Paul Litwin's Blog

What Could Easily Be Your Most Rewarding Weekend in 2012

2012-09-18T04:45:00Z

How many times have you thought to yourself that you want to help those less fortunate than yourself but you just can't seem to get past the inertia to get involved. What do I do? Will my skills be useful to any charities? Is it a big commitment? What if I can't stand it; will I be stuck having to work on it for the rest of my life? Maybe it's just easier to do nothing...

Well, what if I told you that you can do something for a very worthy cause all within the confines of a single weekend in October and that's it. Period. No further commitment.

That's the idea behind Seattle GiveCamp. Nothing to do before the weekend begins on Friday, October 19 and nothing to do after it all ends two days later on Sunday, October 21. But the two days in between Friday and Sunday could easily be the most rewarding weekend of the year! I know it was for me last year when I led Seattle GiveCamp 2011.

Why GiveCamp?

So why Seattle GiveCamp? What goes on there? It's pretty simple: Seattle GiveCamp is a weekend where a number of worthy non-profits ask us to help them with a software project that can be accomplished in a weekend. Things like putting together a new website, automating some aspect of the organization's fundraising, moving data from point a to point b, creating a mobile version of their website, or hooking their organization up to social media. Charities like FareStart, Plumbers without Borders, Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute, EarthCorps, Hearing, Speech, and Deafness Center, and Southwest Youth and Family Services to name just a few of the likely organizations we will help this year.

So that's the first (needy) half of the Seattle GiveCamp story. The other half is where you come in -- filling that need with a little software genius. Those volunteers coming to Seattle GiveCamp will get to hear about the projects on Friday night and then form teams of software gurus, programmers, designers, program managers, website wonks, and other software professionals to solve the problems brought to us by the non-profits. Any software experience is appreciated, whether that be C#, Java, Ruby, Android, iOS, Windows 8, WordPress, Facebook, or some other expertise. And all skill levels are welcome, everyone from the beginner to seasoned professional are needed. If you know how to contribute to a software project, we can use you.

And even if you don't consider yourself a techie, we can use you in some supporting position checking people in, serving food and beverages, etc. The important point is that we need you to help make magic during the Oct 19-21 weekend.

Your Call to Action!

Your call to action is simple: Visit the Seattle GiveCamp website. Read some more about this amazing weekend and then click on the Volunteer link to commit to that single weekend in October. You won't regret it.

Google Chrome Kills Excel DDE

2012-04-20T21:03:00Z

As part of my job at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, I work with SAS, a popular statistical software package. Well, like many real programs that still exist today, SAS uses Microsoft's ancient DDE protocol to allow one to automate Excel and send data to excel. SAS and Excel actually make a great statistical reporting duet that we use often here.

Anyway, I currently maintain a set of SAS scripts that manipulate and analyze the data via SAS, open a report template, export that data to a Excel via DDE, and then save the report to a folder. These scripts, which were originally developed by others, have been working for years and save us a lot of time, obviating the need to manually cut and paste statistics from SAS output to Excel files. (For those who use SAS, here is a great whitepaper on using SAS, DDE, and Excel.)

Anyway, I don't use these scripts as often anymore but needed to a month ago and damn they wouldn't work. Today, I went to use them again, and SAS and Excel freeze and require me to kill the SAS process. So I spent half the day fiddling around trying to make the damn thing work, constantly simplifying the problem but without success. Then, I ran across this post using Google that implicates a recent (sometime in 2011) update of the Google Chrome browser.

So if Chrome (my default browser of late) is running when I try to run the SAS script, the DDE part of the script fails hard and SAS locks up. But if I close all instances of Chrome before I run the script, all is well.

Hoping this gets fixed soon, but in the mean time, I know now to kill Chrome prior to using SAS or any other program that uses DDE.

