Developing UX

If you are going to read through my “10 practices that every developer should start right now” series, then you probably want to know where these 10 practices came from, why I chose these 10 – really, what so important about secure coding anyway?   – I think that it’s important to know that these aren’t just 10 random items to fill a couple of blog posts. These are all practices that have been thoroughly thought out. This list is something that I started to formulate over a year ago based on my experience as a consultant, working as a technical editor, and discussions with countless MVPs, other consultants and in my interviews with potential consultants… Read more »

Last Thursday I posted my thoughts about Microsoft’s OSS announcements (go digg it: 3 Reasons Microsoft Needs an Open Source Officer), namely the formation of the CodePlex Foundation (awesome) and the departure of Sam Ramji (bummer). My take is that this is a great opportunity for Microsoft to take open source projects at Microsoft up a notch and raise the stakes with a big bold move by bringing in someone like my friend whurley (William Hurley – currently the chief architect of open source strategy at BMC).

This morning I turned on my computer to see that Todd Weiss and the folks at Linux.com had featured this idea on their home page. Go check it out the full article!

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Today there were two big announcements from Microsoft regarding their involvement with the Open Source communities. First, was the formation of the CodePlex foundation, an open source foundation for the

Enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities

Awesome. Great. Fantastic. This is the natural progression of a lot of the open source work that’s been happening at CodePlex, in the ASP.NET MVC stack and a lot of the other OSS projects that Microsoft has been initiating and contributing to lately.

The other announcement was more disappointing, Bill Hilf, the general manager of Windows, announced that Sam Ramji would be leaving his post at Microsoft to be the interim president of the CodePlex Foundation (cool – but why interim?) and then he would be pursuing some other opportunity.

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I’m not done yet… but I do like the changes so far.

Old                                                              New

If you are watching my RSS feed then you might not have noticed the change. Ultimately I’m planning on merging my Health Blog and Developing UX into a single space. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to organize my content by categories. Development, Health, Family, Religion, Politics, Entrepreneurism are the categories that I’m thinking about, of course I’d still like UX, Silverlight, Speaking, CommunityCast, SixFlags, Microsoft in there… so I’ve still got some thinking to think about.

Of course, not everyone likes the change…

randypeterman @CalebJenkins if UX is your priority DO NOT do white/grey text on dark colors. 'cept when showing people what not to do.

Well… I didn’t say that I was done yet.  What are your suggestions?

In June I’ll be the local Silverlight expert, leading a technology track on Rich Internet Applications (RIA) at a Microsoft’s BizSpark event, SparkStart.

From the official announcement:

SparkStart is a full day of business and technology discussion (open format) and learning event for startups (“startup bootcamp”). This event will also be a networking opportunity for those startups who are new to the BizSpark program and not yet enrolled in the program and would like to mingle and learn from key business and technology influencers. It will also be an event for those startups who are recently enrolled and need to keep the momentum going by learning key strategies for success, both in business, and in technology.

I’m looking forward to checking out Microsoft’s new Technology Center in Las Colinas, TX – It’s an amazing building!

It’s going to be an incredible event for startups and entrepreneurs to learn, network and get to know some of the incredible technologies that are now available. I’m especially looking forward to hanging out with some of the other people that will be presenting at the event. (too name a few)

• Local start up expert, Alex Muse
• Social Media Expert, Giovanni Gallucci
• Blake Burris of Facebook development and CoHabitat fame
• Angel investment and venture consulting mastermind Marc Nathan
• Microsoft User Experience Architect Christian Thilmany
• Microsoft Architect Brian Gorbett

Check out SparkStart on twitter and read some of Christian’s other related posts. Be sure to register. It’s going to be an amazing day!

I finally had time to announce the winners for the Fit In Feb Developer Challenge. Check out Peter’s before and after picture. Awesome!

Go see the rest of the winners over at my “Get Less of Me” health blog.

I’m looking forward to doing another event like this at some point in the future. I’ll just need to find better ways to automate more of the process and do daily leader boards and that sort of thing.

What sort of “Healthy Developer” contest would you like to see?

While there weren’t *actually* any Linux MVP’s announced on April 1st, there were several new MVP’s announced. Now, over 10% of the people at Improving Enterprises are recognized by Microsoft as “Most Valuable Professionals”. By the way, that “over 10% number” is not just our .NET developers… I’m including everyone.

What is an MVP?  From the official site:

“MVPs are a select group of experts representing technology’s best and brightest people who share a commitment to community. While MVPs come from many backgrounds and a wide range of technical communities, they share a passion for technology and a demonstrated willingness to help others”

So without further ado… let me introduce the 6 Microsoft MVPs from Improving :

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I just posted this on my new health blog. I’m re-posting it here because there is a definite overlap to this contest between getting healthy and the developers audience here.

Wednesday night I spoke at the North Dallas .NET User Group where I announced this for the first time publically… unless you count twitter (some good twitter feed back as well)

So Here’s the deal…. if you’ve seen my new health blog you’ll know that I’ve been having a lot a success lately getting back in shape with an eating plan. I feel great and I’d like to keep the momentum going and help “spread the love”. Too many developers are out of shape (including me).

To help keep this going I’m going to run a contest on my health blog in February: I don’t have all of the details worked out yet, but I do know that I’m going to give out a free subscription to MSDN Team Suit to the winner (approx $10,000 retail value!).

so, tune in, subscribe, or follow me on twitter and look for the final details to get announced here on my health blog before February. Also, if you have any suggestions on how we could do this fairly and accurately on line, leave a comment over there!

(I turned off comments on this post… so that they could go over here.)

This is one of my favorite talks that I’ve been doing lately. I like the concepts here because they don’t just apply to Silverlight applications, but all of your software development. I also like that fact that most people don’t think about some of the more advanced software approaches that you can take with Silverlight.

Download my demo code from SkyDrive.

Enjoy!

This week I’m attending and speaking at VS Live Dallas. VS Live is the largest independent conference on Microsoft technologies in North America (and maybe in the World?). So far, I’ve met a ton a great people that are attending (from as far away as Florida and Connecticut).  The speakers this week are amazing. I’ve already sat through sessions with Jessie Liberty, John Papa, Miguel Castro, Rockford Lhotka, Richard Hale Shaw – it’s a virtual smorgasbord of marque level speakers.

People have paid big money to attend the conference this week. (I posted a discount code about 5 weeks ago), but tonight it’s free! That’s right. Anyone that wants to can come join us tonight for VSLive! After Dark Community night where you’ll be treated to an amazing panel made up of Josh Holmes, Rocky Lhotka, Jesse Liberty, Richard Hundhausen, John Papa and Richard Hale Shaw – they be covering the topic of the Future of .NET.

This going to be cool. If you’re in the Dallas area be sure to stop by The Adolphus Hotel in Dallas – Grand Ballroom A. Doors open at 6:00pm.  - See you then!