Daily Archives: March 31, 2008

Writing Style: Me, Myself and I?

Book

In my blog, I write as though I am just talking and the words me, myself and I appear quite a lot.

When writing technical articles, my editors constantly have to battle the “me myself and I” becuase the article is not supposed to be a story about me. Though I really do like to share those “man, this thing was killing me until I figured out x y and z” type of anecdotal lessons.

As I am writing my book, I have been extremely careful to make the book be about YOU, the reader. Even though I desparatley want to hold your hand and lead the way, I try to be consistent with YOU and even avoid WE as in “and now we’re going to do this”. It takes a lot of thought to figure out how to do this without being completely impersonal because that would just not be me.

Occasionally I have written essays for CoDe Magazine’s MVP Corner and I have an upcoming “End Bracket” essay in MSDN Magazine. These essays are where I get to write about me, myself and I as much as I want. Yay.

I just happened to come across a comment on a recent MVP Corner essay called Meeting Bill Gates. The comment said “Because it’s natural, I had a feeling like Julia Lerman talks face to face with me. Nice”

I just love that comment because this is the way I truly love to write.

Hudson Valley Software Summit in Planning

Community Cheerleading

I used to live in NY State’s Hudson Valley and am always interested in what’s going on there with the software community.

Some folks I know are beginning to plan for a summit to bring together software people from around the region.

They have a website with a survey (on the registration page) to help with planning the summit.

Hudson Valley Software Summit

Here is a copy of the overview on the home page:

The goal of the Hudson Valley Software Summit (HVSS) is to encourage technological innovation in the region. The area is richly endowed with creative people, many of them software developers and entrepreneurs.

The HVSS is an opportunity for these folks to network with each other and to showcase their work for others outside the immediate community, such as potentially interested parties in New York City, Northern New Jersey, Albany, and Boston.Those for whom this event is a must attend occasion include:

  • Venture capital firms
  • Technology firms
  • Internet service providers
  • Private equity firms
  • VC-backed portfolio companies
  • Angel investors
  • Professional service providers

Who work in the fields of:

  • Biotechnology
  • Communications
  • Computers
  • Internet
  • Medical
  • Peripherals
  • Semiconductors
  • Semiconductor equipment
  • Software

MSDN Forum restructuring for Data Access (LINQ and Entity Framework)

Data Access

The MSDN forums for data access have been restructured a little.

Entity Framework & LINQ to Entities questions:

The one which has always been under “MSDN Forums » Visual Studio 2008 (Pre-release) » ADO.NET (Pre-release)” has been renamed to MSDN Forums » Visual Studio 2008 (Pre-release) » ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities (Pre-release). It’s still pre-release, of course.

LINQ (Released)

While there is still a general LINQ forum under MSDN Forums » Visual Studio 2008 (Pre-release) » LINQ Project General  (Yes, under Pre-Release. I imagine they don’t want to lose the content or confuse people by moving the forum), the LINQ “flavors” have now been split up and are in the “Data Platform Development” section.

MSDN Forums » Data Platform Development » LINQ to SQL  
MSDN Forums » Data Platform Development » ADO.NET DataSet (This includes LINQ to DataSet)
MSDN Forums » Data Platform Development » XML and the .NET Framework   (This includes LINQ to XML)
 
Regular ADO.NET (aka “Classic”)

1) The above linked ADO.NET DataSet forum is the place to go for all things DataSet.
2) MSDN Forums » Data Platform Development » ADO.NET Data Providers  
“Data platform development using classic ADO.NET (v 1.1 and 2.0) and System.Data namespace.”