If you are going to be at DevConnections this week, come by and visit us at the INETA booth!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I’m doing my last minute org for DevConnections and making note of the times of my talks.

• Sunday 3/20: 1-4 PM Web Security for Dummies and WSE 2.0 Introduction
• Tuesday 8am – 9:15 am  ASP.NET Beyond System.Web Namespace
• Wednesday 8am – 9:15 am C# for VB Programmers
• Wednesday 1:30 – 2:30 What’s New in ADO.NET 2.0 (just noticed this is only one hour!)

My husband is laughing over the 8am talks. At home I am not an early riser, but he doesn’t know that when I’m travelling I tend to get up at 6 am or so. 🙂 (shhh, don’t tell)

I will also be manning the INETA booth  Monday from 9-9:30 and Tuesday from 10:45 – 11:15.

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I’m curious to see if anyone that I know who is coming to DevConnections is signed up for my pre-con workshop. It is a special workshop, not included with the regular conference. I am *so* looking forward to this session!!

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I want to keep reminding folks attending DevConnections that my talk titled “C# for VB6 Programmers” will be just as useful for VB.NET programmers (who likely came from VB6 anyway).

I got more confirmation of this when doing it to a packed room at Code Camp III which chose to stay an extra 45 minutes during lunch just so we could experiment some more.

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Alex P doesn’t like this book. He is absolutely entitled to his opinion. What I don’t understand is his position that Francesco Balena has no credibility and that his position as an RD is of little value. Balena is a well known and respected author in the .NET world as well as pre-.NET Visual Basic. And RD’s aren’t selected based only on their good looks. 😉 Many of them also happen to be some of the top in their field technically, which is why Microsoft allows them to represent MS as such. I see nothing wrong with expressing one’s opinion, but I think the [unjustified and unqualified] personal attack is pretty crappy.

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http://www.AcehAid.org

wowee! what a fun fun weekend. Even with a snowstorm there were a good 300 people at code camp on saturday. More on Sunday. There were even speakers who came from afar – Seattle (Rod Paddock who is speaking at Vermont.NET tonight), Chicago (Raj Das), North Carolina (Rob Zelt and Josh Carlisle), NJ (DonXML).

There were a lot of first time speakers and that went great! Dave Burke gave his presentation on Customizing .Text , which I couldn’t attend as I had a talk at the same time, and really enjoyed presenting. Dave got in a very scary accident on his way down and we were all happy to have him there and well.

Sam Gentile had to deal with my low powered laptop to do his .NET 2.0 demos since he had problems with his machine – but at least it worked!

I had fun with my talks. I did the security fundamentals talk again with a look at wse2.0 and love doing that one! I also got to try out two new talks. What’s new in ADO.NET 2.0 and  C# for VB programmers. They were both fun.

I know that during the ADO.NET talk, there was something I said, “hmmm – will have to check that out and blog it, but someone has to remind me” – I need the reminder because, as I expected, I don’t remember what that was – outside of checking the perf differences between using row add to add many rows to a table or using dataset merge and modify row state – as expected – no difference. I tried it with 400 new rows. So I have to find a better scenario for my demo!

The C#/VB talk was a total blast. Although the sessions were a generous 90 minutes, mine was before lunch. So at the point my talk was supposed to end, everyone just went and grabbed their lunch and came back and we played for another 45 minutes. Even though I don’t know the ins and outs of CodeRush too well, I spent about 10 minutes demoing it. I think it is a great tool for people who are used to one language and have to do some coding in the other. We got a little deeper into delegates than I meant to. I believe that delegates are the A#1 biggest hard to grok thing for VB programmers but I have found a way of explaning it that I think works. I think that I will get myself better versed in them and put together a session on delegates and event handling in .NET for VB programmers.

Thom Robbins did an extraordinary job putting this together!

I am having a blast working on my ADO.NET 2 demos for the ASPConnections talk (and for Code Camp). It is forcing me to think beyond what I did for my MSDN Mag article. For the article, I have about 50 little tests that I ran from a windows form. Here, not only is everything from ASP.NET, but the idea is to show where the benefit is if you are doing asp.net. It’s a lot of fun. Also I have done so much Windows Forms lately, I’m happy to be focusing on ASP.NET again.

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uggh – if it weren’t for the 200 mile drive I wouldn’t be worried about the forecast of snow (heavy at times) all night and tomorrow morning. the plan is to meet up with Laura Blood at 7am or so nearby and then haul a** to Mass. (hey, it rhymes). I was counting on a pedal to the metal 3 hour trip. Good thing my first talk is not till the afternoon. I hate all that time sitting in the car but at least I’ll have company this time! Dave Burke, who is presenting on customizing .Text, has a plan that will help him continue preparing while he drives. He’s smart – going down today. I still have plenty of prep to do today.

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and I’m sitting here waiting to get control back so I can keep hammering away…tick tick

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