Part of my job is to help the local user group community in SoCal I can't tell you how much time this takes and how different I have to do things for each group. The rub comes when I want to try and get all the groups to do something that would help them and me there is always some groups that decide not to participate. Now don't get me wrong I love my local groups and the leaders are great and after helping run a group for many year before this job I know how much of a pain in the a@@ doing anything extra can be but... (there's always a but) I finally have something I think is so compelling and will only get more so to get all the groups to do something that will make there lives easer and my life as well.

It's CodeZone.com this is not a new site but it finally has functionality that will make managing a user group much better! What is it... well the now people and register as a speaker on CodeZone so user groups can find them. So what dose this mean? If you are interested in speaking at the local user groups go to CodeZone.com and register as a user then once you are logged in you can register as a speaker. Then user group leader will be able to find you and ask you to speaker at there group. In SoCal so far we have 4 people registered as a speaker but we need more!

Let me know what you think of CodeZone.com I work quite closely with the team that created and supports this site and we want to find out how we cam make it even better!

Last week and this week I was helping out with two different Mobility Touchdown events last week was in the Microsoft office in LA and this week I am in The White House in Las Vegas (note The White House is the coolest event venue for hands on class I have ever been to).

I said in LA and have promised some here in Las Vegas that I would post some of the class content. This includes 4 PDF files this includes the lab book the slides and pre & post install docs.

Download HERE!

I hope all that have taken the class have or am enjoying it.

Resources for content:
'Mobile Line of Business Solution Accelerator' kit
PocketPC FAQ
Compact Framework Case Studies
MobileBlocks on www.codeplex.com

The next IASA meeting will be in the Microsoft San Diego office, the topic will be Domain-Driven Design using the ADO.NET Entity Framework the presenter will be the world famous Tim McCarthy.

For more information see the SoCal section of the IASA web site http://www.iasahome.org/web/socal.

This has to be the coolest software I have seen in years! 

The software is called Microsoft Physics Illustrator for Tablet PC follow the hyperlink to download it.

The next SoCal IASA chapter meeting on will be Thursday April 19, 2007 at the Microsoft San Diego office, 9255 Towne Centre Dr., Suite 400
San Diego, CA 92121. Meeting starts at 7:00 pm, pizza and networking 6:30 pm. RSVP by emailing to rsvp@SoCalDotNetArchitecture.org if you plan to attend.

Domain-Driven Design using the ADO.NET Entity Framework

Abstract:

Developers using DDD with .NET usually end up using NHibernate as an OR mapper (or they do it manually) for their business objects, but Microsoft's soon to be released ADO .NET Entity Framework is an up-and-coming alternative to NHibernate. This presentation will give an overview of essential Domain-Driven-Design concepts, and will talk about the challenges, solutions, and advantages, when using the Entity Framework with a Domain-Driven Design architecture.

For more information www.socaldotnetarchitecture.org and socal.iasahome.org

This is a post that will help me claim this blog as my own, I am not sure if I want to claim this mess but ok here is the claim.

What was Woody up to this weekend? Well from the earlier post about BarCampLA-3 I was super excited to go and I was not disappointed as all! If you want to see some things that happened there check out flickr and look for the tag BarCampLA3.

What did I like?

• The people!
• The sessions I will list what I saw later

What did not like?

• Not staying the night
  • I stayed downtown next time I think I will crash at BarCamp depends on how old I am feeling that week
• Too many carbs
  • I had just restarted a low carb diet and BarCamp was not help with that
• To much going on
  • There is no way to get to all the sessions I wanted to

To see some of the craziness start looking for some videos as well Noodle Scar has one up now. 

There was plenty of work involved in getting BarCamp going so to all that helped thank you! Especially Heathervescent & Crystal Williams!

 Yes there was plenty of work!

I know that more people in the world know Scott Mitchell than know me but for the few of you that may not know this he is going to be doing a class as described below:

ASP.NET Black Belt Training - Saturday, April 21st, 2007

San Diego, California

Cost: $199 (good through March 31st; afterwards, $299)

Overview: Learn a variety of real-world tips, tricks, and techniques for building data-driven ASP.NET 2.0 web applications in this one-day event with speaker, author, and consultant Scott Mitchell. Over the course of the day, Scott will walk attendees through the process of creating a feature-rich web application. Starting from scratch, the talk includes discussions and demonstrations on Membership, building an application architecture, techniques for code reuse, caching to boost performance, and many other topics.

Detailed Outline:

http://fuzzylogicinc.net/BlackBelt/Outline.aspx

Signup/more information:

http://fuzzylogicinc.net/BlackBelt/Default.aspx

The best part of getting to hear Scott is all is points are extremely real world!

When I first started to play with Vista I had no clue why anyone would want to have or use the Sidebar, the programming model sucks, it eats CPU... on and on.

Well I have been converted! A local partner speakTECH has been working with a local customer Move on a great gadget that has shown me the light ;).

Go to labs.move.com and get the "Realtor.com Search Gadget" or the "Move.com Search Gadget" beta gadgets. Once you run one of them they will start to show you listings of properties in your selected zip code and other criteria you will start seeing photos of all of the properties in the MLS that are for sale and you can get more detail.

OK so you say "what is the big deal I am not looking for a house" ok but if you were how likely would go to move.com or realtor.com to get a house? I will tell you, much more! This would reach to any type of product or service that you can think of. Example why doesn't a grocery store have a gadget that shows you there sale products? Why doesn't Netflix have one that shows you what they have new or what is in you list? And on and on...

So what about the developer story? Well it is now a little better now thanks to Tim Heuer, he has created a Visual Studio sidebar gadget templates. With the template you at least don't have to start from scratch.