Jay Harris is Cpt. LoadTest - Events

Help Wanted: Ann Arbor GiveCamp 2011

Jay Harris — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:59:04 GMT

In case you haven't heard, Ann Arbor GiveCamp 2011 is almost here. It is coming up in two weeks, September 16-18. This will be the fourth annual Ann Arbor GiveCamp, and it is again held at WCC. Sign up at http://www.annarborgivecamp.org.

For anyone that is not aware of what GiveCamp is, it is a weekend long Coding-for-Charity event where area software developers, database administrators, graphics designers, and other technologists use their talents to meet the needs of area non-profits in need of technology assistance. That need could range from a new intra-office application to help manage donations and membership rosters, to a new web site spun up on a CMS like Drupal, WordPress or DotNetNuke, or perhaps a new auto-notification system for the blood bank to notify donors when they are again eligible to donate blood. The event and its projects are completely platform agnostic and the sky is the limit; there is only one rule: the project must be scoped for completion within one weekend.

In today's economy, financial donations are down. People are unable to donate to the area charities, or at least are unable to donate as much as they would like to or once did. The local charities like the pet shelter are spending their dollars on dog food and cat litter, and not on their web site and other marketing. As a result, their web site was last refreshed in the 90s, or it was recently rebuilt by the proverbial boss's son or neighbor-kid next door. Their online presence, if they have one at all, doesn't meet the needs of the organization. It lacks a professional's touch.

This year, 40 local charities are asking Ann Arbor GiveCamp to help them with their technology needs. One of the charities for 2011 is Angels of Hope, a local organization that helps local families whose children have pediatric cancer. Angels of Hope uses nearly every dollar donated to pay for utility bills, home repairs, car payments, and medical bills; unfortunately, sometimes that includes funeral services. Imagine if you had a child with cancer; now imagine if you were to lose that child to the disease and were unable to pay for the funeral. What Angels of Hope does to help out the community is very inspiring and very humbling. But their web site is deficient; made in 2001, it does not meet the needs of the organization, and does not do what is required of a web site to market the organization and to provide necessary information to those in need. They have asked for our help to provide a new site so that they can boost their marketing effort, help bring in donations, and help get the word out to other families that the support is there and available.

There 39 other stories like Angel of Hope's. Forty organizations that give all of themselves to improve lives of their neighborhoods, their communities, and people in need. But in order to meet those needs, we need volunteers to complete projects. So far, Ann Arbor GiveCamp only has enough volunteers to meet the needs of 7 charities. Thirty-three charities are on a waiting list, crossing their fingers that more local technologists will give up a weekend and donate their talents. Thirty-three stories will go unheard without additional help from the very community that they seek to improve.

I encourage you to consider volunteering for Ann Arbor GiveCamp. We need your help, the help of your developer friends, your graphic artist co-workers, and the database administrators you have lunch with. Everyone--regardless of their talent level or technology platform--is encouraged and requested to join us in two weeks, to be a part of our inspiring and humbling event, and to join us as we help out those that help others. When you cannot give with your wallets, this is a great opportunity to give back to the community with your time and your talents.

While at Ann Arbor GiveCamp, we will do everything we can to help you complete projects. Hosting accounts have been donated, domains names are pre-registered, and all the food, snacks, and beverages you need to keep going will be on hand throughout the weekend. We have the charities organized, the projects defined and scoped, and we just need you to help get them done.

Thirty-three other charities are still waiting for word. Donate your weekend; sign up to be a volunteer. Tell your friends and colleagues, and have them sign up to be a volunteer. Forward this post on to other groups and mailing lists, and encourage them to volunteer. Help GiveCamp meet its goal of forty completed projects on Sunday, September 18th.

Come be a part of something special.

Learn more and sign up at http://www.annarborgivecamp.org

We'll see you on the 16th.

Technorati Tags: Ann Arbor,GiveCamp,Geeks Giving Back,Charity

Presenting ASP.NET MVC 2: A (Microsoft) Web Coder's Salvation

Jay Harris — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:40:39 GMT

"There was a time when everything was moving towards the desktop. This Internet thing was new and cool, but there was no way it would ever last. And no one knew how to code for the web, at least not anything beyond animated lava lamps and cute "Under Construction" images. So, to make coding for the web easier, they made ASP.NET to be just like coding for a desktop, using the same patterns, the same event-based model, and the same stateful approach. But the web isn't stateful, its only events are GET and POST, and is nothing like a desktop, so we tortured ourselves for years forcing a square peg through a round hole. The time has come for redemption, and its name is ASP.NET MVC. Spend an hour discovering how coding for the web is supposed to be--how it is today--and end your misery. Salvation awaits."

Slides on SlideShare | Code Walkthrough

At various user groups throughout Southeast Michigan and Northwest Ohio, I have been presenting this topic since the last quarter of 2009. For those that are interested, I have made the slide deck available on SlideShare. The code demo used during the talk is available as a walkthrough via one of my installments of Learn to Code, where you can create, step-by-step, the same ASP.NET MVC 2 application as was built during the presentation.

If you attend one of my presentations for this topic, I would appreciate your feedback. If you are willing to tolerate a small registration process, SpeakerRate will allow you to give feedback and anonymous ratings to the session you attended. If you are interested in having me present this topic at your user group or conference, please contact me.

Past presentations on this topic:

Rate – Ann Arbor .NET Developers, Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 2010
Rate – GLUGnet, Lansing, Michigan, March 2010
Rate – A2<DIV>, Ann Arbor, Michigan, February 2010
Rate – NWNUG, Toledo, Ohio, February 2010
Rate – GLUGnet, Flint, Michigan, February 2010

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,MVC,Speaking,Presentation,Slides,Demo

Upcoming ASP.NET MVC 2 Study Group Jam Session in Ann Arbor

Jay Harris — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:45:36 GMT

On Tuesday, February 23rd, I will be leading the jam session for Come Jam With Us, the software developer study group in Ann Arbor. The session will be on ASP.NET MVC, and aims to give attendees enough of an introduction to the product to empower developers to be able to start coding their own ASP.NET MVC 2 projects. Like all of the Come Jam With Us sessions for the winter/spring of 2010, it will be held at the offices of SRT Solutions in Ann Arbor at 5:30p.

