The snacks at the DevSummit in Stockhom speak loudly of the healthy living of the Swedes.

Here is fruit and some yummy mango banana smoothies!

I remember the year at TechEd just after Steve Ballmer slimmed down and got healthy. The afternoon snacsk of candy bars, chips and hostess cupcakes was replaced with healthier fare - baked potato chips, celery and carrot sticks, stuff like that. From one extreme to another.

The above is MUCH more my speed, though I was also quite happy to find bite sized toblerone bars at one of the vendor booths!

I'm not sure which he is more excited about! Just kidding. But considering that his wife is going to let him go to the MVP summit only 2 weeks after their first child is born, it makes one wonder!

Hey Matthieu - what's this about making fun of being a VB MVP?

Matthieu has spent a lot of time in the MSDN forums answering questions on Entity Framework. Thanks to him, I've had time to write my book while he gives the team a run for their money on answering questions.

I used to live in NY State's Hudson Valley and am always interested in what's going on there with the software community.

Some folks I know are beginning to plan for a summit to bring together software people from around the region.

They have a website with a survey (on the registration page) to help with planning the summit.

Hudson Valley Software Summit

Here is a copy of the overview on the home page:

The goal of the Hudson Valley Software Summit (HVSS) is to encourage technological innovation in the region. The area is richly endowed with creative people, many of them software developers and entrepreneurs.

The HVSS is an opportunity for these folks to network with each other and to showcase their work for others outside the immediate community, such as potentially interested parties in New York City, Northern New Jersey, Albany, and Boston.Those for whom this event is a must attend occasion include:

• Venture capital firms
• Technology firms
• Internet service providers
• Private equity firms
• VC-backed portfolio companies
• Angel investors
• Professional service providers

Who work in the fields of:

• Biotechnology
• Communications
• Computers
• Internet
• Medical
• Peripherals
• Semiconductors
• Semiconductor equipment
• Software

Red-Gate is one of those companies that you just can't help but love. They produce phonemenally useful and popular developer /data developer tools, and the community facing people are a joy to work with. It doesn't surprise me that this stems from a company with a good soul. So it's no surprise (but still quite nice) to read that they have been chosen (for the 2nd year in a row) as one of the "Top 100 Best Small Companies to Work For" in the U.K. by the Sunday Times. Read more on Red-Gates's website.

Scott Galloway recently joined the ASP.NET team as a P.M. for ASP.NET 3.5. Congratulations!

My conspiracy theory is that Microsoft is actually building a new team for a new product called Scott.NET.

Who's next? Scott Mitchell? Scott Watermasysk? K.Scott Allen? There are still a LOT of ASP.NET Scotts not yet on the payroll.

Microsoft announced 14 high level promotions yesterday including those of ScottGu and Soma! read more

[A New DevLife Post]

Roger collected all of his Visual Studio Magazine covers (that is, those issues where articles written by him were featured on the cover) in one blog post. It's quite impressive!

Jonathan Carter was very interested in Entity Framework and Astoria. Last month, he started working for Microsoft as an Technical Evangelist. So he gets paid to share his excitement about these and other .NET technologies.

Guy Burstein was very interested in Entity Framewrok and Astoria writing lots of posts about the two topics. Today Guy announced that he has started working for Microsoft Israel with the Developer & Platform and Adoption team. He too says he has found the sweet spot of getting paid to do something that you are good at and love.

Congrats!!

When I was at ReMix Boston in early October, I remember that Stan Shultes told me that someone was doing user group presentation on Entity Framework in Florida but couldn't think of the person's name at the moment. Shortly afterwards, I had an email conversation with someone who had asked an interesting question on the ADO.NET forums and when he said he lived in Florida, I correctly put two and two together. It was Jonathan Carter who had been doing the presentations.

I met Jonathan a few weeks later at an SDR at Microsoft and, although I'm used to how young many programmers seem to me now (it's all relative ... only because I"m so friggin' old now ), I was surprised how young he was, but oh so smart. And of course, we had our passion for Entity Framework and Astoria in common!

