Florida UG Community

First South Florida SQL Meeting

Dave Noderer — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:27:06 GMT

Thanks to Scott Klein for organizing a set of SQL focused meetings here in South Florida.

The first meeting was held in West Palm Beach at the Palm Beach County building on 8/7/08. I took a few pictures you can see at: http://cid-e8348157304bce63.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/FlaDotNet/20080807%7C_WestPalm%7C_SQLPass.zip

Eitght of us were there and as it was mostly an organizational meeting, we dicussed the location, topics and format of meeting that would be good. The topics were pretty straight forward:

Reporting Services
Basic SQL Server
- Connection types
- Management Studio

Clustering / Mirroring
Replication
Integration Services
Oracle
Tools
- Apex SQL
- ANTS -
- Toad for Oracle
- SQL Navigator
- Team System
- SQL Programmer
- Management Studio
- Red Gate -
- Data Conversion

Format wise, Terry Carrol suggested having 1/2 hour at the beginning of each meeting to have a round table technical discussion.

Scott already has a number of speakers lined up and is planning on a monthly meeting in West Palm and also in either Ft Lauderdale or Miramar.

He is making arrangements to put up a website. In the meantime, i've put up the announcments on the FlaDotNet website and am including the info in the weekly emails.

We discussed SQL Pass organization. Joe Homnick and the Gold Coast User Group has long been the SQL Pass Chapter but not 100% focused on SQL. As part of starting the new groups, Scott has been in contact with Joe Homnick who agreed to Scott starting up the new groups but no mechanics to link them together is in place yet.

Other plans are to host a SQL Saturday sometime in 2009.

We did spend some time discussing SQL 2008 which just went to RTM.

For more information and to help Scott in these efforts, send him an email at: ScottKlein@sqlxml.com

XP Lego game at Ft Lauderdale Agile

Dave Noderer — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:05:20 GMT

Sitting here watching Adrian Wible run the eXtreme Programming Lego game.

~ 40 people have been split into 6 groups, each with a number of cards describing customer wishes and a pile of legos.

Pictures at: http://geekswithblogs.net/dnoderer/gallery/8256.aspx

Video :

Process shortened for the 1.5 hr meeting. The goal is three iterations.

Step 1: Estimation: 10 min - Relative difficulty

Step 2: Prioritization: 5 min. - What is the most important

Step 3: Signup: 5 min - What to do for the 1st iteration (5 min)

Step 4: Development: 5 min - Implement the signup

Step 5: Testing / Totals: 10 Min - Measure actual against estimated effort and the signup / actual value

Step 6: Retrospective: 5 min - Have both customers and teams review work.

Iteration #2 - 40 min - More requirements

IPM Iteration Planning Meeting - 20 min
- Estimation
- Prioritization
- Signup

Then steps 4,5,6 repeated.

Only got through 2 iterations by 8:45 pm so cut it off there. The 2nd iteration for all the teams was both more productive and generally much closer to the estimate.

This is giving us a lot of ideas for future meetings!

Does anyone else have interactive games like this??

DotNetRocks on Building Communities!

Dave Noderer — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:06:06 GMT

Even if you don't listent to DotNetRocks on a regular basis (you should!), if you are a user group leader or interested in starting a user group you should listen to this show.

It is been quite a while since DotNetRocks has had a community focused show.

http://www.dotnetrocks.com/

Show #344 | 5/22/2008 (69 minutes)
Building Communities at Dallas TechFest

Carl and Richard talk with three community leaders in Dallas about building communities, and specifically how you can directly benefit from participating locally.

This DotNetRocks session touchs on many of the most important points about running a user group.

A few things I can add...

- At one point INETA (International .NET Association, www.ineta.org), when the .net community was being built, had large user group leader summits that got a wide variety leaders and potential leaders and everyone always walked away pumped up and excited about all the new ideas they heard about at the sessions. This in my mind was another very significant benefit that INETA delivered. Unfortunately funding dried up as it was hard to make a case for the Microsoft "numbers" system to understand the much deeper reach this had on the community and Microsoft. Everyone leaving one of those meetings had a wide and lasting effect in their respecitve communities. None of us were smart enough to figure out how to translate this comitment to the very large numbers Microsoft likes to see!