Prerequisites

You will need few things for ASP.NET MVC 2 application development and to complete this exercise. Please complete the following prerequisites prior to the session, otherwise you likely will spend the hour downloading and installing rather than coding.

Install Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1
Install Microsoft SQL Server or SQL Server Express
Download and install ASP.NET MVC 2 from Microsoft.com

Rescheduled

Due to weather, the original February 9th meeting was cancelled. This session is rescheduled for Tuesday, February 23rd.

Technorati Tags: Ann Arbor,Software,Code Jam,Study Group,ASP.NET MVC,ASP.NET MVC2

Come Jam With Us in Ann Arbor

Jay Harris — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:28:41 GMT

The new season of Come Jam With Us in Ann Arbor is upon us. Come Jam With Us is a weekly software developers' study group in Ann Arbor for gaining exposure to and learning about many different software development topics. The group originally started in late 2008 by a group of developers looking for a way to help each other prepare for and pass one of the Microsoft .NET exams, and now has hour-long weekly Jam sessions covering Java, Ruby, .NET, F#, Silverlight, Design Patterns, and more.

The Winter/Spring 2010 Schedule begins this Tuesday, February 2nd, and continues every week until early May. Come Jam With Us in Ann Arbor, at the offices of SRT Solutions, 206 South 5th Ave, Suite 200. More information, including the prerequisites for each session (such as what software you need to have pre-installed), is available at the group's web site, http://www.comejamwithus.org.

Come Jam With Us in Ann Arbor

Every Tuesday, 5:30p-6:30p
February 2nd through May 5th, 2010

SRT Solutions
206 S. 5th Ave, Suite 200
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 | Map

Winter/Spring 2010 Jam Schedule

2-02 : Django with Darrell Hawley
2-09 : ASP.NET MVC2 with Jay Harris
2-16 : RESTful Web Services with Mike Smithson
2-23 : Erlang with Carl Wright
3-02 : MVVM with Brian Genisio
3-09 : F# (Part 1 of 3) with Chris Marinos
3-16 : F# (Part 2 of 3) with Chris Marinos
3-23 : F# (Part 3 of 3) with Chris Marinos
3-30 : WPF with Anne Marsan
4-06 : Getting to know jQuery with Dennis Burton
4-13 : Testing with WatiN with Jay Harris
4-20 : Adobe Air with Bill Heitzeg
4-27 : ActiveMQ with Becky Glesner
5-04 : NoSQL MongoDB with Dennis Burton

Technorati Tags: Ann Arbor,Software,Code Jam,Study Group

Speaking at Lansing Day of .NET 2009 on ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

Jay Harris — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:18:18 GMT

This Saturday, August 1st, I will be speaking at Lansing Day of .NET 2009, at the Breslin Student Events Center at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. This session will be the same ASP.NET Page Life Cycle talk that I gave last month at CodeStock.

Dev Basics: The ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

Jay Harris / Session Level: 100
When a request occurs for an ASP.NET page, the response is processed through a series of events before being sent to the client browser. These events, known as the Page Life Cycle, are a complicated headache when used improperly, manifesting as odd exceptions, incorrect data, performance issues, and general confusion. It seems simple when reading yet-another-book-on-ASP.NET, but never when applied in the real world. In this session, we decompose this mess, and turn the Life Cycle into an effective and productive tool. No ASP.NET MVC, no Dynamic Data, no MonoRail, no technologies of tomorrow, just the basics of ASP.NET, using the tools we have available in the office, today.

If you can make it, I recommend attending LDODN09. There are some great sessions lined up, and it is all being provided free-of-charge (though the event organizers are encouraging donations). Last year's event, held at Lansing Community College, was the first Lansing Day of .NET and the first event that I was involved in organizing. It went well, and from the moment it was over I was looking forward to the next one. I'm not on the organizing committee this year, but I am still sure that this one is destined to be great as well. They rented the Breslin Center! If I knew nothing else, that would be enough.

So come out to Lansing Day of .NET this Saturday. Registration is still open.

I hope to see you there.

Technorati Tags: Lansing Day of .NET,Day of .NET,Speaking,Events,ASP.NET,Page Life Cycle

Speaking Engagements

Jay Harris — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:53:45 GMT

I enjoy being a speaker. I have learned a lot through my mentors, colleagues, and through other community speakers, and standing before a group of my peers and sharing my knowledge is one way that I can give back to the development community. By linking together my speaking and my blog, I can provide a central repository for the slide decks and demo code for my sessions and make these things available to the audience for further review. Here, you will find all of my slides and code for all past presentations, as well as information about all my past and future talks. This post will also be linked through my top navigation so that it can be easily found, and will also be regularly updated with any new schedules and slide decks.

Thank you to everyone who as attended any of my sessions, and as always, I encourage you to give me any feedback you have via SpeakerRate.

Upcoming Talks

I would love to speak at your meeting, event, user group, or conference; please feel free to contact me if you are interested.

