C4C in Kansas City was, once again, an incredible event. There were about 8 charities and probably about 30 developers / designers. We even had our own film crew from KC VideoCore, there to document the event and record the “ninjas” at work. I had the privilege of helping the Focus North America team building an aggregate data interface for personal donation campaigns on the Focus North America Site. The experience taught me, first and foremost, that Joomla is my enemy, but even enemies can work together for good. We (the team) did manage to create a Joomla plug-in that allows Focus NA to place this view of aggregated data onto any page of the site, which was a very proud moment for me personally. I felt that I had conquered a formidable opponent in Joomla.

Joomla, however, was not without its last hurrah. 5 minutes to demo time the Joomla Virtual Appliance refused to get an IP address, making a demonstration of the the wonders we had stored within impossible to reach. Joomla may have won the battle, but I shall win the war! Stay tuned for the conclusion of this epic conflict…

In addition to the Joomla challenge, we were also able to help out a second charity, Mid America Freedom Band with their new site. This one allowed us to go back to our roots, and build the site using .NET and DotNetNuke. I must say that DotNetNuke has come a long way since I last explored it, which was very fortuitous for our team. We were able to very quickly whip together a website with all of the functionality that the Mid America Freedom Band needed.

Shout out to the team:

Lee, Becky, Ionut, James

Good times,  good food, good Rock Band!
And we’ll do it all again next year.

Well if you're like me and you've learned to live with UAC and the persistent prompt to run as administrator. And if you're also like me and have a habitual compulsion to open every link in a new tab, then you may experience a blank page with "Connecting..."

So you just bought a shiny new Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and got it all installed with everything working. Then it happens.... Someone hits the little Send/Receive button in Outlook and the thing just hangs or you get the ubiquitous 0x8004010F error. 'Microsoft Exchange' reported error (0x8004010F) : 'The operation failed. An object cannot be found.'

Recordings from the Sharepoint Firestarter event presentations are now online. So I just want to share, for those who have not yet viewed these presentations

A big Thank you to Lee Brandt for organizing a great event in good ole Kansas City. For those of you who attended my jQuery presentation, Thank you to you as well. As promised, here are the slides and the source project from the presentation.

Often I've wanted to automate something, just to avoid some clicks and survive the tedium. Never was it really worth the effort of learning some crazy scripting tool. So 3 automation tools I recommend for the scripting junkie.... AutoIT, VBScript and for web automatiion I like Sahi

It is hard to really get a grasp of how much control you are given in Sharepoint [...] I was able to get an amazing look at Sharepoint the many aspects of Sharepoint development and customization in a one day live meeting.

Install IIS, ASP.NET, .NET Framework 3.5, SQL Server 2005 Express /w Reporting Services, a Web Application, create the Web Application database, and Deploy Report files using a batch script... Possible? Yes!!!

So... To challenge myself and to make good on all those times I said, "I'd like to give back.", I joined other local developers for the C4C (Coders 4 Charities) http://coders4charities.org event last weekend.

What a Blast!!!

I can't say I was expecting the experience I had, but I can say that I'm glad I participated. I teamed up with some outstanding developers and wish I could work with these guys (and gal) everyday. Not only were there great personalities on my team, but Tim, the charity representative for Boyscout Troop 813 was inspiring. Had I known him as a younger lad I would probably have been a boyscout. The combination of a good cause, great people, and a lot of caffeine made it easy to enjoy the experience. Also I learned a lot about Sharepoint and Silverlight, which was a nice bonus. Anytime I can walk away wiser and smarter I'm all for it.

There was no shortage of food and beverages. Before you could get hungry there was something being delivered. And more soda than I drank in the last year!

After all of the work was done, (I use that term "work" loosely. It hardly feels like you're working when you having such a good time.) each team presented their final products. Every project had me wishing I had the opportunity to work on. Lots of cool stuff was created in a very short amount of time.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat and I would encourage anyone who thought they maybe, might, kinda like to give to a charity to come out next year and enjoy the fun. See you guys at .NET Sig ( http://www.dotnetsig.org ).