- Another benfit of INETA in the early days was to really mentor new user group leaders and potential leaders. This was dropped at some point and personal and ongoing communications between INETA and the user group leaders was stopped. Having helped mentor many hundreds around the world to start user groups this was crucial at one point. The .net community has maturred now and perhaps this type of mentoring is not as important.

- One social / community building thing I like to do is to go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves.

Leaders, speakers and members can get to know who is in the room and what they might be interested in
Many of the developers may not be use to speaking in front of a crowd. I know it is small but believe just this small exercise may help some people out of their shell
It sets the tone for a more interactive meeting.

- I do agree that charging a small annual fee (I don't) is not necessairly bad and may be required if you have to pay for the venue (which usually is not necessary) but it does add a fairly significant additional set of tasks on a monthly basis for someone to collect money, keep track of the members, deposit money, write checks and do a bit of accounting at the very least. My thought is that all admin functions should be kept to a very small minimum, nobody really loves doing them and volunteer hours should be very carefully spent!

- We did a "Code Idol" meeting which was good but none of us could be mean like Simon! In the end, our judges were part of the vote but next time we will rely only on having all the participants face the front wall and have a silent vote by the rasing of hands. I think it is time to do another one!

- Thse days the Microsoft Developer Evangalists are very active in starting and supporting user groups, this was not always the case. So... if you are starting or want to start a user group, definitly find out who your most local DE is! Our DE's Joe Healy, Russ Fustino and Jeff Barnes are very active and Joe keeps the entire state of Florida influencers linked together. If you are having trouble finding out your local DE let me know, I can help you or direct you to someone who can.

- Finding committed volunteers for any organization is always a challenge. As Toy pointed out, you have to ask people to do things. Over time, some will respond and get interested, many will not. In all cases it has to be fun, even if it is a bit of work there has to be personal growth or reward or people will not do it over time.

Thats all for now!

Bhamas Dot Net Meeting

Dave Noderer — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:06:29 GMT

I was honored to be able to attend the first meeting of the Bahams .net (www.bahanet.org) user group in Nassau last week.

Kyle Baly (http://codebetter.com/blogs/kyle.baley/) organized the meeting held at a local comany IPBS.

Fairly small group but that is ok! None of them knew what to expect and surprisingly none of them were there due to a direct contact with Kyle but because someone told them about it.

After getting them warmed up to what was possible in learning, business networking and socializing, they all left very enthused and ready for the next meeting which as already been scheduled.

It does not seem that .net is quite as far along on the island as it is here in the states but maybe this is a message to me that we should address basic .net topics at our user group meetings in Florida. We have tried a few times but it has not continued. This was also brought up to me when someone who is fairly new to .net happened to go to the www.fladotnet.com webstie and looked at our first video (see link at bottom of right column) where Jason Beres was talking about basic clr and framework concepts (this was in the fall of 2001).

Another interesting thing was that there really is no techincal netowking to speak of in the bahams. Everyone who grew up there attended "COB", College of the Bahamass (http://www.cob.edu.bs/) but apparently students don't have access to free Microsoft software there and there is no continuing contact among the alumni.

So, even if there are qualified people on the island to do technical work (.net ,rpg, php, etc...) the tendancy is to go elsehwere, the United States or Canada for example.

People did not know about DotNetNuke, Robotics Studio and a number of other appealing dot net based projects and technologies they might be using.

It will be interesting to watch how this develops. The next meet scheduled for May 28th will cover basics of creating an asp.net website.

Thanks Kyle!!

TechEd 2008 Tweener Weekend - June 7/8

Dave Noderer — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:52:50 GMT

This year, US Teched will be held in Orlando starting on June 2^nd with the developer week and continuing the following week for IT Pros…

So it happens that the Orange County Convention Center is available and as many of you already know, the Florida people are putting together a number of things that include SQL, DotNet University, DotNetNuke, etc.. AND a Florida Code Camp which Shervin and I are heading up.

This is the first “tweener” weekend and may end up being a major event in and of itself. The will be lots of things going on before, during and after so even if you are not attending teched, a couple of nights in Orlando will be worth it!