This didn't go unnoticed and now Jonathan is wearing a blue badge! He is now the technical evangelist for Visual Studio and .NET Framework - a pretty impressive position to start with.

You can read more about Jonathan's new job here and then check out the rest of his blog because he's been blogging up a storm.

Kathleen Dollard gave up the fight against spam on her self-hosted blog and has moved over to MSMVP Blogs.

Here new blog, Leaning Into Windows, can be found at http://msmvps.com/blogs/kathleen

I just found out about Channel8 which is in Beta and was launched recently. it's aimed at students - from kids to PhD's.

There are arlready some great videos - interns at Microsoft, PhD students describing their research projects; blog posts and more.

I've been emailing it to all of my pals who are teachers and profs related to all things nerdy.

Even though i am on the INETA speaker committee (responsible for the NORAM Speaker Bureau), I didn't really know this was public yet but I'm starting to get some emails and see some blog posts that people are announcing their addition to the speaker bureau, so I guess it's okay to blog about it now!

Must be that the email I got wasn't a "how does this look before we send it out to the world?" but it was the official email.

Fifteen, count 'em 15! new people were added to the speaker bureau.  They are all on the website already so you can start ordering them up!

Rod Paddock - Rod has spent his kid's college fund travelling on his own dime to speak to user groups all over the u.s. and canada. he's been to VTdotNET and he's a great presenter. Rod is also editor of CoDe Magazine.

Markus Egger -  Markus is the publisher of CoDe, so he keeps Rod in line! Markus presents at conferences all over the world. I am always amazed at the ease at which he explains some difficult concepts in a easily understandable way. Even with that Austrian accent!

Mark Miller - You may know Mark from his crazy fun on Mondays! with Carl Franklin, but Mark is also a friggin genious who is one of the driving technical forces behind Developer Express. Mark is another one of those guys who speaks at user groups on his own dime all the time.

Nick Landry - aka Active Nick. Nick is a crazy and smart as hell guy from Montreal (though he's now a New Yakah living in Joisey)who is a guru in mobile device programming. He has been presenting at conferences for years. Watch out for that Quebequois accent, shiny bald head, and most especially his super silly jokes that somehow make technology sound dirty.

John Papa - John writes the Data Points columns for MSDN magazine and speaks at VSLIve a lot and we've just snagged him to present at devconnections this fall (he's doing 2 talks in the Data Access track that I coordinated and 2 in the Mobile Connections conference that Nick Landry chairs). Maybe if we keep him really busy on the speaker bureau, he'll be lulled into slacking off on his MSDN Mag column and I can steal it away from him. Evil laugh.

Ambrose Little - Ambrose has written books for WROX on ADO.NET 2.0, ASp.NET 2.0 Hacks and has a book on silverlight coming out. He works at Infragistics  and is an ASPINsider - and a really nice guy who will be a pleasure to host at your user group!

Oh, John Papa's really nice too. You should all invite him to speak at your groups. Keep him really busy!

DonXML - oh, wait, Don actually has a last name! It's Demsak. But really, "Donxml", need I say more?

Wow - 7 down and 8 to go. This is a lot of work and I have work to do.

I'm going to have to just cut & paste the rest. I know, that's really boring. Sorry!

Todd C. Bleeker, Ph.D., is regarded as an innovative, resourceful, and competitive technologist with an intense desire to excel. Todd is co-owner of Mindsharp (http://mindsharp.com/), a company that offers top-notch educational opportunities on the SharePoint platform.  Todd has architected many solutions for small and large corporations: P&G, Fingerhut, United Healthcare, itiliti (now PeopleClick), Air Canada, State of Minnesota and Bank of Montreal. Todd also presented on Web Services and MCMS at TechEd.  Todd loves to soak up whatever technology Microsoft is churning out and lives in Minnesota with his wife and six "high energy" children.

