One of my colleagues, Brian Prince, has put a call out for anyone heading to DevLink next week that would like to participate in a Technology Community Leadership Summit.

Our goal is to gather together anyone who is rabid about the community: all of the community leaders, speakers, and contributors. We want to get together and share best practices, and learn from each other. This is OPEN. We aren’t just talking about .NET user groups. We are talking Ruby, PHP, Python, OSS, Linux, ALM, and anything else you can think of. It doesn’t have to be a big formal user group; your community might be the small group of folks that crack code at a coffee shop at 7am. Whatever it is, come on over.

In our industry, community is important. The sharing of ideas. The opportunity for self improvement through learning from others. The networking opportunities. When I was in the consulting world, I made sure to attend various community events: User groups, Seminars, Conferences, etc. The interaction with peers from my industry allowed me to share and learn new ideas, new technologies, new ways of doing things. It was a stimulation for my mind and gave me the necessary gusto to excel in my career. Now, as a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, it is my primary job responsibility to help foster and build these communities. Communities are important. They’re important for you and your career growth, and they’re important for our industry to help drive innovation.

If you’re interested in participating in a community, find your nearest users group. If you’re a community leader and/or contributor who’d like to work with others to share best practices in building a better technical community, head to Nashville on Aug. 12th for the Community Leadership Summit.

If you have any ideas how to build a better community, feel free to leave a comment here and let’s carry on the discussion.

…and Homer couldn’t be happier! Ok…not THAT Springfield, but Springfield, IL.

Part of my job as a Microsoft evangelist is fostering developer communities across the region. It just so happens that my region (officially) covers Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. However, I like to help provide support to any and all developers communities where and whenever I can.

One of the areas of the region that hasn’t seen much action in way of community (at least that I know of) is the southern half of the state of Illinois. Well…that all ends now. Darrin Bishop, in partnership with Levi, Ray and Shoup, are bringing the Central Illinois SharePoint Users Group to Springfield, IL.

(You can read the full announcement over on Darrin’s blog.)

I’d like to see additional developers groups started in the southern area. If you’re interested in starting a user group, there are a few organizations like INETA that can be a valuable asset and resource. To learn more, check out INETA’s whitepaper on Starting and Running a User Group.

I just received word today that attendees of the Chicago stop of the MSDN Developers Conference (MDC) will be some of the first people to get their hands on Windows 7 Beta 1 DVDs! All MDC attendees will receive a copy of Windows 7 Beta 1, but Chicago looks to be the first. For the MDC events taking place before Jan. 13th, you will receive your DVD in the mail after Jan. 13th. Bob Familiar has more details on this.

What is the MSDN Developers Conference you might ask? Well, apparently you don’t read my blog as I’ve discussed this already. Don’t worry, I’ll let it pass *THIS TIME*.

Anyhow… MSDN DevCon is a “Best of PDC” show for developers that the Microsoft Evangelist team is bringing to 11 cities across the country.

The Chicago MDC will be taking place on January 13th, 2009 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency. Ron Jacobs will be kicking things off with the morning keynote followed by a number of sessions covering Microsoft’s Cloud Computing initatives, the latest in Client and Presentation development, as well as what’s new in Tooling, Languages and Framework. We’ll also be running a “Community Courtyard” series of sessions throughout the day as well.

Register now for the Chicago MSDN Developers Conference, or check for other MDC’s events happening in your area.

There is a $99 charge but that is peanuts compared to what PDC registration cost. :)

I would like to commend the organizers of the Indy TechFest ‘08 for putting on one of the best community run conferences I’ve ever been a part of. With over 450 in attendance and a day full of great technical content and great speakers. Very impressive all around. Stand up job, gentlemen! I’d also like to thank the attendees who came up to introduce themselves and those of you who attended my sessions.

My first session on A Tour and Discussion of CodePlex came awfully early in the  morning when Dan Rigsby dragged myself, Brian Gorbett and our new friends from Findlay, Ohio out for a night of pre-techfest festivities. As a side note, if you feel your ego is getting to bloated, just go to a bar where you are the oldest one there! Ugh. Here are a few links from the session…

Resource Links:

http://codeplex.com

Wikipedia definition for Open Source

CodePlex Team Blog

Article on CodePlex support for TortoiseSVN

Facebook Developer Toolkit Project Page

Sara Ford’s Blog

In my WPF session, WPF, WTF? No…WPF! It’s all about XAML these days, we had an amazing turnout – standing room only! There can only be a few explanations as to why… A.) the room only had 10 chairs available, B.) all of the other sessions at the time were canceled, or C.) there is a LOT of interest in building WPF applications. I hope it’s the latter! As with all my WPF sessions I’ve presented in the past, there was just WAY to much content to fit in a short amount of time. I need to either take this session and ask for two time slots to cover it, or just pair down the session to fit it into the standard 60-75 minute time slots. There is just SO much to talk about, it would be hard to pair it down. Here are the resources from the session…

Resource Links:

MSDN Virtual Lab on Building WPF applications

http://windowsclient.net learning resources

Expression Learning Resources

We’re starting to see Visual Studio Team System User Groups starting to pop up in our area. Chicago’s has a VSTS group (no group site just yet) and they’ve held twomeetings all ready (sorry for slacking on my blogging duties and not informing you in time that there was a group – a mistake I don’t plan to make again).

There’s also a group starting up in Indianapolis as a Special Interest Group of the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA). Their plan is to meet every 4th Wednesday of the month. Here are the details of their kickoff meeting on May 23rd…

When:
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 @ 6:00PM

Where:
Microsoft Corporation
Parkwood Business Park, Building Four
500 E. 96th St., Suite 460
Indianapolis, IN 46240

Click here to register