Current schedule for code camp rooms: http://www.fladotnet.com/FloridaCodeCamp_2008_20080408.mht
More info on tweener weekend: www.tweenerweekend.com
Tweener weekend flyer: http://www.fladotnet.com/downloads/Inbetweenv04.pdf

Links to more information will be posted on the FlaDotNet.com site: http://www.fladotnet.com

Code Camp 2008 South Florida Done -- Whew!

Dave Noderer — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:43:38 GMT

It's all over, what a rush!

Final stats...

795 registered, over 600 showed up, 50 speakers gave 71 sessions over 12 parallel tracks.

We drank 1100 waters, 500 sodas, over 700 cups of coffee, ate 170 pizzas and used 300 pounds of ice.

Feedback can be viewed at: http://www.codecampevals.com/speakers/SpeakerEvals.aspx?CodeCampID=17

Some photos at: http://noderer.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!E8348157304BCE63!316/

Russ & Alex Photos:

http://blogs.msdn.com/rfustino/archive/2008/02/11/photos-from-the-code-camp-in-south-florida-2-2-2008.aspx

Speaker links as I get them: http://codecamp08.fladotnet.com/Speakers.aspx

Thanks to all the sponsors for making this great event happen!

No code camp would be possible without all the great speakers, some local and many who traveled to on their own with no monetary help from us. The entire developer community is grateful to each one!

I'd like to point out the other volunteers who helped make it all look easy! Many of them were speakers as well but I want to make sure they get the credit they deserve.

Ed Hill - Devry University Professor organized the venue, provided student volunteers, acted as "Intro to .NET" track chair, made multiple runs to Costco, received the material and was on the run all day Saturday during the event.

Scott Katarincic - created web administration pages without which we would have been poking in the datbase and the sesssion / speaker entries could not have been distributed.

Charles Curtis - Handled the sponsor images and displays, this was a big help!

DeVry Student Volunteers.. I don't have a list of names but without them and the help of Bob O'Connell (another Devry professor) we would have had to recruit a lot more volunteers for the day of the event. They did a great job, just point them in the right direction and they took off with the task at hand.

Alex Funkhouser - In charge of the T-shirts and t-shirt graphics plus organization of the commons for the sponsors and donated Mike Wasserman.

Mike Wasserman - Mike did all the legwork for organizing the speaker reception on Firday night and the post party at JP Mulligans on Saturday night. Both came off smoothly, people had plenty to eat and drink and did not go over the budget.

Jonas Stawski (Spanish), Larry Port (Agile), Jeff Barnes (Architecture) and Bill Reiss (Pre-Mix 08/Silverlight) stand out as excellent track chairs that spent considerable time thnking about and organizing their respective tracks.

I have to mention John Dunagan aka "ICE MAN" who for the second year in a row drove from Naples to deliver 300 pounds of ice... ok, he just poped over to public but it was a big help!

Mai Nguyen was our session monitor and kept a count of each session. Thanks!

Morgan Baker helped organize the un-organized speaker sessions with a spreadsheet that got us launched into the actual scheduling of sessions.

Shevin Shakibi as always provided great ideas and moral support and was the SQL/BI track chair.

Jose Luis Manners was a Spanish co-chair but was in the middle of a number of work issues and ended up being out of town during code camp.

Joe Healy as always was a great support but i think he enjoyed sitting back and watching it happen without a lot of his help. And this year he was very sick and just barely made it to code camp on Saturday! He helped locate and motivate a number of the speakers and as always is a valued part of the team!

Next year's code camp has been set for 2/8/2009.

South Florida Code Camp 2008 - 2/2/2008

Dave Noderer — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:39:41 GMT

FREE - 4th Annual South Florida Code Camp - Register Now - Spaces are going fast!

To attend this free, all day .NET Developer mini-conference register at: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=122048 ! The Code Camp will be held on Saturday 2/2/2008 and include breakfast, lunch, giveaways, valuable raffle items and of course lots of great content!

The sessions are now listed on the agenda page. A big thanks to all the speakers that have stepped forward and volunteered to come speak at their own expense. We have already scheduled 70 of 72 sessions. There will be something for everyone... from the person who is new to .net to advanced architecture and software process sessions. For the second year we will have an all Spanish track. Dedicated tracks include "Into to .NET", "Silverlight" and "Agile / CI". Sessions include Ajax, MVC, Visual Studio 2008, Powershell, Windows Workflow and .NET reflection.

