Jason Townsend

Lately I have been extremely busy helping with the We Are Microsoft – Charity Challenge Weekend.  Well that weekend is almost here I am am extremely excited!  The list of charities that were put together were absolutely amazing, the people organizing the event are extremely talented, and the event promises to be extremely high energy!  The Bartlesville .NET User Group, that I am the President of, has put together a very good team of developers to compete in this challenge, and we promise not to take it easy on anyone.  The weekend isn’t only about friendly competition.  The greatest benefit I am looking forward to in the opportunity to help great charities receive the great software they deserve and need in order to make this world a better place.  I will be blogging through the event so hopefully everyone can see how much fun you can have bettering the world we all enjoy living in.  If you are going to the event please give me a shout.  If you are not going to the event then follow my blog to see what truly happens.  If you want to go then it may not be too late.  Register for the event and see if Toi has a job for you.

For those of you that may know, and those of you that don’t, I was scheduled to go to PDC 2008.  The the inevitable happened.  We ended up having issues with a third party vendor the week before I was scheduled to go.  We also ended up having other issues and scheduling conflict that all came together to mean one thing, I MISSED PDC!  I was so excited, I had never been a part of an organization that was will for me to go to one of the top conferences.  But, the world’s aligned to keep me from my dream.  Then I saw the ad for the MDC conference coming in Dallas, TX.  So, I signed up and paid for my ticket.  I am going to MDC!  It may not be PDC, but it is the next best thing.  It will be a great time, and this time it is on my own dime so work really cannot say anything to keep me from going (ok they could, but they won’t).  You should check out MDC, at $99 it is one of the best values out there.  With the current economic situation that we are all a part of it is definitely a top notch event at a bottom dollar price.  Who doesn’t like lower costs.  If you go to the Dallas, TX MDC give me a shout!

Agenda:

1. Azure Services Platform for Cloud Computing
2. Client and Presentation
3. Tools, Languages and Framework

7:00-8:30
Registration and Breakfast

8:30-10:00
Keynote

10:00-10:15
Break

10:15-11:30
1. A Lap Around Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform
2. ASP.NET and JQuery
3. The Future of Managed Languages: C# and Visual Basic

11:30-12:30
lunch

12:30-1:45
1. Developing and Deploying Your First Azure Services
2. Developing Data-Centric Applications Using the WPF DataGrid and Ribbon Controls
3. A Lap Around "Oslo"

1:45-2:00
Break

2:00-3:15
1. A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services
2. Building Business-Focused Applications Using Silverlight 2
3. A Lap Around VSTS 2010

3:15-3:30
Break

3:30-4:45
1. Developing Applications Using Microsoft SQL Data Services
2. ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap
3. An Introduction to Microsoft F#

I was perusing Zain Naboulsi’s blog today catching up on my blog reading and I noticed a post he had that I knew I needed to pass on.  If you have ever had the pleasure to attend one of Zain’s presentations or hear him speak on one of his webcasts probably one of the first things you notice about Zain is that he is a very prolific speaker.  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work on my presentation skills, and Zain is someone who I would like to be more like in my presentations.  Zain spoke at the Bartlesville .NET User Group and it was amazing!  I received a lot of feedback from people asking for Zain back, everyone seemed to enjoy his style and his content.  Therefore, when I saw this post I new I needed to sign up.  If Zain took the time to recruit Nancy Duarte to present at the Second Life .NET User Group then I know she has some information that I need to know.  I would highly suggest attending the virtual event if you can and hear what wisdom Nancy Duarte has to offer! If you get a chance subscribe to Zain’s blog and show him some love!

Lecture by Nancy Duarte Author of Slide:ology on Microsoft User Group Island in Second Life -- Tuesday, January 27, 2009 12:00 PM Pacific Time

Come join the creator of the gold-standard collection of best practices for creating effective slide presentations. With the proliferation of presentation software in the workplace, presentations have become a primary means of communication. Meet the author who teaches conceptual thinking, inspirational design, and solid principles for putting on great presentations.

Register here:  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032400632&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Seating is VERY limited so register right away if you can definitely make the event. 

While watching my tweets go through on Twitter, I noticed a call to arms by Caleb Jenkins.  He was looking for a discussion around a new contest he is starting for February.  If winning your own Visual Studio Team Suite MSDN Subscription, while also getting yourself away from the computer and becoming fit.  Then you need to check out Caleb Jenkins' latest blog post. Full details to be posted on Caleb’s site.  Get Fit in February Contest – Win Visual Studio Team Suite MSDN Subscription! « Caleb Jenkins | less of me  You can see the conversation on twitter at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=FitFebContest or http://search.twitter.com/search?q=FFC.  You can find Caleb on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/CalebJenkins and myself @ http://twitter.com/okcodemonkey .  I know I plan on winning the competition, but if you think you can watch Caleb’s blog and get ready to lose.  In this case losing is good :).  The more pounds the merrier!

