Last week, I was doubly fortunate. First, because I had the opportunity to attend my second Tech Ed. Although I attend a lot of conferences, the large, commercial conferences tend to be out of my price range. But more importantly, I was fortunate to be invited to speak at Tech Ed this year. This was by far the largest in-person event at which I have ever spoken and it was a great experience!

I arrived in New Orleans Saturday night and had dinner with Richard Campbell and Tibi Covaci - two of the smartest people I know.

Saturday morning, I woke up early and took a bus with a bunch of volunteers to a New Orleans neighborhood still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina 8 years ago. Tech Ed partnered with several local charities to invite a busload of attendees to help build houses in this neighborhood. You can read more about the event here.

A morning pounding nails left me exhausted but a hot bath later I was ready to attend the INETA Meet and Greet - a chance for those in the developer community to connect with one another. It was also a great chance for me to catch up with others on the INETA Board of Directors, an amazing group of people who put a lot of effort into making the developer community better.

My presentation was scheduled for Monday afternoon, so I spent most of the morning preparing for it. The topic was "Effective Data Visualization" - a talk I have given many times in the past. I was nervous but the presentation went well and the 70 minutes flew by. Over 200 people attended the session and several people approached me afterward to tell me how much they enjoyed the talk and what they learned. Microsoft Evangelist Brady Gaster was kind enough to sit in my session and provide some valuable feedback on my presentation skills. You can watch a recording of my presentation here.

At Tech Ed last year in New Orleans, I won "Speaker Idol" - a competition among those who have never presented at Tech Ed before. Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell of .NET Rocks fame host the contest in which each contestant must deliver a 5-minute presentation, followed by critiquing by a panel of 4 judges. A heat takes place each day during lunch and the finals are held on the last day of Tech Ed. As last year's Speaker Idol champion, I was asked to be a judge this year. The quality of the competition was amazing this year and I was excited to see Jeff Fritz - whom I met at last year's Speaker Idol - finish as runner-up this year. The champion was Jessica Devita, who gave an excellent presentation on Office 365 Migrations. I had a blast judging this event and I'm grateful I was asked to do so.

One advantage this conference has is the number of people on the Microsoft product teams who attend and make themselves available. One section of the trade show floor is designated "Ask the Experts" where Microsoft employees and industry experts make themselves available to answer questions of attendees. I took advantage of this opportunity, getting answers to my question about how to configure startup options for Lync (the menu is hidden until you click the 'Gear' icon); and my question about how to configure DNS to point to my Azure Web Site without prefacing the URL with "www" (I need to add the URL to the "MANAGE DOMAINS" list in the Azure portal).

On Wednesday, I volunteered to work one of the Ask the Experts area and I answered a number of questions about Visual Studio.

Tech Ed features over 700 sessions, which can be a bit overwhelming. I managed to catch a few of these - some in person and some via recordings. My notes are at the end of this article. I'll likely be watching some more videos during the coming weeks. They are available at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013#fbid=-b30gJBZH1s

Even without Tech Ed, a few days in New Orleans is a pleasant experience. The hotel (Loews) was great; I explored the French Quarter in the evenings; Thanks to Becky Isserman, I experienced my first Beignet (at Cafe du Monde); I attended a number of parties thrown by sponsors; I had dinner with many old and new friends, including Mihai Tataran, Mark Minasi, Brent Stineman, Dustin Campbell, Chris Woodruff, and too many others to list here; I ate too much excellent spicy food; and I walked so much that my feet ached by the time I left.

The only downside was that I had to leave a day early to attend my son's high school graduation, so I missed the closing party at the Louisiana Super Dome that featured a concert by Tina Turner.

All in all, Tech Ed was an amazing experience and I hope to be invited to speak again next year.

Photos of Tech Ed

Session Notes

KEYNOTE

by Brad Anderson
video

Key Changes to Azure
    BizTalk in cloud
    Billing prorated by the minute
    Web sites now support SSL

Brownfield Development: Taming Legacy Code with Better Unit Testing and Microsoft Fakes

by Peter Provost and Joshua Weber
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/DEV-B331#fbid=i3RgnF-27j2

Legacy Code=Any code without tests
    Risk of change outweighs value of new features
Start writing tests
    Pick something you know; then another thing you know
What test
    Code you will change
    Code that affects what you change
    Test to understand code

Do not test
    Irrelevant edge cases
    Unrelated working code

Recommended:
    Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
Large methods are painful
    Do too much
    Need to understand it all to make a change
    Solution
        Refactor into smaller methods
        Single Responsibilty
    Use SENSOR variables
        private Object SENSOR;
        this.SENSOR = somevariable;
    Shim/Seam:
        Change what a method does
        Requires a scope with using()

Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

by Dustin Campbell and Scott Cate
video

Solution Explorer
    Expand class: View members
Right-click  class or method: Scope to: Used By
Filter pending changes

Common metaphor
    Back arrow

CTRL - Last cursor position
CTRL SHIFT - Reverse direction

View | Code Definition
    Always shows definition in a window without navigating away

CTRL ,
    Navigate To
    Global Search

CTRL SHIFT V
    cycles through items on clipboard ring

SHIFT ALT F11
    Prompt which nested function to step into

Building Modern, HTML5-Based Business Apps on Windows Azure with Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch

by Beth Massi
video

Rapid Application Development for data-based apps
Handles CRUD for you

Single Page app
"Responsive Design": Layout changes as screen size changes
1. Start
2. Describe your data
3. Create screens for common tasks

Customize screens
Define custom queries

Design or Die: The Challenge to the Microsoft Developer Ecosystem

by Billy Hollis
video

Software landscape is changing
    Customers expect apps to work on different devices

Layering information in a single panel is now possible

You don't have to be as good as professional designers; You have to be better than you are now
Need basic understanding of composition and a process

Data Grids tend not to be good for touch
    If we expand size of cells to touch, less data on screen

OK to have incomplete metaphors; Mind fills in the details

Gutenberg Principle
    In left-to-right reading cultures, people tend to scan rectangular surfaces from top-left to bottom-right.
    Fitt's Law
        Big buttons are easier to find and use
        Hollis: If buttons are too large, insulting to user (Fisher-Price principle)
    Hick's Law
        Too many options confuse / slow down users

People like wide open spaces

Screen real estate is no longer as valuable as it once was. Easy to swap screens.

Recommended books
    Universal Principles of Design
    Designing with the Mind in Mind

Keys for Design Process
    Create multiple design. Compete for best one.
    Collaborate
    Iterate
    Starts with paper (tools constrain your brain to what you know how to make the tool do)

    Observe users in the field

Present multiple prototypes
    Focuses users on differences between options, rather than nitpicking limitations of a design

TypeScript: Scaling Up JavaScript

Jonathan Turner
video

JavaScript Designed to
Client
Server
work on any OS
(so does Typescript output)

JavaScript code works in TypeScript

Compatibility: Can call into 3rd party javascript libraries from Typescript

Type system
Statically typed
  Better Intellisense
  Type-checking only at design-time (removed at compile-time)

http://www.typescriptlang.org/
"Play" link: Write Typescript: See compiled JavaScript

Episode 263

Shawn Weisfeld on UserGroup.tv

Episode 257

Stan Schultes on Bar Camps, Economic Summits, and SparkGrowth

Last week, I attended my third Microsoft Global MVP Summit. The Summit is a conference held in the Seattle area open to Microsoft MVPs.

I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement that prevents me from talking about most of the conference content; but I can tell you about my experience and my impressions.

By far, the best part of the MVP Summit is the chance to meet so many smart people. Many of them I know by reputation before I meet them. Every year I joke that I plan to be the dumbest guy in every room at this conference. And every year, the joke is very close to reality. There are some amazing people here - those with deep knowledge of a technology; those who have built amazing products or open-source projects; those who have written books and blogs that I've read; those who produce podcasts that I listen to regularly; and those who have a story to tell about how they use technology to solve real problems. I love meeting and talking with all these people.