.NET Users of Fort Wayne (NUFW), July 10, 2012

On July 10th, 2012, I will be presenting at the July meeting of the .NET Users of Fort Wayne (NUFW) in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The meeting's session will be "Your Spark Razored by NHaml: A Comparison of Popular ASP.NET MVC View Engines." | Event Site

St. Louis Days of .NET, August 3 & 4, 2012

On August 3rd-4th, 2012, I will be presenting two sessions at the St. Louis Days of .NET in St. Louis, Missouri. My sessions at the conference will be "Going for Speed: Testing for Performance” and “XCopy is Dead: .NET Deployment Strategies that Work." | Event Site

That Conference, August 12-14, 2012

I will be presenting at That Conference, a developer's conference in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, held August 12th through the 14th. I will be presenting "Serious Business with Node.js: Module Development." | Event Site

DevLink Technical Conference, August 29-31, 2012

At the DevLink Technical Conference, held in Chattanooga, Tennessee on August 29-31, I will be presenting three sessions covering development in Orchard and in node.js. The presentations will be "Serious Business with Node.js: Module Development," "Serious Business with Node.js: TDD for Node," and "Serious Business with OrchardCMS: Module Development." | Event Site

Presentations

ASP.NET MVC: A (Microsoft) Web Coder's Salvation

There was a time when everything was moving towards the desktop. This Internet thing was new and cool, but there was no way it would ever last. And no one knew how to code for the web, at least not anything beyond animated lava lamps and cute "Under Construction" images. So, to make coding for the web easier, they made ASP.NET to be just like coding for a desktop, using the same patterns, the same event-based model, and the same stateful approach. But the web isn't stateful, its only events are GET and POST, and is nothing like a desktop, so we tortured ourselves for years forcing a square peg through a round hole. The time has come for redemption, and its name is ASP.NET MVC. Spend an hour discovering how coding for the web is supposed to be--how it is today--and end your misery. Salvation awaits.
Slides | Code Walkthrough

Previous Sessions

Dev Basics: The ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

When a request occurs for an ASP.Net page, the response is processed through a series of events before being sent to the client browser. These events, known as the Page Life Cycle, are a complicated headache when used improperly, manifesting as odd exceptions, incorrect data, performance issues, and general confusion. It seems simple when reading yet-another-book-on-ASP.NET, but never when applied in the real world. In this session, we decompose this mess, and turn the Life Cycle into an effective and productive tool. No ASP.NET MVC, no Dynamic Data, no MonoRail, no technologies of tomorrow, just the basics of ASP.NET, using the tools we have available in the office, today.
Slides | Code

Previous Sessions

Bullets Kill People: A Presenter's Guide to Better Slides

Effective communication is a pivotal component of a success. Be it presenting at a user group, assisting with a Sales demo, or simply justifying to your boss the purchase of Visual Studio upgrades, you will give a presentation in your career. But the effectiveness of your presentation is not just about being well-spoken and having a prepared outline; the quality of a slide deck has as much impact on a presentation as the quality of the speaker. Slides can destroy. Slides can invigorate. Slides can shape the mood of your audience and bend it at will. Learn to harness this power; use it to tell your story effectively, persuasively, and leave your audience inspired.

Previous Sessions

Continuous Integration: More than just a toolset

Does your team spend days integrating code at the end of a project? Continuous Integration can help. Using Continuous Integration will eliminate that end-of-project integration stress, and at the same time will make your development process easier. But Continuous Integration is more than just a tool like CruiseControl.Net or TeamCity; it is a full development process designed to bring you closer to your mainline, increase visibility of project status throughout your team, and to streamline deployments to QA or to your client. Find out what Continuous Integration is all about, and what it can do for you.
Slides

Previous Sessions

The Geek's Guide to SEO

So, you have a web site. Your own soapbox to the world. As a developer, it seems easy for us to claim a spot on the world wide web, set up shop, customize the look and feel, and throw up some content. The hard part is attracting people to your new little flag in the sand. Hey, we majored in Computer Science, not Marketing. But there is hope: one hour of tips, tricks, and general how-to about promoting your site using programming, power toys, and other technical prowess. Our discussion will include ways to attract and appeal to search engine spiders using better tools that are freely available and better code that doesn't include learning new languages or frameworks.

Previous Sessions

Going for Speed: Testing against Performance Expectations

Unit Testing has settled into the mainstream. As developers, we write code that checks code, ensuring that the outcome matches some expected result. But, are we really? As end-users (which includes each one of us from time to time), when we ask a question, we don't just expect our answer to be right, we expect it to be right now. So as developers, why are we only validating for accuracy? Why aren't we going for speed? During this session we'll discuss meeting the performance needs of an application, including developing a performance specification, measuring application performance from stand-alone testing through unit testing, using tools ranging from Team Foundation Server to the command line, and asserting on these measurements to ensure that all expectations are met. Your application does "right." Let's focus on "right now."

Previous Sessions

XCopy is Dead: .NET Deployment Strategies that Work

Back in 1995, when we first started deploying web sites, the copy command was enough. Our web sites only consisted of a static HTML file and a few graphics of animated lava lamps. But our systems are more complex now; instead of a dozen files being uploaded through FTP to a single web server, we have hundreds of files spread across multiple load-balanced web servers, dozens of applications interwoven in a tiered server architecture, and an expectation that it can be deployed error-free without impacting our stringent SLAs. When a tool is no longer sufficient to perform the task at hand, it is time to find a better tool. XCopy is dead; it is time for strategies that work.

Previous Sessions

Serious Business with node.js: Module Development

JavaScript has left the browser and is prowling on the server. No longer just for image rollovers and AJAX, Node.js has given JavaScript a new resurgence as a server-side language with a platform for creating lightweight networked applications. In this session, we will move beyond Node’s base web servers and Twitter applications, and into module development: those small, reusable components that are the foundation for every business application on every platform. Learn how to create a module within Node.js, how to test your module and validate functionality, and how to get your creation distributed into the wild.

