Jim O'Neil's Blog : Rhode Island

Thank You Providence

joneil — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:02:45 GMT

I’m stealing a line from Alanis Morissette to offer my (and Chris’) appreciation for the turn out at our first-ever Northeast Roadshow to be held in the Ocean State. If there were any doubt this is the ‘winter’ edition of our series, they melted (ahem) away on Wednesday as 30+ folks braved the winter storm to come to our event at the Hotel Providence.

If you signed up for the event, but couldn’t get past your driveway, don’t worry, our content and demos are currently on line at http://tinyurl.com/nerdshow1109. We have one more stop on this tour on Tuesday (in Augusta, Maine), and then we’ll put the finishing touches on the demos, etc., and upload them up on our Code Gallery site (where you can also find materials from past roadshows).

By the way, you don’t have to wait for us to come to you for great content and networking with the local technical community. Here are some links to user groups and other regularly occurring technical events in Rhode Island.

Rhode Island .NET User Group (Bristol)
Southern New England SQL Server User Group (Warwick)
Southern New England Network Users Group (Warwick)
Providence PHP Meetup (Providence)
Providence Web Developer Lunch Hour Meetup (Providence)
Providence Geeks (Providence)

Also, check out the community calendars below for additional events in Rhode Island:

RI Nexus

Tech Collective

Data Camp v2.0

joneil — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:28:00 GMT

Shake off the winter chill, and join your fellow data geeks for the second edition of Data Camp (aka SQL Saturday #34), being organized by Adam Machanic of the New England SQL Server User Group and Grant Fritchey of the Southern New England SQL Server User Group.

New England Data Camp is a free training event for people who work with data--particularly in the Microsoft space. This event will feature content for SQL Server DBAs, .NET developers, and business intelligence professionals. Applications are only as good as the data that backs them; if you are a software professional working in any of these
disciplines then you are a data professional and this event is for you.

Date:	January 30, 2010
Location:	Microsoft Office 201 Jones Road, Suite 600 Waltham MA 02451
Cost:	FREE!
Registration:	register here

The call for speakers is open through December 31st, and you can view the list of sessions as they are submitted.

The organizers are also looking for sponsors to help defray the costs of this free community event. It’s a great way for companies, recruiters, and other organizations to tap into the best and brightest data professionals in the area.

Bring a Friend, Get a Book

joneil — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:00:00 GMT

As you know, Chris and I are in the middle of our Fall/Winter 2009 Northeast Roadshow, with four more stops scheduled for early December:

Now there’s even more incentive to attend! In addition to the WIN7 code referenced in my previous blog post, we’re incorporating a “Bring a friend, get a book” promotion for the rest of our venues (our colleagues down the East coast are doing the same, by the way). Here’s how to take advantage of the offer:

Follow the registration link above for the desired venue
For the referral code, enter the name of the friend you’re bringing along, OR if you’ve already registered, have your friend enter your name when she or he registers (see below).
When you check-in at the event, we’ll hand each of you a copy of Laurence Moroney’s Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 3.

Obligatory Fine Print:

Government employees are not eligible for promotion
Both parties must be present to win
If onsite supply runs out, books will be mailed to recipients

Northeast Roadshow: 3 Down, 4 to Go

joneil — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:52:58 GMT

Thanks to the folks in Burlington, Vermont, and Troy and Rochester, New York, for coming to the latest edition of the Northeast Roadshow last week. Given the timing (PDC this week and the Thanksgiving holiday next week), Chris and I are on a short break before we resume the series on December 3rd. There’s still room at all the remaining venues, AND we’ve got a special deal for you:

If you’re among the first seven at each venue to register with the code WIN7, we’ll hand you a copy of the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536) Microsoft .NET Framework Application Development Foundation, Second edition at the event!

Given what I heard just today -- and PDC hasn’t officially started yet -- we’ll have a lot to talk about at the upcoming venues (I’m already contemplating a few updates to my presentations and demos!). You can get the full agenda here, but the topics we’ll be discussing include

WCF
Model-View-ViewModel with Silverlight and Expression Blend
Avenues to get technical help on Microsoft technologies
LINQ fundamentals
ASP.NET Web Forms and Ajax

User Group Hiatuses (Hiati?)

joneil — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:41:05 GMT

For the most part, summer is a slower time in terms of User Group meetings, and since I got notices this week from three groups that generally meet today that they’re taking July (and even August) off, I thought I’d mention it’s a good idea to check the various user group sites (full list here) to make sure their meeting is on before battling the traffic!

By the way, if you had been planning today to drop by the New Hampshire .NET User Group, the New England ASP.NET Professionals Group, or the Boston Pocket PC group, consider heading south to Providence and join me for the monthly Providence Geeks dinner. Providence has an awesome community of professional developers and designers fed in part by its the proximity to RISD, Johnson and Wales, and Brown, so come check it out!

Happy New Year!

joneil — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:36:00 GMT

Yes, you’re still recovering from Fourth of July festivities, and, no, I didn’t get too much sun over the long weekend. July 1st indeed starts a new year, a new fiscal year, at Microsoft, and with that comes some intense planning for the coming 12 months – budgets, sales quotas, annual reviews, etc. For us, the Developer Platform and Evangelism team (DPE), specifically it’s a time for planning out our various events and road shows as well as fostering community activities like code camps and ‘firestarters.’

So what’s the best way to keep on top of all these happenings during the upcoming year?

MSDN Flash – subscribe here and enter your ZIP code to get localized content from Chris Bowen and myself in the Northeast. Our colleagues in other regions likewise add their own local flair to the bi-weekly newsletter.
Community Megaphone – on my blog’s sidebar is a feed showing the events in the Northeast district, but you can visit the main site and see what’s going on around the country.
Follow your evangelists’ blogs. Well, you found mine and the rest of the members of the East region developer evangelist family are listed in my blog’s sidebar.
Get involved in a User Group. In the Northeast, we have nearly three-dozen active groups focused on various aspects of Microsoft technologies, and there’s many more independent groups focused on complementary topics like JavaScript, Web technologies, and user experience as well. There’s no better way to hear about activities than being part of those activities yourself. It’s a double-win: you stay abreast of technology, and you meet some great people in the process.

Some Upcoming Events

joneil — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:51:30 GMT

I'll be out and about in New England during the first two weeks of November, so just wanted to let you all know of a few events

Nov 4th, 5 - 8 p.m.	Rhode Island .NET User Group Roger Williams University Bristol, Rhode Island Topic: ASP.NET Dynamic Data
Nov 5th, 1 - 5 p.m.	MSDN Event (click to register) Courtyard by Mariott 63 Grand Street Waterbury, Connecticut
Nov 13th, 1 - 5 p.m.	MSDN Event (click to register) Sheraton Boston 39 Dalton Street Boston, Massachusetts