If any of you follow Amanda Laucher (pandamonial on Twitter), you may have seen her comment about meeting someone who didn't know about their MS evangelists. I have to admit - I had no idea of these people called evangelists until just this last December.

Living Under a Rock

When you work for a small company that really doesn't use new technologies nor hears about it, you never realize that you're outside the realm of influence. The only reason why I knew about C# was because my buddy G and I were talking about how we'd never need to know it as long as we were at that company. I remember the discussion clearly, and to this day, G's still there and not using much in the way of .NET (other than probably maintaining my small VB.NET app). Meanwhile, I moved on to a smaller company, bigger technical staff, and am using C# and having fun learning new technologies. There we were, the developers (yep, just the 2 of us) for a manufacturing company of 600+ people, not knowing of all the resources available to us.

Developer Evangelist?

I imagine that if my buddy Russ hadn't mentioned the .NET SIG, I wouldn't have thought to look to see what else is out there. Even so, going to the SIG meetings apparently wasn't enough, as I had been going to the meetings since May 2007, shortly after I started my current job, but still had no idea that there were these people called evangelists. I wouldn't hear about them until December 2007, when this guy Jeff Blankenburg came to the Bennett Adelson SIG and showed us some cool stuff from Microsoft (like Popfly). He mentioned that he is a developer evangelist for the region. At that point, I had to wonder what it was they did. After prodding Russ for more details, I learned that there was some other guy who would come along rarely but apparently not much else happened here in Cleveland. Still, there wasn't much that I could find out from Russ on what a developer evangelist did.

So, some of us lived under rocks or were just out of the realm of influence with the evangelists. (SIGs too far, no evangelists geared for the industry, etc.) If you know people who are left out, mention this post to them, as the Microsoft evangelists (at least those here in the Heartland District) are just an awesome team to meet!

So what do evangelists do?

Before I get into the "who", you need to know what they do.

Just as the title suggests, they evangelize! Seriously, though, they're developers, architects, and other tech-minded individuals who get to hear about the cool stuff ahead of time and make sure that we know about it. Tools and technologies, they're seeing just what the industry has in store, where things are going, and they tell us about it. Through presentations at user groups and events, blog entries, podcasts, videos, forums, and just being themselves and talking about the things they're passionate about, the evangelists get the word out.

Who are our evangelists?

Ohio is in the Heartland District, which happens to have quite active evangelists in the area. Since I'm a dev, I'm going to mention the developer evangelists first - Jeff Blankenburg and Jennifer Marsman. If you're a dev and reading my blog, you ought to read their blogs as well! Jeff's blog may be slow at the moment, as he's out until the end of May, but definitely stay tuned to his blog when he returns, as you never know what he'll blog about - from something about Silverlight to the after-party of a .NET event or a contest for swag at Codemash, his blog covers all sorts of things, some .NET related and some just regular blog entries. Jennifer just started her blog at the beginning of April and has returned to our region after a few months on leave. Something that Jennifer's doing in her blog is featuring women in technology on her Friday entries. Definitely check out her blog as well!

Then there are the architect evangelists. We used to have Josh Holmes as an architect evangelist for the Heartland District, but he recently was promoted to Central RIA evangelist. Josh is one of the guys from Code to Live, and although he has a bigger region now, he still comes around to the Heartland area events. Our new architect evangelist is Brian H. Prince. I can't comment on the architect coverage, as I'm not an architect, but I definitely recommend checking out Brian's blog even if you aren't an architect. He talks of cool technologies like LiveMesh, robots, and even these things known as "soft skills".

There are other evangelists in the area, but I've met the 4 that I mentioned, and I can definitely tell you that these guys (and Jennifer!) are passionate about technology and getting the word out to the community. Sometimes, I think part of their job is to promote the "unity" in "community".

Don't know who your evangelists are? Want to know who the others are in the Heartland area? Meet your local Microsoft Evangelists!

I've sent this info on to my buddy G, so that he's no longer just another dev out of the realm of influence. But there are other devs out there who don't know about these great contacts. So pass this word on and get the word out there, so that they know that there are awesome resources out there for us in the field.