The sessions are good, but, other than REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED, I didn't hear about a whole lot of new stuff.

There are some regular events in the evening and I took advantage of those. A party at Ted Neward's house attracted a who's who of technologists and the annual Party With Palermo (hosted by Jeff Palermo of Austin, TX) always attracts a great crowd. I attended a reception for first-time MVPs, even those this was my third summit, because:

1. It was hosted by INETA and I am on the Board of Directors
2. It was organized by my friend Joe Guadagno, who did an amazing job
3. INETA presented a Lifetime Achievement award to Russ Fustino at the event and I wanted to be present to congratulate Russ.

The day after the Global MVP Summit was the ASP.NET Insiders Summit organized by Scott Hanselman. I was excited to attend this conference because I was invited to join the Insiders only a few weeks ago. (I think I was the newest member at the time of the Summit). These sessions were really informative. We got a look at new and proposed language, framework, and IDE features. We also had a chance to provide feedback to the product team; and to see several open-source web frameworks. Another NDA prevents me from revealing too many details of what I saw there, but I really learned a lot from this extra day. I plan to attend the ASP.NET Summit again next year.

Two days before the MVP Summit, a group of attendees and a few other volunteers traveled to the Northwest Harvest Food Bank in Seattle to help pack fruit for needy families in the area. This was a great opportunity to meet people, have fun, and do some good.

The week was exhausting but well worth the trip. If Microsoft will have me, expect to see me at the 2014 Global MVP Summit. And I still expect to be the dumbest guy in each room.

A lot of exciting things are happening at Sogeti in Michigan. We hired a new leadership team about a year ago; we recently realigned our region with the offices in Columbus and Cleveland; and we moved our Detroit office from Farmington Hills to Southfield on January 1.

To celebrate our move to a much nicer home,  Sogeti is hosting an open house tomorrow, February 13 at 6PM.

The event begins with plenty of past and other Italian food from Buca di Beppo, which is why we’ve titled this event “Sogeti and Meatballs with a Side of Technology”. Three Sogeti consultants will be giving technical presentation during the evening: Sogeti Mobility Lead Samidip Basu will talk about Windows 8; Sogeti Managed Testing Practice Manager Matthew Eakin will present The "New" Tester: How Agile is changing the Testing Skillset; and I will deliver an introduction on Cloud Computing and Windows Azure.

The purpose of the event is to introduce or re-introduce Sogeti to the Detroit technical community; however, it’s also a great opportunity for you to learn something and to network with your peers.

The event is free, but we ask that you register at http://sogeti.eventbrite.com so that we can get an accurate count for the food. The address is:

26957 Northwestern Highway
Suite 130
Southfield, MI

I hope to see you there.

CodeMash 2013 is in the books. A record 1500 people attended this conference and many (including me) left with their brains and bellies full.

This community event has swelled to 1500 attendees - almost the size of many commercial conferences that charge many times the $280 price tag. It also attracts many of the same speakers as these larger and more expensive events.

As a result, you get to hear great presentations from top technical people; and a chance to interact with these speakers, asking technical questions of industry experts and finding out how they are applying technology on their projects.

Attendees had their choice of about 200 presentations on a wide range of topics. Presentations covered development platforms, such as .NET, Java, Ruby, JavaScript, and Scala; as well as development concepts such as Testing, Agile methodologies, Application Lifecycle Management, and User Experience.

CodeMash also included an area for open spaces. In these sessions, the attendees picked a topic and discussed it as a group, rather than listening to a lecturer. I found these to be better suited to my learning style because I could ask specific questions of the most knowledgeable people and draw on the experiences of more than one person in the session.

In addition, CodeMash offered a few things I did not take advantage of:

• Coding Dojos allowed users to get hands-on experience practicing their coding skills by solving defined algorithms.
• KidzMash was a mini-conference aimed at teaching software to children. (The waterpark makes this an ideal conference to bring your family to)
• At the Thursday evening Jam Session, musicians could bring their instrument and play together.
• Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell recorded an episode of their popular .NET Rocks podcast in front of a live audience.
• Customer obligations kept me from much of the "Pre-Compiler" sessions. These are half-day sessions that either dive in-depth to a topic or provide attendees a chance to try out a set of technologies and skills as they learn them. In particular, I would have like to attend the speaker workshop, because I'm hoping to organize something similar in Michigan.

Here are a few things I learned at CodeMash

• I learned a new technique for redirecting old links when migrating a web site. This is important for Search Engine Optimization.
• I learned the difference between JavaScript and CoffeeScript.
• I learned the strengths and weaknesses of Backbone.js and Knockout.js. (Backbone is better at interacting with server data; Knockout is better at automatically updating visual elements in response to model changes)
• I saw examples of how to build robotics using Arduino and Netduino microcontrollers.
• I learned the advantages of using KendoUI controls and learned the basics of adding them to a web site.

CodeMash takes place at the Kalahari Conference Center in Sandusky, OH - a venue most famous for housing "America's Largest Indoor Waterpark". Conference activities always keep me occupied during the hours that the water park is open; fortunately, the CodeMash organizers negotiated one evening when the park re-opened for a few hours for the conference attendees.

This was my 6th consecutive year attending CodeMash (of the 7 total). For the second consecutive year, I was honored to be selected to speak at CodeMash. My presentation was titled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love jQuery" and focused on how jQuery made client-side JavaScript coding much easier.

Photos

Episode 247

Kent Fehribach and Matt Ruma on Growing a User Group

A few months ago, David McKinnon told me he planned to organize a conference at Cobo Hall. I was skeptical. At this larger venue, he could attract a much larger audience than to the previous 1DevDay, MobiDevDay, and CloudDevDay conferences he had organized, but the cost was higher. A lot higher.

Still, Dave decided to take a chance and he signed a contract with Cobo.

Months later, over 500 people showed up to see presentations on various software development technologies, platforms, and languages. The common theme was software development.

On Saturday, November 17, the lines began to form at Cobo Hall. The registration line was so long that we had to delay Ted Neward's opening keynote presentation by 30 minutes. After that small glitch, the conference went very smoothly. Dozens of technical presentations were available to the attendees, open spaces, plus panel discussions, plus a gourmet lunch. The event finished with an excellent keynote by Chad Fowler and an after-party.

I had the privilege of serving as Master of Ceremonies for this event and I could not have enjoyed this more.  Throughout the day, people kept coming up to me and telling me how much they enjoyed the conference.

After a few days rest, we may consider a 2013 1DevDayDetroit.

Episode 239

Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell on The .NET Rocks Road Trip

I'd like your feedback on a conference I am considering helping to organize.

This idea was originally suggested by Matt Ruma, but I like it and I would like to help him execute it.

The conference would feature speakers delivering 10-15 minute "Lightning Talks" on a technical topic. Following each talk, a designated panel of experienced speakers would provide 5 minutes of feedback to the speaker about his presentation. The feedback would cover the topic, the demos, the speaking style, the slides, anything that contributed to the quality of the presentation. After 2 speakers, we would all take a short break to stretch.

Using this format, we could have 12-15 Lightning Talks in a single-track, all-day conference.

There are two primary goals of this conference.

1. Audience members could learn from hearing a series of Lightning Talks, possibly getting a brief exposure to some new technologies.
2. Speakers (particularly inexperienced speakers) would receive valuable experience speaking in front of an audience and valuable feedback on their presentation. One advantage of this format is that delivering a 15-minute presentation is far less intimidating than delivering a 60- or 75-minute presentation.

Part of the inspiration for this conference comes from the excellent Kalamazoo X conference, organized each year by Michael Eaton. However, the speaker feedback and the emphasis on technology rather than soft skills would distinguish this conference from Kalamazoo X.

I'd like to hear your opinions on this. Is it something you would be likely to attend? What ideas could make the conference more successful? Please add your comments below or post them on Twitter with the hashtag #SpeakerConf. You can find me there at @DavidGiard.