Mark Dunn has over 20 years of experience in the disciplines of software engineering, database administration, and project management. For the past four years, Mark has been awarded MVP status for his contributions to the Visual Studio .Net community and he serves as Microsoft's Regional Director covering the Southeast United States.  Mark also co-founded .Net Rocks, an Internet radio program for .Net developers recognized in over 80 countries and now hosted by Microsoft on the MSDN site. Mark is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Application Developer, Solution Developer for .Net, and Database Administrator.

Daniel Egan - MCT, MCSD, ASP.NET MVP, Daniel is the founder of Odyssey Consulting Group Inc. (http://www.ocgpros.com/), a Southern California software development company. In addition, Daniel teaches a .NET Certification course and serves on the .NET Advisory board at California State University, Fullerton. He is cofounder of the SoCalDotNet Developers Group and a frequent speaker and conference presenter including SDWest, and MIX07. He has written several articles for asp.netPRO magazine, and is the author of several books including an upcoming title on design patterns from WROX. [Daniel is also now heading up INETA Noram's Tech committee and working on getting a new website for us. But more importantly, he is going to win the "best dressed INETA Speaker award"]

Caleb Jenkins long time community leader, former Microsoft Developer Evangelist, training mentor and consultant with Improving Enterprises, Inc. Host, cameraman and editor for http://communitycast.tv/. Caleb lives in Dallas where he continues to date his beautiful wife and busy himself playing candy land and Xbox 360 with their four incredible children. Occasionally he writes curriculum, speaks at conferences, and writes code for silly things like twitter applications. Eventually he'll post some of the gazillion interviews that he's recorded on CommunityCast or blog at http://www.calebjenkins.com/

Kevin McNeish is President and Chief Software Architect of Oak Leaf Enterprises, Inc, and a Microsoft .NET MVP.  He is a well-know speaker and trainer throughout North America and Europe including VSLive!, DevTeach (where he serves as one of the .NET chairs), SDC Netherlands, and Advisor DevCon. He is co-author of the book "Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET", author of the book ".NET for Visual FoxPro Developers". He authors articles for CoDe magazine and has been interviewed on the .NET Rocks! Internet Radio Show. He is the Chief Software Architect of the MM .NET Framework and spends about half his time on the road training and mentoring companies to build world-class .NET applications.

Mark Michaelis is the IDesign architect specializing in WCF and VSTS. Mark was recognized by Microsoft as a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio Team System and C#. Mark holds a MS in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology and he serves on several Microsoft Software Design Review teams including WCF, C# and VSTS. Mark speaks at developer conferences both nationally and internationally and has written several articles and books, in addition to maintaining a blog. His most recent book is Essential C# 2.0 (Addison-Wesley, 2006). [Hey, there's nothing in this bio about riding roller coasters on top of tall buildings with Kathleen Dollard!]

David Yack is the CTO of Colorado Technology Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Colorado.  David specializes in large system architecture, design and integration.  David is a Microsoft Regional Director and is also a Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET.    David is a frequent speaker at user group and industry events and is co-author of two NET 2.0 related books.  David founded and is on the leadership team for the South Colorado .NET User Group and lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and two kids. You can always track David down via his blog at http:/blog.davidyack.com where he writes about his .NET adventures.

Scott Cate found a great way to support Scott Hanselman in his goal to raise $50,000 for the American Diabetes Association.

Scott's company is offerering there site search component EasySearchASP.NET for what looks like maybe only the cost of tax - with all of the real proceeds going directly to Scott Hanselman's fundraising effort.

So you get a great tool for a crazy cheap price and the entire amount goes to the American Diabetes Association.

You'd be silly not to do it!

One of the many midwestern towns that has been impacted greatly by the flooding is Findlay Ohio. Here's a picture that is currently on the home page of CNN.com.

According to the latest CNN article:

Findlay, Ohio, was enduring its worst flood in nearly 100 years.

"This is the most widespread it's ever been," Findlay Mayor Tony Iriti told The Associated Press.