And a shout out to the PA evangelists, especially John McClelland, for getting the word out to their PA followers on Cleveland Day of .NET! Thanks for spreading the word! :)

Labels: Brian H. Prince, evangelism, Jeff Blankenburg, Jennifer Marsman, Microsoft, pandamonial, Twitter

While stuck at home, I got a message from a friend who was working on some of his websites. He really wanted to work on a particular one, but he didn't know enough PHP or any SQL to really get it going. It was a good thing that he found me online and that I had a lot of time on my hands.

He's working on a site that I happen to understand quite well. All the features he's looking for are pretty similar to the things I work on at my day job. The only difference is that I use .NET stuff and he's using PHP5. I worked on a team that developed an inventory system in PHP with MySQL, so I've got that background to help as well. What could possibly go wrong?

I figured the best way for this to work would be for him to show me what he's working with and take it from there. After paying attention to some Twitter people and to posts in the NEODevEvents group, I installed Microsoft SharedView and sent the link to my friend. After a quick install, we were hooked up and ready to go.

My friend started sharing his environment with me, which helped me understand a lot and enabled me to give him direction without having to guess at what he was looking at. It also was nice to see his database structure without him having to copy and paste it in IMs. I was able to walk him through basic SQL queries via phpMyAdmin (and point out some of MySQL's quirks that I wish worked in SQL Server and vice versa). We looked at his database structure, in which I was able to give him a couple tips as well.

Then came the PHP part. When I worked with PHP and MySQL, it was PHP4 and MySQL before it grew up (got views, stored procedures, and a lot of other features that other database packages already had). I had to learn this mysqli syntax, which thankfully isn't too much different from what I used to work with. I was able to work with him on how to take what he learned with the SQL queries and how to use it in his code. Granted, it was basic stuff, but to be able to see his environment while this was going on helped a ton.

I definitely will use Microsoft SharedView again. Hopefully I'll be feeling better soon enough so that I can do voice chats while working with people over SharedView, as I can see that making things go a lot easier as well. So check it out - if you have to work with someone remotely on code, SharedView is nice because you can show them what you've got and vice versa. You can also delegate control of your shared things to other connected users. Definitely a useful tool for remote collaboration!

Labels: collaboration, Microsoft, MySQL, PHP, SharedView

This post is the first in many on Microsoft, the Not-So-Evil Empire, in relation to programming related topics and sites. Many years ago, I ran in circles with the Toledo Area Linux Users Group and later on with some of the guys here in Cleveland. One thing I noticed with those crews is the strong anti-Microsoft sentiment throughout. However, I was upfront with them about my playing the field - I prefer to be able to switch between platforms without playing favorites. They put up with me, but the president of TALUG at the time reminded them that I had volunteered for Microsoft (the Gaming Zone, but still...) and would tease me for not being a loyal Linux user. Every time I gave a presentation, I would hear a line about it.

One of the things that the Linux people complained about was that Microsoft didn't deal with open source. Their operating system isn't open source, the programs aren't open source, and there's no support for open source. Insert the rest of the Linux complaints against Microsoft and anti-open source here.

The Linux community has always looked towards SourceForge as its open source repository. There are many different categories of software available - including databases, sysadmin stuff, games, and desktop stuff. Some better known Linux packages on SourceForge include: phpmyadmin, PHP SysInfo, Squirrel Mail, and Licq.

Something I noticed while writing this blog though was that SourceForge has definitely changed. There are definitely more Windows packages available. Some packages worth checking out include GIMP for Windows (similar to Photoshop, but open source and free), GNUWin32 - GNU tools for Windows, and Tight VNC.

Now Microsoft isn't anti-open source. It just took them a little longer to get there. Introducing CodePlex, Microsoft's open source hosting site... live since June 2006, it's their attempt at getting open source projects in the Microsoft world. Some projects to check out include Iron Python, 3D Tools for WPF, Power Toys Pack Installer, and a managed library for the Wiimote.

So how does this make Microsoft not-so-evil (as opposed to the Evil Empire that Linux people really see it as)? By promoting open source, they are also promoting community interaction with their users. Each project may be worked on by one developer or many devs. Version control can be handled by numerous CVS tools including Tortoise SVN and TFS. Yes, SourceForge was out first, but let's give Microsoft some credit for taking this step.

One beaten dead horse addressed, with many more to come (but not necessarily right away)...

Labels: CodePlex, dead horse, Linux, Microsoft, open source, SourceForge