On Friday I spoke at the 2010 Dallas Tech Fest. This is a great event and I look forward to it every year. This year, I spoke on the 10 Practices that every developer needs to start right now (slides). I also, found out later, that I had the most attended talk of the day – awesome! One of the things that I cover in that talk are the principals of SOLID – and that’s what I was heckled about.
This is just a quick note that I’ll be presenting at two different events in the DFW area this month. Hope you can make it!
First, Wednesday March 3rd, I’ll be at the North Dallas .NET Users Group talking about Model View View-Models (MVVM) for your Silverlight Applications. If you’ve ever seen my Dependency Injection for Silverlight talk, this is pretty much the follow up to that. (above is a snapshot from the last time that I spoke there.)
Have you ever wanted to be a technical presenter, but you weren’t sure how to get started? Or do you want to take your technical presentation skills to the “next level”? This this is the event for you! I love the idea of events like this, and I was honored to be invited to participate. Maybe this will spark more interest in groups like Presenter Mentor?
Teresa Burger, awesome community member and talented developer over at Woot! is organizing this event. It’s $50 to attend, includes lunch, and is a full day of Dave Gunby, Microsoft’s Chris Koenig, MVP extraordinaire Tim Rayburn and also yours truly.
Yep, this is going to be a fun month! Hope to see you there!
I was talking to a friend of mine last month that had just had mid-year reviews at his company. I received his permission to relay some of our conversation and my response to him here.
“So I walk in to sit with my manager for my mid-year review… we’re ranked on 12 different categories on a scale of 1 to 5, there are 9 of us that report to him”
Sounds normal, makes sense.
“First thing my manager says in going over my review is, just so you know, and I’ve told everyone this: I don’t give 5’s”
Wait what?! Um, if that’s the case then why not just have a scale that goes from 1 to 4? Let’s think about that for a minute. No really, let that sink in. Why call it 1 to 5, if it’s really 1 to 4?
First, I need to recognize the excellent posts on this subject that one of the North Dallas .NET User Group members, Anderson Imes, did a while back. Here and Here.
Here’s the thing. Anderson and I are in pretty different boats. He’s starting off his career, I have a well established development background with some of the largest companies in the world. That being said, the principals of “job hunting” are the same. When you are being interviewed – it is just as important for you to also interview the potential company.
One of the best parts about leaving Microsoft is that I have Microsoft on my resume. It’s amazing how many doors that opens. Any company that I have wanted to look at… the door has been wide open. I pretty much get the interview… and in most cases I’ve been ushered past the tech screen as well. One of the other benefits of the last year and a half is that I know most of the consulting partners and enterprises shops in the DFW area, and most of them know me as well.
This has created an interesting phenomenon that I haven’t really had in my life before. I’m *really* able to evaluate different companies and make some serious decisions about the type of work that I want to do… and the type of company that I want to do that with..
After I left Microsoft, I met with several companies… most of them were really good companies with interesting projects. During that process I learned a lot about what I *don’t* want to do – which is sometimes, just as important as knowing what you do want to do. Mostly I realized that I am so used to working with and impacting multiple teams at a time that staying on one project with one team wasn’t very appealing. At the same time, I actually *want* to complete projects… help teams of people implement best practices, leverage Microsoft technologies and move from inception to deployment.
I also realized that I like being involved in the community. I wasn’t sure how I was going to continue my involvement… hookup with a specific user group or what? That was when Giovanni convinced me to follow through on the CommunityCast.tv idea. That is something that I am very excited about., and I’ll blog more later. The important community aspect is that not all companies value community involvement. If I had the opportunity to go to the Mix07 conference, or the MVP summit… not everyone would support opportunities like those.
So, after two weeks of meeting with different people and companies… the company that I am going to work at is actually the first company that a spoke with after leaving Microsoft. I’ve known them since before joining Microsoft and worked with them frequently while I was there. Giovanni keeps trying to get me to spill the beans on my new endeavor… but I think that I’ll have a contest and give out a *really cool prize* instead. 
More on that to come!
Caleb Jenkins, is a recognized Silverlight expert, Software Mentor and Coach; he is the Founder and Principal Mentor for Proaction Mentors, he is also a National Speaker for INETA, a Technical Editor for Wrox Press and is a Microsoft MVP. You can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his blog updates.
Caleb lives in the Dallas, TX area where he continues to date his beautiful wife and busy himself playing Candy Land and xBox 360 with their four incredible children. Eventually he’ll post some of the gazillion interviews that he's recorded on CommunityCast.tv or blog more... or stop speaking of himself in the third person. more...
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