Findlay is a beautiful small city with a lot of glamour to it thanks to it being the home of Marathon Oil. It has a main street right out of the 1920's and a lot of charming homes from that era as well. Of course, it's also home to the Sugar Towers, which should be one of the wonders of the world!

I got to go to Findlay last fall on my Central Ohio INETA "tour" (3 groups in 3 nights) and just loved the town and totally enjoyed the attendees at the user group meeting.

I've emailed Gary Shank, the leader of Findlay.NET who is currently sitting in a remote office, but still in Ohio and still suffering from the sweltering heat and the floods, but hanging in there.

I wish them all the best and look forward to coming back to do another user group talk and to get some pictures of those Sugar Towers!!

Besides being a technical guru and an amazing teacher (e.g. conference presenting and more), Kate Gregory is, to me, somewhat of a sage, a very wise and even-keeled person. So when she diverts a little from her great technical tips on her blog and gives some bigger lessons  -- life advice -- I definitely perk up my ears.

She has written about giving and taking, whether it's on newsgroups or forums, job interviews, interacting with clients or anywhere in your daily work.In the post she also references another post about knowing what you want (which I believe also inspired me to blog about at the time she wrote it).

After many years of being an icon of teaching us all how to use Microsoft development tools, Mike Gunderloy decided he needed to transition himself away from a dependency on Microsoft for personal reasons stated in this blog post, the first of his alter-blog "A Fresh Cup".

It was a scary proposition, mostly because he has a family of 6 (including himself) to support.

It's been 7 months and in a recent "status report", Mike seems to be content with his progress, productive with his learning curve and getting work using his new tools.

I'm not sure if I could go through the refactoring that he has done, going from "expert" to starting over again with a new set of development tools. On the other hand, he brings an enormous amount of IP to his adventure which makes the transition that much more interesting.

I think if I were going to make a big life change like this, it would be more along the lines of doing a dramatic life-style downsizing and returning to my love of potting (as in making clay pots and sculptures) and that just ain't gonna happen any time soon.

I have an enormous amount of respect for Mike on many levels and his commitment to following (and following through on) what he believes in is pretty impressive.

As a follow up to my recent post about spending time with the teens attending the Summer Institute in Information Technology in Burlington, I've written about my visit over on my DevLife blog.

[A New DevLife Post]

Although I'm pretty jaded about any achievement of Amanda Murphy (hey, I just expect great things of her!) I was happy to see her on the list of paneliests for this year's Women in Technology Lunchon at TechEd. It's a big honor.

Here's more on the luncheon (pasted from the TechEd site):

Women in Technology Luncheon

Every year, the Women in Technology luncheon provides a fantastic opportunity to network with other professional women in the computer industry. This year's luncheon takes place Wednesday, June 6, from noon – 1:30 P.M. and will feature Eileen Brown who will explore the challenges of being a woman and a technical professional in today's ever-changing world.

Eileen Brown, manager for the IT Pro Evangelist team in the Developer & Platform Group, will join us from Microsoft UK to share insights from a study done by Microsoft about women in technology. She will then introduce the panel of 4-5 phenomenal women, and moderate a discussion about attracting women into the technology field and retaining those who are already a part of the field.

Panelists include:

• Amanda Murphy, Senior Technology Specialist and Director of Operations for Infotech Canada and president-elect of INETA
• Lisa Coleman, Marketing Manger for Microsoft partner Intermedia.NET
• Mary Jo Foley, Currently the "unblinking eye on Microsoft" behind the "All About Microsoft" blog, and frequent radio, TV and newspaper commentator on Microsoft products, people and strategies.
• Ani Babaian, Senior Product Manager with Microsoft and author of a book to be released in October on women in technology.
• Mythreyee Ganapathy, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Education Strategies, and the mother of "a challenging 2.5 year old, who almost behaves like a Microsoft employee already."

There is an Israeli contingent of speakers at DevTeach this year, bringing Udi Dahan, Oren Eini and Roy Osherove.  I was especially happy to meet Roy because after so many years of blogging, he is someone I feel like I've known for a long time! Here's proof that we were not only on the same continent, but in the same room!