If you are running a user group or organizing a technical conference, one challenge you will face is finding good speakers.

The problem is compounded by the fact that most such organizations run on a limited budget. Many speakers are willing to freely donate their time because they enjoy presenting, they want to help out, and it increases their reputation. However, it’s not reasonable to assume these speakers will also be able to donate their own money to travel to your group.

Some areas don’t have a large pool of good speakers on which to draw. Even if you are fortunate enough to live in such an area, I still think it enhances local events to bring in some speakers from other areas.

Bringing in a speaker from another area costs money. Someone has to pay for transportation and lodging. Either the speaker will decide to donate his money as well as his time or your group will find the funding to make this travel possible. Fortunately, you have a few options.

INETA: For years, INETA has helped bring speakers to other parts of the country. Recently INETA changed their speaker programming, focusing more on helping speakers who travel within their own region. Currently, there are hundreds of speakers registered with INETA. This expanded the number of speakers, but decreased the maximum amount paid to each speaker. You can request an INETA speaker at http://ineta.org/Speakers/SearchCommunitySpeakers.aspx. I am a registered as a speaker with this program and I know many others also registered and I can tell that it does help to offset at least some travel costs.

Local Sponsors: Because user group audiences are a great target market for recruiters and hiring managers, you can often find companies willing to pay a speaker’s travel expenses in exchange for some free publicity and a few minutes in front of your group. Find out what companies are hiring or recruiting and make a few phone calls.

Evangelists: The job title “Evangelist” is a relative new one in the software world. However, many companies employ individuals as full-time Evangelists. Their job is to spread the word about the company and its technology – often by delivering technical presentations at user groups and conferences. Part of their performance review includes something called “reach”, meaning the number of people who read, see or hear their message. By inviting them to your group, you are increasing their reach. If your audience is in their target market, it probably won’t cost you anything. My experience is that most Evangelists are not focused on delivering a sales presentation; however, it’s worthwhile to verify the topic with the speaker ahead of time.

Speaker Programs: Many companies sponsor a select group of speakers who travel to user groups and conferences. While these speakers are not employees of the company, they do get some of their travel costs offset by the company in exchange for some publicity during the talk. This allows the company to reach a larger audience than they could using only their Evangelists. It also allows many speakers to travel to more events than they could afford on their own. I am a member of such a program - the Telerik Insiders - and it has been very beneficial to me and to Telerik. You can see a list of all Telerik Insiders at http://www.telerik.com/community/insiders.aspx. Several other vendors have similar programs.

These are some resources to find speakers and some ideas for finding funding for speaker travel costs. Don’t let geographic barriers prevent you from bringing the best speakers to your next event.

If you are running a user group or organizing a technical conference, one challenge you will face is finding good speakers.

I recommend starting by looking in your own area for good speakers.

My geographic area (southeast Michigan and environs) is blessed with many good speakers and we often exploit this at local user groups and conferences. Get out and find these speakers. Learn who is speaking at user groups and conferences in your area and contact those people. Better yet, attend those events so you can hear and meet these presenters. Establish a personal relationship with them, so they will be more likely to donate their time to your event.

You can also use your event to help cultivate inexperienced speakers. Multi-track conferences and short Lightning Talks at a user group are great ways for new speakers to gain experience in front of a live audience. At the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group, we host up to two Lightning Talks per monthly meeting. A Lightning Talk is a 10-minute presentation on any topic and is a great way to practice one’s presentation skills in a low-risk environment. Often a member will start by giving a Lightning Talk and will go on to speak at local and regional conferences.

It’s tempting to bring in big-name speakers from other parts of the country, but don’t ignore your backyard. You are likely to find some excellent speakers in a convenient location.

Our noses were pressed against the inside of the 19th floor window when the giant RV drove by. I called Richard to tell him we saw them and he asked where they could park their 37-foot vehicle. “Ask the valet to park it,” I joked. Within seconds, I heard Richard asking a terrified valet if he would park his car.

A few minutes later, Richard Campbell, Carl Franklin, and their driver found a few concurrent spots to park the RV and arrived at the 19th floor for a special meeting of the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG) and a special live recording of the Tablet Show. The event was part of the 2012 DotNetRocks Road Trip that spans 39 cities and nearly 3 months. At this stop, Richard delivered a presentation on DevOps; Carl a presentation on Building Windows 8 applications; and Jeff Wilcox of the Microsoft Azure team gave a brief presentation about his life and work. Afterward, Carl and Richard interviewed Jeff about his Fourth and Main application, built for Windows Phone 7. You can listen to that interview here.

The trip was initiated by Carl and Richard, who are the famous hosts of a number of popular podcasts, including The Tablet Show, DotNETRocks, and RunAs Radio. When I heard the trip would include a stop in Michigan, I immediately contacted the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group volunteers and a great many people worked hard to make the October 9 stop in Southfield a great success.

We billed it as a second October GANG meeting with President Kent Fehribach hosting, New World Systems chipped in some extra sponsorship money and we ordered a barbecue dinner from Lockhart’s of Royal Oak. About 120 people packed the room and nearly all stayed for the entire 4 hours. Many went to the pub after the show to continue the conversation.

Somehow, I ended up getting the credit for the local event, but that simply isn’t fair – many people contributed to the night’s success and I’m proud to have been one of them.

I’m hoping this isn’t the last tour Richard and Carl organize and I’m hoping it’s not the last time they visit Michigan. We have a lot more valets waiting to be terrified.

Links

Photos

Dot Net Rocks Road Trip

The Tablet Show

Interview with Jeff Wilcox

Episode 235

Ian Felton on Marching Mountains

For many, the Tampa Code Camp was an experience to learn about others; for me, it was a challenge and an adventure.

I submitted five talks because I wanted to allow the organizers to pick what they wanted and in case someone else submitted some of the same topics I did. Little did I know that they would ask me to deliver all 5! There were only 6 time slots and I was scheduled for 5 of them! To be fair, I could have e-mailed the organizers and asked them to cancel some of my talks, but I saw the thrown gauntlet and I accepted the challenge.

Because I was speaking almost the entire time, I didn't get to experience much of the Code Camp directly. However, I can say that the audiences in my sessions seemed really energized and there was a lot of enthusiasm at the after-party.

The Tampa Code Camp was held in conjunction with the Tampa Bar Camp. About 1000 attendees turned out in total. I don't know the numbers for Code Camp versus Bar Camp, but it didn't much matter as the sessions all took place in the same 2 buildings. I was told that the Bar Camp tends to include more open source presentations, while the Code Camp was focused more on Microsoft technologies. I love this kind of mix because it gives attendees a chance to learn about things about topics outside their comfort zone and to meet people working in other disciplines.

I did record an interview with Kevin Wolf, who had built a remote-controlled helicopter using a variety of hardware and software. This will be available on Technology and Friends in a few weeks.

I was able to attend this year’s Tampa Code Camp, thanks to the support of Telerik.

All in all, the Tampa Code Camp was a great success for the organizers, for the attendees and for me personally. I will definitely consider this conference again next year.

I have been listening to DotNETRocks almost since the show's inception and I am an unapologetic fan. I'm not the only one: The show is the oldest and most popular podcast target at .NET developers.

So I was thrilled to learn that hosts Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin planned a cross-country Road Trip and that this trip would include a stop in the Detroit area. Upon hearing about the Road Trip, I immediately reached out to Carl and Richard to ask how I could help. It has been a few weeks since the initial announcement and plans are now taking shape.

Richard and Carl will be in Michigan on Tuesday October 9. The Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG) will hold a special meeting to host the event. Jeff Wilcox, creator of the Fourth and Mayor Windows Phone 7 app will be their guest.

