As I indicated a couple weeks ago I was going to be speaking at the Philly Code Camp 2009.2. If you weren’t there you missed a great day of learning about many of the new technologies that are going to matter to you, as a developer, in the next 12 months. Not all of the topics were Microsoft related or even Developer related, for the first time this year there was an Enterprise IT track, targeting specifically you network admins. So Code Camp next year is something you should pay attention too, even if you are not a developer.

Also the Beginner Track was broken in to two different tracks this year, Beginner I (which I was apart of) is designed for those of you who are brand new to software development and want to get a feel for the tools, Beginner II is designed for those of you who already have a handle on the tools and want to start learning a little more about developing software. Both are great tracks and both had a very good showing, so if you know a high school student, college student, or seasoned learner that wants to start developing software, they should stay tuned and check back with the Philly.NET website in late March 2010.

Also if you weren’t there, I really hope you can make the next one in April. You will not be disappointed. The two presentations that I attended this Code Camp were:

1. Al Katawazi’s presentation on using ASP.NET MVC in the Enterprise.
2. Dani Diaz’s presentation on the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)

Both presentations were interesting and engaging and I highly recommend them as speakers.

While I am on the subject, if you have a chance, and were present for my talks, please take the time to respond to the survey of what you thought about Philly Code Camp 2009.2 and specifically my talks. This is the only way that Philly.NET Users Group can get feed back on what to do better next time and what worked great this time around. I look forward to the feedback. And there is a Zune HD in it for one lucky winner.

• Code Camp 2009.2 Evaluation

As I promised in my talks here are the downloadable resources that I used as part of my presentation.

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Beginner I Track – 10:30 AM – Gooey GUI… Programming in Visual Studio

• Microsoft Visual Studio Express
  http://www.microsoft.com/express/download
• Microsoft SQL Server Express w/ Tools
  http://www.microsoft.com/express/sql/download
• Sara Ford’s Blog:
  http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford
• And Sara Ford’s best selling book on the subject

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Tools Track – 3:30 AM – Visual Studio 2010 Extensibility

• MSDN Visual Studio Extensibility
  http://www.msdn.com/vsx
• Visual Studio Extensibility Team Blog
  http://blogs.msdn.com/vsxteam
• Samples shown during demonstration
  http://editorsamples.codeplex.com/
• My project for the URL Rewriter showing during demonstration
  http://urlrewriter.codeplex.com/

Tags: Code Camp, Code Camp 2009.2, philly.net, Public Speaking

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For the second 2009 Philly Code Camp, it will be held at the DeVry University campus in Fort Washington, PA on Saturday, October 17 from 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM. If you haven’t signed up please register on the Philly.NET web site.  Detailed directions are on the DeVry web site.  Check here and here for the latest printable agenda, there will be:

• Lots of code, just say no to slides!
• 8 hours of presentations
• 60 sessions (8:30, 10:00, 12:30, 2:00, 3:30)
• 12 tracks including two hands-on Beginner rooms and the Bonus Track
• 600 seats with tables (laptops welcome)
• Free breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack (expanded menu!)
• Raffles and prizes at 5:00
• Convenient parking
• After hours party in Ambler (network with speakers and attendees)

All of this is made possible by the Gold partners (Component One, Hosting.com, TEK Systems), Silver partners (Pearson, Redgate, Telerik) and the Platinum site sponsors (DeVry University, Microsoft).

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My First Presentation at 10:00

I have been asked back to do my presentation from April again in the newly expanded Beginner I track at 10:00 AM.  The abstract for this talk is as follows:

This session explores the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and how it is used to develop Web and Windows applications.  The topics include:

• The IDE
• Solutions and projects
• Templates
• Files created
• The debugger
• The configuration file

If you are going to be attending this talk please bring Visual C# 2008 Express with you, that is going to be the main tool I will be using to demonstrate the features of Visual Studio.

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My Second Presentation at 3:30 PM

I will also be doing a new presentation on extending Visual Stuido 2010 in the Tools track at 3:30 PM.  The abstract for this is as follows:

I will be showing the basics of how to get started on extending Visual Studio 2010 for custom highlighting and intellisense support for custom Domain Specific Languages that may be used with in a company for configuration or custom processing. I will be using a real world example, of how I am extending visual studio to support the coding of the Apache mod_rewrite style configuration files that are used in my URL Rewriter that was featured in PDC 2008 last year. http://urlrewriter.codeplex.com

If you are going to be attending this talk please bring Visual Studio 2010 with you and the Visual Studio SDK already installed.

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On the day of the presentation I will be posting up the slides and any links that are relevant to my presentation on this blog.

Tags: Code Camp, Code Camp 2009.2, philly.net

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You can now use the Amazon Look Inside feature to view many parts my book that is going to be released June 22, 2009.  So if you are interested use the links below to go to different parts of the book or search for specific things.

• Front Cover
• Table of Contents
• First Pages
• Index
• Back Cover
• Surprise Me!
• Search Inside This Book:

Tags: Book

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I have always been driven by the idea that computers and to the greater extent the internet should be as transparent as possible to the users.  People shouldn’t care about what the hot new websites are to meet people with similar interests.  In fact I think this is most of the problem why people are becoming more and more disconnected from each other on a personal level.  And more and more disconnected from the human experience, of social interaction.  There is so much communication that is lost when you cannot see a person face to face, and experience things in the same environment that they do.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could find and meet new local people with similar interests, hobbies, and ambitions, whatever they maybe.  The Internet currently excels at all of this even getting people physically together to meet.

However, this requires a lot of active participation of the person searching and trying to find the right website where everybody of a particular interest meets, and then you need to find somebody locally who is willing to meet up for dinner or a gathering of some kind.  This is a lot of work to find people who are interested in the same stuff as you are.  And it is no wonder so many people just give up.  Now imagine that barrier is removed and finding people with similar interests, hobbies, and ambitions is a passive activity.  Where you are automatically alerted to a new person or group in your area that shares your interests, sort of like Google Alerts for real life.

I would really like to start working on this problem with a small group of developers and people that share a similiar passion to physically connect people in a meaningful way with other people that share their interests.

Tags: Google Alerts, Real Life

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