Bipin's website (well, that's one of them)

Bin's latest book:

I realized that I am somewhat like a sailor with a girl in every port, except that I'm a girl with a geek in every port.  When I learned that the weather might prevent me from flying the last leg of my trip home from Seattle last night (Seattle to Washington, then to Burlington), I didn't even have to think for more than a moment who I knew in the area. Andrew Duthie and his ever so lovely (and recently expanded) family live close to Dulles. Talk about a friend; he even came to pick me up at the airport! I got to visit briefly with their 4 yr old who Andrew and Jennifer woke up just long enough for a "hi" (Joseph and I fell hard for each other last time I visited). Wireless, a comfy bed, a beautiful new baby to meet. And happily for me, Andrew has recently become slightly obsessed with making the perfect cup of coffee, which I got to sample before we headed back to the airport this morning. Pretty convenient that he had a flight out this morning too.  

I was heads down prepping for DevConnectiosn last week and missed this post from Beth Massi. This is fabulous news, not just for Beth but for anyone who is a fan of the VB Developer Center (and all the new fans that I'm sure she will attract). Beth is one of the most energetic people I know and she's scary smart, too!

Congrats Beth!!

Thursday, March 22, 2007 6:27 PM
Yes, I swallowed the red pill, drank the koolaid, been assimilated, whatever...
That's right folks, I joined Microsoft on Monday! (Right after the MVP summit, of course.) I'm very excited about my new position writing content for the Visual Basic Developer Center and promoting the Visual Basic language in the community. I'm still getting all set up over here but stay tuned!!!...

Here's her new blog: blogs.msdn.com/bethmassi

Thanks again to Kate (she sure helps funnel good info for me), I see that Microsoft is sponsoring a contest to win a full paid trip to this [Microsoft sponsored?] summit.

You need to be a software developer chick (sorry guys), live in one of these 5 countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany or the UK, and not work for Microsoft.

The submission is an essay and due by April 2.

Check it out here.

Frances Allen's Turing award has rightfully created a big buzz as she is the first female in the award's 40 year history to get this incredibly prestigous technology award. (I love Larry O'Brien's comment about Grace Hopper (which Kate pointed out to me)!)

But you probably didn't hear that the Vermont Engineer of the Year award, which has been in place for 46 years went to its' first female recipient this year, too.

Katherine Norris worked at IBM for 38 years. She started in Fishkill in 1967 and moved up to Vermont to work at the IBM plant eleven years later. She retired only last year.

Can you imagine being a woman in Engineering at MIT in the 60's? That's not just engeineering, it's pioneering!

Read more in this Burlington Free Press article.

Frances Allen, who has a grand legacy at IBM with her work in compilers was awarded the Turing Award this year. The award has been around since 1966. She's the first woman who has ever gotten it. Very cool. Thanks to Carl Franklin for making sure I didn't miss this!

Okay, that' s just a little misleading. Charles will be doing the keynote for Wintellect's Devscovery NYC event in May.

I also heard that they have made a recent hire which,  knowing that hiree, I was very happy to learn that news as well!

When we attended the ASPInsiders Summit in December, I was impressed with the amount of time that many of the ASP.NET Team members spent with us over the three days (and nights) that we were there. Notably were Rich Ersek and Scott Guthrie, but really so many others that spent lots of time with us.

In one of the of the presentations that Scott did for us, we were reminded that he is a coder first and a manager second as he talked about working out some coding concepts on a plane but getting cut short because his laptop battery died.

One of the things that has always been great about Scott is that regardless of his elevation to higher and higher ranks at Microsoft, he's still, in many ways, just one of the guys, or should I say, just one of the geeks.

I have always been under the assumption that Scott, who is a very busy guy, has some of his lengthy technical posts and tutorials ghost written, but it just isn't true! He wrote about this in his rendition of "five things you didn't know about me..." that has been going around the blogosphere.

