As Visual Studio prepares for the VS2017 launch and the 20th anniversary of Visual Studio, I started reminiscing of Vermont.NET birthdays of the past. Our first meeting was in February 2002. Here’s a screenshot (thanks to the way back machine!) from October 2002 of our hand-made (by yours truly) ASP.NET 1.0 website:

More fun though is the various cakes we’ve had throughout the years when we’ve celebrated the passing time.

First is the cake made by user group member Laura Blood for our Feb 2003 meeting, our first anniversary.

According to my blog, we had cake at our Feb 2006 meeting with special guest (thank you INETA), Ken Getz. I don’t seem to have a picture though.

Another was from our 6th year. We had  a presentation on unit testing that night by Sarah Cameron who came down from Montreal.

2010 was our 8th year. We didn’t have cake for our Feb meeting but we DID for the April meeting which was the launch of Visual Studio 2010.  Dave Burke designed this cake and it was implemented by the bakery at a local supermarket:

For our 10th year, the supermarket bakery suggested balloons and I asked for green ones in honor of Vermont. Many jokes have been made about this cake. I did NOT see the problem until someone pointed it out at the meeting. Then we were all giggling like school boys.

Rob Hale was quick to tweet it so I was able to find this picture easily enough!

Here was my own creation for Vermont.NET’s 12th anniversary in 2014. Notice that the sprinkles are dinosaurs.

I wasn’t here for our February 2017 meetup, but our upcoming March meetup will celebrate the VS2017 launch so I plan to make or get a cake to celebrate for sure!

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