Call for Abstracts for Fall 2012 Las Vegas Microsoft.ASP.NET Connections -- DEADLINE April 3

2012-03-13T04:44:00Z

Dear Colleague,

We would like to extend you an invitation to submit abstracts for consideration to speak at the Fall 2012 Microsoft ASP.NET Connections conference (part of DevConnections) in Las Vegas, October 29-Nov 1, 2012.

The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, April 3, 2012.
For submitting sessions, please use this URL: http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Please keep the abstracts under 200 words each and in one paragraph. No bulleted items and line breaks, and please use a spell-checker. Do not email abstracts, you need to use the web-based tool to submit them. Please submit at least 3 abstracts, but it would help your chances of being selected if you submitted 5 or more abstracts. Also, you are encouraged to suggest all-day pre or post conference workshops as well. We need to finalize the conference content and the tracks layout in just a few weeks, so we need your abstracts no later April 3rd! No exceptions will be granted on late submissions!

NOTE: At the above URL, you will note there are several other co-located conferences, including HTML 5 Connections, Visual Studio Connection, etc. Feel free to submit abstracts to multiple shows.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
* ASP.NET WebForms
* jQuery
* ASP.NET MVC
* Single Page ASP.NET Apps
* Web API
* Data access in ASP.NET (Entity Framework, etc.)
* Orchard
* Web Matrix
* Anything else related to ASP.NET
* Agile Development and other talks about process and professional development

Please realize that while we want a lot of the new and the cool, it's also okay to propose sessions on the more mundane "real world" stuff as it pertains to ASP.NET.
What you will get if selected:
* $500 per delivered talk.
* Compensation for full-day workshops ranges from $500 for 1-20 attendees to $2500 for 200+ attendees.
* Coach airfare and hotel stay paid by the conference.
* Free admission to all of the co-located conferences
* Speaker party
* The adoration of attendees
* etc.

To repeat: the deadline for submissions is Tuesday, April 3, 2012.
And the URL once again is: http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Your continued support of Microsoft ASP.NET Connections and the other DevConnections conferences is appreciated.

Good luck and thank you,
Paul Litwin
Microsoft ASP.NET Connections Conference Chair

My Video Plugging Visual Studio 2010

2011-11-03T23:29:00Z

A few months ago I got an email asking me if I was available to talk about on camera what I liked about Visual Studio 2010 and how it made me more productive. I said sure and a week or so later spent a few hours at the Microsoft video studio at Redmond recording a video. I only spent a few minutes beforehand considering what I was going to say and frankly I thought it came out pretty well with me espousing some great new features without sounding like a total Microsoft rah-rah fan boy.

In case you missed it, my video was one of three that can be seen at Visual Studio More Time for What You Love (or The Day I Went Home Early) page on microsoft.com.

Call for Abstracts for Spring 2012 Microsoft ASP.NET Connections

2011-10-12T03:23:00Z

Dear Colleague,

We would like to extend you an invitation to submit abstracts for consideration to speak at the Spring 2012 Microsoft ASP.NET Connections conference (part of DevConnections) in Las Vegas, March 26-29, 2012.

The deadline for submissions is Monday, October 31, 2011.
For submitting sessions, please use this URL: http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Please keep the abstracts under 200 words each and in one paragraph. No bulleted items and line breaks, and please use a spell-checker. Do not email abstracts, you need to use the web-based tool to submit them. Please submit at least 3 abstracts, but it would help your chances of being selected if you submitted 5 or more abstracts. Also, you are encouraged to suggest all-day pre or post conference workshops as well. We need to finalize the conference content and the tracks layout in just a few weeks, so we need your abstracts no later than Haloween. Boo! No exceptions will be granted on late submissions!

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
* ASP.NET WebForms
* ASP.NET AJAX
* ASP.NET MVC
* Data access in ASP.NET
* Orchard
* Web Matrix
* Anything else related to ASP.NET
* Agile Development and other talks about process and professional development

Please realize that while we want a lot of the new and the cool, it's also okay to propose sessions on the more mundane "real world" stuff as it pertains to ASP.NET.