This event will include the following:

• A presentation by Jeff Wilcox
• A barbeque dinner from Lockhart's barbeque in Royal Oak, MI (courtesy of a generous donation from New World Systems)
  A live recording of Carl and Richard interviewing Jeff for an upcoming episode of DotNetRocks. The audience will have an opportunity to ask questions of Jeff
• A technical presentation by Carl Franklin
• A technical presentation by Richard Campbell

This is a lot to pack into one night, but if you are a regular GANG attendee, you know that we regularly pack a great deal into each meeting.

Richard Campbell traveled to GANG in 2011 and that meeting was one of our most successful ever!

This evening is made possible by the vision of Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell and by the hard work of the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group volunteers.

Because of the limited seating, the popularity of the event, and the need to buy the right amount of food, you will need to register in advance for this free event. Do so at http://dotnetrocks.eventbrite.com/.

You can learn more about the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group at http://migang.org.

Here is Randy Pagels's presentation on What's New in Visual Studio 2012at the August 2012 Great Lakes Area .NET User Group meeting.

The organizers of That Conference knew a good thing when they saw it. For years, CodeMash has set the standard for community technical events. And when community leaders from Illinois and Wisconsin saw the success of CodeMash and experienced how well it was run, they resolved to create something similar.

The similarities are immediately apparent - a large polyglot developer conference, run by volunteers, taking place at an indoor waterpark. They even chose another location (Wisconsin Dells, WI) of the Kalahari water park. They added a bacon bar - an idea that I first saw implemented at CodeMash earlier this year and upped the ante by roasting a pig for dinner one night.

But it's not enough just to draw inspiration from success, have a good concept, and borrow a few ideas. To be successful, you still need to execute well. And the organizers of That Conference executed their plan very well.

They attracted an impressive list of speakers covering a wide variety of topics. Not only did this make the presentations great, but it also made the lunchtime and hallway conversations great. I saw some excellent presentations by Steve Bodnar, Jimmy Bogard, and Scott Hanselman, among others. My favourite was Bogard's session, which described how to write code that is easier to functional test.

My presentation on Azure Storage went really well. The audience was great. They asked good questions and were genuinely interested in this technology. I even overheard a couple people talking about my presentation in the lunch line. And thanks to Bob Laskey, I now have a new photo (below) that I can use on my conference profile pages. As you can see, I was very excited about my presentation.

But talking one-on-one with experts in the industry is where I get the most value from these conferences and I gained a lot of value from conversations at this conference (or is it “that conference”?). Many of the talks were so interesting, that I asked permission to record them, so you will soon see Chris Powers, Keith Casey, Ian Felton, Scott Hanselman, Samid Basu, Clark Sell, Jeff Nuckolls, Jay Harris, Michael Collier, and Ted Neward on Technology and Friends. Topics ranged from Windows Azure to telephony to home automation to the relationships between developers and managers.

That Conference included a few extra events, including a hackathon, a code retreat, a game night, open spaces, and a night in which the water park stayed open until 1AM, allowing the attendees a chance to play.

The only downside was the cost to attend, which was higher than most community events. The ticket cost was very reasonable ($350 for 3 days), but hotel rooms were almost $200 a night, the flight to Wisconsin was expensive, and the closest major airport is over an hour from Kalahari, meaning one still needed ground transportation. I was fortunate to receive sponsorship from Telerik (a sponsor of That Conference)and others received a training budget from their employers, but not everyone is so fortunate. Still, it is much cheaper than the large for-profit technical conferences.

600 attendees is an impressive turnout for a first-year conference. But the Kalahari can hold many more, so I expect this conference will grow next year. Especially if word gets out what a great job the organizers did.

That Conference home

Photos

Here is Mike Wood's presentation on Continuum (of the Windows Azure Variety) at the July 2012 Great Lakes Area .NET User Group meeting.

I have volunteered for many community-run conferences and I have organized two: GANG10 and Detroit Day of Azure. One of the challenges of a conference is getting people to attend. It's not enough to have great content. You have to spread the word about the event and you have to inspire people to register and to attend. If your target audience doesn't know about you event, they will not attend it.

Here are a few things my team and I have done to promote conferences.

Create a web site as soon as possible and keep it updated. This will save you time. When people ask for event details, you can point them to the web site. A Facebook or LinkedIn page is fine, but not sufficient because these sites are for members only and your audience will need to log before they can read all the information.

Create a Twitter account and post to it regularly. Have that Twitter account follow all your speakers and volunteers and ask that they follow it back. The new Twitter account won't have many followers at first, but you want followers who are willing to re-tweet what you post. Prior to the event, I would post to the Twitter account every day; then re-tweet from my own account (which had more followers). Because the promotional messages are coming from the event Twitter account, it feels less like spam to my followers than if it were coming from my personal account. Consider using a service like FutureTweets or an application like TweetDeck to schedule tweets in advance. This makes it easier to space out your tweets throughout the day. Be creative in your tweets: announce the speakers; announce some of the other perks, such as door prizes and lunch menu; talk about the venue; thank the sponsors. If you repeat the same message over and over, people tend to tune it out.

Make a list of people you think might be interested in the event and contact them. If it's a couple dozen, send a personal e-mail to each one or call each one; If it's several hundred, send out an e-mail blast. Services like Constant Contact can help with this.

Who are the influencers in the area that the conference covers? Offer them a free ticket to the event. Call them and let them know you'd really like them to be there. They will spread the word and reach more people than you could on your own. If they are talking about the event, that is great advertising.

Think of popular bloggers who would be interested in this event and tell them about it. Even if they can't make it, they may blog about it, increasing exposure.

E-mail your co-workers to let them know about the event. Ask them to spread the word among their colleagues, customers, and friends.

Print flyers. Hang them up in your workplace and in your customer's workplace and anywhere that your target audience congregates. Many companies have a bulletin board in the lunch room or break room just for things things like this. Ask others to do the same. Make sure the flyer has all the relevant information, such as date, time, and the web site URL.

Register the event at http://CommunityMegaphone.com.

Get others involved. Recruit volunteers. Not only will it help defer your workload, but those who are involved will feel ownership and will be more likely to spread the word enthusiastically.

Contact user group leaders. Ask them to promote the event at their meeting. Ask if they will send out an e-mail promoting the event. Some groups have a monthly newsletter and will be happy to add to this. If possible, attend user group meetings and promote the event yourself. Ask the leader if you can have 2 minutes to talk about it.

Send an e-mail to speaknet@googlegroups.com. You will need to join this group first.

Create an event on Facebook and LinkedIn. As mentioned earlier, this is no substitute for a web site, but you may reach an audience that you otherwise might miss.

Contact the chair of the CS department of local universities and ask them to promote to their students. Consider offering a discount or free admission to students.

Contact podcasters and ask if you can be a guest on their show to talk about the event. I appeared on Community Megaphone a few weeks before GANG10 and this helped spread excitement about that event.

For Microsoft events, contact your local Developer Evangelist. They have their own channels for communicating with the local technical community.

I have done almost all of these things in order to drive interest in the event. The two key points are: let as many people know about the event as you can; and get people excited about the event.

Planning an event is a lot of work and a lot of fun. But the payoff is more satisfying if you have a good turnout.

Here is a video of the Azure Q&A Experts Panel at the 2012 Detroit Day of Azure.

Here is a video of Dennis Burton's Single Page, Real Time Web Apps Using Node.js And Windows Azure presentation at the 2012 Detroit Day of Azure.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting at the aspconf online conference. I delivered 2 presentations: HTML5 is the Future of the Web; and Using Windows Azure Storage.

As promised, my slides and demos are available by clicking the links below.

Here is a video of Jason Follas's Using Geospatial Data With SQL Azure presentation at the 2012 Detroit Day of Azure.

Here is a video of Michael Collier's Windows Phone 7 And Windows Azure – A Match Made In The Cloud presentation at the 2012 Detroit Day of Azure.

Here is a video of Mark Stanislav's Cloud Disaster Recovery presentation at the 2012 Detroit Day of Azure.

