This past Saturday, I attended Central Ohio Day of .NET. I spent a lot of the time running around, but despite missing a couple sessions, I really enjoyed the event.

A Friendly Game of Tag

Jeff Blankenburg had the fun idea of a Microsoft Tag scavenger hunt at Central Ohio Day of .NET, and he recruited me to help out with this event. Saturday morning, I had the stack of tags and surveyed the conference center for good spots to put the tags. Jeff and I had talked the night before about some potential spots, and that gave me ideas to run with. While he wrote up the hints, I was getting them in place. Special thanks to the guy who placed the tags in the Open Spaces room and on the open spaces board.

We had quite a few participants, and the scavenger hunt was done by about 11am, when Alex Moore came by and told Jeff the winning phrase - in a Ballmeresque way, he had to say "Developers! Developers! Developers!". There was great timing all around - Jeff and I were talking with some of the guys in the hall, including Andy Erickson, when we saw Alex and Steve Wallace heading towards the last stage. Andy put together last year's video recap and caught Alex's message - so let's hope he uses it in this year's recap!

We plan on doing a more challenging Tag scavenger hunt at another event later this summer, so keep an eye out for the Tags!

Intro to the New Data Types in SQL 2008

My SQL 2008 data types talk has made its second appearance at a Day of .NET. Some of the things that were covered included:

• Using date and time as separate fields, with the music collection example.


• Offsets are not time zones.


• FILESTREAMs extend SQL 2008 into the NTFS file system, related relational data to files.

My slide deck is available here.

TDD in T-SQL

This was the only other presentation that I sat through in its entirety. I had been hearing about TDD for quite awhile and had seen it in Python, Ruby, and Java. So it was about time that I saw TDD with a language that I use in my day job.

Phil Japikse presented on why to use TDD in general and then showed us what it took to do TDD with T-SQL. He used the T-SQL Test Tool, available through CodePlex. This tool works on SQL 2005 and higher.

I look forward to downloading it and testing it here at home to get a feel for TDD in T-SQL.

Thanks to...

This event was made possible by a lot of people, so I wanted to take the time to thank them here.

Sponsors

Without the sponsors, this event could not have been free to the attendees. Sponsors are the ones who provide the swag and financial support to cover costs like the venue, badges, programs, and any other incidentals. This year's sponsors were Microsoft, MAX Technical Training, DevExpress, Redgate, CBTS, Triune Group and SDS.

Speakers

The speakers bring the content to the event, sharing their interest on topics that you may be able to apply in the workplace. We had speakers from as far as Michigan and Tennessee. Thanks to all the speakers who came out and shared their passion for technology with the community.

Attendees

Without the attendees, the event wouldn't have a reason to happen. But we know there are people out there who want to learn more on .NET and who want to add to their technical toolbox. People traveled from all over for the event - it was amazing to see almost 200 people together for this event. If you attended, I hope you at least learned something new and were able to take home some nuggets of knowledge that you could put to work.

Organizers and Volunteers

And last but not least, I'd like to thank the organizers - Mike Wood, Jim Holmes, Carey Payette, Justin Kohnen, Bob Sledge, Matt Rigling and Chris Barth - and their crew of volunteers. Putting a successful event together takes just the right team, and this group had a successful team that kept the event running smoothly. Thanks for putting so much time and effort into bringing this event to the community!

I really enjoyed this year's event, and I look forward to some of the other Days of .NET that are yet to come.

Labels: Alex Moore, Central Ohio Day of .NET, Jeff Blankenburg, Microsoft Tag, SQL 2008 data types, T-SQL Test Tool

As some of you may have noticed, I've updated my blog badges for some of the upcoming events. However, there are also other events going on that I will not be attending due to other commitments, but I want to get the word out about them as well. So what's happening over the next few months? (Note: There are a lot of events going on, so I am splitting this into two posts.)

Central Ohio Day of .NET (April 18, 2009)

The Day of .NET season opens this year with Central Ohio Day of .NET, down in Wilmington, OH. For those of you not familiar with a Day of .NET, it's typically a day-long event covering various topics that would interest .NET developers and those getting started with .NET.