5) I write all of the blog posts and samples on my blog myself.  A lot of people often ask if I have help doing them - but I actually write all of the posts/tutorials entirely myself (hence the reason I usually post between 10pm and 2am at night <g>).  I've posted 217 blog posts over the last 12 months and have responded to ~6500 (non-spam) blog comments this year.  It has kept me busy, but I also find it a lot of fun.

You might also assume that this is just part of his job, but have you ever noticed when his posts are posted? 11:30 pm. 1am. 8:30 pm. etc.

And it just makes me wonder how he does it all, but only adds to the enigma that is Scott. All I can say is that I know I'm one of many many grateful developers!

"LOCAL GIRL DOES GOOD"

Okay, can't be helped. She lives very nearby. So that means to me, she's a local yokel. Although, as I don't know her, I suppose that merely makes me a fan. (blush)

Alison's book, Fun Home, which I have blogged about, recommended and given to number of friends is on top of Time Mag's 10 Best Books for 2006. I dont' read Time, but I do peek at her blog occasionally which is where a typically hilariously titled post when she learned about this.

But it's not just Time. It's on a LOT of lists. From another of Alison's posts:

Doug Reilly, along with his family, has fought an invansive cancer for a number of years. This never stopped Doug from being one of the smiliest guys at TechEd, answering posts on ASPAlliance listserver from the hospital and writing and sharing so much with so many through many ASP communities. Doug passed away today, quietly and peacefully, at home with his wife and children at his side. His wife Jean has been keeping his blog updated with his status and even today, somehow, she took the time and love to share with us this very very sad news. Even still, this evening she added another post about arrangements.

While does was still physically strong, he was cycling and fundraising for the LIVESTRONG foundation. He never let up and he truly lived strong right up until the end.

We will truly miss you Doug. Thanks for everything.

I've written some more about Doug over here on my DevLife blog.

Who else but the energetic Stephen Forte! HEre's his account of running yesterday's marathon. Now he's on his way to TechEd Barcelona. I'm on my way to speak at DevConnections in Las Vegas. But my marathon was a marathon weekend of sitting in front of my computer.

One of my clients rolled out the Beta version of their big project this week - a public website with brilliant plumbing that allows end users to build their own interactive floorplans and maps. Drop your map or plan onto the site, upload pictures that represent views of different locations on the map/plan (a bedroom, a vista on a trail map), link them up, type in some descriptions and voila - you have a beautiful end product that any user can easily navigate. There are no refreshes to bring the various pictures up and I'm not talking AJAX style partial post backs. The photos just transparently change on the page.

It was a major undertaking and is all done in asp.net 2.0. I did not do the site, but mentored them through a good chunk of the process. It was wonderful to work with folks who were not only software smart, but their level of attention to the user experience was hugely impressive to me.

It's called MapsAlive.

Go check it out and it's a beta - so feedback is appreciated!

Here's a screenshot of the home page.

In "blogtime" this is old news, but I just caught that John Lam is joining Microsoft to work on the CLR team, "to help bring the love of dynamic languages out to the statically typed heathens ". Great news!

Noah Coad was a  student ambassador and an MVP when I first met him a few years ago. You could easily describe him as a young, eager, bright and clean-cut kid.

So was Ian Ceicys!

I see both of them occasionally at Microsoft events such as the MVP Summit or TechEds, 

Both of these young men got sucked up by Microsoft when they graduated from college.

(I am feeling older with every sentence - egad!)

I don't think I have ever seen them together which is the likely reason that somehow they had blended into the same person in my mind.

When I saw Ian at the New England Code Camp last weekend and asked him why he was in Boston and how his Microsoft job was going, he gave all the right responses - it could have just as easily been Noah - which is the mistake I made. I even blogged about it. Oops.

So here I am putting their pics side by side and now the difference is a little more obvious! Sorry guys!

