April 11th, 2008 at 12:46 am
(Microsoft, Speaking)
Tuesday was the Official Microsoft Launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 in Dallas. It was great. I got to hang out with many of my fellow MVP’s as well as people like Mark, Keith, Phil and Rachel (also Jason, Toi, Scott… and many more!) at the “ask the experts” table (which Microsoft *incorrectly* labeled the MVP - Microsoft Valued Partners booth - I guess even they have too many TLA’s!). I missed the Keynote, but I did get to see Chris Koenig present at another session on developing web applications with VS 2008 and he did a great job.
While walking through the halls I did run in to Keith Combs, a friend of mine from Microsoft - he presents all over the region at TechNet events. (think MSDN Event for MCSE’s - if that helps.) Keith has a very active blog and interviewed me for that. You can see the interview on Keith’s blog.
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September 28th, 2007 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
Hats off to the Microsoft team that put this on. There were plenty of people there, several pod-casters, bloggers and a whole bunch of other people.
One of my favorite parts of the night was from my friend and Biz Talk MVP Tim Rayburn. Tim set up a small cam on his laptop with a sign that he had people read. It said, “TimRayburn.net, it’s like CommunityCast.TV only we actually post videos!” Hilarious. What a great play on the theme for CommunityCast, (“It’s like channel 9 for the rest of us”) and a nice reminder that I actually need to start posting some of those gazillion interviews that I’ve already recorded.
BTW…
CommunityCast was there recording more interviews… hopefully those will get posted sooner rather than later!
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May 7th, 2007 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
<
I've heard him speak a couple of times, and it's always a great experience... he really knows how to say things like they are and doesn't pull and punches. Go read his blog and some of his other books while you're at it. This is a great resource to have in our back yard! (I wonder if he'll be open to speak at any of the local Code Camps?)
Welcome to Texas Michael!
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March 19th, 2007 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
<
http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2007/02/28/zune-firmware-update-1-3-coming-mid-march-skipping-fixed.aspx
To be fair... I have nev..vv..vvv..vv..er had any problems with my Zune, but that's probably because I have so much music already, that I'm not using the Zune marketplace yet. Now, if only they would get on the stick and add podcatching support, and video to the marketplace! Then I might reconsider my marketplace free Zune.
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March 8th, 2007 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
With everything else going on this month, I almost forgot! I’m heading to the Dallas .NET Users Group tonight for their official Community Launch of .NET 3.0 / Vista and Office 2007! I’m looking forward to a great night of coding and fun! If you’re in the Dallas area, you should stop by. It’s at the Microsoft Las Colinas Office.
3 Comments
January 27th, 2007 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
<![CDATA[
I feel like I can say this, especially since I don’t work for Microsoft anymore. They did a great job this weekend.
About the facilities:
Overall: The facilities were great – we could have easily had 300+ people with all of those rooms (there were around 40).
Low Lights: The wireless access was the most frustrating thing about the experience, it worked well for some, flaky for most, and not at all of others – but I understand that spotty wireless is a common problem at most BarCamps.
Mid Tones: Having to register at the front desk, and be escorted up (and sometimes down) the elevators. At first, we thought this was going to be a huge frustration point, but in the end – it actually wasn’t that bad. The security guys were pleasant, happy to have us there and very accommodating. The only thing that someone was told they couldn’t do was smoke in the non-smoking area – and they were quickly directed to the smoking areas. We could go out whenever we needed, and there was a phone at the front and back doors that we could contact the security guys with during the night to let us back in.
Highlights: The Microsoft guys that hosted BarCamp. Serious kudos to Dave Bost and Chris Bernard from Microsoft. They both flew all the way from Chicago just to help cover this event (since I no longer carry a Microsoft blue badge). They were at the front to greet most people when they arrives, and when it looked like we weren’t going to have food for lunch – they ordered *a ton* of food for us (read: a TON of food). We had sandwich platters for lunch barbeque for dinner and when no one was looking the refrigerator suddenly was stocked full of Monster drinks (blue and green), Rock Star Energy, and about ever type of beer that you can think of. I’m not sure how much they had to expense for BarCampDallas – but wow! They definitely came through and stepped up to the plate.
About the rest of the event:
Overall: Several people mentioned that this was one of the best BarCampDallas’s yet. Even though less people attended (weather? location? getting the word out? who knows). The people that WERE there definitely had a great time, and we got to have some of the best conversations ever. There were too many great people there for me to highlight all for me to highlight all of them.
Low Lights: More people would have been nice. This is actually a double edge sword. On one hand I would have loved see more people engaged in the weekend, and involved in the conversations… on the other hand – that would have also changed the dynamics… which I think worked well.
Mid Tones: As is true with most BarCamps (I’m told). We were a little unorganized. There were a couple of events that we had planned – and then didn’t do, and a couple more that we not even thought of until we did them… I guess that’s part of what makes BarCamp BarCamp.
Highlights: People, content and technologies. It was great to meet so many people and to catch of with several people that I already know. I know that I’d leave someone out… but I’d like to at least highlight a couple of people. Erica, Jay, and Christopher – for all of the planning, organization and effort that they put in to making BarCampDallas happen. Giovanni for doing a truly amazing job providing media coverage to the entire event. Kinan – for bringing some nice anti Microsoft angst to the event (I was afraid that there wouldn’t be enough there. – seriously Kinan does a great job standing up for services, linux and open source. Whurely for bringing the stickers and seriously – I have not laughed that hard in a long time – (I am going to go build the site if it hasn’t already been done). Jim – for providing a lot of balanced and honest input on the event, Cody and Jay for winning the “Web 2.0” Application Contest – they built a pretty cool idea over night. The robot guys for showing up and walking us through a pretty cool industry. Ingrid – for actually bringing a tent (cool!). Everyone that let me interview them for the next episode of CommunityCast.TV!