This year's topics include Lean with Kanban, CSS, XAML, SQL 2008, Powershell, object-oriented programming, patterns, Javascript, WPF, dependency injection, testing, Ruby and Rails for the .NET developer, Office development, and Sharepoint.

I will be giving my "Intro to the New Data Types in SQL 2008" talk.

For more information on Central Ohio Day of .NET, check out their site at: http://www.cinnug.org/cododn.

Kalamazoo X Conference (April 25, 2009)

As developers, we tend to go to conferences to learn about new technologies and languages - like Silverlight, MVC, WPF, and F#. But there's more to being a developer besides writing programs, and most developers tend to forget this.

My friends up in Kalamazoo have put together a conference called the Kalamazoo X Conference that address these other things tha we forget as a developer. There is a track for Soft Skills - including branding, measured innoveation, social networking, and the famous Soft Skills talk. Another track focuses on architecture/design/process - including unit testing, Kanban and Lean, patterns, and how to improve your development process. One of the things I get asked about by some of my colleagues is how to improve their UI and UX, and yes, these guys included a track for UX/design - which includes the process of designing, the art of simplicity, and tips for improving UX. Finally, there's the career development track - including change, organizational dynamics, effective customer communication, and leadership 101.

So take a break from the languages and techniques, and come out and see these other skills that we need to have and hone as developers.

I will be giving the talk on social networking and how to use the various sites effectively.

For more information on the Kalamazoo X Conference, check out their site at: http://www.kalamazoox.org/.

Stir Trek (May 8, 2009)

A few of my friends had the opportunity to attend MIX09, and now they're bringing the MIX content to our region. Some things that are getting covered include Silverlight 3, ASP.NET 4.0, Internet Explorer 8, Azure, SketchFlow, and WPF 4. Topics are being covered by both nationally-known and regionally-known speakers (including Tim Heuer, Matt Casto, Michael Eaton, Brian Prince, and Steve Smith).

For $25, you get MIX09 content, lunch, a raffle, and a private screening of the new Star Trek movie that opens on May 8. Need to convince your employer to give you the day off? It's a shorter period than MIX, cheaper than MIX, and you'll come back with a look at some of the new technologies that you can use to get ahead of the competition.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up at: http://www.stirtrek.com/

Ignite Cleveland (May 16, 2009)

The challenge - 20 slides, automatically advancing at 15 seconds each, giving you a total of 5 minutes to get your point across. Are you up to the challenge?

I took the challenge at the inaugural event this past February, and I delivered my "Marketing Your Event Online" pitch. Other talks given included "How to Winterize Your Business", "5 Steps to a Personal Brand", and "Things We Should Do For Our Clients (Even Though We Aren't Getting Paid for Them)".

Once again, Andrew Kavanaugh and Jon Stahl are putting this event together, and it'll be held at LeanDog. After seeing the success of the inaugural event, I have high hopes for this next event. If I didn't have prior commitments, I would definitely be at Ignite Cleveland 2. So what are you waiting for? Got a talk idea? Or maybe not brave enough to talk but want to purchase a ticket and attend? Check out their site for more information at: http://ignitecle.com/.

These are just some of the events that I'm looking forward to in the next couple months. Stay tuned for the next post, where I cover a few more events that are happening this summer!

Labels: Central Ohio Day of .NET, events, Ignite Cleveland, Kalamazoo X

Yesterday, I realized that my upcoming speaking schedule is going to be fun - 3 talks on 3 different topics in 3 different states in less than 1 month. So... where am I when and what am I talking about?



Talk 1: PyCon, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, March 29, 2009. "Pumping Iron into Python: Intro to FePy"

I have to thank Catherine Devlin for suggesting that I submit something to PyCon. I will be giving a mostly abridged version of my talk from CodeMash. However, unlike my demos at Codemash, I plan on showing IronPython in both a Windows environment and in Mono. I can tell you it's a combination of my CodeMash slide deck and my original IronPython talk that I gave last May. I should have my slide deck on the PyCon website later this week for those who are interested.

Note: Although I say this in the abstract: "This session will introduce the open source .NET implementation of Python known as IronPython without using Windows.", I've been asked by some Windows Python programmers to show Windows examples as well. So I will have both on hand. However, I plan on showing most of the demos with the ipy console on my Ubuntu VM.



