Just wanted to let you all know that I'll be speaking at and attending the upcoming ITARC in NYC, May 22-23. The conference is grass roots and platform agnostic. Grady Booch is giving the keynote from 2^nd life. There are some great roundtables and panel discussions on SOA, SOAP vs. REST, as well as others.

It should be a good opportunity to get involved with the local architecture community and participate in discussions on what is currently happening. The registration price is lower then other conferences because we are non-profit and just trying to cover the costs.

There is an attendance limit and the early bird registration ends this month so we encourage you to sign up as soon as possible.  Register Now!

I wasn't going to post about it, but after reading Don's post, I realized that I should so that I can thank those involved in presenting me with this honor.  I was surprised when I was contacted about being nominated to be an INETA speaker, and I was even more surprised when I heard that I'd been voted in.  Looking over the folks on the list, I feel hardly qualified to be named among them.

So without further ado, let me thank David Walker (who's an all around great guy and VP of the Speakers Bureau), Nancy Mesquita (who I've not had the pleasure to meet personally but has been very helpful in her role as Administrative Director), as well as everyone else involved on the Speaker Committee and others (whom I know not of specifically) in welcoming me into the INETA speaker fold.  It's a great honor--thank you. 

Now, I have to get back to work!  My group, UXG, just released Tangerine, the first of our exemplars, and now we're on to the next great thing!

If you're reading this and you attended my session on Monday morning at 9a but haven't yet filled out an evaluation, please do so.  I've been told the room seats over 800 and it was packed, but only 208 thus far have submitted evals.  I'd really like to know what EVERYONE thought, not just those few who've filled it out thus far.  It only takes a minute, and you get a chance to win an XBox if you do it sooner rather than later. 

Info again: 6/12/2006 - 9:00-10:15, WEB301 - Accelerating Web Development with Enterprise Library.

Just go to: http://msteched.com, log in, and go to fill out evals for breakouts (menu on left).

And remember, be honest but kind!  :-p

As most of you know who follow my blog at all, I recently joined Infragistics.  Well, I finally got around to getting my company blog set up, so if you're curious or interested, feel free to check it out and maybe subscribe.  While you're there, if you are a customer or potential customer, you might want to look around at the other blogs and maybe subscribe to some of them to stay on top of Infragistics stuff.

I just updated this site to the latest version of dasBlog.  Many, many thanks to Scott for helping me out with getting it (given that I am a total noob to CVS and, apparently, picked a bad time to start since SF was having issues).  Most notably (that I know of), this version incorporates using Feedburner, which I guess is the latest and greatest for distributing your feed and lowering bandwidth usage, though I'm sure there are some other goodies in there.

Anyhoo, let me know if you suddenly start running into any problems with my blog.  Have a good un!

Not long ago, I polled subscribers as to what they're interested in.  There seemed to be a fairly even divide between what I'll roughly call Technical posts and Non-Technical posts.  In fact, my goal with this blog is to be a blend of those two general categories.  At the same time, as much as it hurts to admit it, I know that some folks really don't care about my opinions on non-technical matters.  So it struck me (some time ago, actually; I've just been lazy) to create two general categories using the creative taxonomy of Technical and Non-Technical. 

Why?  This is because dasBlog (and most other blog systems, I imagine) allow you to subscribe to category-based RSS feeds as well as view posts by category.  So from this day forward, in addition to the more specific categories, I'll be marking all posts as either Technical or Non-Technical.  If all you care about is one or the other, you can just subscribe to one or the other and never be bothered with the stuff you don't care about.

You can view/subscribe to the feeds using the feed icon next to each category in the list (of categories).  Here are direct links as well:

Technical

Non-Technical

I hope this helps!

I'm very happy to announce that I'll be joining Infragistics soon.  Officially, my first day will be May 15th; however, I'll be going to the Alabama Code Camp to represent them next weekend (4/22).  If you're in the Huntsville area, you should definitely check it out; there are tons of great speakers and sessions lined up.  (Mine's not up there yet as it is still undecided which of the ones I submitted I'll be doing.)