What you will get if selected:
* $500 per regular conference talk.
* Compensation for full-day workshops ranges from $500 for 1-20 attendees to $2500 for 200+ attendees.
* Coach airfare and hotel stay paid by the conference.
* Free admission to all of the co-located conferences
* Speaker party
* The adoration of attendees
* etc.

To repeat: the deadline for submissions is Monday, October 31, 2011.
And the URL once again is: http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Your continued support of Microsoft ASP.NET Connections and the other DevConnections conferences is appreciated.

Good luck and thank you,
Paul Litwin
Microsoft ASP.NET Connections Conference Chair

Give Back at Give Camp, Oct 21-23!

2011-08-30T22:31:00Z

Let's be frank...Most of us developers have it pretty good. We happen to have hung our hats on an industry that has plenty of work, even in the midst of a protracted recession. (Okay, this might not be true for every developer but as a general rule, employment for software professionals is better than many other sectors. If you are currently unemployed, I wish you the best in locating a job.)

We possess unique and valuable skills that would be valuable to charitable organizations if they just could afford to hire us.

Now woudn't it be nice if there was a low-barrier, low-pain, short-term-commitment way to hook up worthy non-profits with software professionals to crank out a few apps in a short amount of concentrated time? Well there is and it's called GiveCamp!

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, project managers, designers, database administrators, and other software professionals donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. The next National GiveCamp is being held October 21-23 in 20+ cities.

I am leading the Seattle instance of GiveCamp. If you are in the Seattle area (or close enough to drive to Seattle) and are a software professional, we'd love to have your help in helping a great bunch of charities. You can volunteer here. (BTW, we need both technical and non-technical volunteers.)

[And if you are part of a charity (or know a worthy charity) that might be interested in applying for help at Seattle GiveCamp, you can submit an application here. But hurry so you can get your app in by our deadline (first deadline is Sept 15; last deadline is Oct 7).]

And if you are not in the Seattle area, but still want to help, please check out the National GiveCamp site where you can find the closest GiveCamp with which to hook up (charities can go here too to find an event in your locale).

Note that your volunteer committment is only for 1-3 days. That's it. GiveCamp is not about supporting the apps you work on for life. (Of course, if you want to make a longer-term committment, I'm sure the charities will be happy to sign you up outside of the event--but that's not what GiveCamp is about.)

With your help, we can make National GiveCamp a success that we can all be proud of! Thank you.

Make the Move to MVC at DevConnections, Oct 31-Nov 3 in Las Vegas

2011-08-30T22:09:00Z

I will be presenting three sessions at Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, one of the conferences that is part of DevConnections. Two of my talks are especially targeted at ASP.NET Web Forms developers who are in the process of learning or coming up to speed with ASP.NET MVC.

On Wednesday, November 2nd at 11:30 AM I will be delivering ASP.NET MVC 3 in 75 Minutes. This talk is especially suited for MVC neophytes. Check out the abstract...

Trying to come up to ASP.NET MVC in a hurry? The session will begin with a brief introduction to ASP.NET MVC 3. During the remainder of the session, Paul will present a series of step-by-step demos, building a data-driven ASP.NET application utilizing the Razor View Engine, LINQ, and the Entity Framework. The demos will cover creation of a data model with Entity Framework 4.1, the population of select controls, the incorporation of input validation, unobtrusive JavaScript, jQuery, remote validation, and more.

Then at 3:45 PM that same day I will be delivering another interesting session entitled Lightning Development with MVC Scaffolding. Here's the session abstract....

Steve Sanderson and Microsoft have created an amazing Nuget package called MVC Scaffolding. This package with a very unasuming name is packed with features to help you develop ASP.NET MVC applications rapidly. This session will get you started using MVC Scaffolding with a series of demos that illustrate the scaffolding controllers, views, data models, tests, and lots more. During this session, you’ll learn how to scaffold various parts of your MVC apps, change scaffolding defaults, and even modify the scaffolding templates used by MVC Scaffolding.

