One of the more exciting things in a developer's life is going to a conference, especially a really big one. Microsoft's TechEd U.S. conference is starting on Monday and ..

[A DevLife post].

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If you are not going to be at TechEd, and come on, there are millions of developers and only 10,000 or so attendees  so there's a chance you aren't  (although there aren't millions of developers reading my blog, so it does narrow the field a bit ) - prepare yourself for a week of torture. Once at TechEd, that's basically all that a blogger (attending) will blog about. Saw this session, met that person, went to this party.... But hey, it's the next best thing to being there....

The first year I was there I did give a blow by blow of all the people that I ran into. Now it is not possible because over the years I have gotten to know so many people. Anyway, I STILL have to pack and the clock is ticking.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Aceh Aid is now Aceh Recovery. They are still doing amazing things. Aceh Province is still in a terrible state. It will take a LONG time to recover from the tsunamis and the enormous loss of life, land, infrastructure and sustainability. They have an amazing amount of information on their website now. Please go check it out.

So... I am REALLY excited to report that Microsoft and Stephen Forte have helped gather up 20 of the TechEd speakers for another EBay auction for my friends in Bali who are running Aceh Recovery.

The EBay site will be up soon. Stephen has the list of speakers, but just for google, I will list them here as well, (alphabetically)

Don Box
Andrew Brust
Michele Leroux Bustamante
Richard Campbell
Stephen Forte
Carl Franklin
Jackie Goldstein
John Goodyear
Kate Gregory
Scott Hanselman
Tim Huckaby
Richard Hundhausen
Patrick Hynds
Jesper Johansson
Tim Landgrave
Rockford Lhotka
Juval Lowy
Ingo Rammer
Joel Semeniuk
Kimberly Tripp
Clemens Vasters
Christian Weyer

There is a lot of effort that goes behind pulling this together. Last time Stephen and I spent many hours so I am very grateful for the support from Microsoft this time. And of course to all of the speakers and, in advance, to all of the bidders, whether they win the bids or not.

We will have the EBay site up soon and the rules & regs!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Oh, boy, if only I was taking my Compaq (my whidbey travel box) with me to TechEd, I'd have something to play with on the airplane to Orlando!!!!! But I have decided to bring my tablet and that's got VS2003 on it.

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I wrote an article for MSDN's Tablet PC Developer Center about how I wrote the Doodle application that lets you ink on the web. The trickiest part of that app was redisplaying the ink image for the user without saving it somewhere. If they want to save it, the also have that option. But moving the ink data through the pipe, from the client side to the server back to the client was vewwwy twicky. Also, thanks to a bunch of ASPInsiders and then Jeff Prosise who laid the final blow to get me to modify my application to use HTTPHandlers. They always sound so scary, so "for plumbers only".... but actually they are EASY and will get even easier in VS2005.

The article is on the home page of the tablet dev center under the "Recent Articles" section.

Note the article by Dr. Neil right below it, on leveraging the Network Location Awareness API for managed code. I sure wish I had had *that* darned API when I wrote my first few mobile apps. I came up with my own way of detecting "am I on the local network?" "am I on the web?" "am I totally disconnected?".

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

Here's one thing that always gets me at the big conferences. The people who go around the expo hall collecting as MUCH STUFF as they can with absolutely no regard for what they are even getting - just so long as it's free. I remember at TechEd Dallas we didn't have a proper banner for our wee INETA booth way in the back of the expo hall so I hung up some INETA T-Shirts. We didn't have give aways, just shirts for the volunteers. What we did have was some of the real rock star .NET speakers who wer also INETA speakers in the booth as an Ask the Experts. That's a pretty good deal. Free technical advice from some of the top presenters ni the .NET world. But no..... So many people came by asking for a t-shirt. They had no clue what INETA was and no interest in finding out. Just wanted the damned shirt. I actually had an argument with a guy who was demanding I give him a shirt!

I do like to get stuff to hand out to my user group. One year I brought back a box and just dumped it out on the table for everyone to take from. But I'm actually embarrassed to carry a bag around to get stuff. And if I do take something, I will end up spending a lot of time talking to the people at the booth. Rather than just do a drive by and grab fast.

And then there's getting it home. LOL. Spendng all of that money to ship FREE stuff home. Okay so I got smart and brought an extra soft suitcase last time. Someone suggested a heavy duty canvas duffel bag would do the trick. We'll see how it goes...

http://www.AcehAid.org

If you are attending the User Group Leaders Summit on Sunday, you can find a detailed schedule of events here on the INETA website.

http://www.AcehAid.org

A friend brought over a laptop that someone had given her. She couldn't figure out how to use it and I said just bring it over, I'll check it out.

I turned it on and was totally mystified by what I saw. It was a Dell laptop and had Linux installed with a Freesbee desktop. I couldn't figure out how to use it either. Happily I had an unopened unused fully licensed WinXP Pro hanging around so we stuck the cd in in and said "yes" to remove the partition and "yes" to reformat.

