know is that there is a lot going on with NIEM but not a lot of blogging about it that I have found.  Specifically not much at all on using NIEM with .NET.  I figured it's time to give a little back to the many blogger's who knowingly, or unknowingly have helped me put together pieces to some of the puzzles I was in charge of solving. 

I will apologize up front if some of my posts are vague in reference to what I do or why I'm attempting to do something.  Because of the scope of what I'm involved in I can't really spell it out in a public forum.  I'm sure there are blogger's with more important jobs than mine but I do have to use caution.  I like my job and I'd really like to keep it for a while.

If you like things like XML serialization, object relational mapping (specifically mapping objects to schemas), SOA, etc, stick around.  I may need some help or I may have something of use for you.