Dallas TechFest Call For Speakers

Dallas TechFest 2010

If your are interested in speaking, please email speakers@timrayburn.net with the following information:

  • Name
  • Email Address
  • Phone Number
  • Up to three abstracts for sessions, 1 paragraph each with a technology area (.NET/Java/CF/PHP/Flex/Ruby/etc) if appropriate.
  • A list of previous events or groups  which you have spoken at, and contact information for at least 1 of those organizers.

This call for speakers will end on March 15th, 2010 and choices will be announced shortly there-after.

This is an awesome event, I highly recommend if you do not speak plan to go.  Last year was awesome and I think this year will be even better.  I am planning on going so let me know if you want to car pool.

Tweet Wall – Show event tweets project on the wall.

 

Last fall I was looking for an application that could display tweets based on a hastag on the wall.  I found HashWall on codeplex and downloaded it immediately.  It worked great but then I got to thinking, this is going to be a corporate event where I work and that it may not be a good idea for tweets to be displayed unfiltered on the wall behind our CIO giving the welcome speech. 

Open source to the rescue, I thought heck this is an open source project I will just download the code put in a bad word filter and away we go.  Slow down there cowboy, it doesn’t always work that way.  The source code on CodePlex didn’t contain the code to perform the Twitter search.  Since I had recently completed Peepster, a one way tweet application, I was ready to take on the challenge.  I grabbed the latest build of TweetSharp and went to town.

I believe in sharing so I took the fully working code and put it back on CodePlex as a fork of the original HashWall project with a few minor updates so that everyone could utilize it.

The short list of updates:

  • Replaced twitter search provider with TweetSharp
  • Added content filtering based on a bad word list
  • Modified SetupDialog to allow user to use a File Open Dialog to browse to alternate background image

Please feel free to check out the code and make it your own.

Enjoy

Tulsa TechFest 2 Weeks Away

TulsaTechFest 

 

 

 

Tulsa TechFest is THE largest developer conference in the Northwest Arkansas/Eastern Oklahoma area.  It is also the original TechFest, if you are a developer in this region this is the conference you won’t want to miss. 

I will be presenting two sessions; Introduction to Agile Software Development, and Visual Studio 2010 Web.Config Transformations.  The second session will also take a look at corporate deployment challenges and will suggest some strategies to try now, as well as, show how Visual Studio 2010 will help solve them in the future.

This years event is only 1 day and is on Friday so it is an awesome excuse to start the weekend early and learn something new. 

Who knows if we get the release candidate for Open Jeopardy ready we might get to have some fun with that as well.

David Walker and crew always to a great job with this event.  Here is the info, go a head and register, you know you want to!

Tulsa TechFest
Friday, Nov 6, 2009 at OSU – Tulsa
8:00 AM – 6:30 PM
Keynote by Joe Fletcher – UX lead for Microsoft Surface team
13 Tracks – 65 Sessions of top developer, architect, designer and IT pro content
FREE event – just bring 2 cans of food for the Eastern Oklahoma Food Bank or $2 for the Family and Children’s Services of Tulsa

Just visit http://tulsatechfest.com to register today!

How I Got Started Programming

This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and just decided that this it the time.  I saw this first on Michael Paladino’s blog.  I always wished I would get called out, but since I didn’t I am calling myself out.  I am also calling out a few others to share their story, and I hope you will pass it on to your closes enemies, eh I mean friends. ;-)

How old were you when you started programming?

In my senior year of High School I was overjoyed to be able to take a 1/2 semester programming class.  The computer class had 11 TRS-80 computers where 1 was the main host.  That meant that we all had to share the floppy drive on the host computer for saving data to disk.  It was a basic programming class, of which I still have some of my code.

How did you get started in programming?

When I got to college I of course was seeking a computer degree.  There I took all of the standard programming classes for my field which included a lot of Pascal programming, but I think I learned the most writing IRCII bots to share files and keep the channel ops in line. 

What was  your first language?

I would have to say that first language I developed in was Pascal or IRC Script.

What was the first real program that you wrote?

During college I was working a our local Wal-Mart and got the chance to go work in their Information System Division.  After working there for about a year I was moved to a programming team and started using Visual Basic (starting with version 3) to create reporting tool was used to monitor the health of the companies system by analyzing help desk ticket information.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

I have spent time in several languages since then, C/C++, Perl, Visual Basic v3-6, ASP Classic, C#, VB .NET, and a short year working with Java.

What was your first professional programming gig?

As I mentioned earlier, creating reports with Visual Basic at Wal-Mart was my first paid programming gig.  I learned a ton from my mentor John Lafoon, who I owe a great debt for setting me on my programming path.

If you knew what you know now, would you have started programming?

Heck yeah!!! I consider myself lucky that I get to do all day what I would be doing if I was independently wealthy had free time on my hands.  A friend of mine, I believe it was Raymond Lewallen, stated like this, “I am a professional problem solver who has chosen software as the tool of choice”.  I love learning and improving my development craftsmanship and spend as much time at home as I do at working improving my skills.  Really that just means I have a lot things to improve.  I like to say “I am failing my way to success” :-)    

If there was one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would that be?

Be a practitioner of your craft, practice your craft and keep your axe sharp.  Set out to learn the fundamentals of your craft don’t just skim the surface to gain enough knowledge to get the job done.  Be a proactive programming, too much of the time programmers are reactive. I need to perform task X lets get the book and hit the reference section and find the example to get me past this hurdle.  This path has little learning, learn enough about your craft so that when the problem arises you already have enough information to formulate the correct action to solve the problem.  In short study and practice your craft.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had…programming?

For the past two years I have attended the We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge, a give camp event, in the Dallas area.  Where developers come together for a weekend to produce web project for charities.  It is awesome to see dev teams put together produce the awesome project they do in such a short period of time.
Tag, you’re it!

I’ve enjoyed hearing other people’s stories, so I think I ought to keep this going.  I’m going to call out:

Arkansas User Group Leader Call Tonight: Getting Members Involved

8612~Leadership-PostersThis is a reminder that the Arkansas User Group Leader Call is tonight at 8:00 PM CST.  Meetings going forward will be held via Live Meeting please use the following link to join http://tinyurl.com/dytjef.

All groups suffer from the fact that most of the work is done by a hand full of individuals.  Tonight Zach Young will be facilitating a discussion on this very subject.  We hope to find some techniques that we can employ to increase the involvement of members in the actual running of a group or event.

Meeting Information:

Topic: Get Member Involved!
Medium: Live Meeting (verify you system
Meeting Link: http://tinyurl.com/dytjef

 

I’ll see you tonight!

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