Here is a video of Brian Prince's Architectural Patterns For The Cloud presentation at the 2012 Detroit Day of Azure.

Here is Gael Fraiteur's presentation on An Introduction to Aspect-Oriented Programming with PostSharp at the June 2012 Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG).

Two years ago, I was recognized as a Microsoft MVP for the first time. This past Sunday morning, I received my third MVP award. Since the award lasts for exactly one year, I wake up every July 1 with a sense of hope and dread.

I often joke that I receive the award because of a glitch in the selection software, but the official word from Dora Chan, my MVP Lead is that the award is given for "technical expertise, community leadership, and voluntary community contributions"

I find it difficult to apply that definition to my community efforts, so I always think of it as people with knowledge of Microsoft technologies who take the time and effort to share that knowledge with others. In other words, it's not necessarily the smartest people or those with the deepest knowledge who win the award; rather it’s those with a solid understanding who are spreading this understanding throughout the development community. This definition works well for me because, although there are many people with deeper knowledge of the software than me, I have experience with a wide range of development tools on the Microsoft stack. More important, I always enjoy sharing that knowledge with others - whether it's through user groups, conferences, blog posts, articles, books, or general interactions with developers.

For me, the best pats of the award are public acknowledgement from people I respect; and a chance to go to the MVP Summit in February. The MVP Summit is a treat for me because I often find myself in a room filled with people smarter than me.

I'm grateful to Microsoft for this award and I'm grateful for Telerik, who provides some financial support, without which I could not afford to travel to as many conferences. I'm also grateful to Sogeti, for allowing me to occasionally take time away from my day-to-day responsibilities.

It is a blessing to receive recognition for something that I would be doing anyway.

If you are in or near Michigan or northwest Ohio this week, you have a rare opportunity to learn from the creator of one of the most popular Aspect-Oriented-Programming (AOP) frameworks on the market. PostSharp inventor Gael Fraiteur will conduct a user group tour this week, primarily talking about AOP, using PostSharp for his examples. During the day, Gael will be stopping at area companies to educate them. AOP provides a way of adding functionality across a variety of classes and methods without cluttering said methods with a lot of extra code.

Originally from Belgium, Gael now resides in the Czech Republic, so it’s not often we get to hear him in-person.

Gael’s evening schedule is:

I hope you can make it one of these nights.

I attended my first Tech Ed conference in Orlando this week. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work for INETA at the conference. In exchange, INETA covered my admission and expenses which would have been prohibitively expensive if I had to pay them myself.

My INETA work involved the following:

• Working at the Community Leadership Summit the day before Tech Ed
• Staffing a booth on the Expo floor
• Volunteering at Birds-of-A-Feather sessions
• Meetings throughout the week to talk about board business
• Preparing a sponsor prospectus for the INETA Champs program

This was a small price to pay and I enjoyed most of these tasks. I got to meet some of the other board members in person for the first time and I had a chance to spread the word about user groups to a broad audience.

I gave a presentation at the Community Leadership Summit on attracting volunteers to a user group.

Two of my Birds-of-a-Feather topics were accepted at this conference, so I served as a moderator for these. The topics were "Getting Involved in my Local Developer Community: How is it a Win-Win? " and "Is Windows Azure a Contender for my Next Application?" Attendance wasn't particularly high at these sessions (possibly due to the 530PM and 830AM time slots) but the attendees participated in an active exchange. One exciting aspect of these sessions is that they were streamed live online and INETA volunteers monitored a Twitter hashtag to accept comments and questions from beyond Tech Ed.

Attending Tech Ed gave me the opportunity to spend some time with some members of the Visual Studio team and ask them some questions about the testing tools in VS Ultimate. I've been struggling with some aspects of this for my current project and I now have a better understanding of the capabilities and limitations of these tools.

I was invited to a Q&A with Microsoft VP Jason Zander in which we heard about some directions Microsoft is taking in the future. Unfortunately, I signed a non-disclosure agreement, so I can say nothing about this event except that I'm very excited about this future.

I competed in the Speaker Idol contest, hosted by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell. Because I won, I now have an invitation to speak at next year's competition.

Of course, I also recorded 5 interviews that I plan to publish on Technology and Friends over the next few weeks.

The busy schedule above left some time to attend sessions. My favourite sessions were Web Sites on Windows Azure
and Building HTTP Services with ASP.NET Web API. I saw some exciting new technologies in these sessions that I can use in my work soon.

Of course, there were many hallway conversations and a chance to meet technologists from all over the world, which is always an opportunity to learn.

My notes on the sessions are below:

Web Sites on Windows Azure

Presenter: Bill Staples

10 free web sites

Supports Classic ASP, .NET 2.0,

Usage info on dashboard

App Gallery: Create blog in WordPress on Azure

WebMatrix 2 (in beta)

Install & download WordPress site

Publish automatically syncs with Azure (no configuration needed)

Publish via

• FTP

• Web Deploy

• Git

• TFS

Essential Tips for the Windows Azure Startup

Presenter: Michele Leroux Bustamante

• Avoid web.config for
  • Settings that vary between staging, production
  • Use Web.config transformations

• Caching
  • Co-located caching (% on each VM)
  • Shared caching (on one VM)
  • Same API

• Queuing
  • Service bus queues
    • unlimited lifetime
    • 5GB max storage
    • Duplicate detection
    • Guarantee order
  • Storage queues
    • 7 day expiration
    • 100TB max storage

• Diagnostics
  • Trace.TraceWarning
  • Listeners in webrole<trace><listeners>

• Monitor from Outside
  • Monitoring Service

• noSQL Kool-Aid

If the learning curve for noSQL is great, only use it for "obvious" data (e.g., profile, location data).

• Enable Social Logins. Simplify signup
• Don't ask users for too much info
• Estimate costs
  • Calculate projected costs and revenue based on expected usage in advance
  • What is break-even point?

Beyond Master-Detail: Interaction and Navigation Patterns for Modern User Experience

Presenter: Billy Hollis

List

Hicks Law: Too many choices slow down user

Add 'FIND' capability

Launchpad

Make important buttons bigger

Combinations

Different patterns at different parts of the app

Wizard

Lots of new users

Complex but rarely use

Spreadsheet

Flexible Sort

Allow drag/drop columns

Context switchers

Toolbars & Ribbons

Usually action-oriented

Ribbon designed for en-users (not devs)

Most users don't like toolbars

Galery

Visual array of items

Multi-select

Dashboard

Visualization & navigation

Queue

Next item on top. No naviagation.

Don't use confirmation'

Underused.

Can increase productivity dramatically

Configurator

See changes as you select them

Timeline

Vertical or horizontal layout

Metaphor

Interface resembles something familiar in the real world

May be cute the first time, but gets old over time

Map

Items laid out in real world

Use lat-long

May use geocoding to get lat-long from address.

Viewport

Semantic zoom: Change view as you zoom in & out

For multiple levels of detail

Book recommendation: Mobile Design Pattern Gallery by Theresa Neil

Building HTTP Services with ASP.NET Web API

Presenter: Daniel Roth

VS 2012

MVC app

Scaffolding to create CRUD methods around entity

GetById

If not found, throw httpException (not found/404)

Post

Create new entity

Return HttpResponse

Url pointing to new entity page

ASP.NET Roadmap: One ASP.NET – Web Forms, MVC, Web API, and more

Presenter: Scott Hunter

In release mode, all js files are combined and minified

Put validation on model. Enforced in client script.

