Daily Archives: May 1, 2004

Me and Shelley, Shelley and me

Purely Personal

Shelley Powers is one of the most interesting bloggers I have [virtually] met – a well-published geek, a poet, a photographer, a bookbinder and partially the inspiration for my blog title. We “met” in the comments of Halley Suitt’s misbehaving.net blog after last year’s PDC. We didn’t get off on a very good start, but my misinterpreted statement was quickly cleared up, and I have since felt almost protected under her wing.

So this post of hers, which highlights my own attempts at lighting a fire under the discussion of women in i.t.,  means quite a lot to me. Thanks Shelley.

 

Too much Longhorn & Whidbey focus?

dotNET

It seems that a bunch of developers have finally cracked under the pressure of too much information on the future stuff and just not enough focus on the current technology that most developers are working in (referring to .NET 1.1, there).

I definitely understand.

Take a look at Greg Robinson‘s post  and the comments in there as well as Brady Gaster’s. Rob Chartier is wondering the same thing as I.  There are probably more I haven’t seen yet.

I was asked (not trying to beat a dead horse hear on my recent DevSource interview so I’m just NOT going to link to it…but if you read it you would know this question…) what my exposure to developers in my user group was teaching me about developers that Microsoft might not know.

My response was, based on what I see in Vermont.NET, that most developers really aren’t interested in the upcoming technologies. They want to learn what they can use now. I did try to point out that I don’t think Microsoft is unware of this, considering DevDays was mostly about 1.1 and the ASP.NET RoadShow was, also. And just to mention a few others: Microsoft just began releasing a series of 101 demo videos on VB.NET (and it looks like all 1.1); MSDN VS.NET Developer center just put 1 of 3 planned chapters from a new book on VS.NET2003 (from Brian Johnson’s blog).

But it isn’t Microsoft that Greg and Brady (and others) are pointing the finger at so much in regards to the onslaught of future “moving target” technologies. It is the tech magazine publications.

I think in the blogging community there is a very high concentration of people out on the bleeding edge and if Microsoft or the publishers are using this as their gauge of “what developers are thinking and what they want…” then that is probably a big mistake. I [personally] think the folks who are more interested in .NET 2.0 or Longhorn than in 1.1 are a very small percentage of developers.

Thanks to SAMS and Amy Sorokas for a DevDays Blogging prize of a discount coupon

Community Cheerleading

Bloggers listed on DevDaysBloggers.net were associated with the city that they were speaking at or attending. During the events, SAMS offered a little contest regarding the amount of blogs:

We’ll be tracking the number of blog posts aggregated on DevDaysBloggers.net from bloggers in each DevDays city. The bloggers from the city with the most aggregated posts will receive a 50% discount on the retail list price of any SAMS Publishing book title and access to selected sample chapters.

Not that I ever need incentive to blog or anything, but Boston (one of my two events) ended up having the most blogs and I wanted to thank Amy (and SAMS) for the coupon that I received.

My girly love for my AcerC110

Tablet

Peter is absolutely right in describing my affection for my Acer. Perhaps this might be a smart thing to think about when marketing it. Perhaps it might be a good idea to ensure that the manufacturers continue to design them with these form factors. Unfortunately, that’s probably also going to mean “fashion covers” like they have for cell phones.

What’s really sad about the fashion cover link is that I just out of curiosity googled “barbie cell phone cover” and found that instantly!

Microsoft’s Sara Ford on Women in Tech

Community Cheerleading

Thanks to the recent flurry (let’s keep it up!!!!) of discussion on women in tech, Robert Scoble says he decided to interview Sara Ford, a tester on the VS.NET team on her thoughts. In her Channel9 interview, Sara talks about her attraction at a very young age, to a puzzle game on a TI-99, her constant draw to things I.T. as she grew up, her struggles to get access to it and also her theory of what attracts girls to computers – storyline. It’s a short interview, but says a lot. Check it out.  It is one of many of her Channel9 interviews. In her blog, Sara says 5 of the 8 have been posted. I think this one makes 6 though. Thanks Robert and Sara!