Community Credit

I'm an INETA Community Champion :)

Lou Vega — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:50:26 GMT

So this is a step up I suppose from getting "Stupid Prizes" from Community-Credit in the past...how about winning an MSDN Subscription or an XBox for your participation in the developer and user group community? I plugged in my points and ended up one of ten winners this quarter for the INETA Community Champion program. I found out yesterday after getting home from an exhaustive day of memory and cognitive tests related to my brain-aches when I opened up the latest INETA newsletter.

Congratulations to all the other Community Champions too!

Sujata Devraj
Judith B. Calla
Adnan Masood
Joseph Guadagno
Philip Wolfe
Jess Chadwick
Christopher Brandsma
Kristin Ferrier
Brian Hendrson

I won a stupid prize!

Lou Vega — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:02:47 GMT

I won 12th place in last month's Community-Credit contest and will soon add a 7" Commander Deanna Troi to my shelf to stand beside my Albert Einstein action figure, Boba Fett bobblehead and USB SnowBot.

Today marks the first day of a brand new contest so get credit for what you're doing in the developer community and start winning some prizes! :)

Win an Xbox or an MSDN Subscription....sweet!

Lou Vega — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:21:09 GMT

As I was driving home from giving a presentation at the PDANUG last night, I got a call from David Silverlight and he reminded me about this cool new program INETA has to recognize those involved in user groups. He's written up an excellent blog about it on Community-Credit you can read http://www.community-credit.com/cs/blogs/community_credit_news/archive/2008/06/17/the-ineta-community-champion-award.aspx

I know a number of you reading this help run user groups in your area and as someone who helps run a user group, I know there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that goes on to keep a group running. This is a great chance for you to shine in that area...so what are you waiting for? Get your contributions logged and compete with me for that Xbox! :)

I won a stupid prize!

Lou Vega — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:47:47 GMT

I managed to squeak through April in dead last place on Community-Credit and picked up Extreme Office Crafts!

Atlanta Code Camp 2008

Lou Vega — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:53:08 GMT

First of all - a huge thanks to all those folks in Atlanta who pull this thing together each year. They really do put on a good event in Atlanta and I look forward to it (almost to the point of bugging Jim via e-mail) each year.

This was actually my 2nd code camp where I didn't speak...though I did have some slide decks ready in case there were some last minute cancellations. I actually missed a chance to speak since I was helping Bill move furniture while Jim was looking for me to cover a session.

It was cool to see those folks I only get to meet at these events since we're all so spread out. Doug & Glen, Jim, Josh, Chris, Bill, Paul and I'm sure I'm forgetting others. Plus I got to meet several people who've seen my presentations in the past and it was nice to hear they remembered me and were looking forward to seeing me speak again (though I'm sorry to disappoint since I didn't speak this time). I actually got to finally meet David Silverlight which was cool. BTW - if you're reading this and went to Code Camp and are not registered with Community-Credit - go ahead and register, collect 5000 points for attending Code Camp and be on your way to winning some ~~cool~~ stupid prizes!

Both the sessions I attended in the morning were great. I started out with Bill Ryan's Home Server presentation which definitely gave me some ideas that I need to implement with regards to having a Home Server on my own home network. The second session I attended was Bruce Thomas' Windows Mobile LOB presentation which also gave me some neat ideas on how to improve my own Windows Mobile applications. If you've never seen either of these guys present before and have a chance to then by all means go see them.

A couple of things I thought were done well also from the point of view of one planning a code camp were:

1) Big Item Prizes - entrants were given five tickets. There were 5 "big" prizes (Xbox, Zune, Software, etc.) and you put your ticket(s) in the bowl for the prizes you wanted to win. So if you already have an XBOX at home and want to win a Zune instead, you won't "accidentally" win an XBox. At the end of those drawings the remaining tickets are all combined and those are drawn for books, shirts, etc. I won a book!

2) Food - there was a multi-tiered lunch system where ticket folks were split for the lunch lines versus all going out at once. While I actually missed that part - the food I ended up eating was pretty good. I hadn't tried the Pizza Mia's yet and it was pretty tasty!

3) Speaker Feedback - Rather than collecting all speaker feedback then giving it to someone to sort through and tally the results, each attendee was given multiple feedback forms and gave those directly to the speakers at the end of the presentation. This way speakers get "instant" feedback.

4) The lounge - Doug bought in a whole bunch of Xbox's (Xboxii, Xboxen?) and had a HALO 3 room set up and a Rock Band room set up. Those were a great way to spend time and I actually spent one of the afternoon sessions playing Rock Band with Josh since I had arrived a little late to head into the session. There was also an "Expert's Lounge" which I didn't get to visit but it was basically a place where people could talk and ask more detailed questions of speakers who were finished with their sessions if they wanted to.

5) Glen (and a few others) shot video throughout the day as part of an attempt to document what it takes to pull of a code camp as well as what code camp is like. Looking forward to seeing that!

I've been inducted to the Hall of Fame...

Lou Vega — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:07:49 GMT

The Community-Credit Hall of Fame that is... :)