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.