Content: Here is a quick overview of the sessions that I attended. Most of these were recorded by Giovanni, I’ll post to those once they are online.
- Jay Fichialos – Started things off by going in to the “HackDays” that he is leading over at Sabre. They are 24 hour, free form sessions for corporations to throw for their developers. Sounds like fun!
- Joseph Hill and Mark Terry did a great overview of their new project “Availitime”. I think that this was the first time that a start up had their launch party combined with BarCamp at Microsoft! It was a great product launch party with food, and some people stayed all night!
- Aaron Baxtor (Top Site Marketing in Houston) – CSS Power. Aaron did a great job highlighting some of the tricks and approaches that he uses with CSS and non-obtrusive technologies.
- Todd Manning from BreakingPoint Systems - OS X Exploits and Patching – This was a great talk where Todd showed off some of his mad security skillz and highlighted some of the types of vulnerabilities that exist in applications today… he specifically pointed out a vulnerability in an open source application that he was able to patch and contribute to.
- Joseph Hill & Mark Terry – Roll your own ISV, lessons learned. With their recent launch of Availitime, Joseph and Mark were on hand to discuss their experiences, insights and to learn form others.
- Chris Bernard (Microsoft User Experience Evangelist) - What is UX? – This was so good we did it again! This truly was a great talk. So many people were buzzing about it the first night (which we didn’t record because nobody knew to push the red button that we asked if Chris would be able to give a similar talk on Sunday morning… he did, and we recorded it. Chris talks more about that here.
What others are saying…
· The Real Adam; Adam again – BTW, he won the Xbox 360, sweet!
· Kinan (Ximda) – Bar Camp Dallas III was a success.
· Chris Bernard – Barcamp Dallas Recap
· Erica O'Grady - BarCampDallas3 - The Aftermath
· And then there’s this guy that says that he couldn’t get in. That’s so weird, because we were all in and out all night. I left him a comment, but he’s never called… I guess there is just no pleasing some people.
· The “Official” BarCampDallas homepage.
· Finally… go check out all of the photos from the BarCampDallas III.
· Update: Giovanni shares his thoughts... and put's the smack down on anti-Microsoft FUD..
We had a blast, and I am truly looking forward to more BarCamps!
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January 15th, 2007 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
<![CDATA[
I've posted about BarCampDallas before, now that it's just around the corner Giovanni posted Erica's email... here you go:
Erica O'Grady just sent out a reminder for all this weekend's BarCampers in Dallas:
BarCampDallas will be held this coming weekend (January 20th - 21st) at the Microsoft Campus in Las Colinas (THANKS to Caleb Jenkins and Dave Bost for arranging this). For more info on the venue or to RSVP you can visit:
http://upcoming.org/event/136629/
or the Wiki at: http://barcamp.org/BarCampDallas
Join the Jambo Group at: https://jambo.net/groups/barcampdallas to meet and interact with campers before the big event.
We're camping out (literally) on the 4th floor of the Microsoft offices, so feel free to bring your tents and sleeping bags. Other things you might want to consider bringing along:
Powerstrips
Laptops
Pillows ?
Anything that you might need to make your presentations a success.
Christopher St. John is doing a mini DemoCampDallas -- for more information on how to participate e-mail him at: ckstjohn at gmail dot com. Also - I have a form for anyone who can't make it to registration on Saturday or Sunday morning and would like to pre-register. I'll be posting that to the wiki today -- and we'd like to have most people's info 48 hours prior to the event.
On Friday January 19th - there will be a Pre-BarCampDallas Party - 8:00 PM at Lee Harvey's
See you there! - Caleb
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December 27th, 2006 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
<
Several people have emailed me lately regarding the Office and Vista Launches for TX, OK, AR and LA. It seems that a lot of people are registering for the Launch Events through the MSDN Events site (http://www.msdnevents.com) and several people were confused by that fact that there isn’t a launch for Dallas or Houston listed on this site. That is because the Houston and Dallas Launch Events are being handled by a different team (you’ve gotta love silos!).
Here are the links that you want:
Click here to Register for Houston – February 13th, 2007
Click here to Register for Dallas – February 21st, 2007
Register for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, San Antonio, Austin
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November 28th, 2006 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
<![CDATA[
It looks like Corey beat me to it.
“Yeah, someone at the Microsoft Campus has been smoking something to have come up with this idea. Don't get me wrong. This is very amusing; a bit twisted... but funny nonetheless.”
You'll have to go watch the video to understand what he's talking about.
(and in the process you could score your own copy of Windows Vista Business or Microsoft Office System 2007)
Sweet!
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12/3/2006 Update: Wow that was fast! It looks like the free copies of Office and Vista are all sold out! Still, the video is still funny... (not for dial up...as one person pointed out to me... I guess not everyone is on FiOS yet!
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2 Comments
November 23rd, 2006 at 6:00 am
(Microsoft)
<![CDATA[
I'm not one to name names... so will just call this other database company “Big Red O”
Here's the link: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2169225/microsoft-beats-oracle-security
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