Developing UX

2 and a half years ago I left Microsoft and joined Improving Enterprises. That’s a decision that I have never regretted.

Back then there were only 7 of us. I joined Improving because they were the best consultants and trainers in the Dallas area… and still are.

Sadly, this week will be my last at Improving Enterprises. One of the great things about being a consultant is that you get to work with a lot of people, meet a lot of teams, and meet a lot of needs. You get to see teams that work, and even some that you’d like to work for. One of our clients, Six Flags, offered me a position to join their staff permanently and I’ve decided to pursue it. I work with incredible people at Improving and after discussing it with the leadership there, this is a good move for all of us, and so I want to make sure and thank the Improving leadership for supporting this opportunity!

The last two and a half years with Improving have been amazing. If I wanted to keep doing consulting – I wouldn’t pick anyone else to do it with. We’ve grown a lot in 2 1/2 years! Today Improving has over 60 people, 6 MVP’s, 2 INETA National Speakers, we’re one of Microsoft’s leading Gold Partners, and home to the leading .NET mentoring and training practice in the South Central region. We also have thriving agile and Java practices, an incredible rural-sourcing development center in College Station, plus we do a ton of community work…

I was actually offered a practice lead position a while ago with another consulting group, but everyone that I would want to build a practice with is already at Improving.

I’m working forward to this new chapter in my life. Leading a corporate development team day in and day out is very different from moving from company to company every couple of months. I’m looking forward to a consistent commute, to owning the projects beyond their development cycles, and to really helping to shape the technology future at one of the funnest places on the planet!

To all of my friends at Improving – Thank you. It’s been a blast – Keep up the great work (‘cause I’m hanging on to my shares ) and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at future Improving events!

I was recently working on another blog post (coming soon) when it occurred to me how much Improving (my employer) does in the .NET / Java / Agile and other technical communities. I thought that it would be nice to summarize some of that work here.

A different kind of COE.

It’s good to give back.

I personally think that Improving does more to support the growth of technical communities than any other consulting company in the world. That might just be me, but seriously, check out this list:

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  With all of the great press that Improving Enterprises has been getting lately (6 of the most talented MVP’s in DFW area work here, we’re a Microsoft Gold Partner in multiple competencies, our Rural Sourcing offering has been making waves, even our marketing team and java guys have been making news lately.)

It’s easy for people to look at us and think that we are *just* an amazing consulting and rural sourcing company pioneering agile in the Microsoft space and providing incredible service to our customers… well, I’m writing this post to make sure that you (yes, you specifically dear reader) know that we are also an incredible Microsoft Training Company.

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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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Next week I’ll be attending the 2009 MVP Summit in Seattle with fellow MVP and Improving’er David O’Hara.  I’m especially looking forward to the sessions on the up and coming new technologies and to catch up with the various product teams and other MVPs! If you’ll be in the in the Seattle area next week look me up!

My great friend and Social Media genius, Giovanni Gallucci is putting together an amazing event to help spread his knowledge and expertise in social media marketing to the masses and we’re hosting it!. Here’s the info from Giovanni’s announcement:

Social Media Has Changed The Landscape Forever

Social media has turned advertising, marketing and public relations upside down. Giovanni Gallucci is one of the most well-respected and well-known social media experts in the industry. He’s delivered social marketing solutions to some of the world’s best known brands and garnered media exposure for clients that would make any marketing & communications professional envious.

Extreme Social Media Marketing Workshop

In Dallas on March 10, 2009 you’ll be able to learn his techniques, developed over ten years as an online community developer, search engine programmer and online marketing consultant to help utilize these tools and platforms for yourself.
This one day social media training workshop will train you to utilize the new media marketing tools of twitter, blogs, videos, photos, social networks and other social media related websites in your online marketing efforts.

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The last couple of months I’ve done a lot of speaking around Silverlight as well as developed a 3 day Silverlight class for Improving (where I work). This is one of the demos / exercises from that class. Enjoy!

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I think that I’ve mentioned it before… but Improving Enterprises (where I work) has a single RSS feed mash up with ALL of the people at Improving that blog. You can subscribe to the feed here, or sign up for email notifications. While you’re at it, check out the cool widget from Feedburner (shown above).

Allen Hurst used Yahoo pipes to put this mash up together and then we ran the whole thing through Feedburner to give us the email and widget features. Awesome!

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!

Next Wednesday (November 5th, 2008) I’ll be heading down to College Station, TX for INETA to present at the Texas A&M University .NET User Group’s lunch time meeting.

   I’ll either be presenting on "Developer Designer Zen – Bringing two worlds together" or "Dependency Injection with Silverlight (A Silverlight Tale of Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control and the Strategy Pattern) "

It looks like the User Group as a list server (dotnet@listserv.tamu.edu) set up so that you can participate in the User Group conversation.

I’m looking forward to meeting the .NET developers at Texas A&M and then afterwards I’m planning on meeting up with some friends from Always Creative, then it’s off to my first visit to the Improving Rural Sourcing Development Center that’s based in College Station.

If you’re in the area be sure to drop by!

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