Previous Sessions

Serious Business with node.js: TDD for node

If you don’t test it, how do you know it works? Over the past few years, we have been compelled to write unit and integration tests for our applications--code that validates code--and it is these tests that change a one-off tool into a well-architected, robust, business-ready application. Yet, every new framework requires a new testing framework, so in this session, we will discuss testing frameworks for node.js. You will walk away with a solid understanding of how to write tests against your node.js applications and modules, leading to confidence that your work is business-ready.

Serious Business with OrchardCMS: Module Development

So, you need a Content Management System on the .NET framework. While your business might spend wheelbarrows of money on a platform that is powerful and extensible, your personal site would abandon extensibility for a free, open-source solution. But what if we had an option that was free and powerful and extensible? We do: OrchardCMS. Since we already know that Orchard is free, in this session we will discuss the power of Orchard’s CMS engine. You will learn how to build new modules for the Orchard platform, allowing you to extend functionality as you see fit to meet the needs of your site, your business, and customers.

Your Spark Razored my NHaml: A Comparison of Popular ASP.NET MVC View Engines

If you've worked with ASP.NET MVC, you've likely worked with the WebFormsViewEngine, and have felt like you've stepped back 10 years into Classic ASP 3.0. But one of the powers of ASP.NET MVC is its flexibility to use other View Engines, allowing you to to keep the same Model and Controller while using code in your Views that doesn't bring back scary memories of COM. Spark, Razor, and NHaml are all View Engines that have each made a statement in ASP.NET MVC. Let's see what they are all about, how they compare, and how they stack up to the WebForms engine.

Previous Sessions

Technorati Tags: Speaking,Presentations

Speaking at CodeStock 2009 on ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

Jay Harris — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:27:01 GMT

Next month, I will be speaking at CodeStock, a developer conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, held June 26-27. We will be discussing the ASP.NET Page Life Cycle, to help get over the fears and troubles with validation, event handing, data binding, and the conflicts between page load and page initialization.

Dev Basics: The ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

Jay Harris / Session Level: 100
When a request occurs for an ASP.NET page, the response is processed through a series of events before being sent to the client browser. These events, known as the Page Life Cycle, are a complicated headache when used improperly, manifesting as odd exceptions, incorrect data, performance issues, and general confusion. It seems simple when reading yet-another-book-on-ASP.NET, but never when applied in the real world. In this session, we decompose this mess, and turn the Life Cycle into an effective and productive tool. No ASP.NET MVC, no Dynamic Data, no MonoRail, no technologies of tomorrow, just the basics of ASP.NET, using the tools we have available in the office, today.

It's a long drive from Michigan to Knoxville, but the conference is worth the trip (the first of two Tennessee conferences I will be attending this year). A few other local speakers will be making the trip to Knoxville, as well. Check out the full session list for more information, and while you are at it, register for the event if you haven't already done so; the cost is only $25 if you sign up before the end of May. I was there last year for the first CodeStock, and I had a great time; I'm excited about this years event, not only because I am speaking, but to see what other new things that people are talking about, catch up with friends, and to meet new people in the community.

I hope to see you there.

Technorati Tags: CodeStock,Speaking,ASP.NET

Lansing Give Camp Wrap-Up

Jay Harris — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:55:31 GMT

The event was about giving back to the community. A few weekends ago, April 24-26, 2009, the Impression 5 Science Center held the first ever Lansing Give Camp. The Lansing, Michigan event was a weekend of coding for charities, where nearly 50 area developers and over 10 volunteers gathered to donate their time and complete projects for 13 charities.

The event, which primarily took place in one large room on the first floor of Impression 5, was full of excitement and emotion. Sponsors stepped up to offer additional assistance at the last minute, all to really make the event a success. TechSmith, DevExpress, the MSU University Club, and even Impression 5 all stepped up during the final week to sponsor a meal. The remainder of the meals were covered by collaboration between Microsoft, Wing Zone, Dominos Pizza, Guido's Pizza, Panera Bread, and Dunkin Donuts. Jennifer Middlin of TechSmith and Camron Gnass of Vision Creative also covered our late-night snacks, which included Tacos and "Insomnia Cookies." Nom, nom, nom.

The biggest drama of the weekend had to be Mother Nature's visit on Saturday afternoon. A band of severe Thunderstorms rolled through Lansing on Saturday, knocking out power to the entire facility. We didn't lose any work, since everyone's laptop battery kicked in as soon as the lights went dark, but the loss of power did kill all of the wireless access points, and with it all connectivity to the source control server and to web hosting facilities. However, within minutes, Erik Larson (Director of Impression 5) was on the phone with Eric Hart (Director of the Lansing Center), and the Lansing Center responded heroically by providing us with a temporary home with power and internet access until power was restored at Impression 5. Between three teams shipping of to local coffee houses, and the rest all taking the trip across the street to the Lansing Center, everyone was able to continue working on their projects with minimal delay. I extend a huge "Thank you" to the Lansing Center for helping us get out of a jam that could have been a major detriment to the success of our weekend.

However, it was the closing ceremony at Lansing Give Camp that stole the show. There were many emotion-filled faces throughout the staff and crowd as each project conducted a presentation of their output, demoing their wares, and each charity saw dreams achieved and went home with a year of free hosting from LiquidWeb and an "everything you need to maintain your site" bag of software and books from Microsoft. Each of the attendees even went home with one or two prizes, which included books, hardware, and software from Microsoft, books from TechSmith, and software from DevExpress, Telligent, and Telleric.

It was a great event. The charities were happy. The developers were happy. It was all a huge success. And I can't wait until next year.

Lansing Give Camp in News and Blogs:

Great Lakes IT Report : Lansing GiveCamp Develops Free Software for Nonprofits
Lansing Capital Gains : Give Camp Brings $50,000 in Tech Talent to Local Charities
AM Lansing : On-Air Interview with Jay Harris on Lansing Give Camp
The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard : Lansing Give Camp Success
The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard : McWherters and Harrises on the Lansing Give Camp

Technorati Tags: Lansing,Give Camp,Charity

Attend Give Camp or the X Conference? Both!