Anyhoo, I'll be working for Infragistics as their Codemunicator, a title that they let me coin because the position is kind of a blend of things.  Codemunicator is a portmanteau, as you might guess, from "code" and "communicator."  It sounds like it'll be a lot of fun; I'll get to do a number of things that I enjoy--writing, designing, coding, and even the occasional speaking from what I hear.  And I'll get to work with great guys like Jason Beres (noted author and INETA speaker), Devin Rader (also noted author and ASPInsider), and others whom I've had the pleasure to meet. 

Plus, some other really cool peeps are not far away, like DonXML (MVP and XML extraordinaire), Scott Watermasysk (Mr. .Text himself, ASPInsider, MVP, etc.), Doug Reilly (author, ASPInsider, MVP, etc.), Terri Morton (author, ASPInsider, MVP, etc.), DotNetDude (author, INETA speaker, MVP, etc., though I hear rumors of his not being long for the area), and I'm sure I'm not aware of or forgetting others and/or not getting all of the accolades right (that's my official apology if that's the case).  So all I'm saying is it's a really cool area for .NET experts and ubergeeks. :)  Hopefully we can all get together occasionally for dotNetMoots of some kind.

Of course, this change in employment constitutes a change in locale for me and my family.  We'll be moving from sunny Tampa, FL up to Princeton, NJ (right near East Windsor, home of Infragistics HQ).  I'm sure a lot of folks think such a move is crazy, but the wife and I are not especially keen on the six-month summers down here in Tampa.  We both grew up in cooler climes that have all four seasons, so we're actually looking forward to having them again.  That's not to say that the Tampa area doesn't have lots to recommend it, most notably family, friends, and mild winters, but we still feel this is the right move for us.

We've heard a lot of good stuff about the area we'll be in, both from folks who live there now and who lived there in the past.  Apparently, the whole "armpit of the US" epithet only applies to the Newark/Elizabeth area (in the NE near NYC), and having flown into and out of Newark and driven by Elizabeth, I can believe that.  (No offense to anyone who lives there and likes it!)  But central NJ is actually quite nice from what we saw when we toured the area a bit and from what we've heard.  It's about an hour by train from NYC and Philly, not far from some mountains in Pennsylvania, and not far from the beach and Atlantic City, so we're actually looking forward to it a lot.

All in all, we're pretty psyched about the move, and I'm especially juiced about going to work for a great commercial software company like Infragistics.  They still have openings, so if you think any of them sound interesting, let me know.  I'd love to have more good people come on to work with us.  If any geeks or ubergeeks live in the area and read my blog that I don't know about, give me a shout out.  I'll be helping Jason Beres et al pump up the NJDOTNET user group, so join and come if you're in the area.  You WILL join and come! <waves hand using Jedi mind trick>

TTFN!

FYI: I've got an upcoming presentation on O-R mapping in .NET.  Here're the details:

Time:  Thursday, December 2, 2004 @ 6:00pm
Place: GulfNeTug Dot Net User Group
         Sun Hydraulics
         701 Tallevast Road
         Sarasota, FL

Abstract:
You've probably heard the whispers:  "Psst.  I've heard about this O-R mapping stuff..  seems kinda weird to me; surely it can't work as well as writing my own ADO.NET code..."  The answer is yes; it can and does work as well, and you don't have to bother with code generators or ongoing maintenance of ADO.NET code when you use them.  O/R mappers do ADO.NET for you, allowing you to focus on more important aspects of developing a data-driven application.

J. AmbroseLittlewill introduce you to the concepts behind object-relational mapping as well as illustrate those concepts by looking at the code underlying an existing O/R mapper called DataAspects.  In addition, all attendees will get a free site license of the soon-to-be-released DataAspects library to use in their own projects.

Recommended Prerequisites:
Familiarity with .NET (particularly ADO.NET) programming.
Familiarity with obejct-oriented design and programming principles.
Familiarity with relational database development, especially SQL Server 2000+.