Don't get me wrong - I am not an anti-opensource bigot. There was just no way that either my friend or I was going to figure out how she could use this quickly when she already was well-versed in all things windows.

http://www.AcehAid.org

This month, VTdotNET is starting something new: .NET Newbie sessions. It is in response to my ponderings about how to deal with the widening knowledge gap in the user group. So I am really excited that this is starting. The first session is this month at our June 13th meeting. Laura Blood, from Blue Note Computing will present on "Object Oriented Programming in .NET - How to Build and Use Objects".

Then, for the main session, we will depart from Object Oriented program in it's entirety (just a coincidence) as Sam Gentile presents on SOA and Indigo. Sam is coming as an INETA speaker!

I just this moment realized the irony in that!

http://www.AcehAid.org

It seems like just yesterday that John Bristowe got mad at me for blogging that he was going to be speaking at a conference. He was embarrassed that I was cheering him on. Now, look at him! Regional Director and TechEd conference speaker! (But still with all of that humility in tact!) 

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I couldn't pay my husband to come to Orlando with me for a week during TechEd in June or even in March for Connections. Or to San Diego last year. Or to Las Vegas for Connections. Etc....

I wish I had business trips more like this...

There was a time in my life actually when I did. In my late 20's I had two fab all expenses paid business trips to London with plenty of time to explore. Both of them were consulting gigs. Ahh the good old days.

There's still hope...

http://www.AcehAid.org

Microsoft Tech·Ed 2005 is sold out but you can still explore Microsoft technologies and solutions in this series of webcasts. Join us through the end of May for pre-Tech·Ed webcasts, then tune in for a special week of webcasts June 5-10, 2005, as we simulcast 12 sessions live from Orlando, Florida.

Also, stay tuned for our live "best of" Tech·Ed 2005 webcasts this fall, as we highlight some of the most popular sessions from the event.

[from the TechEd website]

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Betsy talks about the dress code of working the booth - anything that you are doing representing Microsoft - at TechEd. The biggest killer is the shoes. I live in my Tevas all summer. I have worn them exclusively at every warm weather conference I have gone to. I have to go figure out what additional shoes I can bring that won't take up any extra room in my bag for my few hours hither and thither as a booth babe also. One will be for the TabletPC Team (4-5 Wednesday). Another will be at the CodeZone booth (10-12 Wednesday).And who knows, since I'll have "the shirt", maybe I'll get snagged elsewhere also.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Michael Kaplan wants to come to the Women who Code BOF at TechEd. Absolutely! The first one we did had a bunch of guys there. One who was curious how to encourage his teenaged daughters who are interested in things technical but are being discouraged by advisors at school. Another guy was really curious why there were so few women in his C.S. major at college and what he could do to make it be more engaging to women. The more diversity we have at the BOF the more interesting I think it gets, so please, feel free to come!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

How on earth I am going to be ready to leave for Orlando on Saturday afternoon, I have NO clue! I am having the usual pre-going-away-for-a-week-to-a-huge-conference jitters. My clients are suddenly having crises left and right. The sun and warm weather has finally arrived in Vermont. I can see the flowers coming up in my lupin field. I still haven't gotten the rest of the seedlings into the veggie garden. I'm always worried about my darling old dogs not being here when I come back and Rich is stocking up on Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

I know from past experience when I get to TechEd, I will be stepping out of my life for a week into a different one.You really leave everything behind and get immersed in the whole environment. Trying to get to see some sessions, but ending up talking with a million fun and interesting people. Wandering the expo hall is a blast, not for swag, but to visit with so many people you don't get to see enough. Just imagine being stuck in a huge building with over 10,000 people who all have the same passions as you do for week. People who understand you and don't think you're a dork because you think computers are *it*. People who understand the insane life you lead and how hard it is to walk away from that code even when everybody's begging for dinner. Just one more line, I know this is gonna do it....

Yep, the last days before I go, I just dread, I'm all stressed out, I don't want to leave home. But once I'm there, I have just a majorly grand time.

Yep, I'll be there!

http://www.AcehAid.org

My DevLife blog on the DevSource website is now live. It is awaiting it's skin, and I've asked for Captcha ... which one should we use??

But I have started posting things to there as well. Here's how it's gonna work. When I post something there, I will post a bit of it on this blog. Click on the text of the post and it will bring you to the full post on the DevLife blog.

You can also subscribe directly to the DevLife blog. It's a .Text blog. I've already got a few posts there now and have some more organizing to do. And no, the makeup picture isn't there yet!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

When I was at Devscovery, I was chatting with Jeff Richter over dinner about the work I have been doing with WSE. He asked me why I was working with a dead-end technology. I don't think it was a critical question, but ..

[A DevLife post].

http://www.AcehAid.org

In January, I got very excited about Soma's announcement that Microsoft was finally going to update the ancient bitmaps...

[A DevLife post]

Here are the ones that I am hosting with time and location.

You can find all of the BOFs by filtering on "session type" on the session breakout page. Dave Noderer also made a comprehensive list on his blog.

http://www.AcehAid.org