Jay Harris — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:55:41 GMT

Torn between attending Lansing Give Camp or the Kalamazoo X Conference?
You don't have to choose; do both!

Give Camp or X Conference?

The first ever Lansing Give Camp is being held April 24-26. The first ever Kalamazoo X Conference is being held April 25. The sessions of the X Conference offer a great opportunity for learning and for improving your craft. For $20, you can't beat that. But Lansing Give Camp is a weekend of giving back to the community by helping out local charities. Coding for a cause; you can't beat that, either. Two amazing events, slightly more than an hour from each other, are being held the same weekend. It's like a bad case of deadlocked threads. Kalamazoo or Lansing? Lansing or Kalamazoo? How do you choose between them?

You don't have to choose. Go to both.

Spend the weekend in Kalamazansing!

Kalamazoo X Conference and Lansing Give Camp have partnered together. Lansing Give Camp will have special projects that will accommodate X Conference attendees. Kalamazoo X Conference is waiving its registration fee for anyone attending Lansing Give Camp. Friday night, come out to Give Camp. Saturday morning you can grab a shower (thanks to a partnership with the Lansing YMCA), and head out to Kalamazoo. When the event is over, finish out the weekend back in Lansing, coding for a cause. It's almost like one big event, spread between two Michigan cities. Kalamazansing.

I want to go to Kalamazansing!

Sign up Lansing Give Camp at http://www.lansinggivecamp.org. The registration form includes an option to sign up for the X Conference, too. We'll take care of the rest.

Technorati Tags: X Conference,Kalamazoo,Lansing,Give Camp,Kalamazansing

Lansing Give Camp 2009, April 24-26

Jay Harris — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:50:07 GMT

On April 24th-26th, 2008, the local software development communities will pool their talents to put together the first ever Give Camp in Lansing Michigan. The event will be hosted at the Impression 5 Science Center in downtown Lansing. For more information, please visit the event's web site, http://www.lansinggivecamp.org.

Lansing Give Camp

April 24-26 at the Impression 5 Science Center
200 Museum Drive, Lansing, MI 48933
http://www.lansinggivecamp.org

What is a Give Camp?

A Give Camp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software solutions for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new web site for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or an application for the Red Cross that automatically will email a blood donor three months after they've last donated blood to remind them that they are again eligible to donate blood. The only limitation for a Give Camp project is that it must be scoped to be completed within a weekend.

During the event, developers are welcome to come and go as they please. The event will continue 24/7 from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, and developers can choose to go home in the evenings or camp out for the entire weekend. Showers are not available at the Impression 5 facility, but the Lansing YMCA--just down the street--is donating their facilities throughout the weekend for any Give Camp attendees.

How can I help?

If you are a developer and are interested in attending, please go to the event web site and register for the event. We are looking for developers of all skill levels to help out, from students to senior developers, and for developers of all skill sets, including designers, developers, database administrators, and more. If you can code, we want you there!

What about Sponsorship?

Lansing Give Camp is seeking cash donations of any amount, or the sponsorship of a meal. A meal sponsorship would entail funding breakfast, lunch, or dinner for roughly 100 volunteers. Typical meals would be sandwiches, pizza, or BBQ. As consideration for your donation, your organization’s logo will be added to the Give Camp web site, along with mention during the opening and closing sessions.

Technorati Tags: Lansing,Give Camp,Charities

Changing of the Guard at Ann Arbor .Net Developers

Jay Harris — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:38:25 GMT

February was election month for us .Net Developers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. On February 11th, during the monthly meeting, the Ann Arbor .Net Developers user group held its annual elections. After serving as the group's leader for the past 3 years--ever since the group was formed--Bill Wagner decided to hand over the reins. When the election dust settled, I stood as the second President of the Ann Arbor .Net Developers. I appreciate the honor and the opportunity given to me, and I look forward to serving the group for 2009.

The Elected

President: Jay Harris
Vice Pres: Scott Zischerk
Secretary: Darrell Hawley
Treasurer: Eric Bratton

That evening, after the meeting, we held our first board meeting, as we were responsible for filling the two appointed positions: Program Chair and Webmaster. As the group has grown, so have these two roles. Program Chair turned into a catchall for most of the membership and speaker management, and was an overload for one person. Webmaster had changed, too, as the group's web site is no longer the only communication medium we employ.

We restructured these two appointed positions into four. Program Director is responsible for knowing what people want to learn about, and making sure that our schedule is booked solid with great speakers. Webmaster has been rebranded as Communication Director, and is the public voice of our group; the position is responsible for any articles and communications published by the group, and for maintaining the web site, Twitter, Facebook, and all of our other various methods of getting the word out. Membership Director is one of our entirely new roles, responsible for maintaining demographics on the group, membership listings, and swag. Finally, we wanted to ease the burden on our group membership and work towards eliminating our member-dues fiscal model; the new Sponsorship Director is responsible for finding sponsorship funding to help run our group.

The Appointed

Program Director: Mike Woelmer
Membership Director: Dennis Burton
Sponsorship Director: Brian Genisio
Communications Director: Len Smith

The new board has some great ideas for the upcoming year, and I am excited to be a part of it. In addition, a sincere thank you goes out to the departing board members, Bill Wagner (President) and Dave Redding (Vice President); we appreciate the effort that you have put in to this group.

