The holidays were great. I took some much needed time off to recharge the batteries and spend time with my family. Returning from the holidays I jumped right back into the thick of work with mid-year review preparation and business reporting as well as four outstanding events that saw me on the road each week in January.
Where’ve I Been?
The first week of the new year took me to Sandusky, OH by way of Cleveland, OH to attend CodeMash, a conference organized and run by several community leaders across Ohio aimed at bringing together developers, designers and technologists from a wide array of technology disciplines, from .NET to Java to Ruby and more. It was held at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, a resort and indoor water park, and the conference featured great activities for families and children, a really interesting addition to the traditional (and non-traditional) conference format.
Following CodeMash, the team and I hosted four more MSDN Developer Conference events, in Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Dallas. I was able to attend Chicago on January 13th, Detroit on January 22nd, and Dallas on January 26th. Each event was very successful, despite some rough weather in Chicago and Minneapolis (they had –14F… before wind chill). It was great fun being able to participate in the events, meet with people, and see the team and our outstanding group of community-based presenters run several great events.
All this made for one busy January, which also included mid-year business reviews, budget reviews, and planning for our (still in the works) ArcReady and MSDN Unleashed events. And knowing we’re a bit behind the planning eight ball (due to a couple of extenuating reasons), we’re getting a jump on next quarter’s event plans as well. We should be announcing our plans for this quarter in the next week or so, with those events happening in March, and next quarter’s plans (looking at early May) getting locked in a couple of weeks later. And, as a surprise added bonus, we’re working with our colleagues who cover the TechNet events engine to begin incorporating them into our quarterly event plans as well. Finally, we’re taking a good long look at how we run our quarterly events and considering some rather significant fine-tuning for our next fiscal year. If they come together well, you could see our new approach by late August or early September. (Yup, I’m really tired of being behind the eight ball, so I’m cooking up plans quite far out.)
Yeah, That’s Nice, but What About this Readiness Stuff?
Okay, I went on a bit about what’s kept me away from the nine of you who follow my blog. What about that developer readiness I mentioned, eh? Well, first those fine folks in Evangelism at the mother ship have continued to publish their 10-4 schedule. They are up to Episode 6 now, and it’s some really great stuff covering Visual Studio 2010 and Team System.
Warning: Ginsu alert…
But Wait, There’s More!
It’s late and I’m in a silly mood. But in this case, the analogy applies. The great folks who run the Ramp Up site have posted a whole new track of content on SharePoint, complementing their earlier track of SharePoint for Developers content. The first part covered the basics of web parts, data lists, event handlers, workflow and leveraging Silverlight. The new track of SharePoint for Developers adds content covering for page navigation, page branding, web services, custom content types, and user management. Between these two tracks of Ramp Up training content, developers will definitely get a feel for developing solutions based on SharePoint.
In Closing… MVP Summit 2009
On a side note, I will be attending the MVP Summit, along with a couple of other folks from our team. If you are an MVP, drop me a note at brimoore at microsoft dot com and perhaps we can meet up at the welcome reception, Palermo’s party, or some other time during the Summit.
This will be my first Summit, and I am really looking forward to it. (Can you believe it? I’ve been at Microsoft over 8 years and this is my first Summit.) If you’re an MVP, I hope to see you there!