I know very few people who can write sentences like this:

"I've been messing a lot with time zones lately, planning my trips to South Africa, Spain, and Denmark...." [http://www.gregcons.com/KateBlog/TimeZones.aspx]

This represents TechEd South Africa, TechEd Europe and then some more .NET love in Denmark. It also represents quite a lot of frequent flier miles!

At the hotel I am staying at in Sofia, a conference is now going on. It is a realtor conference. I talked with a realtor from Washington D.C. to find out what this conference is all about and was impressed with  the similarity of what we are both doing here.The conference is being held by FIABCI, which is an international real estate federation. The economy here in Bulgaria is really emerging, as we are discovering wrt the software industry here. Real Estate is the next wave, but the realtors here don't have the organization and business tools that are common in the U.S. and other areas of the world. MLS is a big example. The conference is a two-way street, with the local realtors teaching the internationals about the market here and the internationals sharing their experience and ideas with the locals. It's so familiar and the woman I talked with was clearly as excited about what she is doing here as I am about having come here to participate in DevReach. Here is a link to the actual conference.

I know that the software industry isn't the only one that is going global and has people who are championing it, rather than fearing it. But my personal experience is only limited to that and it makes me happy to personally see this happening in other industries as well.

I hope that someday INETA (and I am referring to all of the INETA regions as a whole) can realize the level and effectiveness of an organization like FIABCI.

It was announced a few days ago that Bulgaria and Romania will become part of the European Union on Jan 1

So I'm sure there will be a big excitement when we arrive in Bulgaria next weekend.

Martin (who lives in Sofia) has links to more details.

By attending DevReach in Sofia Bulgaria Oct 9-10, you will be entered in the drawing.

Pretty amazing!

I wasn't there to witness it but I have heard from DCC Susan Wisowaty that there were 110 people at the MSDN event in Burlington yesterday. Another attendee told me she had heard it was 117. This is pretty phenomenal for a city that got axed from the schedule due to poor attendance. This is pretty phenomenal for city with a population of 50,000. This would be a good number for an event in NYC or Boston!

So, for anyone who thinks that Vermont has nothing but farmers, hippies and ski bums as it's population, think again!

Thanks to hard work by Chris Pels and his posse, you can now register for Code Camp 6 (as attendees and to submit sessions as a speaker).

www.thedevcommunity.org

It's Saturday & Sunday, Oct 21 - Oct 22

My friends at Global Garage Sale outside of Burlington had an exciting day earlier this week when they sailed over the milestone of having sold over $1 million worth of other people's stuff on eBay. They are one of the hottest drop-off stores in the country and are getting ready to start franchising because they have a business model that is not only successful, but very socially responsible as well and that is a great combination. The local news station did a big item on them. I was proud like I was their momma!

(from their press release)

DevReach 2006 debuts in Bulgaria

The conference is the first of its kind to be held on the Balkans, focused on the latest trends in building software applications with Microsoft development tools.

SOFIA, Bulgaria – September 04, 2006 – National Academy for Software Development - a private education center, specializing in professional training of software engineers, and Telerik Corporation - a leading vendor of UI and data components for ASP.NET, announced today the DevReach conference to be hosted in Bulgaria with the sponsorship of Microsoft Corporation.

DevReach conference is the first of its kind to be held on the Balkans, focused on the latest trends in building software applications with Microsoft development tools.

Over two days, more than 500 attendees will meet 12 world famous lecturers, engaged all year round in such events as TechEd, VSLive!, Microsoft DevDays showcasing their latest knowledge in creating more reliable, scalable and secure solutions using Microsoft technologies in more than 20 technical sessions.

DevReach will be held at the International Exhibition Center on October 9-10 in Sofia, Bulgaria. The conference is hosted by National Academy for Software Development and sponsored by Telerik Corporation and Microsoft Corporation.

DevReach is the premier development event on the Balkans, featuring in-depth exposure to the latest Microsoft development technologies and a chance to interact with other members of the developer community.

Teodor Milev, managing director of Microsoft Bulgaria is scheduled to deliver a keynote prese