During this talk I will show you how to use MVC Scaffolding for both CodeFirst and DatabaseFirst development. If you are interested in the latter, see my blog post on this topic.

Not ready to make the jump to ASP.NET MVC? I will also be presenting a Web Forms talk as well: What's So Funny About Peach, Love, and Server Controls? It's a light-hearted title, but the topic is nonetheless very important. I'll be giving this talk on Thursday, November 3 at 9:30 AM. Here's the abstract...

Server controls are both the good news and bad news for Web Forms developers. They can be quite good because their rich event model makes things so easy. But they can also be very bad once you start pushing their inconsistent programming model. In this session, Paul will explore in depth the "out-of-the-box" data-bound server control event model, make sense of the programming model, and show you how to maximize your use of the data controls while minimizing your pain.

Of course these are just my talks. There are lots of other talks on MVC and Web Forms at varying levels. Plus lots of talks on WPF, Silverlight, SQL Server, Windows Phone 7, HTML 5, Exchange, and Windows.

Hope to see you there!

Use MVC Scaffolding in Database First Scenarios

2011-08-11T17:00:00Z

Steve Sanderson's MVC Scaffolding NuGet package is awesome and goes far beyond the very good scaffolding available from the Add Controller dialog in Visual Studio 2010 (after installing the MVC 3 Tools Update).

But a shortcoming of MVC Scaffolding is that, out of the box, it works only in Code First mode. However, with a little finagling you can get it work in a database first scenario. I'm sure there are several different ways to do this but here is what I did that was pretty easy. This assumes the database schema has already been created using SQL Server.

Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model to the Models folder of your ASP.NET MVC 3 application.
Select Generate from database from wizard and generate the entity model for your database objects.
Right-click on the .edmx model file and select Add Code Generation Item... from the pop-up menu.
Under Code tab of dialog, select ADO.NET DbContext Generator. This changes the EF model to use DbContext instead of ObjectContext and creates a DbContext class for the database, by default, with the name databaseEntities. For example, I have a database named BPath. So for this database, EF creates a DBContext class named BPathEntities. This step is key because it will make the database-first classes you generate compatible with the code-first classes that MVC Scaffolding generates later.
Now use MVC Scaffolding to generate the controllers for your app utilizing the entity classes that the DbContext generator generated for you in step #4, which, by default, will have the same name as the tables/views from your database that you selected in step #2.
For example, in my database I have a table named Participant so I would enter
Scaffold Controller Participant -force -repository
into the Package Manager Console to scaffold a controller and views for the Participant entity from the model. The -force option overwrites any existing items and -repository creates repository classes for the entity.
Now open the repository class that MVC Scaffolding created. It will be named, by default entityRepository. So in my example, I would open ParticipantRepository in the code editor in Visual Studio.
Now you will note that MVC Scaffolding created a different DbContext for itself named, by default, projectnameContext that it references in the ParticipantRepository class.
Change the context statement so it now uses instead your db-first context instead of MVC scaffolding's code-first context.

In my example, I have commented out the code-first context named BPathMVCContext and replaced it with the database-first context named BPathEntities:

Repeat the process for any additional controllers and you are done. Hope this helps.

Getting & Staying Current with Visual Studio 2010 for Web Developers

2011-06-24T21:47:00Z

I don't know about you, but I find it kind of crazy at times figuring out if I have the latest of everything there is for the Visual Studio 2010 developer from Microsoft. (This does not include any third-party components, just recommended updates from Microsoft.) And the be honest, the msn.microsoft.com and asp.net sites are not that helpful in figuring this out.

In an effort to help, I have enumerated here what the latest VS 2010 setup should include, complete with download links. When you install everything here, you will be able to develop ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 3 applications and web sites in addition to the other stuff your version of Visual Studio supports (e.g., Silverlight, WPF, etc.). These downloads will also include NuGet and the Entity Framework 4.1, so there is no need to download this software separately.

