All posts by Julie

VTdotNET finally attracting IDX developers – and two MORE .NET jobs in Burlington

Jobs

first: .NET JOBS at IDX
Searching on the careers section of the website if you filter on Vermont and use keyword “.Net” there are two jobs there.

This is in addition to the two that I wrote about yesterday and four I wrote about a few days ago.

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IDX is a large company in Burlington and has a LOT of developers using Microsoft development tools – VB, C+. In the 2+ years that Vermont.NET has been around, we have had no IDX developers (save one C++ guy occasionally) at our meetings. The message I was getting when inquiring about this was a) they were not doing .NET yet and b) they were 9-5’ers.

I have been know to terrorize (not really) random strangers at parties when they tell me they are a VB developer working at IDX. “Why aren’t you people coming to our meetings???!“ I ask them.

I have heard that this year they were going to start to really get the developers there geared up for .NET with lots of in-house training.

Finally, two developers from IDX came to our meeting on Monday night. They were very happy with what they saw and said they would definitely be telling more people at IDX about the group. I was so happy to hear this. It has always seemed as though in the their minds, the user group added no value to what that company was doing and was very frustrating to me. I try so hard to let them know that we have some of the most well-known people in the industry speaking at almost every meeting. I have been trying to get the local business community to have an awareness of this group, which is so wonderful and making a big difference for many of us developers in the area. So maybe I am finally making some headway.

I really believe that our user group is an enormous resource in our business community but I just don’t know how to get the word out locally.  People all over the world know about Vermont.NET, but not very many in our own back yard. I see ads for .NET develpers in the local paper and wonder why nobody told me about them so I can share them with the .NET developers in the .NET user group. Oh well. Am I ranting? Sorry. Just venting and wondering wondering wondering…

Tablet PC’s for the single handed writers

Tablet

I had two great excuses to go into Bristol this morning which meant I called up my fellow programmer and friend Jean for a quick “bakery date” as well. While we sipped our coffee and nibbled on our treats (that’s a lie – I’m not quite that dainty!), I noticed the man sitting at the table next to me typing on his laptop with one hand. During the course of the time there, I wanted SO badly to ask him if he had ever seen a tabletpc. So when he got up to leave and it was very clear that he did not have use of his left arm, I finally chose helpful over polite and did ask him.

He explained that he had had a stroke 3 years ago and uses his laptop with ViaVoice and has tried Dragon. In an open space like the bakery, it is too hard to use the speech technologies because of the background noise. We chatted about the tablets for a while and he had heard of them but wasn’t very familiar. Oh, I wish I had had mine with me. But I confirmed that he could use it for email and for everything, that the speech was also built in and that the pricing is really comparable these days to a good laptop. Also that he can get something as small and lightweight as my Acer.

He was so very happy that I had asked and then explained to him about the tablets. I have sent him to www.tabletpctalk.com and a few other sites to learn more about the different models available, pricing, configurations and to talk further with other people like Chris de Herrera. Talking with someone who can REALLY benefit from a tablet pc is such a pleasure after being in a position of having to explain the benefits to people who don’t have such an obvious need for this technology.

A funny encounter at the MVP Summit

Just Rambling

On Tuesday morning as I was hanging out with a bunch of Scotts in the W Hotel Lobby, and me looking like a good ol’ geek, no – make that hippy geek, in came some of those typical “W-crowd“ stylish, all dressed in black, beautiful people. As they came up the stairs to where we were I looked and realized that one of them was a man I had worked very closely with for a year in the late 80’s. He was a “stylish beautiful people“ back then, too. I was a little closer to that at the time than I am now. But we hadn’t seen each other in 12 or 13 or more years. It was so fun to have our little “oh my god!” reunion in the lobby.

We had worked together at a big ad agency in NY (in the same building that Microsoft is in now) and he now works for another huge ad agency and runs the world of interactive advertising for them globally. Coincidentally they were there for a meeting with Microsoft to talk about some advertising accounts. It’s actually a big deal but I don’t know if it’s all public or not.

The funniest part was that I thought he looked exactly the same as 13 years ago and later that evening, one of the women on his team told me that he had said the same of me. Sorry, try to rid that ego boost out of my little head!! 🙂

Maryam

Just Rambling

Do I need to say the last name ? It’s Maryam Scoble. As famous as her hubbie from his many endearing and occasional “please save me from this totally outspoken chick!“ blog posts about her.  I got to meet Maryam when I was in Seattle. First on Saturday night, where I was so happy to meet her, feeling as if I knew her so well, I forgot that she had no CLUE who I was and just threw my arms around her. It turned out to be a-okay. We had a wonderful time and also had dinner together with Alan Griver and Olga Londer on Sunday night – two more of some of the nicest people I know. That was a very interesting and international dinner in so many ways. Here’s an adorable picture of Maryam with Robert in Vancouver. I almost like it as much as this one which I believe was taken on their honeymoon. LOL. Love ya Maryam.

Rocky Lhotka – Microsoft Software Legend and a blogger, too

Community Cheerleading

Amy Sorokas blogged about SAMS author Stephen Walther becoming a software legend a few weeks ago. But I totally missed the fact that Rocky Lhotka was also acknowledged as a Software Legend as well. I know – big shocker, right? Rocky is a definitely a legend — there is no doubt about it.

And he has been doing a little blogging – so stay tuned to this spot for future enlightenment.

Congratulations, Rocky!!

Won’t you play with my tablet?

Tablet

There were 30 people at our user group meeting last night. I brought my little Acer C110 tablet and offered it up for people to play with. Maybe it was because of the pizza they were eating, but I was stunned that nobody jumped at the opportunity. Okay I did say “when you finish your greasy pizza…”. Finally one person said he’d like to play with it, but wouldn’t you know, the battery had just sucked it’s last drop of juice and I had left the spare AND my power cord at home. But ONE person out of THIRTY? I was hoping to do a special afternoon/evening of a tablet pc get together to let people play with them, but this seems almost hopeless.

I have a bit of Tablet PC Evangelism work ahead of me here, I see.

I told them, Tablet PC development is hardly different than Windows development. You don’t even NEED to know how to interact with the API if you don’t want to – just for writing a basic data entry type of application. I will be working on this…

My homies at TechEd

Community Cheerleading

It looks like, thanks to INETA and help from MSDN, I will be going to TechEd this year. The key of going is the User Group Leader meeting on Sunday but I will be staying for the whole week and running another Women who Code BOF (go vote!) and hopefully a Tablet PC BOF. (Brad McCabe from Infragistics is already doing one, so maybe he’ll let me help…)

But what is most exciting to me is that a few folks from my user group are going. Roman Rehak, who works at MS Gold Partner Competitive Computing (“C2”) – where there are a few job openings right now and Ali Aghareza – our local “plumber” – who works for Green Mountain Power, a local utility that is VERY advanced when it comes to technology. I also know that a few of the guys from the UVM Business School (they work for the woman who is a hard core TabletPC user that I frequently write about) will be there. I am thrilled that these guys will all be there. We will have a blast and I am looking forward to showing them off.