Monthly Archives: August 2006

Thom Robbins moving up and over

Community Cheerleading

I’m still in denial but can’t put off blogging about this any longer. The  .NET developers and user group leaders in New England have long known that we have been extraodinarily fortunate to have a true mover and shaker as our Microsoft Developer Evangelist. Thom Robbins has constantly pushed the envelope with respect to Microsoft providing amazing resources to the developer community. He has also made himself very available to developers. Personally, Thom has pushed and encouraged me relentlessly over the years and there is only one time I dared say “no” to him! 🙂

We knew the day would come when Redmond could no longer put off bringing him closer into the fold.

He is off to Redmond to continue to spread the word about .NET, but in a much bigger way, as the Director of .NET Platform Marketing.

It’s going to be pretty tough to fill his shoes in Waltham, and prospects be warned, I have told Thom that whoever it is will have to get my stamp of approval before they can be hired. Heh heh.

I am not going to say that I’ll miss Thom, because I expect to continue to work with him regardless of east coast or west coast living. The only difference is that I probably won’t be able to ask him to cruise up to Vermont to present at Vermont.NET or VTSDA again. He amazed me with his willingness to drive the 3+ hours each way in one day – something I have not been willing to do as he well knows now: I hate road trips.. Of course, what takes me 3 1/2 hours might only be 2 for him!

Slides and Samples from my NYCdotnetDEV talk on Query Notifications – Samples have been modified!

Presentations

I had a blast presenting in NYC Thursday night on ADO.NET 2.0 Query Notifications. It was also a great whirlwind trip to my old stomping grounds where I lived for my first eight years out of college. I did a little of everything…subway, taxis, Museum of Modern Art, falafels in Union Square, the farmer’s market in Union Square, walking through the “new & improved” Times Square, an incredible meal at a French restaurant in Chelsea, Penn Station, NYC bagels…. Stephen Forte and Andrew Brust were great hosts!

It was my first visit to the microsoft offices up on 6th Ave. Last time I was there they were on 50th and 8th, in the same building where I happened to work at N.W. Ayer in the late 80’s. Thanks to the receptionist there for allowing me a little reprieve and internet access (and a cookie or two) prior to the user group meeting.

I have updated my Query Notification samples where I was [accidentally] overdoing it with the unecessary VB Static to cache my datatable rather than the simpler VB Shared. Although my samples worked perfectly well, they were not as efficient as they could have been. Thanks again to Andrew for pointing this out when hundreds of developers before him have either not noticed or just not bothered to mention it. (Read more about that as well as my recent (somewhat aggravating) education on VB Static over here.)

The deck and samples are on my TALKS page of my website. Scroll down to “Leveraging Query Notifications ….“

Sharing a lesson about VB’s Shared and Static Declarations

dotNET

I’ve long been confused by the fact that static variables in VB are not the same as static variables in C#, but shared variables/methods/classes in VB *are* like static variables/methods/classes in C#. It made for some cumbersome VB code that didn’t have to be. I think I finally got it cleared up and here is a blog post I wrote trying to explain it (to myself for future reference). [Read more…]

[A DevLife post]

Vermont IT Jobs: Got Adobe Flex and a Web 2.0 mind?

Jobs

Java Engineer Developer Lead

 

We plan to shake up the IT industry with a unique process management software application utilizing Web 2.0 technologies and the software-as-a-service model. Our target is the Global 2000 market. We are in the exciting start-up stage with beta test customers and will release our first version this fall.  The application is being built with Adobe Flex on the front end and Java on the back with open source technologies.  The founder has a proven track record with a past successful startup and is willing to provide a competitive salary with serious equity bonuses (stock awards, not stock options!).

 

We have huge plans and need a technical leader to build a smart technical team and to solve complex problems.  Please contact us if these points fit you:

 

Most Important

– You hate bad company politics

– You’re smart, energetic, and you like people

– You’re searching for something new and exciting to build (with passion!)

 

Technical Skills

– Strong experience building large complex web applications

– Expert with Java, XML, web services, databases, and open source solutions

– Can find solutions to everything else you don’t know

 

People & Project Skills

– Easily coach other smart and nice people

– Manage the entire development process and foster innovation

– Ensure efficiencies with standards and Agile development methods

 

Are you tired of smog, traffic jams, long commutes, mean people, and long travels to get out of town?

