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!

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:

• We run and host the:
  • Dallas C# SIG.
  • Team System Live (Chris Tullier)
  • DFW Scrum (they rotate locations)
• We co-run:
  • Dallas Team System User’s Group
  • Dallas Presenter Mentor
• Our people organized the
  • Agile DotNet Conference
  • The DallasTechFest (Tim Rayburn)
• Our people have been featured presenters at
  • VS Live! Dallas (2 Presenters, 5 sessions)
  • Dallas DevCare (featured presenter – Tim Rayburn)
  • Tulsa Tech Fest 08 (2 presenters, 4 sessions, 1 keynote)
  • Dallas Tech Fest 09 (7 speakers, 8 sessions – 3 .NET 5 Java)
  • The Big (D)esign Conference 09
  • Agile 2008 Conference (2 sessions)
  • Tulsa School of Dev (keynote)
  • Dallas Tech Fest 08 (3 speakers 4 sessions)
  • Tulsa Tech Fest 07 (2 sessions)
  • Houston Refresh (featured presenter)
  • Dallas Refresh
  • UPA Web 2.0 Usability Panel
  • Multiple User Group’s across the country*
• We’ve also been requested presenters for various Microsoft events like:
  • Start Spark
  • MSDN DevCon
  • Microsoft TechDays Dallas
  • XAML Fest (Houston)
• We’ve hosted or currently host groups like:
  • Java Spring Group
  • Java Certification Study Group
  • Dallas Ruby Brigade
  • Dallas Rules User Group
  • Dallas C# SIG
  • DFW UPA (They rotate around from month to month)
  • Dallas AJAX User Group
  • first Dallas Silverlight DevCamp
  • Dallas BarCamp 4

we’ll be hosting the

• Dallas PreDevCamp (next month)

Update: (7.22.2009) Several people from Improving and the commnity have reminded me of some of the events that I missed! So here they are:

• Speaking at / or upcoming:
  • LoneStar Software Symposium
  • Twin Cities Software Symposium
  • New England Software Symposium
  • SpringOne/2GX
  • The Greater Boston Chapter of ACM (at MIT)
• Run / Host
  • Dallas APLN (apln.org)
  • Aggieland .NET Users’ Group (aggielanddnug.org/)
  • Agile BCS (agilebcs.org)
• Speaking at and hosting
  • DrupalCamp 2009!  www.drupalcampdallas.org

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.

Specifically, that we specialize in training on the Microsoft platform in the Dallas area. Our *ahem* Silverlight expert has written a 3 day extensive course on Microsoft Silverlight (outline available soon), another course on Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX and a combo “Developing Rich Internet Application on the Microsoft Platform” course. We also do the gauntlet Microsoft’s Official Curriculum, but really focus on delivering the right training to you and your team which usually  involves customizing the MOC with our own custom modules. Our customer’s seam to really like that approach!

Why did I write this blog post?

I know it sounds more like a marketing spin than my normal blog posts. I did this for two reasons. First, because we really are an awesome training company and I’m looking for was to let more people know about that (both of you). Second, I am working more and more with our Microsoft practice to define our offerings in a “customer friendly, easily consumable” way, and in a very practical sense this is an exercise for me in writing about who we are and what we do… so what do you think? Did it sound just write, too markety or overly technical? I’m really looking for your feedback here to help me improving this style of writing for me. Thanks!

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 :

Chris Tullier  – Visual Studio Team System MVP

 Chris joined Improving this year as a Principal consultant and was awarded with the Team System MVP April 1st (congrats Chris!). He works directly with Microsoft and many engagements and is a VSTS / TFS rock star. Seriously, he get the nuts and bolts of the tooling, but also grasp the business side of software engineering in ways that I’ve never really thought of before. “What’s your branching / release strategy?” “How are you managing your migration?” Huh? Chris has it covered. He’s the co-founder of the Dallas Team System User Group and in also the founder of the weekly online VSTS chat sessions over at http://www.teamsystemlive.com.