Technorati Tags: AADND,User Groups,Ann Arbor .Net Developers

This is CodeMash! A look back at CodeMash 2.0.0.9

Jay Harris — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:30:31 GMT

Last week was CodeMash 2009, a developer's conference in Sandusky, Ohio. The conference, which lasted from Wednesday, January 7th, through Friday, January 9th, was held at the Kalahari Resort, a hotel and indoor water park; this makes the conference unique, as families are able, and encouraged, to join the attending developer for the week, and while the developer is off learning about the Next Big Thing, the significant others, spouses, and children are off enjoying the fun of the water park. As for the conference itself, it is billed as an event where opposing developer communities congregate and mash together. Attendees are encouraged to exit their comfort zone—.Net developers can attend sessions on Java or Ruby; Java developers can attend sessions on Azure or .Net—allowing a seasoned developer to get a new perspective, and allowing communities to cross-pollinate ideas and practices. This was not only my first CodeMash as a speaker, but also as an attendee, and it will not be my last.

Day Zero (The Precompiler)

As Brian Prince points out, we developers love to start lists with zero. It's cool, now that we no longer think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. Day Zero at CodeMash was the Precompiler, an optional extra day of sessions that was new feature of the 2009 event. Unlike the conference's traditional hour-long sessions, the precompiler is split into two half-day sessions, allowing attendees to take a deep dive into a particular topic. For me, it was a dive into Ruby by Joe O'Brien and Jim Weirich and into Windows Azure with David Aiken.

In the Ruby session, @objo and @jimweirich used "koans" to teach Ruby to the attendees. Effectively, these koans were unit tests coded in Ruby against the Ruby language. Each test purposefully failed, and the process of correcting the code of the each test progressively taught more and more about the ruby language. The tests begin with assert false which must be converted to assert true to pass, and proceeds through conditionals, strings, arrays, hashes, blocks, and beyond. Ingenious.

In the Azure session, @thedavidaiken, the evangelist for the Azure platform, gave a once-over and code demo to Azure. After this talk, I'm very excited about playing in the Azure sandbox, and have been brainstorming for a good topic. I have since gotten my invite into the Azure CTP, and should be making sand castles, soon.

Other precompiler sessions were available, including 101-level sessions on iPhone development, Java, and more, and what I have only heard described as a phenomenal talk by Mary Poppendieck on Value Stream Mapping. Also, an all day CodeJam allowed any of the attendees to pop in and code with their friends, colleagues, and other attendees. I wish I could have cloned myself, and attended some of these other sessions.

Day One

After a night that included a few hours of water park slides followed by a few hours catching up with people I hadn't seen since DevLink 2008 or last fall's Ann Arbor Day of .Net, the conference officially kicked off with breakfast and a fantastic keynote by Venkat Subramanian. Then it was off to a day of sessions and Open Spaces, split by a keynote by Mads Torgersen during lunch. I attended Jeff Blankenburg's A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services talk, and stopped in to Bryan Weber's Functional Concepts for OOP Developers talk for a bit, all in between preparing for my talk. The Open Spaces, where this year's theme was Techniques, Not Tools, are always a part of my day at conferences, especially since these were facilitated by Alan Stevens. Any time he is involved in organizing an event's open spaces, the attendees are in for a treat. We had some great conversation on testing practices and on pragmatic learning (which incidentally spawned another open space on Day Two on mentoring.

During Day One's final block of sessions was my talk, Continuous Integration: It's More Than Just a Toolset. Though this was my first presentation at a conference, it went off great. Having given this talk a few times prior at various area user groups, I was comfortable with the talk and had all of the bugs worked out. I was fortunate enough to have a sizeable crowd and great questions from the audience. I am looking forward to speaking, again.

Day Two

The second day kicked of with another breakfast keynote, this time delivered by Eric Meyer. I spent the entire day involved in open spaces. Alan Barber convened a discussion on Getting in to Speaking. Rick Kierner convened an open space on having and becoming a mentor, a topic that originated from the pragmatic learning discussion from the prior day. I hope that the outlines of these discussions make its way to Heartland Open Spaces, soon.

The day, and the conference, ended with a trip to the open spaces Closing Circle followed by the Closing Giveaway. The Closing Circle, open to anyone who wished to participate, is where we could all look back on the open spaces of the event, and discuss what we liked and provide constructive feedback on how to improve for next year. Alan did another great job with organization; I would have liked the open spaces to be in a more prominent location, to help introduce open spaces to the crowd, and apparently, this is already taken care of for next year. The Closing Giveaway in the conferences Great Hall ended the show for everyone with an hour of prize giveaways, which included two XBox 360s, a Wii, the full Rock Band 2 set, the full Guitar Hero World Tour set, and much more. My number was cursed; I did not win a thing. I'll have to acquire Rock Band 2 through some other means.

Thoughts

This was my first CodeMash. I loved it. It is a very cool event, for if no other reason than it is great to have the conference and the hotel room be in the same building. I enjoyed the opportunity to learn new things that were outside of my day-to-day space, as well as share the wealth by giving a talk to others. I look forward to next year, and I hope that they will again have me as a speaker.

Thank you to all of the CodeMash organizers for a great event.

Technorati Tags: CodeMash

Announcing Ann Arbor Nerd Lunch

Jay Harris — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:56:03 GMT

Brian Genisio has organized a monthly lunch for the local development community around Ann Arbor, Michigan. The event, held on the third Thursday of every month, will be an opportunity for developers to get together, network with colleagues, talk about what is cool or what is in the way in day-to-day development efforts, and have a good time socializing at lunch. A Google Group has been set up for more information, and will serve as the primary method of communication.

The first Ann Arbor Nerd Lunch will be held next week, noon on Thursday, December 18th, at the Mahek Indian Cuisine restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor. The plan is to change the meeting place every month to accommodate different taste buds, but to keep the meeting time consistently on the third Thursday.

Ann Arbor Nerd Lunch - Google Group
Thursday, December 18th, Noon

Mahek Indian Cuisine - Map
212 E. Washington Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

Please RSVP on the Google Group, so that proper table sizes can be planned.