Migrations

1. Inherit from DbMigration
2. Up() method

1. Update columns in db

HTML 5 emitted

e.g., <input type="datetime" … />

Page.cshtml

Page.mobile.cshtml <-- Displayed when Page is requested on mobile devices

Signal R

1. Inherit from Hub
2. Send() method
   1. Clients.addMessage

Real-time communication with server

Design for Non-Designers

Presenter: Jennifer Smith

Good design makes a product useful, usable

Dieter Rams:

Good design

1. is innovative
2. Makes a product useful
3. Is aesthetic
4. Makes a product understnadable
5. Is unobtrusive

Putting things in boxes is not good design

Keep UI focused

Before starting

My ___ app will be the best at _________

Talk through app using low-fidelity prototype

Recommended design tools

Illustrator

SketchFlow (Expression Blend)

Use rule of thirds (Divide into thirds, horizontally and vertically)

Golden Region

Viewers look at apps, pages, pictures, etc via Fibonacci (spiral in)

"Dead center is dead wrong"

White space is OK.

Fonts

Use sans serif fonts

Counter size = space inside 'e' or 'p'. Larger is better

Next week, I will attend my first Tech Ed conference. I don't really know what to expect. Although I attend a lot of conferences, the great majority are small to medium community-run conferences. Larger conferences like this are usually out of my price range. Fortunately, I'll be doing some work for INETA at Tech Ed, so they will pick up my ticket.

I have scheduled a few things.
I will be delivering two Birds-of-a-Feather sessions: Getting Involved in my Local Developer Community: How is it a Win-Win? on Tuesday evening and Is Windows Azure a Contender for my Next Application? on Wednesday morning.
I will be working at the INETA booth, answering questions about how our organization helps user groups.
I signed up to compete in Speaker Idol, a contest in which each contestant delivers a 5-minute technical presentation. Winners of each heat advance to the final round and the grand prize winner is invited to speak at Tech Ed 2013.

I will also be working and presenting at the Community Leadership Summit the day before Tech Ed.

Looking through the web site, I see that Tech Ed offers a great many technical presentations and workshops. I hope to attend some of these. But, more importantly, I hope to have a chance to talk with a lot of smart people and add to my toolbox.

If you are planning to attend Tech Ed North America or if you will be in the Orlando, FL area June 10, I recommend you check out the INETA Community Leadership Summit.

This free event will bring together leaders in the developer community to exchange ideas with one another. INETA is hosting the event at the Orlando City Hall on Sunday June 10 from noon to 5PM.

As part of the Summit, I will moderate a discussion titled "Getting Others Involved: Building a Leadership Team, Recruiting Volunteers & Growing Your Membership". This is based on my experience helping to grow the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group over the last couple years. Expect lots of interactions and a chance to listen and to share ideas. Other moderated discussion sessions will include “How to start a user group” and “Working with sponsors”.

In addition, this is a great chance to meet the INETA Board of Directors and other influencers in the development community.

The Summit is free and there is even an after-party hosted by Grape City, but you must register in advance at http://inetals2012.eventbrite.com/.

You can find more information at http://ineta.org/summit2012/.

Here is the video of Glenn Block’s presentation at the November 2011 Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG) meeting. Glenn described his 2 latest projects: Web API and node.js.

Episode 208

Joe Guadagno on INETA

This year, Michael Eaton and his colleagues hosted the 4th annual Kalamazoo X conference. I have attended all 4 years and I have to say this was the best one. For those who haven’t yet heard of Kalamazoo X, it is a conference targeted at software developers, but the topics focus on the softer skills (i.e., the non-technical skills) required in your career. Each presentation is only 30 minutes long, which keeps things moving very rapidly. A single track provides a shared experience for all attendees. Every presentation was excellent and the room was packed. Speakers would often reference a presentation from earlier in the day.

Below are my notes from the sessions I attended.

Joe O'Brien
People Patterns
Packed a lot of great ideas
Never seen a project fail for technical reasons.
Corollary: Never seen a project SUCCEED for technical reasons.
Deliver bad news quickly

Laura Bergells
The People You Like the Least are the People You Need the Most
Teams require different personality types
Idea people (Putting the "Fun" in "DYSFUNCTIONAL") and rational people (Putting the "No" in "INNOVATION")

Suzan Bond
Intuition: Your Very Own Super Power
Learn to understand intuition and trust yourself.
Takes guts
OK to find ways to back up intuition.

Leon Gersing
Going Gonzo – an exploration of cultures in software development
Allow yourself to separate from the dominant culture and its associated dogma.
Drew inspiration from Hunter Thompson, Frank Zappa, and Georges Seurat.
"Most people doing Agile today are actually doing Waterfall with Agile terms. Agile is dead."
More important to be right than to be wise. Understand the problems you are solving.

Tim Wingfield
Your Career is Yours
Watch Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk
Ask Why? Does my customer really need this feature?
Coding Katas: Practice how to code.
Need to build trust. Be honest.
Work/Life balance: You need to enjoy your career; not endure your career.

Justin Searls
The Mythical Team-Month
If you are going to fail, fail quickly.
We are conditioned to avoid failure
Finding great developers:
Most traits are non-technical
Look for one who can succeed without you.

Saturday, I spoke at the Orlando Code Camp at Seminole State College, just east of Orlando, FL. This was the seventh year of the Code Camp but my first time attending.

The first session I attended was Memory Management Fundamentals – Garbage Collection Deep Dive by Scott Dorman.
Scott explained the way memory management works under the hood.
Key points:
The garbage collector takes care of cleaning up objects when they are no longer needed.
It's generally not advisable to implement a finalizer.
If your machine has plenty of memory, garbage collection might not occur until the user exits the app.
Larger objects are cued up for cleanup.
Here is a list of resources
http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2008/09/14/.net-memory-management-ndash-resources.aspx

The next session I attended was Creating a HTML5 WinRT application by Brian Kassay
You can build Windows 8 applications in either HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 or in XAML. This session focused on HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3. In order to work with this, one needs to install Windows 8 and Visual Studio 11 (both are in beta).

I planned to see Richie Rump's Entity Framework - Code First and Magic Unicorns session, but others had the same idea and the room was packed. Rather than stand for an hour, I opted to hear Greg Leonardo's Line of Business development with MVC3.
This was a basic overview of how to use MVC. It consisted of more slides than demos.
He did explain how MVC's Anti-forgery library works (issues a token to the user with a response and checks for that token in subsequent requests).
He also discussed the MVC Anti-XSS library, which is designed to protect your site against cross-site scripting errors. By default, MVC disallows HTML input by. If you decide to allow HTML input, it is important to scrub input with the Anti-XSS library.

The final session I attended was Elijah Manor on Exterminating Those Common Pesky jQuery Bugs
Elijah went through a series of common JavaScript mistakes made by developers and showed ways to correct them.

I delivered a session on Visual Studio 2010 Database Tools. It was very well received and the audience asked lots of questions.

The conference was organized by local user group leaders, including Esteban Garcia, a fellow Telerik insider (Telerik sponsored my trip, BTW). The organizers did a very good job on this conference and everything ran smoothly.
The one drawback of this event was the lack of an obvious common area, where attendees could talk and meet one another. When it was over, we regrouped at a local pub, which gave me the opportunity to meet many of the local developer community. This was particularly important to me at this conference because I only knew about 5 people among the speakers and attendees. One of the reasons I came down to Orlando was for a chance to meet people in the local Florida communities. It turns out that Orlando, Sarasota, and South Florida have very vibrant communities based on the enthusiasm of those I spoke with.

Of course I recorded a couple episodes of Technology and Friends. Elijah Manor and Max Trinidad agreed to go on camera to discuss JavaScript and Powershell respectively.

The Orlando Code Camp will take place again next year and I'm seriously considering making this an annual trip. I also heard of a few smaller events in the area which might bring me back here.

Cloud computing has been a hot topic in the software industry for the past couple years. Many of us hear about cloud technologies such as Windows Azure, but don't know how to get started.

I wanted to make it easy to find that information, so I'm organizing a 1-day conference to teach people about Windows Azure.

The Detroit Day of Azure will take place Saturday March 24 from 8AM to 6PM at the Microsoft office in Southfield, MI.

14 speakers from 8 different states have agreed to deliver 19 presentations at this event. The speakers (listed below) are among the foremost Azure experts in the region. The list includes MVPs, Microsoft insiders, book authors, and people delivering real Azure solutions for their customers.