Find more information at http://codecamp08.fladotnet.com . We have many sessions lined up. The track chairs will get them organized and on the website agenda over the next couple of weeks.

Install Fest at Devry on 12/11/2007

Dave Noderer — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:53:11 GMT

WOW!! That was fun!

The room was packed with 50 people and their machines loading Visual Studio 2008 while Joe Healy (www.devfish.net) talked about various Visual Studio Features.

People started arriving at 5PM with Ed Hil from DeVry checking identiies and dna samples. Up to 6:30 PM only the 1st 50 on the list who showed up with a machine got a copy. During this time we kept a list of people as they arrived and the order they arrived in. At 6:30 we opened it up and had just enough copies for everyone!

As each person finished, we took their picture with their completed install screen which Joe will post on his website.

But... this was no ordinary presentation.. the room was "buzzing" all night as people are talking about the installs and other topics too. A few people had problems and were awared the mechanical "bug" by Joe as a prize but most were able to finish. One person had a big server box and 24" monitor! Another had an older system which unfortunately did not have a DVS player.

A few of the DVD's were bad but everyone shared and more importantly got the code for the boxed version.

Everyone got a Visual Studio 2008 T-shirt and thanks to Sherlock Technologies (www.sherstaff.com) and Mike Wasserman, we had pizza and soda.

A big big thanks to Joe Healy, our Microsoft Developer Evangalist for making this possible... Hey now we know how to fill the room each month, give everyone $600 of free software!

See photos through Joe Healy's blog: http://www.devfish.net/FullBlogItemView.aspx?BlogId=473

Running Code Camps

Dave Noderer — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:30:04 GMT

2007-11-17 - Added organization, Lorins unconference website software and a few other update

A week or two ago a few guys wanting to get some ideas about running code camps. It has taken on a life of it's own but here are some notes I made based on running code camps in South Florida. I'll edit and add to this as the discussion progresses.

Organization

Very important not to try and do it all yourself, get others involved.
Planning is key
Start at least a few months out, lining up venue, sponsors
Pay attention to basics. Venue, signage, food, directions.

Venue

Free is good!
Devry universities around the country seem to be open to dev events for no charge.
In Florida community colleges charge some fees
Best if you can have one large room or auditorium to accommodate everyone and then a bunch of classrooms.
Don’t forget plenty of signage the day of the event.

Speakers

Local / new speakers (chance to grow the community)
MVP / RD
MS DE’s can help a lot!
We still use a word doc signup

Promotion

Pull in all local user groups
Promote to your members
MSDN Flash
Blogs

Code Idol Results

Dave Noderer — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:11:59 GMT

All the code Idols did a great job. In the end, mostly by popular vote, Steve Potter won the "Top Geek" title. I'm sure we will see more of Steve as he is very interested in presenting at future meetings!

Thanks to the code idol contestants:

Steve Potter - Cache Register
Jonas Strawski - SQL Server as Document Repository
Lou Yovin - Volume Shadow Copy
Tim Corbett - System Tray App
Louis Datz - dashCommerce
Martin Anderson - XML Schemas and powershell
Max Trinidad - Powershell script to create CSV file

We will definitely do this again at code camp and at other UG meetings. A few lessons were learned!

- Next time we will limit it to four contestants and give each at least 15 min, with 5 min of Q&A while the next person sets up. Seven was way too many but we were not sure how it would work out.

- I was a judge and it was not fun to try and pick a number for each contestant. None of the judges liked this. So.. in the future the judges will still be there but only for the normal banter, asking questions and embarassing the presenters.

- The way to go for judging is the "Popular Vote". We did this by having the contestants (the top 3 of 7 in this case but in the future all 4) stand at the front of the room with their backs to the audience. The audience is given the chance to vote by raising their hands as each contestant is indicated by the MC. This is much more objective and far more humane for both the contestants and the judges.

- From a code idol presntation standpoint, focus is important. Boil what you have down to something that can be shown from end to end including the code. I think that Tim Corbett's system tray app might have been the best example of this even though he did not win.

Other than that it was different and a lot of fun. Blasting through a bunch of different subjects in one night was great. I saw a number of things i will use myself!

Thanks to Shervin Shakibi for the concept and being a judge and also to Jeff Barnes of Microsoft who was the third and "Mystery Judge".