For most of my career I have wanted to make a difference to society.  Something that would changes someone's life, or leave a lasting impression.  Part of this is because for part of my life I wrote Interactive Voice Response systems.  You know the ones that no one likes, where the company you are trying to get support from specifically disallows “zeroing out” to an operator and forces you to wait through their nasty tree of menus and submenus.  For the past few months I have been working up to this coming weekend with the WeAreMicrosoft event.  I have had the pleasure of working with charities and helping them to drive to their requirements as part of the selection committee.  I also got the pleasure of working with the Red Letters Campaign on the project they have submitted for the event.  Part of my involvement with the WeAreMicrosoft event is to see how a Give Camp is ran.  I plan on bringing the joy of Give Camps to Oklahoma and seeing what wonderful charities the technologists in Oklahoma and surrounding areas are going to be able to help.  As a first step to getting the Oklahoma Give Camp up and running, I have released the Alpha version of the site at http://okgivecamp.org.  If you would like to help or know a charity that could use our help please email myself at info@okgivecamp.org.  As I get the sponsors lined up, location lined up, and more planning done I will release the details and the final date.  If you are at the WeAreMicrosoft event this coming weekend give me a shout!  It should be a great time as we all band together to help some very deserving charities receive the technologies they need for their future.

Here is a job opportunity I was recently notified of for someone interested in working in Tulsa, OK.

Senior Level SQL Developer

6 month contract

Microsoft SQL Server Developer and Data Analysis

Darbi Newman

Professional Recruiter

JOCO

Philtower Building

427 S. Boston, #12C

Tulsa, OK 74103

dnewman@jocotulsa.com

www.jocotulsa.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/darbinewman

Senior Project Manager

3-6 month extendable contract

• Excellent communication skills
• Good facilitator
• Works independently
• Semi technical
• Knows Microsoft Project and other MS Office products
• MUST HAVE 2-3 years current experience as a Project Manager
• Energy experience is a PLUS!!!

Darbi Newman

Professional Recruiter

JOCO

Philtower Building

427 S. Boston, #12C

Tulsa, OK 74103

918-398-7593 x102

dnewman@jocotulsa.com

www.jocotulsa.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/darbinewman

Ok I had to do it.  This is a lot of fun and can be used to pass some time.  Check out ElfYourself.com, and Elf Yourself :)

We had out November Bartlesville .NET User Group Meeting on 11/14/2008.  It was an amazing meeting!  We had 55 people in attendance.  There were 48 developers and 7 recruiters.  This was an amazing turnout.  I was actually a bit nervous going into the meeting as only 25 people had RSVP'd.  However, I knew with the reminders and the marketing I put out the weeks before the meeting that we would have a great turnout.  And we did!!  It was an amazing presentation by Raymond Lewallen on Behavior Driven Development.  Raymond does a great job in presenting Behavior Driven Development and I have had a lot of feedback telling me that everyone loved Raymond's presentation.  I really appreciated Raymond taking his day off and driving from Oklahoma City to Bartlesville, roughly a 2.5 - 3 hour drive one way.  My desire to have Raymond was two-fold.  I had the pleasure of seeing Raymond present at School of Dev in May in Tulsa.  I knew at that point that I needed to get Raymond to Bartlesville for the user group.  Why?

1) I needed others to hear the benefits of BDD from someone besides myself.

2) I wanted the Supervisors in our group to hear about BDD from someone besides myself.

The presentation worked.  I have had some great discussions with my supervisor about BDD and may even be able to pilot BDD in the near future on a project.  Hopefully this is a sign of change as one of the biggest problems I see in our group is the inefficiencies of rework.  Thanks Raymond!  If you guys get a chance check out Raymond's blog and see if you can get him to present at your group.  You won't be sorry!

Being a user group leader (Bartlesville .NET User Group) I get a lot of messages for recruiters looking for jobs.  Given the current market situation I like to pass these on.  This one looks pretty interesting.  If you are interested give Darbi a call and let him know I sent you:

Know anyone (maybe you) who might be interested in the following position?  It is located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  It is a direct hire position with a great company.  If you are interested or know someone who is, send me a current resume in word format.  THANKS!!

Senior Developer in OKC

• .NET 2.0 Framework (ADO, ASP)
  • Heavy experience with Web Services and SOA
  • Web User Controls
  • MS Security Provider
• MS Enterprise Libraries 2.0
• SQL Server 2005
  • Reporting Services
  • Writing Stored Procedures
• MS Team System (would be a plus)
  • Load Testing
  • Unit Testing
  • Team Builds
• Experience with Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), (would be a plus)
  • Custom Performance Counters and Agents
• DHTML
• XML
• AJAX
• CSS
• JavaScript
• Telerik Web Controls

Darbi Newman

Professional Recruiter

JOCO

Philtower Building

427 S. Boston, #12C

Tulsa, OK 74103

918-398-7593 x102

918-637-7070 (cell)

dnewman@jocotulsa.com

www.jocotulsa.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/darbinewman