Datagrid Girl

Women Speakers

via private email, from a (male) Australian:
Just thought I would pass along a comment about how odd it seemed to me that you appear to be the only lady speaker listed in all of the listed sessions at the forthcoming TechEd 2003 conference in Australia.
 
I don't really know why, but I decided to take a close look at the speakers list on the Tech.Ed 2003 Commnet site while I was building my own agenda.  I am always dismayed at how few ladies there seem to be in our industry.
 
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.  Apart from wishing you a great trip down here & hoping that the conference goes well for you.

I agree completely.  During the U.S. Tech Ed Women's Luncheon, one of the panel members said that as many as 20% of technical jobs are now held by women, but at the technical conferences that I've been going to, it seems that only about 5% (or less) of the speakers are female.  If anyone has suggestions on how to get more women involved in speaking, I'd love to hear about them.

Teaching a class!

I was lucky enough to get to tape a show last night for DotNetRocks! (the Internet .NET radio talk show) with Carl Franklin and Mark Dunn.  We talked about a lot of datagrid stuff, and some stuff about me, and I mentioned how I was interested in doing training, which is part of the reason I want to get my certifications up to date. 

Anyway, after the show we talked for a while longer, and Carl offered to let me teach a joint class with Mark Dunn on ASP.NET!  So, I'm thrilled to announce our new class, “ASP.NET Master Class”.  We're going to do the first two classes in January, in Connecticut and Atlanta, then who knows from there.  So if you know anyone who's interested in a 5 day, hands-on ASP.NET class, please pass on the word about this class.

Certification Book Recommendation

It looks like Mike Gundleroy posted a comment on my blog from yesterday about Certifications, which I thought was really cool because I used his book to prepare for the ASP.NET exam.  For those who are doing these exams, I highly recommend taking a look at Mike's book:

It covered everything in the exam prep guidelines, and really filled in some gaps for me.

Certification Whine

Every couple of years it hits me:  the certification bug.  I got my MCSD (VB 6) in 2000/2001, and now I'm feeling the urge to update it for VB.NET.  I have mixed feelings about the value of certifications, but I have to admit, I just like taking the tests.

I'm kind of bummed about 2 things since I was certifying a couple of years ago:

1) They don't give scores any more, just Pass/Fail.  I'd really liked to know if I failed by one question or by twenty, and the same goes for passing exams, I'd like to know if I just scraped by or what.

2) They've raised the prices from $100 USD per exam to $125 USD per exam.  Also the VB 6 MCSD was 4 exams ($400), and the .NET MCSD is 5 exams ($625).  Grrrr.

I tried to take the ASP.NET exam during Tech Ed, where VUE was offering the exams at a discounted rate, but I arrived about an hour and a half before the "closing time" on the last day, and they wouldn't seat me for the exam, even though I've never spent more than an hour on any of the MS exams.  Grrrr.

I also hear that some of my fellow MVPs have been able to get free exam vouchers from their MVP leads, but I haven't had any luck in doing that either.

<still whining>Ok, so now I'm off to spend $625 on a certification that doesn't really hold that much value in the market place.</still whining>

New MetaBuilders custom control: DualList

DonXML on Developer PR

Put your name in your blog title.

Robert McLaws says, "Put your name in your blog title."  He mentions it from the exposure point of view, but I'd also like to see it as a user, I sometimes forget whose blog I'm reading, and sometimes their blog home gives no real indication :)

Updated:  My actual "name" wasn't in mine either, so I've added it.  (You mean "Datagrid Girl" isn't your actual name?)

Frans Bouma on source control

Spending some time at Microsoft

I spent some time at Microsoft this week, and I must say that I just continue to be impressed with them.  I mean obviously the technology they come up with for us web developers is very, very cool, but more than that, their people and their entire culture is very impressive.  At a place with such incredible talent and knowledge, you would expect to see some egos or arrogance (I've seen much bigger egos for far less substance at other places).  But this group (at least in my limited exposure) just doesn't have any of that.  (I'm sure it must appear in some form at times and places that we don't see, but it's clearly not the prevailing culture).

Everyone just seems to be focused on the *products*, and that is where their pride lies.  Everything is focused on quality, and it is the products that they brag about (not their own individual accomplishments as is so often the case in technology).  I'm not saying that Microsoft products are perfect, but it does really seem that they are trying to make their products the absolute best that they can.  And if there's something you don't like about a product, rather than get defensive about it, they want to hear about it so that they can make improvements.  I like that.

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