Happy news from my friend Mario Cardinal in Montreal who has been awarded MVP for Solutions Architect. Mario came to VTdotNET in January to teach us about Enterprise Services Applications Blocks before they were even released. He had done so much research just based on the documentation with no code available. Mario has a French .NET talk show called BlaBladotNET. I have never listened to it of course because my french is pretty limited! Congrats Mario!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Holy Canoli. I type really fast – or so I thought. So if I type fast and this is my score on the TypeQuick typing test, I cannot being to imagine how freaking fast Sahil types!!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

People always ask me how I find the time to learn about Whidbey and also get my work done. I wonder how people manage to deal with Avalon, Indigo, Longhorn etc. So I thought it would be a really interesting topic for a BOF. HEre’s the BOF proposal that I just submitted. It has to be approved before you can vote.

Whidbey, Yukon, Indigo, Avalon, Longhorn, EEEK! How the heck do we learn all this stuff when we can’t even keep on top of all of the current technology? Come to this BOF and we can talk about how we decide how far ahead we should be looking, how we pick and choose what we want to learn and how we find the time and energy to do it.

You, too, can submit a BOF!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I know that every time we have done these we get a new group of women who have not had the opportunity to sit in a room with a bunch of women programmers and talk. Although there will be a Women in IT luncheon again this year (these are awesome). So I have submitted this BOF. Not sure how long it takes for them to go live. Here is the description.

This will be the 3rd Women who Code BOF. It is not a bitch & stitch session, but just an opportunity to gather with some women that you have a lot in common with and talk about some of the things that make being in a mostly male industry work for us. Maybe you find it a challenge. Perhaps you thrive on being special. You may even not think that it’s an issue. Either way, it would be interesting to hear your perspective!

If you would like to see this session happen, go vote!

I see a bunch, but am especially happy for Sahil Malik, that are brand new. Also, Bill Vaughn did of course, retain his MVP status. I was in that speaker lounge where he wrote about how much grief he got from some Microsoft people (though I thought it evolved into much more light hearted ribbing over the next few days) and his response was basically that it had the intended effect. It brought a big time awareness to the fact that there are a lot of people and businesses who are not ready for VB6 to be retired.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Hmm – looks like they’ve reached an impass on the name for an umbrella website where all of the code camps can get listed and linked from, as well as other info relating to code camps, the wiki, etc.

Is it

CodeCamps.com

or

CodeCampHQ.com

go vote here! (that’s Thom Robbin’s website)

You can only vote once. (and no this is not an april fool’s joke)

…which would it be?

Lately, this thought has popped into my head every time I read a new post from Elizabeth Grigg’s blog.

But of course, I would probably go into some type of withdrawal shock if I couldn’t “blog surf” like I do frequently throughout the day. And I would stop being constantly challenged to learn a gazillion new things about programming which is the result of reading (or scanning or surfing or whatever) such a great variety of different blogs.

But Beth’s blog is definitely a stop and smell the roses kind of thing…kind of like having the t.v. channel stuck on PBS.

http://www.AcehAid.org

very cute!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Ahh – Malek is finally going public with his big news!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I’ve been perusing the awesome list of BOFs submitted, but there is something that is nagging me about it. I think of the BOFs as a way for community people who don’t normally get the opportunity to present at conferences (or who may not want to present!) a chance to lead a discussion about a topic near and dear to their hearts. So far, most of the submissions are from a lot of Microsoft people and some rock stars from the community.

But this does not mean that you need to be a ‘Softie or a well-known .NET person or an MVP or anything special to submit a BOF. Don’t be shy! Step up to the plate! The submission deadline ends in a few more weeks! That seems a little early, but it is tied into TechEd’s planning schedule.

Remember that the BOFs are not presentations and there will be no projectors. It is just a planned discussion and whoever submits it merely leads the discussion.

The BOF site is hosted by TechEd, but the whole BOF organization is being run by INETA (thanksk to the great efforts of Stuart Celarier) and Culminis.

http://www.AcehAid.org