I tend to be a bit Boston-centric given my physical location and where the population center of the Northeast District lies, but I’m happy to say that upstate New York is on a tear lately in terms of community and Microsoft-led tech events (in addition, of course, to the regular cadence of User Group activities).  Most of these have been mentioned before on either Chris’ or my blog, but I thought it worthwhile to put them all into a single package so our Empire State friends can plan our their Fall activities.   Chris and/or I will be at some of these, so we’re looking forward to seeing you and re-connecting.

	TONIGHT, October 26th, it’s the relaunch of the Western New York .NET User Group (Buffalo) with its new branding: MS Dev WNY. Group leader, Rich Nalezynski, will be kicking things off with “An Introduction to Windows Phone Development.” The event starts at 6 p.m. with pizza and networking – please RSVP so they have an accurate count.
	BarCamp Rochester will be held on October 29th at RIT. BarCamp is an ‘unconference,’ where technology-focused sessions of all kinds are proposed by attendees at the beginning of the event and a schedule is crafted on the spot. Come ready to speak, demo, or participate in some lively discussions! You can register here.
	Startup Weekend Syracuse runs from November 4-6th. It’s an intense 54-hours bringing together engineers, developers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and business folk to collaborate on innovative new ideas and products.
	Heading a bit eastward, SUNY-New Paltz will host a one-day Windows Phone Camp on November 9th. Come ready to learn how to build Windows Phone 7.5 (aka “Mango”) applications for fun and profit, and take advantage of hands-on hacking time and the presence of Microsoft and community experts to launch your own killer app! [Update: it appears that this event has sold out; however, there are other opportunities in the Northeast to attend this same event].
	The University of Rochester will be holding a Windows Phone Camp as well on November 15th. It’s the same agenda as the others.
	RIT Game Camp is set for December 2-4th, at well, RIT! It’s actually a few events you can choose from all mushed up into a mega-gamerific weekend: Game Jam – a 40-hour game challenge beginning Friday at 5 p.m. and ending Sunday at 4 p.m. (which is presumably when the Red Bull wears off) XNA in a Day – a full day (Saturday) of how to build games for the Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone using XNA Windows Phone Camp – another edition of the Windows Phone camp! HTML5 Camp – and afternoon of learning how to build games for cross-browser, cross-platform environments