.Net Jonesie - January, 2006

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		Peter G Jones New Zealand

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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

Monday, January 30, 2006

CodeCamp NZ 2006 by Peter

It's official. CodeCamp is coming to New Zealand.

CodeCamp is:

All about programming and software development.
Run by the local community for the local community. Most speakers will be from the local community but there may be one or two overseas speakers.
Free!

Think of CodeCamp like TechEd without the glitz and IT stuff.

If you want to know more about CodeCamp in general then see the official CodeCamp wiki site. Over the next few weeks we (the NZ .Net User Group) will be getting more information collated and details sorted, but for now, all you need to know is:

Where: Whitireia Community Polytechnic, Porirua Wellington

When: 22 & 23 April (Saturday and Sunday)

What: 2 whole days of pure programming sessions, discussions, workshops and fun! Plus one or two extra-curricular events.

But most importantly, if you would like to present a session to CodeCamp NZ, you should get in touch with Kirk [kirk AT dot DOT net DOT nz ] or myself [peter AT dot DOT net DOT nz].

Monday, January 30, 2006 8:17:19 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

Comments [0] NZ .Net User Group |

Thursday, January 26, 2006

TechEd Split by Peter

I saw from Peter Himschoot's blog that TechEd Europe has been split into two separate events, one for IT Pros and the other for Developers.

I would love to see a developer only conference in New Zealand and TechEd is now probably big enough to split into two. At least the last two TechEd's have sold out very quickly and Auckland does not have a bigger venue. I'm not sure what the mix of IT Pro / Developer is - I'm guessing it's about 40/60. A thousand or so Developers would be a good number.

TechEd is a very expensive event to hold so I suppose splitting it would almost double the cost, but here's some ideas to help reduce that:

Scrap the vendors hall as they add nothing to the content of the event (except the vendors with Segways).
Actually, if you just get rid of the vendors hall then Sky City would probably be big enough for a few hundred more attendees.
Scrap the party - the cost of this must be getting ridiculous. I heard the rough cost of the 2003 TechEd party. 2005 must have been more. You could buy a warehouse apartment in central Auckland and have a non-stop year long party for less!
Splitting it will make things go a little quicker - maybe 2 days will be enough for each event.
Scrap the hands on labs and just give people the VPC images instead.
Make people pay for internet access. I know what this cost for one TechEd a few years ago (2003?) and it's just horrendous. Most people just need to check their email occasionally or surf MSDN. They can save the p0rn downloading for their hotel rooms.
Reduce the full ticket price by $400 and increase the corporate price by 50%. Business can afford to pay more and send less people. I know for some organisations that this is a junket for the staff.

Ok, so some of these ideas may be a bit controversial but really, TechEd can't get any bigger the way it is. It's time to think about a change.

Thursday, January 26, 2006 7:15:19 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

Comments [3] General |

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Note to Self - Operator Overloading in C# by Peter

Habbits are a bad thing. Automatic assumptions are the root of all evil. Challenge everything.

int i = 42;

Trace.WriteLine("The answer is " + i.ToString());

Trace.WriteLine("The answer is " + i);

Could have saved myself:

const double TimeToPressKey = 0.3;

string wastedKeyStrokeString = ".ToString()";

int perDay = 25;

int workingDays = 5 * 48;

int years = 3;

double savings = TimeToPressKey * wastedKeyStrokeString.Length() * workingDays * years;

Or thereabouts.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 8:30:55 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

Comments [1] General |

Monday, January 16, 2006

Back at work catch-up by Peter

It's been a great holiday. I've done very little and I'm feeling really relaxed and stress-free on my first day back at work. Here's a bit of a catch-up of some stuff, no particular order.

Some nice Team System 3rd party stuff I'm testing. I'll report on these more thoroughly soon.

TeamPrise preview 4 - tried preview 3 and it's not bad - but limited
TeamPlain Web Access - haven't tried yet but it looks to be more extensive than TeamPrise
TeamLook - integrates work items with Outlook - seems to work fine so far

From the blogsphere:

AfterMail bought by Quest - fantastic news for Rod and his crew and the New Zealand IT industry
Team System supports team size of 3500.
RC not far off
Some Cool Visualisers
CVS, Subversion & RCS to TFS conversion tools

What I did on my holidays:

Installed DotNetNuke 4.02 and used it to create 2 new sites for the NZ .Net User Group. jobs.dot.net.nz is not far off being ready. The new NZ .Net site still has quite a bit of work to do - hopefully it'll be done around February.
Created a new site for a new user group. My wife, Trish, uses Microsoft Dynamics Nav (formally known as Navision). She is also involved with the start-up user group for this so we have created a site for this using Community Server 2.
Did some work on DNN 3.2.2 for Tim.
Did some gardening and extended the driveway.
Was best man at a wedding/new years eve party (a combo deal)
Hosted Christmas dinner and a couple of barbies for the family and friends and neighbours
Went to a couple of barbies
Went into work once to make a phone call and check when I was supposed to return to work

Roll on 2006. I hope to:

Get TFS RTM installed and working
Get other Airways Teams using TFS
Expand my own team
Finish 1 project! Any one will do...
Trips to South Africa & Redmond (maybe) again
Organise a community developer conference
Attend TechEd (maybe)
Organise 10 user group meetings - first one in a couple of weeks so I better get cracking on that!
Lose 10kg

Monday, January 16, 2006 7:32:26 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

Comments [0] General |