Visual Studio 2010.
First of all, you need to purchase and install Visual Studio 2010 itself. For the free Express version, you can download it from Visual Web Developer 2010 Express
Visual Studio Service Pack 1 (released Spring 2011).
This is a must-have download that fixes a bunch of bugs and a number of enhancements too including preliminary support for HTML5 and CSS3. See #4 below for better support of these web technologies. Download and install from VS 2010 SP1 download page. You can find details on the features of the service pack here.
ASP.NET MVC3 Tools Update (released Spring 2011)
If you are using ASP.NET MVC 3, then you should also download install this update for Visual Studio from ASP.NET MVC3 Tools Update download page. This update improves Visual Studio's support for MVC 3, including better scaffolding, NuGet, Entity Framework 4.1, and more. A good overview of the updates can be found in Phil Haack's blog post.
Entity Framework 4.1 (update released July 2011)
Not in the original post but I realized that a project I created would not work on a co-worker's workstation until they had installed EF 4.1, not just the nuget package. Download from EF 4.1- Update 1 download page. This is the link to the update of the original EF 4.1 download that was released in the Spring of 2011.
Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1 (released June 2011)
This is an update to VS 2010 SP1 that "brings VS 2010 intellisense & validation as close to W3C specification as we could get via means of an extension". Download and install from Web Standards Update download page. A good description of the changes can be found in the Visual Web Developer Team blog post.
Latest version of NuGet (currently--as of Oct 31, 2012--at version 2.1)
Update to NuGet package manager is required for some packages. Download and install NuGet

Note: I don't control these download pages, so it is possible they will change. If so, I will do my best to update these links. Post last updated on October 31, 2012.

Call for Abstracts Now Open for Fall Microsoft ASP.NET Connections (Closes Apr 22)

2011-04-10T02:58:00Z

Dear Colleague,

We would like to extend you an invitation to submit abstracts for consideration to speak at the Fall 2011 Microsoft ASP.NET Connections conference (part of DevConnections) in Las Vegas, October 31- Nov 3, 2011.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, April 22, 2011.
For submitting sessions, please use this URL: http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Please keep the abstracts under 200 words each and in one paragraph. No bulleted items and line breaks, and please use a spell-checker. Do not email abstracts, you need to use the web-based tool to submit them. Please submit at least 3 abstracts, but it would help your chances of being selected if you submitted 5 or more abstracts. Also, you are encouraged to suggest all-day pre or post conference workshops as well. We need to finalize the conference content and the tracks layout in just a few short weeks, so we need your abstracts by April 22nd. No exceptions will be granted on late submissions!

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
* ASP.NET WebForms
* ASP.NET AJAX
* ASP.NET MVC
* Data access in ASP.NET
* Orchard
* Web Matrix
* Anything else related to ASP.NET
* Agile Development and other talks about process and professional development

Please realize that while we want a lot of the new and the cool, it's also okay to propose sessions on the more mundane "real world" stuff as it pertains to ASP.NET. However, we want new abstracts this time around.

What you will get if selected:
* $500 per regular conference talk.
* Compensation for full-day workshops ranges from $500 for 1-20 attendees to $2500 for 200+ attendees.
* Coach airfare and hotel stay paid by the conference.
* Free admission to all of the co-located conferences
* Speaker party
* The adoration of attendees
* etc.

To repeat: the deadline for submissions is Friday, April 22, 2011.
And the URL once again is: http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Your continued support of Microsoft ASP.NET Connections and the other DevConnections conferences is appreciated.

Good luck and thank you,
Paul Litwin
Microsoft ASP.NET Conference Chair

My Session Slides & Samples from DevConnections Orlando 2011 Talks

2011-03-29T21:36:36Z

I just uploaded my slides and samples for my 4 talks from DevConnections Orlando.