Talk 2: Central Ohio Day of .NET, Wilmington, Ohio. Saturday, April 18, 2009. "Intro to the New Data Types in SQL 2008"

What originally started out as a presentation for my local SQL SIG - the Ohio North SQL SIG - has evolved into a Day of .NET talk. It debuted in September 2008. At the suggestion of Chris "Woody" Woodruff, I added FILESTREAM to my presentation in time for Ann Arbor Day of .NET last October. At Central Ohio Day of .NET, I will be presenting this talk - complete with revamped examples of hierarchyid and FILESTREAM.



Talk 3: Kalamazoo X Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Saturday, April 25, 2009. "Social Networking for Developers Geeks"

When I first heard about this conference late last year, I was intrigued. My buddy Mike blogged about the X Conference, and I'd recommend checking it out. I won't be showing any code, but I will be showing social networking profiles and some tips and tricks behind it. In an economy where companies are more prone to layoffs than to hiring new people, it helps to have a social network to find possible job leads and to possibly establish relationships and maybe form companies of your own. It also helps to network with others to bounce ideas and questions off of each other and even just to hang out. But we geeks aren't known to be social. So leave it to me to show a bunch of geeks how to get out there and how to get the best experience out of each tool.

I'm looking forward to giving these talks - they should be a lot of fun! I hope to see some of you there!

Labels: Central Ohio Day of .NET, Kalamazoo X, PyCon

Many moons ago, I was a Girl Scout, collecting badges for my sash in Brownies and then for my vest in Juniors. But once the troop dissolved, I stopped earning badges.

Here I am decades later, now collecting badges on my blog's sidebar. So what's the deal with the badges? Here we go:



This isn't a badge, although it appears with my badges. This is one of the Microsoft Tags that I've created, and I will unpassword it when the timing is right. For a very informative post on Microsoft Tag and some of its capabilities, check out Jeff Blankenburg's post on Microsoft Tag.



On Saturday, February 28th, I will be speaking at the first Ignite Cleveland. With an Ignite event, you have 20 slides, 15 seconds each, for a total of 5 minutes. The title of my talk is "Marketing Your Event Online". In my 5 minutes, I will be showing some of the tools to market events online - including Eventful, CrowdVine, Meetup, and Twitter. While showing off the tools, I will be mentioning effective ways of using them and some of the local companies that are using these tools. I've been mentioning this event on Cleveland Tech Events and as clevtechevents on Twitter.



On Sunday, March 29th, I will be in Chicago, speaking about IronPython at PyCon. I'm looking forward to hearing some of the Python and IronPython talks, and I look forward to meeting more people there.



On Saturday, April 18th, I will be in Wilmington, Ohio for Central Ohio Day of .NET. I've submitted talks on Iron Python, SQL 2008 data types, and XAML, but their call for speakers is open a bit longer, so I won't know if any of the talks will be accepted for awhile yet. I know of another IronPython talk being submitted by Darrell Hawley, and if both of our talks get accepted, I'd recommend checking them both out - I'm hoping to do a "look at the cool things you can do with IronPython" kind of talk, whereas he's hoping to showing off some of the tools to use with it and how to get into debugging and stuff.

Even if my talks don't get accepted, I plan on being at Central Ohio Day of .NET and hope to see you there!

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If you want to hear me talk on anything, check out my list of presentation abstracts. IronPython, databases in general, and social networking are the main things that I like talking about, but I'm always looking into new technology and may add more to my list of interests. Drop me an email at sarah at codinggeekette dot com if you want to hear me speak!

Labels: badges, Central Ohio Day of .NET, Ignite Cleveland, Jeff Blankenburg, Microsoft Tag, PyCon

While I was at CodeMash, I attended an open space on "Getting Started in Speaking". One of the questions asked was how to find out who's looking for speakers. Carey Payette mentioned on Twitter that Central Ohio Day of .NET opened their call for speakers. While at CodeMash, we had heard from John Kellar that devLink has opened their call for speakers.

So... if you're looking to speak in the community, take a look at these links:

• Central Ohio Day of .NET Call for Speakers< (Accepting submissions until March 2, 2009)


• devLink Call for Speakers (Accepting submissions until March 13, 2009)

Labels: Call for Speakers, Central Ohio Day of .NET, devLink, speaking