Dennis Burton
Michael Collier
Jason Follas
John Ferringer
David Giard
Joe Kunk
Jennifer Marsman
Jeff Nuckolls
Brian Prince
Mark Stanislav
Brent Stineman
Mike Wood
Chander Dhall
Eric Boyd

Azure MVP and Sogeti National Cloud Computing Lead Brent Stineman will deliver the keynote; then we will split into 3 rooms for the rest of the day, where you can choose from several great topics and speakers. Our plans are to record at least some of the conference on video. We may even live stream some of it, but that is still in the planning phase.

We will designate one room for programmers to build Azure applications. Attendees can bring a laptop and either work on their own project or work through the Azure labs, which we will provide for you. Many smart people will be around if you get stuck. Remember to download and install the Azure SDK and sign up for a free Azure Trial before you arrive!

Download Azure SDK
Sign Up for Free Azure Trial

As with any successful event, many people helped out. Onorio Catenacci, Jamie Altizer, Matt Ruma, Shelly Noll, Sukhdev Tur, Justin Baker, Akhil Mahajan, Brian Korzynski, Jelard Macalino, Jim Priore, and Falicia Starr have volunteered their time to help; while Microsoft, Sogeti, The Epitec Group, Telerik, and RIIS donated their money; while Pluralsight, Wrox, and O'Reilly donated products to give away.

If you have been attending the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (where I was president the last two years), you won't be surprised to learn that we are serving some excellent food at this event. Included in the $20 admission cost is a continental breakfast and a buffet lunch from Lockhart’s barbeque in Royal Oak. We will also have some door prizes to give away at the end of the day.

More information on the Detroit Day of Azure is available at http://DetroitDayOfAzure.com. You can register at http://DayOfAzure.eventbrite.com/.

Space is limited and only a few tickets remain.

I'm very excited about this event and looking forward to it as an organizer, as a speaker, and as an attendee.

Episode 195

Rich Dudley on Event Sponsorship

Dr. Greg Low has been running a technical user group for years. In Building Technical User Communities, he shares what he has learned - what works; what doesn't work; and advice that may or may not fit your group.

As a longtime user group contributor and leader, I had already considered many of his recommendations, but I found most of them to be solid advice. In fact, at my group - The Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group in Southfield, MI - we were already doing many of the things that contained in this book.

For example, we found that members appreciate a consistent meeting place and time for our group. We have also used our group as an opportunity for new speakers to build their skills in a low-risk environment.

Like Dr. Low, I have found the best way to grow a group's attendance is by word of mouth - get to other user groups and technical events in the area and promote your group; and encourage your members to invite their friends and co-workers to the next meeting.

You don't need to take every bit of advice. For example, Dr. Low recommends 2 speakers per meeting, while my group has been successful with just one.

A month after the expiration of my term as user group president may not be the perfect time to read a book on how to lead a user group. But it's a good time to evaluate such a book.

If you are part of the leadership of a technical user group or you are considering forming your own group, an evening spent with this guide will give insight into what can make it successful.

Episode 194

Suzanna Moran on Women In Technology

Recently, Dave McKinnon, the brains behind 1DevDay, the Detroit Java Group, Detroit Dev Digest, and a host of other happenings in the Michigan developer community, called me to ask a few questions. My responses are part of an article he wrote about me, which you can read at http://detroitdevdigest.com/2011/12/26/mvp-dave-giard/

Episode 189

Paul Litwin and Suzanna Moran on Geeks Giving Back

I have been President of the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG) for the past two years and Wednesday was the final meeting of 2011. At the beginning of 2011, the other officers and I sat down and defined some goals for the year. Here are those goals:

• Cultivate Ownership In Group
• Continue to Attract High-Quality Speakers
• Support and Connect with other Area User Groups
• Average 60 attendees per meeting
• Increase supporting membership by 15%
• Increase Monetary Sponsorship by 10%
• Make it an event

I wrote about these goals early in the year and we displayed them at each 2011 GANG meeting. Today I'd like to review if and how we met each of these goals.

Cultivate Ownership In Group

This year, GANG had more volunteers helping out than ever before. In the future, I expect some of these volunteers will become officers of the group. In fact, Matt Ruma was elected the new Vice President this week.

Codeslingers - the monthly pair programming event that we started last year - has moved from a local coffee shop to The Epitec Group offices, giving them more space, more privacy, and more flexible hours.

Gerhard Weiss established the monthly DevLunch this year. Here members get together and socialize over a weekday lunch at the Troy TGIFriday.

The popularity of the post-user group social hour has also exploded. It's not uncommon for 30 people to come to Copper Canyon after a meeting.

Last year, we established Lightning Talks to give members experience at speaking and to share knowledge with the group. In 2011, the number of Lightning Talks more than doubled over last year.

The number of people with whom we are connecting has increased dramatically: In addition to the 625 people on our mailing list, our LinkedIn group membership has increased 84% and the number of our Twitter followers has increased 71% from a year ago.

Continue to Attract High-Quality Speakers

This is an area I'm particularly proud of because it's something GANG has always done very well, but we managed to take it to a new level in 2011. Below is a list of featured speakers at GANG in 2011.

Gary Short
Michael Eaton
Mike Amundsen
Charles Stacy Harris
Gus Issa
Jennifer Marsman
Brian Prince
Steve Bohlen
K Scott Allen
Richard Campbell
Leon Gersing
Josh Holmes,
Darrell Hawley
Bill Wagner
Richard Hale Shaw
Godfrey Nolan
Glenn Block

As you can see, there are many big names on this list. Speakers include Microsoft insiders, MVPs, Regional Directors, Book Authors, popular bloggers, and podcasters. We reached out beyond our geographic region this year and attracted speakers from 7 states (Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington) and 4 countries (US, Canada, Scotland, and Ireland). The presentations covered a wide range of topics from refactoring code, to the .NET Micro Framework to async features in the next version of C#.

Support and Connect with other Area User Groups

The first thing we did was to commit to attending other user groups. In 2011, GANG officers attended over 50 user group meetings this year, not included GANG meetings! I spoke at 12 different user group meetings in 2011.

This year, we came up with the idea of co-hosting meetings with other groups. The Greater Detroit Cloud Computing Group co-hosted the March GANG meeting, which featured Mike Amundsen speaking on RESTful Hypermedia. In January, we plan to co-host a meeting with the Ann Arbor .NET Developers Group.

This year, we offered our space and time to anyone looking to start a user group. We felt this would reduce the effort and risk involved in starting a group if it began as a Special Interest Group. The F# Special Interest Group and the .NET Micro Framework Special Interest Group both were hosted during our meetings in 2011. The F# Group has since moved to its own night and location.

Another way we collaborated with other user groups is by helping to organize user group tours for out-of-town presenters. Gary Short, Mike Amundsen, Richard Campbell, and Steve Bohlen all traveled to Michigan and spoke at more than one user group, including ours.

Average 60 attendees per meeting

In 2010, GANG averaged 54 attendees per meeting. We set a goal to modestly increase attendance this year. Our strategy included bringing in big-name speakers, promoting meetings via social media, and hosting a membership drive at which we gave away an Xbox 360 and Kinect.

Our strategy worked as we averaged over 82 attendees per meeting in 2011 - an increase of 52% from last year.

Increase supporting membership by 15%

We met and exceeded this goal, increasing supporting membership from 23 in November 2010 to 53 in November 2011. That's an increase of 130%!

Increase Monetary Sponsorship by 10%

This goal is difficult to measure because many sponsors pay for things without writing a check to GANNG. However, we received about $10,000 cash from corporate sponsors in 2011, an increase of far more than 10%. We are especially grateful to ComponentOne, New World Systems, TypeMock, The Epitec Group, Telerik, RedGate, and Plex Online, all of whom donated at our Platinum level.