This includes code & slides for:

AMV201: A WebForms Programmer’s First ASP.NET MVC 3 Application
This session is for any Web Forms programmer looking to get his or her head around ASP.NET MVC. The session will begin with a brief introduction ASP.NET MVC 3. During the remainder of the session, Paul will present a series of step-by-step demos, building a data-driven ASP.NET application utilizing the Razor View Engine, LINQ, and the Entity Framework. The demos will cover the population of select controls, and the incorporation of input validation, unobtrusive JavaScript, jQuery, dependency injection, and testing.

SBI201: Creating Report Subscriptions in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
In this session, learn how to set up standard and data-driven subscriptions using Report Manager. We discuss creating file-share, email, and null subscriptions; and how to deal with potential issues with parameters and security. We also demonstrate a sophisticated Microsoft ASP.NET-based application that creates subscriptions by calling the SSRS Web Services API.

SBI303: Programming SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
In this session, you’ll learn how to programmatically manipulate SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) (and SSRS 2008 R2) and integrate SSRS into your ASP.NET, Windows Forms, and Silverlight applications by employing URL Access, Report Viewer controls, and the Reporting Services Web Services. Finally, you’ll learn how to extend reporting services by calling custom .NET assemblies from your SSRS reports.

and my Open Spaces talk…

Speaking at Conferences
Have you spoken at user groups or small gatherings but was wondering what it takes to break into conference speaking? Or maybe you've never spoken at all in front of an audience. Come listen to Microsoft ASP.NET Connections co-founder and conference chair Paul Litwin talk about how to go about finding conferences to speak at, how to improve your proposal acceptance chances, the do's and don'ts of conference speaking, and how to hone your speaking skills. Besides his conference chairing duties, Paul has spoken at DevConnections, TechEd, Comdex, and a number of user groups, code camps, and internal events.

Open Spaces Returns to DevConnections in Orlando, March 29

2011-03-11T04:37:00Z

Now, in its 14th year, DevConnections has grown from a small conference originally focusing on Microsoft Office to a blockbuster family of co-located conferences focused primarily on Microsoft Technologies. One of the great things about DevConnections is the breadth of technologies the conference covers. For example, at the upcoming event in Orlando (March 27-30), for a single registration fee, attendees can choose to attend sessions on ASP.NET, Visual Studio .NET, WPF, WCF, Silverlight, SharePoint, and SQL Server. That doesn't even count the more IT-focused Windows and Exchange sessions. Sessions are presented by seasoned professional presenters, both from Microsoft and third-party gurus who are experts at using these technologies.

In order to present at DevConnections, speakers need to have their abstract proposals accepted and believe me that the process is quite competitive. (If you are interested in receiving the next Call for Speakers notice, please sign up at DevConnections Abstracts site.) Third party speakers are paid a small honoraria for each talk they deliver, get to attend the conference for free, and the conference picks up their travel expenses. This process works great and produces top-notch content delivered by amazing speakers, still there is room for another type of speaking at DevConnections -- Open Spaces.

If you are not familiar with Open Spaces, it's a spontaneous organic meeting of minds where anyone can get up and talk on pretty much any topic. There's not a lot of rules and structure except that everyone who attends (both speaking and non-speaking attendees) gets to help decide on what talks will be heard. Speaking proposals can be made in advance by adding session proposals to the DevConnections Open Spaces Wiki, but they are not required to be made in advance. That would go against the spontaneous, organic nature of an Open Spaces event. The Open Spaces facilitator (probably me) will organize the session proposals on a whiteboard during the first 30 minutes of the event and we all quickly vote. Then we spend the next 90 minutes hearing lots of great Open Spaces sessions. We'll likely end up with twelve 30 minute sessions or eight 45 minute sessions, depending on the number of proposals and how fast we can vote. Our goal will be to have everyone with a reasonable idea for a session have a chance to present that session (unless we have way too many proposals). Speakers do not have to have any prior speaking experience; all you need to speak is an idea for a session and the willingness to lead or facilitate that session.

