Developing UX

Bring your A game, do your best, leave it all on the field. That’s how I roll… until last night. Last night I presented on MVVM in Silverlight at the North Dallas .NET Users Group. It was a great turn out with a lot of interaction and excellent questions. Huge thanks to the organizers for having me, and to every one that turned out for it!

OK, I learned two big lessons last night. First, don’t prep your demo’s with a source control system that you are not 100% comfortable with yet.. second, don’t keep your speaking engagements when you’ve been taking care of sick people all week.

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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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This week I will be at the Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle, while I’m there I will take the time to present at the local .NET User Group. If you are in the area be sure to stop by. It’s going to be a “double feature” between my “Developing Loosely Coupled Applications” talk and my friend, and fellow MVP, Dennis Bottjer will be giving his amazing talk on SharePoint Performance. It’s gonna be awesome!

I always like going up to the North Dallas DNUG. The first (pilot) CommunityCast.tv episode was shot there… and the last time that I was there Jason Alexander showed of Graffiti before Telligent had it released (CommunityCast episode 6).

Side Note: I just realized that Jason updates his blog less than I update  CommunityCast.   – go follow his twitter instead

Tonight I’ll be talking about Microsoft Silverlight, specifically some of the Data Binding and Visual Template features. This is a fun talk, but there is a lot to cover! We’ll start with data binding to business objects and then move to creating visual templates with Microsoft Expression Blend. I’ll also bring my camera so be prepared to chat about what you are doing later in the night!

If you’re in the Dallas area, be sure to stop by and check it out!

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!

Tomorrow night I’ll be presenting at the Ft. Lauderdale .NET User Group on Silverlight. Specifically, I’ll be covering the process and techniques for creating visual templates as well as some of the in’s and out’s of binding to data and creating data templates.

again… big thanks to INETA for sponsoring this event and for supporting .NET communities all over the world!

It should be a great night, if you’re in the area.. be sure to stop by and say hi!

That’s right, tomorrow night I’ll be speaking at the Rockford .NET user group (about an hour outside of Chicago) telling the Heroic Tale of Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control and the Strategy Pattern. This is basically a modified and shortened version of one of the talks that I’ll be doing next month at VS Live! in Dallas.

Big thanks to INETA for supporting the local community and having great speakers (and me ) present all over the World!

If you’re in the area, be sure to stop by and say hi!

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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One of the great things about speaking for INETA is traveling to places that I’ve never been before. July is going to be a little different for me. I was born in Southern California and grew up just an hour north of San Diego in a town called Temecula. (Except for 3 years when I lived in Okinawa)

We moved from Murrieta to Tulsa in 2001 and I haven’t been back to California since then. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been 7 years! Aside from the people and family that are in California there are only 3 things that I really miss. So I’m really looking forward to meeting up with my Dad and having a good lunch while I’m there.

If you are going to be in the San Diego area in July… make sure to stop by the .NET User Group and say hi! We might even go grab a bite to eat afterwards… if I used to know you in Southern California… send me an email: blogger[at]calebjenkins[dot]com.

The topic is still TBD, but it will probably be one of these:

• ASP.NET AJAX with Visual Studio 2008
• Silverlight with Visual Studio 2008 + Expression Blend
• Developer Designer Zen (bringing two world’s together)
• Better Application Design with practical loose coupling

What would you want the topic to be?

Just a quick note: I’ll be speaking at the Spokane .NET User Group tomorrow night covering ASP.NET AJAX with Visual Studio 2008.

This will be my first time in Spokane ever. I’m planning on driving over to see Lake Coeur D’Alene while I’m there too. I’ve heard so many nice thing about this area that I’m really looking forward to the couple of hours that I’ll be out there.

OK, I have to get up in 3 hours to make my *early* flight (a super, super early flight! ugh.. )

Anyways, if you’re in the area… stop by the User Group and say hi!