Sara Ford's Weblog

I’m at TechEd 2009 presenting on CodePlex – from how to consume and contribute to open source software using the CodePlex feature set, to how we use agile development to deploy every 3 weeks. All sessions will be available 24 hours after the talk. Stay...

Ever since I joined the CodePlex team, I’ve wanted to learn something web developer-ish. At long last, I was finally able to make the time to start learning CSS and Javascript by writing the CodePlex Tips Gadget and by re-skinning the CodePlex Team blog...

Am I really doing this to myself again? Well yes, kinda. One thing I learned from the Visual Studio Tip of the Day is that you can get a lot of great feedback if you scope a blog post to a single piece of functionality. I want to get this level of feedback...

Agile is the single greatest things a team could do to significantly improve the user experience and quality of their site. Now having said that… If I could go back in time… 3 things I would tell myself about Agile For a long time, I’ve said that my biggest...

Over on the CodePlex Team Blog, I announced the Open Source Club on CodePlex . An except from the post: The Open Source Club (OSC) is a group of volunteers who contribute what they can to the specified open source project each month. If you’ve ever wanted...

I’m going to be in town after Mardi Gras, so I thought it would be fun to do geek dinner that Wednesday. Keith Elder, the Hub City .NET User Group leader, has the details : Who can attend : Anyone that wants to talk about open source software, codeplex...

Over on the CodePlex blog , I just posted the stats for the year in review. Here’s a sneak peek: Site Traffic 2008 2007 % increase from 2007 Visits 19,493,502 8,891,178 +119% User Hours 2,804,898 1,237,356 +127% Unique Visitors 9,811,365 4,532,440 +116...

I’m heading back to Ohio next week for another CodeMash. My write-up from last year says it all. And yes, I found my friend Rob again by writing a hand-written letter. I can’t recall the last time I wrote a letter to anyone. I’m looking forward to chatting...

Last week, I spoke at the Engineering Excellence / Trustworthy Computing Forum to Microsoft employees at the Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen about CodePlex. I also attempted to do 101 Visual Studio Tips in 50 minutes, but only got through 85 tips...

I do most of my blogging about CodePlex over on the CodePlex team blog , but every now and then there’s something cool I want to share over here with you all. We did our first ever CodePlex Town Hall meeting at PDC with members of the CodePlex community...

My camera battery died after Day 2. Must buy new camera that charges via USB (instead of draining.) As announced on the CodePlex team blog, Channel 9 and I hosted the first ever CodePlex town hall. Thanks to Tamir Khason , Joseph Guadagno , and Kevin...

And some more pictures… In the slides preceding Monday’s keynote, my name was shown for the book signing. It was quite moving to see my name in front of 6,000 people. The book signing   And some CodePlex supporters visiting the booth. Below is Tracy...

http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-15-visual-studio-tips-and-running-an-agile-team-with-sara-ford/ Wow, was i tired at the beginning or what? I was in the middle of my southern speaking tour, driving all around the south at all hours of the day...

My 2 talks, plus my 20 Visual Studio Tips in 7 minutes micro-talk, are available at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/remix08/agenda.aspx I highly recommend checking out the 7 minute presentation, but don’t take my word for it. Thanks to Guy Smith-Ferrier for...

Sara Aside: Matt and I were IM’ing each other this morning, and he congratulated me for the book being sent to printing yesterday. He asked me if I planned to sleep with it like a stuff animal. I said of course I was going to.. One of the hardest things...

Last week, my career-long dream of becoming an international speaker came true. I had the opportunity to speak at ReMix08 UK in Brighton, England. Thanks to Dave Sussman and Phil Winstanley, who ran the Community Track session, for inviting me out to...

I’m speaking at ReMix on Thursday in England, where I will demo the new Subversion client support for CodePlex .  I will also present the Visual Studio IDE Tips and Tricks. http://www.microsoft.com/uk/remix08/ Well, i’m off to catch my flight. i...

Back in late April, before I started on the book, before I started on the TechEd breakout session, and way before I even thought to start on the OSCON talk (in other words, before I realized I would not be sleeping this summer) I wanted to do something...

Yesterday was an incredibly fun day for me.  Wanted to break up the endless series of IDE tips and tricks posts with a little something different… On the CodePlex team blog , I wrote down the Top 5 Myths and Facts about CodePlex : Myth #1: ...

If there ever were a “Sara needs a hug” moment… I’m doing a talk on Friday called Towards a Stronger Open Source Ecosystem .  It’s a story about what I’ve seen and ideas I have for the future.  I actually put together this abstract 2 years ago...

Today is the 2nd anniversary of the CodePlex launch announcement.  I brought in some birthday cake on this nice, warm and sunny Friday afternoon in Seattle. CodePlex team members who are not currently on vacation.   We have a few who are...

I’m sitting here looking at women’s swag apparel wondering how many women we have as project owners on CodePlex (or who work on CodePlex projects).  I remember talking to a handful of women at TechEd regarding CodePlex, but i don’t recall anyone...

Microspotting – Like the paparazzi, but for geeks.  Here’s my interview with Ariel, where we talk about community, blogging, CodePlex, agile development, and of course open source: Sara Ford on what Microsoft can learn from open source And, Ariel...

It’s funny that I’ve never actually given a formal talk at a conference before, and at this year’s TechEd, I’ll will give two talks =)  Just don’t tell me to break a leg.  We don’t need another TechEd Scooter-Cam 1 (or a bob haircut!). Also...

Back in my power toy days, Matt Manela was a developer intern on our team, which you might remember from this post about writing a custom Visual Studio editor .  Well, he came back full time last fall, and was just recently featured on .NET Rocks...