 

Our office is located in downtown Burlington, VT, a college town with lots of cafes, gourmet restaurants, fine arts, great skiing, sailing, hiking etc.  Live in the city and walk to work or settle in the country with very short commutes.

 

Oh yes, don’t bother going to our website www.piematrix.com yet since what we are doing now is still a secret!

 

Please send your resume to paul.dandurand@piematrix.com

Vermont SDA Cruise on Lake Champlain Tonight – great weather forecast

dotNET

Rather than our regular monthly business meeting, Vermont Software Developer Alliance (VTSDA) is going to enjoy one of he very special things in Vermont tonight. We will board the Spirit of the Ethan Allen for an evening cocktail and networking cruise on Lake Champlain. For those of you unfamiliar with Vermont, Lake Champlain is huge – 120 miles long and 10 miles wide at Burlington. The weather forecast is perfect, so we have lucked out. (For those of you unfamiliar with Vermont, you just can never know what to expect with the weather!)

NYC .NET Developers User Group tomorrow night!

Ineta

I’m psyched to be hopping down to NYC tomorrow do an INETA sponsored presentation at NYCdotNETDev. I lived in New York from 1983 to 1991 (as you can imagine, my impressionable 20’s), so it’s fun to go back once in a while. I plan to spend Friday at the MOMA and eating great food with friends before taking a late night flight back to Burlington. It’s only a one hour flight, so it’s a nice and easy trip.

I’ll be presenting on Query Notifications, a topic near and dear to my heart. Most user groups find this a little narrow no matter how fascinating I find it! 🙂 So I’m happy that these guys were interested in this talk.

New Microsoft Gold Partner in Vermont

Community Cheerleading

Congratulations to Jim Smith and EQ2 for their recent award of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner! EQ2 creates solutions for the health care field. Health care software is big business in Vermont. Thanks to IDX (now G.E. Healthcare), a lot of talented people have spun up related businesses here.

There are now five Gold Partners in our tiny little state Vermont.

  1. EQ2
  2. Competitive Computing
  3. SynEcology
  4. SymQuest
  5. Network Perfomance

I was hoping to do an impressive per capita comparison, but after looking at Mass, Washington and New York, I think I better wait a few more years. But we are growing!



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Living Publicly on the Internet

Vermont

Rich and I went to this classic Vermont country summer fair last week. Below is a photo of the tractor pull. There were so many garden tractors lined up, this event went on for hours and hours and hours. One event that I wish I had known about (before it happened, rather than hearing about it after the fact!) was a hand-mowing competition (using scythes). I have an old scythe and use it ocassionaly (not for the lawn but for clearing tall weeds) and would have loved to see how it’s really done.

While wandering through the booths, I came around a corner and saw a well-known Vermont actor/comedian/writer named Rusty Dewees. This is a guy you can’t avoid if you live in Vermont. He’s got a column in the local paper (which is very personal like a blog), does radio spots for lots of businesses, gets written about and highlighted on the news all of the time and does shows (which I have never attended) all over the state. Without thinking, I greeted him like an old friend, only to remember in the next moment that I didn’t really know him, and of course, I was a complete stranger t him. Just another fan, I guess. I was pretty embarrassed (how unlike me!).

It made me think a lot about how much I expose my own life on my otherwise “technical” blog. When I meet developers at conferences around the country and the world, and they know personal things about me, it takes me a moment to realize it’s because I write about it all the time. But I love this aspect of meeting people who don’t feel like strangers for long. Somehow, I wasn’t able to project that Dewees might feel the same way even though he was being perfectly nice. Additionally, it’s only a more narrow community of programmers that know me, so I already have lot in common with these people, as opposed to anyone that might accost this poor guy. It would probably have been a little better if I had bought one of his dvds or calendars or something (the guy is pretty talented and also a marketing machine), but though I enjoy reading his column and have been impressed to watch what he has done with his career, I’m not sure if I really want a calendar of him on my wall (though he’s awfully good looking! ;-))


The tractor pull. Click on photo to see full size