I used to think Control Adapters were for asp.net gurus, but then I got brave and started using them. They're not scary at all. Here's a short & sweet, high-level overview of them ....[read more...]

[A DevLife post]

(from the INETA NORAM website:)

On June 1st INETA North America launched an extensive new Sponsorship Program aimed at raising funds to expand and improve services for our members. Over the past six months the INETA NorAm Sponsorship Team, led by Sponsorship Director Pat Tormey, has designed a great program with many options for sponsorship at a variety of levels. In the four years since our founding, INETA has grown tremendously and to deliver programs and services to our members requires substantial funding and volunteer time. During the past year the INETA NorAm Board of Directors has targeted key areas for expansion and growth to better serve our members. As part of that strategic analysis it became evident we needed to establish a substantial and diverse sponsor base.

The new Sponsorship Program consists of four main levels of sponsorship (Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze) and a wide range of services from which a custom sponsorship program is designed for each sponsor. The services available to sponsors focus on INETA's key strength of providing the opportunity to reach a targeted audience of software developers focused on Microsoft technologies. 

If you are interested in learning more about INETA sponsorship programs, please email marketing@ineta.org.

It's happened again. Not one, but three user groups in one trip!

Here's the schedule of my July INETA user group speaking tour:

Tuesday, July 18th: Central Penn .NET, Harrisburg PA, "Developing Ink Applications with the Tablet PC SDK"

Wednesday, July 19th: Lehigh Valley.NET, Bethlehem PA, "Customized Debugging in Visual Studio 2005"

Thursday, July 20th: Dot Net Valley, Wilkes Barre PA, "Five Scary Things about .NET (That Don't Have To Be)"

The icing on the cake is that after the Thursday night talk, I will drive to north and visit my parents for a few days.

I still can't ever remember which one is back slash and which one is forward. In this post, I'm  trying to figure out just why that is and how I might be able to help myself with this silly but annoying problem [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Still catching up from being on vacation, I saw that Jason is going to work for Microsoft. Great going, Jason!!

I was just chatting with my neighbor who saw the fireworks in Burlington last night and was astonished at how great they were and then happened to see Marc Chadwick's post in my aggregator to get the visual's, too.

Hip hip hooray! Roman Rehak has been awarded an MVP for SQL Server. Roman co-leads the Vermont SQL Server User group (with Laura Blood) and has been track chair for SQL PASS and the DevTeach SQL Track for a number of years.

As far as I know, there are now four six MVPs in Vermont. Zoe Hart has also been one for a while and she works at the same company as Roman in Burlington. Anne Stanton is on the NH/VT border and runs a small business server group and is a total CRM guru. Also, Kate Chase (a renowned author and Office MVP) and Steve Hebert who is an I.E. MVP live in Vermont.

[Roman was smart enough to find a search by state feature and there are 6, count 'em, six, MVPs in our little state. Vermont always has the "highest per capita" rankings because of our small population of app. 625,000, so I wonder if 1:100,000 is it? ]

It's been a long time coming and through a variety of teams, proposals from outside companies, budgets, and plans -with one roadblock after another preventing it from coming to fruition over the past few years, but INETA NORAM (North America) is finally getting a new website and, according to the current site , is going to be launched soon.

Congrats and muchos gracias to all of the volunteers who have worked hard on this.

Montpelier Meeting at Bear Code

Andrew will present using the Java programming language and Josh Sled will present using the Python programming language. Both presentations will focus on their application to the unix environment.

Location

Bear Code

85 Granite Shed Lane, Unit 1

Montpelier, Vermont 05602

More info and directions

The next VT Rails meeting is on Tuesday July 11th.

More information at www.vtrails.org

I've been getting a new type of comment spam on my other blog. The spam is a statement that is very coherent and totally relevant to the post, but then at the end has a link to a page that is filled with a huge list of links to other pages on the site - all for the sake of trackbacks. My guess is that they are copying text from other blogposts, then googling for related blog posts then pasting the other blog's text along with their own link into the comments.

The Igloo Coder (aka Donald Belcham) who is the president of the Edmonton .NET User Group, has written a wonderful series of posts about his experiences and lessons of starting up that group along with a posse of others. I love that he talks about things like motivation in addition to more practical matters. Highly recommended reading.

Also, INETA has been doing a series of webcasts about starting and running a user group. Check them out at live.ineta.org.

Thanks to Leon Bambrick for making sure I didn't miss the Igloo Coder series!

My MVP status was renewed today for another year. Thanks Microsoft! Read more about the MVP award here...

[A DevLife post]

I grew up under the influence of a local weekly alternative newspaper, The Syracuse New Times. When I lived in New York City it was, of course, The Village Voice. In Vermont, it's Seven Days. I always look for these papers when I travel as it gives me a good perspective of the city I'm visiting. In St. Johns Newfoundland this weekend, it was pretty easy to identify the Current as their alternative weekly. I was tickled to find an article on Alison Bechdel (who has become quite the blogger) and her recently published book. Though I don't know her, Alison lives nearby in Bolton, Vermont and has erupted from her underground celebrity in the gay community to being highlighted in People, Entertainment Weekly and other mainstream publications. So to be far away and see the celebration continue was really fun.

This is for fellow vermont bloggers. Seven Day's is once again adding Vermont blogs to it's survey this year. For a thorough list, check Cathy Resmer's blogroll. Frankly, Cathy's blog will probably get my vote!

I'm quite sure that technical blogs have a very narrow audience in Vermont.

• Building a Leadership Team
• Picking a Location
• Running a Successful Event
• Working with Sponsors

With Gates transitioning out of Microsoft and Warren Buffet doubling the size of the Gates Foundation's trust, it has me thinking about what I want to do when I grow up.... [read more]

[A DevLife post]

It rained all of May and most of June in Vermont. It has been raining and raining while we have been gone. I just saw an article in the Burlington Free Press that the USDA has declared the natural distasters in every county of Vermont. It has created a nightmare for the farmers who lost most of their early crops and now are having a hard time getting a chance to catch up with the growing season.