Tim Rayburn – Microsoft BizTalk MVP

Tim is our newest Principal consultant. Tim has been a recipient of the exclusive BizTalk MVP award for the last two consecutive years. Tim is also a member of Microsoft’s BizTalk Virtual Technical Specialist team, which is the closest that you can get to working for Microsoft with out actually moving to Redmond .  Not only is Tim at total BizTalk Ninja, he’s also one of the leading authorities on C# development (total CodeRush Samurai), application architecture, as well as all things Work Flow and WCF related (he’s the president of the Dallas Connected Systems User Group). Tim is also a national speaker for INETA, he travels all over North America investing in others and delivering his top notch – information packed – presentations.

David O’Hara – ASP.NET MVP

Dave is another CodeRush Ninja. He’s worked almost exclusively in ASP.NET MVC since joining Improving, he’s a frequent presenter at various .NET User Groups and conferences and currently helps run the local Presenter Mentor group. You’ll often find Dave sitting with his Mac, participating in an Alt.NET conference and showing others how they can be code ninjas too!

Todd Girvin – C# MVP

Todd is one of the co-founder’s of Improving and also runs the Microsoft Practice here. He’s seriously one of the best people that you will ever have on your team. Not only does Todd get the business development side of running a Microsoft practice but is also one of the most efficient and lethal developers that you will ever meet. I once worked on a project with Todd where he mentored developer’s around the globe while simultaneously increased the performance of there application by over 36 times! (this was actually a really big deal; ask me about it sometime and I’ll give you the rest of the details. ) Todd is also a frequent presenter at various conferences and leads the Dallas C# User Group.

Jef Newsom – Architecture MVP

Jef is the other co-founder of Improving Enterprises and is the current CIO (Chief Instigation Officer – as he puts it). Jef’s really smart. Like wicked smart. If he were an X-Man he’d be Prof X… without that whole stuck in a wheel chair thing. Jef is one of the (less than) hundred or so Microsoft Certified Architects in the world. Jef is a frequent presenter at various events and is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.

Caleb Jenkins – ASP.NET MVP (Silverlight)

OK.. so I’m a little very humbled to be included in this group.  If you really want to know about me go check out my about page, mvp profile, look at the talks that I’ve given, or follow me on twitter. Over 2 years ago I left Microsoft to join the guys at Improving as employee number 7. Today we have over 50 full time employees… and 7 current or past MVPs!

Did you say 7? I thought there were 6? ah… keep reading my friend.

Peter Brunone – 7 time ASP.NET MVP

and I would be completely remiss if I didn’t mention Peter. Peter was one of the first ever Microsoft ASP/ASP.NET MVPs and won the award seven years in a row! Currently, Peter is our resident SharePoint samurai and is doing amazing things in SharePoint development for us. Peter blogs on Microsoft’s official asp.net site and also wrote the Easy List Box control. Go check it out!

Want to keep up with all of the bloggers at Improving? Go subscribe to the composite feed!

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!

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.

What Others Are Saying

@michaelpearsun: @giovanni Saw you at the SMC last night in Austin. Great presentation! Now watching your vids on gallucci.net. You are a ninja!
@shawngurn: Giovanni rocks! Let’s carry him out on our shoulders
@evoigt: @shawngurn – heck yeah! @giovanni is the ultimate social media ninja
@mbrinkerhoff: is getting schooled on all things social media by the Pai Mei of online reputation management, @giovanni.
Miranda Sevcik: Thanks Giovanni- I thought your talk was really great- so informative and somehow managed to be entertaining! How do you do it?
Gimme more testimonials!

Sign ups for the March 10, 2009 social media marketing training class in Dallas are live now. Register by February 24th, 2009 for $50 off early bird pricing!

Know someone who might want to come to this workshop?
Refer anyone to this class and receive $50 for every person you refer that attends! Unlimited! Click this link to get started.
For information about scheduling a corporate class or suggesting cities to add to our schedule, contact sales@extremesocialmarketing.com.
This event is co-sponsored by
Improving Enterprises and Blue Sky Factory.

See you there!

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↑ Grab this Headline Animator

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!

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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