Thanks to these donations (and those of our supporting members), GANG was able to upgrade the dinner served at every single meeting. Whether it was Chinese food, fried chicken, shawarma, barbecue, or a burrito bar, we didn't serve pizza at a single meeting this year.

Despite increasing the budget significantly, our end-of-year cash reserves were about double the level of a year ago.

In addition to cash, sponsors such as Telerik, DevExpress, ComponenentOne, and JetBrains paid the travel expenses of speakers, so they could afford to come speak at GANG. Most of these expense reimbursements were not included in the $10,000 mentioned above.

We also continued to receive books, software, and other prizes that we gave away at each meeting.

Make it an event

Last year, I heard someone describe GANG meetings as more of an event than a user group meeting. I took that to heart and we explicitly made this a 2011 goal.

It all started by bringing in some big-name speakers, such as Richard Campbell, K Scott Allen, Glenn Block and Gary Short.

It culminated with our October meeting - an all-day event featuring 6 presentations by those who built GANG.

We designated several special meetings: A membership drive; and a food drive. The food drive was so successful that we are probably going to hold one every year.

We also included some fun things for our members, such as creating music videos to show during meetings and trivia contests to give away some of the swag.

We have one or more volunteers at each meeting designated as greeters, making sure members feel welcome and get a name badge.

Finally, we recorded most of the 2011 presentation and made them available on our web site.

Declaring Success

Overall, 2011 was a very successful year for GANG. We exceeded all our goals for the year and feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive. I often hear people pointing to GANG as a success story in growing a user group. I’m very proud of what my fellow officers and I were able to accomplish this year. I love that so many people got so much out of GANG; I love that people keep coming back; I love that they tell their friends and co-workers about GANG; and I love that other user groups draw on us for ideas and inspiration.

I'm looking forward to more success in 2012.

I've been a technical consultant for a long time. I've been actively involved in the Development Community for almost as long.

For those who aren't familiar with the phrase, the "Developer Community" refers to a loose-coupled network of software developers who communicate at user groups, technical conferences, and via various social media channels. Some people are only involved enough to show up and listen to presentations or to take part in the conversations initiated by others. Other people are actively leading these conversations: They are blogging; speaking at conferences and user groups; taking leadership roles in community organizations; and organizing educational events, such as code camps and give camps.

I fall into the latter category.  I run a user group, maintain an active blog, speak wherever I'm welcome and often initiate conversations with strangers at conferences. I've been on the planning committee of a bunch of events and I led the planning of the recent GANG10 conference.

All these activities take a lot of time - time that could be spent billing customers or other tasks directly related to my day job.

So why bother? Why spend all this time and effort? Does my consulting career suffer because of my community involvement?

I have a lot of reasons for participating in the Development Community, but I won’t hide the fact that my own enjoyment is one of them. I'm involved in the community because I enjoy it. It's a lot of work, but I get gratification from helping others to learn and from showing off what I've learned. I also have made a number of friends in this community of bright people and I love the social interactions it brings me.

But is enjoyment or helping others enough of a reason? Is altruism sufficient motivation for community involvement? Can a consultant actually boost his career by spending time in the community?

I have found several tangible benefits of community involvement. Here are a rewards I reap from my community involvement.

It helps one’s reputation. If people see me active in the community or hear me speak, they are more likely to remember my name. If I’m doing a good job in public, that provides credibility. I've been on a number of projects where the customer knew about me in advance because of a talk I gave or a blog post I had written or because of my involvement with user groups.

Education. I can only learn so much on my own. Interacting with smart people is a great way to transfer knowledge. Not only can others teach me the nuts and bolts of a technology they've spent time with; but they can show me how they have applied that in a real-world situation. There is simply not enough time to gain real-world knowledge in every technology. Learning from the trials and errors of others is a way around that limit.

Knowing who the experts are. Every day, I encounter new challenges. Sometimes I can conquer these challenges on my own; but sometimes I need help from someone who has been there before. Recently, I needed help on a security issue. I reached out through Twitter and a developer in Columbus, OH volunteered to help me out for a few hours. I was in my car the next morning happy to make the 3-hour drive in exchange for his help. If I have a network of experts in a variety of topics, this exponentially expands the amount of knowledge that I have available for my customer.

Exposure to new technologies. New software is released every day and this can be overwhelming. Having a chance to hear what tools others outside your organization are using is invaluable in managing this flood of information. Interacting with people outside your job exposes you to those working on other projects, products, industries, and technologies.

Finding new work. As you interact with the community, you hear about companies looking for work and about consultants looking for help. Each of these is an opportunity for more billable work. I’m seldom actively selling, but I always have my ears open for opportunities.

Recruiting. It's much easier to recruit consultants if they know you and your organization. Community involvement is a great way to get that exposure. The flip side is that you meet many quality people who are looking for work through networking at user groups and conferences. These events give you a chance to get to know them in an informal setting and form an opinion about their intelligence, skill set and personality. I’ve found this better than a formal interview process. Involvement in the community typically means a passion and dedication, which are qualities you probably seek in your employees.

For me, participation in the community and my consulting career go hand-in-hand. One helps and complements the other. In the foreseeable future, I will continue to devote time and energy toward both.

Note: I am grateful to the following people, who contributed ideas to this article. I know most of them through the developer community.

• Matt Ruma
• Brent Stineman
• Keith Elder
• Elizabeth Naramore
• Susan Anspaugh-Yount
• Seth Petry-Johnson
• Samidip Basu
• Rick Schummer

Last weekend, the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG) celebrated its 10th birthday with an all-day technical event in Southfield, MI. In addition to great speakers, great presentations, and great food, I created three videos to commemorate the last ten years. These videos are below. Enjoy.

G. Andrew Duthie and Dane Morgridge were kind enough to have me on their Community Megaphone podcast this month. I spent most of the show talking about the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group and promoting our 10-year celebration – GANG10.

You can hear the show at http://communitymegaphonepodcast.com/Show/31/David-Giard.

It was the fall of 2001 in the home of Richard Irwin. Richard, John Hopkins, Josh Holmes, Darrell Hawley and Martin Shoemaker gathered in Richard's kitchen to discuss their plans for a new user group. This group would be focused on the new .NET technology. That night they drew up the group's by-laws and came up with a name: The Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG for short). A couple months later, the group began holding regular meetings at the Microsoft Southfield office.

That group still meets today - 10 years later. The format of the meetings and the mission of the group has remained largely unchanged. But the group has grown from a couple dozen attendees to over 80 per month.

Today, I am the president of GANG and my fellow officers and I wanted to do something special to commemorate this milestone. We decided to host a special meeting. Instead of a Wednesday evening meeting with a single main speaker, we will hold our October meeting on a Saturday and offer presentations throughout the day.

The presentations will be topics that we would consider for a regular monthly meeting, but most of the presenters are the people who helped found and build GANG. Many of these people have gone on to become thought leaders in the tech world: People like Bill Wagner, Josh Holmes, Richard Hale Shaw, Darrell Hawley, and Godfrey Nolan.

We felt it would be good to bring in a keynote speaker who was not a .NET developer and would give a non-technical talk that techies could relate to. So, we invited Leon Gersing to give a keynote address on "You", focusing on self-actualization. Many of us heard this talk at the recent Lansing Day of .NET and were impressed with Leon and how well his presentation resonated with the audience.

Staying inside at a conference all day can drain the energy,  so we will provide plenty of nutrition, including a continental breakfast; a barbecue lunch Lockhart's BBQ of Royal Oak, MI; and some treats from the Franklin Cider Mill  in the afternoon.

In addition, we will be having some fun, showing photos and videos of GANG and its members over the years.

This conference promises to be educational and entertaining and it will only occur once - on Saturday October 1.

You can get more information at http://migang.org/tenyear/ and you can register at http://gangten.eventbrite.com/. The cost is $20 for the general public and $10 for supporting members of GANG.