Wow. I woke up this morning to a terrific email…

James,

We would like to extend our thanks for your participation in the INETA Community Champions program and your commitment to the developer community. You were nominated by your local Developer Evangelist Lynn Langit.  You faced some challenging competition yet your accomplishments speak for themselves.  The Community Champions team is thrilled to inform you that you are one of our top winners for Q1 2010.  Congratulations!  INETA will be announcing the winners in our next INETA Newsletter as well as posting announcements on our web site. 

I had worked with the INETA Community Champs committee a few years ago, but never thought I would be a recipient.

Thanks everyone, especially Lynn (my own developer champion)!

And just so everyone knows I’m not kidding… here’s the proof.

Time to get crackin’.

James

Man am I excited! Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin from .NET Rocks are going on the road again, and are making special plans to come out and visit the Inland Empire .NET User’s Group!

I’ve been working with – well he’s been doing all the work – Jim Barry at ESRI in Redlands to host the event there, and he has really come through for us. We will be having the event in the new Auditorium, which means the Inland Empire leg of the road trip will make all the other venues look like rickety old shelters.

(Update. I got so excited, I forgot the date)

Thursday, April 22, 2010 from 6:00 to 9:00-ish

Here’s a peek of what I’m talking about.

Go IE!

Here’s the “official” word from Richard and Carl…

.NET Rocks is on the Road Again!

Carl and Richard are loading up the RV and driving to your town again to show off the latest and greatest in Visual Studio 2010! And to make the night even more fun, we’re going to bring a rock star of the Visual Studio world to the event and interview them for a special .NET Rocks Road Trip show series. Along the way we’ll be giving away some great prizes, showing off some awesome technology and having a ton of laughs.

And one lucky person at the event will win “Ride Along with Carl and Richard” and get to board the RV and ride with the boys to the next town on the tour (don’t worry, we’ll get you home again!)

So come out to the most fun you can have in a geeky evening – and find out what’s new and cool in Visual Studio 2010!

Thanks Jim for all your help!

Keep an eye on http://www.iedotnetug.org/sf/dotnetrocksroadshow/ to RSVP for the event

Time to get planning.

We had our 2008 Microsoft Launch event last Tuesday. When word came down from Microsoft that they were going to have Community Launch Events, I immediately asked for the details. I was told we could have at most, three presenters. In the last year, several members of the user group have really stepped forward to help me with things, and I thought it would be nice to reward them by giving them access to this great experience. So, I wrote a letter back, describing what these people have done, and could they be involved. The answer was "yes". I also mentioned our meeting schedules and our Launch would be a week before Community Launches were supposed to start. Again, they said it wouldn't be a problem. So it was game on. I invited the members I had thought of and away they went.

Well, the "official" training started to trickle out, and there wasn't much there, so these six people, went ahead and created their own content. Launch day came and was I impressed! Here is what the lineup was:

• George Ande – ASP.NET Ajax with .NET 3.5
• Sean Dorsett – Visual Studio 2008 Tips and Tricks
• Volkan Uzun – New features of C# 3.0
• Steve O’Brien – LINQ
• Matt Penner – GIS and Spatial Analysis in SQL 2008
• Cigdem Uzun – Silverlight 2.0

What totally amazed me was how with minimal official training content there was, they each came up with six dead on, concise, to the point, and top notch presentations. Each presentation went about 25-30 minutes, and the amount of questions which were generated, just blew me away. The amount of energy in the room was great. Two recruiters, Armando Lopez from Robert Half Technology, and Brant Jones from San Bernardino County talked about local jobs.

Attendance was great, with standing room only and I'm grateful to Robert Dottl at Riverside Medical Clinic for giving us the bigger room.

Here are the stats:

• RSVPs: 36 
• Attendance: 34 - a new IEDOTNETUG Record
• Non RSVP Attendees: 8
• First Time Attendees: 11
• Total Raffle Ticket Sales: 364
• Number of software licenses (VSTS 2008, SQL 2008, WS 2008, telerik, CodeSmith, ReSharper, Infragistics) won: 38
• Number of books (O’Reilly, Wrox, Pearson) won: 22
• Number of job offers mentioned after break: 4
• Pizza slices left over: 1

Oh, and that's not a typo. This was not Visual Studio Standard Edition given away at the public launches, this is Visual Studio Team Suite!

Pictures of the launch are on Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/iedotnetug

Wow, I'm still on a high

Here are Cal Schrotenboer's slides for his presentation to the Inland Empire .NET User's Group on Windows Presentation Foundation, given on June 12, 2007 

IntroductionToWPF.ppt (234.50 kb)

LearnWPF_WCF.ppt (91.50 kb)

James 

Here is my Presentation to the Inland Empire .NET User's Group, "Home Grown Ajax and Javascripting" given on May 8, 2007.

HomeGrownAjaxandJavascripting.ppt (931.50 kb)

James 

Here is Steve O'Brien's Presentation to the Inland Empire .NET User's Group, "OO Principles and Design Patterns" on February 13, 2007

Design Patterns Presentation.ppt (137.00 kb)

James