For every meeting, you are encouraged to bring a friend. For this first meeting, you are challenged with bringing someone who does not normally attend community functions, such as local conferences and user group meetings, yet is interested in getting involved. Help get Ann Arbor Nerd Lunch off the ground. Also, come with some ideas for the group. Should it stay casual? Should "special guests" be brought in to help start conversation? This is an event for the community, and the goal is to make a lunch that is beneficial for everyone. It should be a great time.

I'll see you there.

Technorati Tags: Events,Ann Arbor Nerd Lunch

Watch the PDC Keynotes from Ann Arbor

Jay Harris — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:33:29 GMT

Interested in the Ray Ozzie keynotes next week, but can't make it to PDC? Come watch the two keynotes (Monday and Tuesday) at SRT Solutions in Ann Arbor. This community event will include remote viewing of the keynotes and discussion about the news. Lunch will be provided, as our local Microsoft office is sponsoring the event for both days. (Thank you, Microsoft!)

Remote Viewing & Discussion of the Ray Ozzie Keynotes
Monday, October 27, 11:30a-2:00p - Register
Tuesday, October 28, 11:30a-2:00p - Register

SRT Solutions
206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

Come out for the show. Space is limited, so please register. (Note: if you wish to attend both days, you must register for each day separately.)
I look forward to seeing you there.

Speaking at AADND on CI, 08-Oct-08

Jay Harris — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:45:27 GMT

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, 08 October, I will be speaking at the Ann Arbor Dot Net Developers meeting. We will be discussing Continuous Integration, focusing on CI as a process, not just a toolset. Come out to Ann Arbor, enjoy some pizza, and hear about what Continuous Integration can do for your development cycle.

Continuous Integration: It's more than just a toolset
Wednesday, 08 October, 2008 @ 6:00pm
SRT Solutions
206 South Fifth Ave, Suite 200
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Session Abstract:

Does your team spend days integrating code at the end of a project? Continuous Integration can help. Using Continuous Integration will eliminate that end-of-project integration stress, and at the same time will make your development process easier. But Continuous Integration is more than just a tool like CruiseControl.Net; it is a full development process designed to bring you closer to your mainline, increase visibility of project status throughout your team, and to streamline deployments to QA or to your client. Find out what Continuous Integration is all about, and what it can do for you.

Speaking at GLUGnet Flint on CI, 11-Sep-08

Jay Harris — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:07:26 GMT

Tomorrow night, Thursday, 11 September, I will be speaking at the GLUGnet Flint meeting. We will be discussing Continuous Integration, focusing on CI as a process, not just a toolset. Come out to Flint, enjoy some pizza, and hear about what Continuous Integration can do for your development cycle.

Continuous Integration: It's more than just a toolset
Thursday, 11 September, 2008 @ 6:00pm
New Horizons
4488 West Bristol Road
Flint, MI 48507

Session Abstract:

Does your team spend days integrating code at the end of a project? Continuous Integration can help. Using Continuous Integration will eliminate that end-of-project integration stress, and at the same time will make your development process easier. But Continuous Integration is more than just a tool like CruiseControl.Net; it is a full development process designed to bring you closer to your mainline, increase visibility of project status throughout your team, and to streamline deployments to QA or to your client. Find out what Continuous Integration is all about, and what it can do for you.

conferencesStream.Flush(); //Give Camp, CodeStock, devLink Wrap-up

Jay Harris — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:33:32 GMT

My summer has been what seems like a steady stream of major events in the development community. It really all began with my election to the board of GLUGnet last April, which immediately put me as a planner for the first Lansing Day of .Net, for which I handled the web site and branding. The event, which I blogged about previously, was held on June 21, 2008, and was a huge success. We will definitely have the conference again next year, and are already brainstorming ways to make the event even better.

Three weeks after LDODN, on July 11-13, was Ann Arbor Give Camp. Give Camp was an event for charity, where area developers volunteered their weekend to code for charity. The Heartland District truly displayed their selflessness and passion with their willingness to endure three days of Ninjas-On-Fire coding, often sacrificing sleep to accomplish deadlines, to help out not-for-profits that likely would never have the budget for a high-quality, professionally developed web site. I was also impressed by the event sponsors for their donations and contributions; Washtenaw Community College provided the venue for no cost, Verio provided free hosting for each charity's site until 2010, and Microsoft provided to each of the charities free copies of all of the software needed to support and maintain the new applications. The planning staff should be commended for this event, too; they went to no end to enable the development teams, and to meet our every desire. There was plenty of food, plenty of snacks, plenty of fluids, and plenty of games for when we needed to occasionally decompress. We requested ice cream; we got ice cream. Someone on my team even requested a Cherry Coke, and one of the organizers made a midnight run to the local gas station to pick up a bottle. The event was great, and we had a blast. I will be there next year, maybe even running a team of my own.

Another four weeks brought CodeStock, August 9, in Knoxville, TN. Dave Redding, The Wife, and I hopped in Dave's Charger and cruised the nine hours from Brighton, MI to Knoxville on Friday night, arriving at about 3:30am for the 7:30am registration. Michael Neel and crew put on a great show. I finally got to see the Joe O'Brian / Amanda Laucher presentation on DSLs and Brian H. Prince's 'Soft Skillz ' talk. (I highly recommend both.) But what really made the event were the Open Spaces, organized by Alan Stevens. We had some enlightening discussions, such as improving User Group participation, and developing in .Net on a Mac. The after party at Alan's house included a time for socializing outside of a technical setting, and included a friendly game of Texas Hold'em. Dennis Burton was the big winner, and graciously donated his winnings to the Hands On Museum in Ann Arbor, the charity that Michael Eaton worked on during Give Camp.

