Tuesday night (5/10) is May’s .NET UG meeting. Matt Deiters (The Agile Developer) will be presenting on Design Patterns with .NET. I got an overview/preview of his presentation last week and am looking forward to getting into it a little deeper. If you’re free, you should definitely be there.
Tag: Community
I booked hotel yesterday via Hotwire. I booked a room for myself and one for a co-worker at the Westgate Lakes Resort & Spa. It looks pretty nice — Hotwire even called it a “condo”. We got it for a pretty good rate, too — only $58 per night.
I’ve talked to a few people over that last few weeks that were either going or planning to go. Of course it’s sold out now, so I don’t know if those “planners” are going to make it. So, anyway, all of us Milwaukee-area locals that are going should plan on meeting at lunch one day or something.
If you’re going and would be interested in hooking up during some downtime, leave a comment here with your link or e-mail so I can get in touch with you later.
Otherwise, I’ll just have to hang out with my co-worker, Steve, and with Gerry.
So, I’m thinking about having a grill-out for my local geek friends and acquaintances one day this summer. I’m not sure what to call it, though. Here are a few of my thoughts:
- Bar-B-Geek
- Geek-A-Que
- Bar-B-Geek-A-Que
- BBQ.NET
- Q#
Maybe I could do it in conjunction with the Milwaukee Nerd Dinner? Or maybe not? I haven’t really thought that much about it other than getting preliminary approval from Kelly (my wife). 🙂
How do you want your burger done? (It doesn’t really matter how you answer. If I’m grilling, it will probably be medium-well.)
This month’s Milwaukee Nerd Dinner is on April 26th at Buffalo Wild Wings on Mayfair. I’m going to try to actually be there this time. 🙂
Well, Deeper in .NET 2005 has come and gone now. Friday night blurred into Saturday, which blurred into Sunday. It was finally Tuesday when I started feeling rested. It was an awesome day, though. The speakers were great. The crowd had good questions. The box lunch was… ummm, the speakers were great!
In my last post, I mentioned all of the speakers that were coming and a few of their topics. I really enjoyed them all, and I learned a lot too. At lunch, there was an open forum to ask pretty much any question to the panel of experts, which included four of the speakers (all except for Rocky who had to leave) and Tom Lindley (sp?). Scott Guthrie was in a rush to catch a plane, so the moderator asked for all of the questions about ASP.NET 2.0 to be asked first so he would have a chance to answer them before taking off mid-session.
Well, I had recently found out that he was now in charge of the IIS team and that a new version was in the works. After a series of questions on ASP.NET with fairly short answers from ScottGu, I asked (paraphrased), “I know you’re about to leave, but in about 1 minute, what is the coolest feature of IIS 7?” Well, I may have made him miss his plane! He seemed very excited to talk about it and listed several (5 or 6?) pretty cool features, and talked about it for probably 5 minutes!
Sorry, ScottGu, if you missed your flight! Needless to say, it excited me about the product to see his excitement.
After the event, the Executive Committee of the WI .NET Users Group, any remaining Platinum sponsors, and any remaining speakers (who didn’t have flights to catch) all went to a nice steak dinner at the hotel restaurant. I actually got to know some of the EC members a little better, and they’re not so bad after all. 😉 I even got to finally meet Doug, Dan and Mark from the Chippewa Valley .NET Users Group.
All in all the whole day was pretty awesome and I can’t wait for next year’s event! We just need to come up with a name for it. The first was Day of .NET, then Deep in .NET, and now Deeper in .NET. Let me know if you have any suggestions for next year.
Now, aside from all of the event stuff happening, I had a little more going on. I am a partner in Oochie Web Hosting, which was a Gold sponsor of the event (as well as being the hosting provider of the WI .NET Users Group). Dennis, one of the other Oochie partners, was there manning the booth, but he wasn’t alone all day.
I need to give a very special thanks to my wife, Kelly, for showing up and helping Dennis get through the day. She kept Dennis company and even answered questions when it was busy, which is pretty impressive given that she’s not really a technical person. Plus, she went and got lunch for me and Dennis at some chicken place nearby (which explains why the box lunch seemed less than wonderful).
All in all, we (Oochie) collected around 100 business cards of people interested enough to leave a card with us. Since we didn’t have any little gimmicky things at our booth to give away like many vendor booths do, we were more than impressed with the turnout. We were, though, giving away a free year of hosting, as well as some other discounted services.
Anyway, yesterday, Kelly took all those cards and entered them into an Excel spreadsheet for us. Plus she did all this for free — that is, free plus a new pair of shoes… 🙂
I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with all those names yet. Maybe we’ll sell them… j/k I imagine we’ll just do a one-or-two-time mailing to find out who is interested, so if you’re name is in there, don’t worry, you won’t get SPAM blasted.
Anyway, I thought the day was great, and so did a few others. Here are a few blog entries I’ve seen about the day after the fact:
I’m really looking forward to next year! (I think I alrady said that though…)
As you may or may not know , I am pretty heavily involved in the local .NET community and serve as the Vice President of the WI .NET Users Group. Well this weekend, March 5, is our third annual day long extravaganza – Deeper in .NET 2005.
Well, I don’t know if extravaganza is the right word. Let me check.
(Searching the web…)
OK, Dictionary.com defines extravaganza as “an elaborate, spectacular entertainment or display”. I guess extravaganza is the right word after all.
I am SO excited about this. I’m such a geek. Our group is one of the 10 largest .NET user groups in the world! And get this: This is going to be the largest .NET user group event ever!! Right now we already have over 400 registrants. If you’re going to be anywhere near Milwaukee this Saturday, you need to be there. But register now so you can be sure to get in and get fed — mentally and literally (there’s lunch).
We’ve got an awesome lineup of speakers:
- Scott Guthrie
- Rob Howard
- Jason Beres
- Rocky Lhotka
- Chris Mayo
Topics look great too! Distributed objects, ASP.NET 2.0, Smart Client…
To top it off, Jacob Cynamon is hosting a lunch Q&A session featuring Scott Guthrie, Chris Mayo, Rob Howard, and Jason Beres who will answer questions regarding .NET architecture and design considerations not covered in their presentations. Watch for the e-mail to come out to all registered WI .NET UG members soon. If you want to know more about this, then you need to register on the WI .NET UG site.
It’s this Saturday, March 5, 2005 at the Radisson by Mayfair Mall. Late registration and check-in starts at 7:00 AM and things get kicked off at 7:45.
Seriously, you should check it out! I’ll be there all day — come see me and say hi!
Well, I have officially joined the “INETA Academic Committee Student Committee” (quite a mouthful). I participated in my first conference call tonight, and it looks like I might be assisting in the development of a new site for the Student Committee. I’m still learning about the role of these committees. I even had to have a cheat sheet of various acronyms and definitions e-mailed to me in order to make sense of what was happening in the meeting.
I’m actually kind of excited about this. When Brian Tinkler first asked me about getting involved with INETA a year or two ago, I was hesitant. Since I am already involved in the local .NET community as the vice president of the WI .NET Users Group, I didn’t think I would have enough time. Plus I didn’t think I could bring anything substantial to the table.
Well, the time availability hasn’t changed much (actually, I’m busier now than ever), but I’m excited to be involved anyway!
I’ve never been to one of these meetings yet, but have a couple friends who have. I’m going to try to make it to February’s Meeting.