AspAdvice.com just got a new look, so tonight I updated the
blogs.aspadvice.com skin to fit the new look. If you haven't been over there, you should go. They have some great bloggers.
While talking to Amy about the promotion of the .NET Book Club, I thought of printing up bookmarks. Well Michelle, my wife in 5 weeks, is doing web design for a custom printing shop. So the order is in and I will have 1000 of them before the MVP Summit. I will also be giving Amy some for the Connections conference. Here is what they look like.
Sign up now at dotnetbookclub.org and you can preview chapters from Alex Homer's book
ASP.NET 1.1 Insider Solutions, due out in June, in its raw format. There are discussions attached to each chapter for you to give your feedback of the work. Thanks to
Amy and
SAMS publishing for providing the content.
One of the issues I have heard from people and the idea of having a "Book Club" is the lack of time to actually read the books, or the lack of interest in the books themselves. Well the "Book of the Month" is not all I hope to provide. I also think it is important to post a book reviews from the members have previously read a particular book. Along with this, I am working on discounts from some book publishers.
Now that the site has some content, I am working on a plan to get User Group adoption with the program. Once formulated, I will post the techniques I have tried with my User Group in Kansas City. If you want to suggest this to your user group, please email me at jjulian@dotnetbookclub.org and I will get you in the loop with my techniques of adoption.
It is free to sign up and no pressure to actually participate in the "Book of the Month" portion of the site. So go sign up and lets start reading. If you have any suggestion about what you would like to see done with the site, please email suggestions@dotnetbookclub.org.
Based on Kent Tegels idea and blessing, I created
http://www.dotnetbookclub.org. This site is still under construction, but uses the .NET Nuke 2.0 portal. I love this thing. It had to be the easiest site I have ever setup. If you haven't looked at this thing, I highly suggest it.
http://www.dotnetnuke.com is the site and 2.0 rocks. If you have any ideas for the .NET book club, please feel free to
email me or write a comment. The site should fully be ready by the end of the weekend along with more information on the approach I am taking and how this could work in a user group.
Philip Rieck of Omaha graciously presented at the Kansas City .NET Users Group last night (with only 6 days notice). His topic was over SOA, but from an architecture standpoint, not code. The presentation went over wonderfully. The audience was top notch for the area and we had some great discussions during and after the presentation about SOA and the techniques presented. If you can get Philip to come to your group, I highly suggest you go for it. Also, if you are an XBox Live player, his gamertag is “PhilipRocks”. Thanks Philip!
Philip's Blog: http://philiprieck.com/blog/
My new job in INETA Infrastructure is Development Manager. This role puts me in charge of all development from our INETA volunteer developers. This is going to be a fun job. If you would like to join our development team, please comment here or email me at
jeff.julian@ineta.org.
I finally got around to fixing the issue with the SMTP server used on Geekswithblogs.net. Sorry about the delay, but it should be fine now.
It ended up being a great show. We had 261 in the audience which was the largest for our district. All the demos went perfectly (well almost) but the audience seemed to enjoy our presentations. Afterwords we went out to dinner and had a great time. We were there for almost 4 hours so today I am dragging. Thanks to all the organizers and speakers for such a great show in KC.
http://geekswithblogs.net/jjulian/gallery/326.aspx
I reached Bartle Hall at 6:30 and of course was the first speaker here. I am going over the slides and demos one last time and then I am up to go at 11:00am. This is definitely going to be a blast. Jon Box and Dan Fox will be here along with John Alexander (RD for KC). Here is my new humble home for the day.
I will have more photos later.
Well I am all finished with User Group presentations for this session. Austin was great, nice people, good food, awesome weather. Scott, thanks for letting me crash at your house, it was a blast. Now I have to finish preparing for DevDays, then taking a speaking break til after the wedding in May.
At first I thought XBox live was alright, but all I had was MechAssult that I could play online. Well today I went out and purchased Rainbow Six 3 and a RF/VGA convertor to hook the XBox to my computer monitor. Very very cool mod and I suggest you try it. There is nothing like coming home, checking your email, playing a first person shooter, dying, and IM in ghost mode. Below is a shot of my new setup.
Well I caved in and got XBox Live with Ninja Gaiden. My tag is
“jjulian2” and the only game I have is MechAssult. Let me know yours and what other games are fun.