http://www.sadeveloper.net/The SA Developer Gauteng team (Gauteng is a province in South Africa that includes Johannesburg) all met in the Microsoft offices in Jo'burg to attend the most recent INETA Live Webcast. Andre Odendaal wrtes about doing this and how valuable he thinks these webcasts are to u.g. leaders.

Geeze, it only took them about 30 years to figure that out!

Musing about why some developers are reluctant to use third party tools. Silly rabbits, I say... [read more]

[A DevLife post]

I worked at Synergy Software when I first moved to Vermont. My original motivation was that Rich and I were both self-employed, and one of us needed to be on someone's payroll in order to get a mortgage for the house we were about to buy. I really loved working with this company and was torn when I knew it was time for me to go back to being a full time consultant. Not only is it a great team and a fun work environment, but the company has so much integrity - with regards to the quality of their product and in their commitment to and relationships with their clients.

It's a successful formula and they have been growing and growing. Here is another job listing.

Synergy Software Technologies Inc. is a dynamic, fun and exciting software company located just outside of Burlington, Vermont. We are rapidly expanding our product line, and have immediate openings for experienced Visual Basic programmers. The following qualifications are desired:
Minimum of 3-5 years experience in developing product-level Windows applications/GUIs

• College degree with a major in computer science
• In depth expertise with Visual Basic 6.0, ADO, Microsoft Access and SQL Server
• Familiarity with VB .NET, .NET technologies and XML a plus
• In depth expertise with object oriented programming and 3-tier development using MTS/COM+ framework
• Working knowledge of Crystal Reports and Microsoft SourceSafe
• Strong database skills as they relate to application development
• Ability to work effectively with other team members and management
• Excellent oral and written skills

Synergy offers a relaxed, fun working environment, and an opportunity to be part of a team working with the latest technologies in a high-growth area. We are leaders in the market segment that we serve, and expect continued rapid growth over the next several years. This is an opportunity for creative, aggressive developers to have a significant impact on our business. Come grow with us!

Scott Spradlin has cranked out the INETA NORAM July Newsletter. In it, I interview fellow INETA Speaker, Brian Noyes, who has had a path into a development career that is more unusual than most! Check it out along with all of the other NORAM news.

MSDN DCC, Susan Wisowaty (who just so happens to live in Burlington - yeah, that's right, we had her FIRST! ) will be presenting an Overview of Windows Presentation Foundation (aka Avalon) this coming Monday (July 17th) at the Vermont.NET User Group.

Given the great response to last month's .NET Newbie session on the Observer Pattern (by Rob Hale), this month, Mike Soulia will do the Adapter Pattern during the .NET Newbie session.

Thanks to a recent INETA Swag mailing, and the generosity of many third party vendors we have lots of raffles for the group for a while. This month, we will be raffling off a license to Infragistics NetAdvantage, which is probaby the most widely used set of UI tools for .NET Windows and Web development. I'm always amazed at the ever growing size of the development team at Infragistics and also their ability to attract some of the bright stars in the .NET universe onto their payroll. Jason Beres has been there for many years now and was followed by Andrew Flick and then Devin Rader. All guys I had gotten to know through their heavy involvement with INETA. More recently, fellow ASPInsider, Ambrose Little, was lured to New Jersey to join the team.

In addition to that raffle item, Susan (and the MSDN team) is donating a PocketPC to raffle off at the event. Yahoo. And she's also paying for the pizza.

There will be DVDs from the latest round of MSDN events and as always, t-shirts (gotta love 'em) to raffle off at well.

It should be a night that is fun and educational for all as well as prosperous for a lucky few!

I've been spending a lot of time with ASP.NET 2.0 lately whereas I had been focused mostly on ADO.NET and Windows Forms for quite a while.

Currently I am working on some articles for aspnetPRO magazine as well as preparing a number of sessions (totaly different topics than the articles) for the Fall 2006 ASPConnections (and two for Visual Studio connections). On the flip side, I have a ClickOnce article waiting inthe wings for CoDe Magazine - it's been written, just not edited yet.

This also means I have gotten temporarily distracted from the likes of Linq, WCF and more. All in good time, I suppose...

The best part is that it has stopped raining and I have been gardening and kayaking again.

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!