Day of .NET in Ann Arbor Registration is OPEN!

I'm thrilled to announce that registration for this year's Day of .NET in Ann Arbor is officially open!!! Run, don't walk, to your nearest web browser and go to http://www.dayofdotnet.org Click on the 'Registration' link to sign up for this 100% FREE event. Last year's event sold out, so don't miss the opportunity to attend this year.

We are making final session selections and should have a schedule up in the next few days, but don't let that stop you from getting on the list for this killer developer event. Space is extremely limited, so register TODAY!

Day of .NET in Ann Arbor Redux

It is absolutely ridiculous of me to have neglected posting about DoDN 2007. I am, after all, chief, cook, bottle washer, HMFIC and conference chair for this year's event. So without further ado...

Day of .NET in Ann Arbor 2007 is taking place on Saturday, May 5, 2007 on the campus of Washtenaw Community College. If you were in attendance last year, you know that this is a developer event NOT to be missed. If you didn't attend last year, then you should be ashamed of yourself. This is THE .NET developer event to attend in southeast Michigan/northwest Ohio.

The call for speakers is well under way, but there are several slots waiting for some great content, so if you are AT ALL interested in presenting at DoDN, then get your abstract in ASAP.

We're also looking for sponsors to help offset some of the costs of this great event ("free to attend" does not necessarily mean "free to organize"). Check out our sponsor prospectus if you or your company would be interested in having the attention of rougly 200 highly-motivated software professionals.

Registration will be opening up in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned to www.dayofdotnet.org for developments!

CodeMash Totally ROCKED!

I'm so glad I attended CodeMash this week in Sandusky, Ohio. I had a really excellent time, learned some new things, made some new friends and reaffirmed some old ones. Mega kudos to the organizers, particularly my good buddies and colleagues Jim Holmes, Darrell Hawley, Dianne Marsh and Jason Follas. You folks put on a killer event that rivaled any paid event I've been to. Congrats on a great conference!

I had the pleasure of attending a private lunch with Scott Guthrie, the father of ASP.NET and supreme overlord of a whole mess of teams at Microsoft. There were a number of developer community influentials at the lunch (I'm flattered to be considered 'influential', by the way!) and had a great discussion with Scott about upcoming features of Visual Studio, the .NET Framework, etc. He even busted out the laptop about halfway through and demo'd some interesting LINQ code.

The snow had been falling on and off all day, so I didn't stick around much after the raffle as I wanted to get started on my 2 hour drive home. Rumor had it Josh Holmes and Brian Prince made good on their pledge so shave their heads if the bloggers in the attendee pool would blog their a**** off. I pray someone got pictures!

All in all, it was a fantastic event. I can't wait until CodeMash 2008!

Code Mash - Day 1

Wow, this is a REAL LIVE CONFERENCE! I can't believe how many people are here. The organization is top-notch, the facility rivals any convention center in Vegas and the sessions are engaging. The theme of CodeMash is "Free Your Mind", so in that spirit I'm shying away from the purely .NET sessions and turning my attention to the presentations on process. So far today I've been to Scott Ambler's "Introduction to OpenUP", Ken Faw's "SOA as a Conversation" and Ben Carey's session on test-driven development. My mind has definitely been opened up to some areas I've not spent much time thinking about. If nothing else, CodeMash will serve as a jumping-off point to further study of some very interesting topics.

Several of the amateur photogs around here have been posting their photos to Flickr...just search for the tag "codemash".

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3...2...1...CODEMASH!

The CodeMash site is live and ready for pre-registration! You should pre-reg to get on the mailing list and get priority access to registration when it opens up (which should  be soon). You can even get your own "I'll Be There" graphic to add to your site/blog!

Microsoft Snaps Up Another One

Continuing their tradition of hiring only the best, Josh Holmes has joined Microsoft as an Architect Evangelist for the Heartland District. I've learned a lot from him in the last year or so as a subcontractor for SRT Solutions. It's a great opportunity for him and I sincerely wish him the best in his new role.

Still not completely back from hiatus

My mother's health continues to be an issue that is eating up a tremendous amount of what little free time I have. I am, however, working on a series of posts on hosting designers in a .NET app. My current project has me developing a custom GUI designer. I used Dinesh Chandnani's excellent article Create And Host Custom Designers With The .NET Framework 2.0 from the March 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine as a starting point for my designer. I've learned a TON of stuff about design-time vs. run-time, serialization, deserialization, interfaces, custom controls and code generation. I may even work up a user group presentation from all that I've learned on this project. Stay tuned!