In the shortest gap of the summer, I only had to wait two more weeks for devLink, August 22-23, in Murfreesboro, TN. However, there was no 9 hour drive, as The Wife and I hitched a ride on the devLink Bus. Organized by Amanda Laucher (and others)--my employer, Latitude Consulting Group, was also one of the sponsors--we chartered a coach for the weekend to take some of the local developers down to devLink. The bus started in Grand Rapids, and made pick-up stops in Lansing, Detroit, Toledo, Columbus, and Cincinnati. We made some "detours" along the way, and the seats were a little uncomfortable for sleeping, but we all had a great time; we had some great discussion, we watched some movies, and Mike Eaton, The Wife, Eric Vogel , and I even played a few rounds of euchre. We had one minor glitch on the return trip, as one of the right rear tires blew out at about 1:30am while traveling at 65mph up I-71, but we even had fun on the 3 1/2 hour delay, as we took over a Waffle House in Carrollton, Kentucky, were entertained by "The Great Pork Chop Incident," and a few riders extended the Open Spaces discussions from the conference.

As for devLink itself, I went to focus on the Open Spaces. Four different Open Space discussions were on hand for each of the session blocks throughout the two-day conference. I attended sessions on Developing the Developer Community; on why Comments are Evil; on How "Should" Changed My Life (a discussion on BDD , and creating effective tests); on Microsoft, Open Source, and CodePlex; and I facilitated a discussion on Continuous Integration. I only went to one session throughout the conference: Jeff Blankenburg's talk on Silverlight. I challenged him to show me a reason to use Silverlight that didn't include gradients, spinning ghost animations, or anything else that I have been able to do in Flash since version 4. After his talk, I'm actually motivated to dig in. Over the years, I have created a few Flash games--nothing too special, as they were primarily about learning a specific component, like collision detection--and I plan on starting with converting them to Silverlight. It should give me a good opportunity to grok the space.

But to me, the best part about this summer isn't the things I have learned, or the code I've produced, but the relationships and bonds that have formed. I have made many new connections this summer, and made some great new friendships, and I look forward to many more. The list is made up of people all smarter than I am, yet I am treated as an equal. Every time we connect, I learn a lot, professionally and personally. I have grown a lot over this past year, and I owe every bit of it to them (and to the kick in the pants from Dennis Burton that pushed me to get involved in the first place).

Here's to what's next.

Today is Contribupendence Day!

Jay Harris — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:29:43 GMT

Jeff Blankenburg came up with a good idea! As I go through my LinkedIn connections, I see that not many of them have recommendations. And it's not that these people don't deserve them--many of these connections I consider to be amongst the brightest people in the industry. As a community, and in many cases simple as a people, we don't often take the time to help each other out. We may pat each other on the back for recognition of talent, but we don't often do so in a public forum. Social Networking sites like linked in are phenomenal for things like job hunting, not necessarily for the networking but because potential employers will peruse these sites to gather information about a candidate, and these recommendations can go a long way towards impressing the employer.

Enter Contribupendence Day! Jeff came up with the idea for one grand call-to-action where the entire community gets together to "tell the world about the people we work with." Everyone should comment / recommend / praise their friends, colleagues, associates on sites such as LinkedIn or Plaxo. No strings attached. No expectation that they will return the favor. Just do a good deed for your buddy, because that's what we should all be doing anyway, everyday.

I have a few folks that I have been meaning to recommend, and I just haven't gotten around to it. This is good motivation, and a great idea. You should, too.

Today we celebrate our Contribupendence Day.

Lansing DODN Agenda Posted

Jay Harris — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:40:52 GMT

The day's agenda for Saturday's Lansing Day of .Net has been posted. Registration will open at 7:30am with the first session starting at 8:30am. There will be 24 sessions throughout the day, spread across 4 rooms and 6 timeslots. Sessions will be divided by a 15 minute break, and an hour break for lunch. The final session will end at 4:30, when the closing and final raffle will be held.

Saturday's schedule:

7:30 - 9:00 - Registration and Check-in
8:30 - 9:30 - First Sessions

Programming with Literal XML and Embedded Expressions (Paul Kimmel)
The Entity Framework (Tim Golisch)
Data Access with NHibernate (Len Smith)
MicroISV: Start Your Own Software Company (Patrick Foley)

9:45 - 10:45 - Second Sessions

Well, Isn’t That Spatial… [SQL Server 2008 Spatial Data Type] (Jason Follas)
LINQ For SQL - CRUD! (Joe Kunk)
An Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD! (Michael Eaton)
Regular Expressions can be your friend (Vijay Jagdale)

11:00 - 12:00 - Third Sessions

IronRuby, the DLR and Silverlight (Carey Payette)
Windows Live: An API for Web 2.0 (Martin L. Shoemaker)
Everyday Inversion of Control (Jay R. Wren)
Structure and Guidance for Organizing Applications within Visual Studio (Keith Elder)

12:00 - 1:00 - Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 - Fourth Sessions

Be a Rules Follower: Windows Workflow Rules Engine (Michael Wood)
Test Driven Development in C# (Philip Japikse)
Monorail: An MVC Implementation on ASP.NET (Patrick Steele)
Manage Complexity With Agility (Alan Stevens)

2:15 - 3:15 - Fifth Sessions

Enhancing Windows and Web Applications with Microsoft Presence (Chris Woodruff)
Introduction to WPF (Jennifer Marsman)
Introduction to Dependency Injection using Spring.NET (Ryan Montgomery)
Agile Games (Amanda Laucher)

3:30 - 4:30 - Sixth Sessions

Agile Project Management with Scrum (Dan Rigsby)
SQL Server 2008 for Developers (Sam Nasr)
Distilling the Dynamic Language Runtime (Josh Holmes)
Getting Started with WCF (James Bender)

4:30 - 5:00 - Closing and Raffle