Back in the office today after a roller-coaster ride across Ireland for the Dr.Strangelove tour. It was great trip and it was fantastic to get out and meet developers from around the country. That movie gets better each time I watch it!
I met some developers up at the Belfast screening that are already talking about setting up an Northern Ireland user group for Microsoft technologies -- so if you want to get involved, do drop me a line at claredil@microsoft.com and I will put you in touch with them. I'll post more news on that bit of usergroup action as it crops up.
The Galway screening was held in the Cinemobile, a real-life transformer which swtiches from truck to fully functioning cinema in only 45 minutes (30 at a push, or so the man in charge told me). Pretty impressive and surprisingly intact (considering it spends 52 weeks of the year navigating the more remote Irish back roads)!
Some of the folks at the events had some excellent ideas for future technical topics. Two that cropped up quite often were:
- .NET/J2EE interoperability
- How VS 2005 and .NET can be used with agile programming.
We will be looking into both those topics for the events post Christmas. Remember, if you have any more suggestions for events in your area, do let me know.
Finally, congratulations to Kevin Mullan (NI Services), Mal Duffin (CanDo Interactive), Ruairi Mc Nally (Level Seven), Simon Iwasaki (APC), Stephen Brownless (HP) and Ke Ning (DERI) who all won prizes at the events and a big thanks to Rob who did all the driving!