If you are interested in learning more about Open Spaces, in general, also know as Open Space Technology, you might want to check out this Wikipedia article on the subject. DevConnections Open Spaces is loosely-based on the OST concept due primarily to the compressed amount of time we have (many OST events last several days), but it generally follows in the spirit of OST.

One great thing about Open Spaces is that the talks can range from very professional cutting-edge sessions with slides and/or demos much like the "regular" DevConnections sessions, to panel discussions, audience brainstorming, Q&A sessions, or pretty much anything else that works for those in the room.

If you'd like to present at DevConnections Open Spaces, please visit the DevConnections Open Spaces Wiki where you can propose a talk in advance. Or just show up at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, March 29 at DevConnections. Of course, even if you don't plan to speak, please join us for what will be lively and engaging time. Oh, and thanks to the Microsoft MVP Program, we will be serving food and drink (most likely beer and pizza) there for free.

Couple of Very Cool Things to Do at the Upcoming Microsoft MVP Summit

2011-01-28T23:35:00Z

Over a thousand developers and IT professionals will be descending upon Bellevue and Redmond at the end of February for the 2011 MVP Global Summit.

If you are coming to town for the Summit, I want to suggest you get involved in doing some good while you are here. In this post, I outline two such options. I mean how often do you get to do charitable work? Well, we've made it easy for you.

GeekGive Northwest Harvest Food Bank Event. On Saturday, Feb 26, a bunch of us are getting together to help a local food bank package food. Microsoft is underwriting the event and paying all of the expenses for us to get from the downtown Belleveue hotels to the NW Harvest warehouse where we will be working. Microsoft is also paying for breakfast and lunch for all of us and a nice t-shirt for everyone who participates. All you have to do is sign up and show up. One issue with participating is that you may have to fly into Seattle early to participate and Microsoft, as generous as they are, cannot pay for the extra night(s) hotel stay. This event is open to everyone: both MVPs and non-MVPs.

[GeekGive, by the way, is a great idea that was made to happen by Steve Andrews. Suzanna Moran, Steve, and myself serve on the board of the group and are always looking for opportunities to do good at technical events.]
MVPs Giving Blood. Since the GeekGive event requires getting into town a little early, I wanted to put together some other charitable event that MVPs could participate in without having to fly in early. This is a very informal tweetup where we will gather the morning of Tuesday, March 1 (time to be determined). and walk 1/3 mile over to the Bellevue Puget Sound Blood Donor Center. If you've never given blood, this is a great way to try it out with some of your friends/associates. And if you are a regular blood donor, come join the fun. Do realize that the blood center does have some eligibility rules. You can check out a 2-page PDF FAQ on the rules plus what you can expect during the donation process here. The whole process should take about an hour. You can register your desire to participate at the twtvite registration page--but if for some reason your plans change, we won't hold you to it!

Oh, and if you're just looking for where all the parties are while in town, check out Joe Guadagno's cool website for a listing of all the MVP Summit Events, which includes the charitable events plus all the places to get free food and booze.

Regards,
Paul

A Few Lessons Learned While Attempting to Publish iPhone 4 Video to DVD

2010-12-06T00:47:00Z

Recently, my son and daughter appeared in a cute little Christmas play which I attended last week. I own a Kodak ZI8 which I forgot to grab for the performance but alas I had my new iPhone 4 which also recorded video so I decided to use it. I have to admit I am a real novice in the world of videos, DVD burning, encoding, and all that crap. Furthermore, I don't own any fancy video publishing software. At least nothing that didn't come with my Kodak camera or for free. This post is meant to educate other novices and help them to avoid the mistakes I made and learn from my limited successes.

Lesson #1 - Don't Record Video in Portrait Mode
When recording video on the iPhone (and I'm guessing on any phone or small form-factor video camera for that matter), use landscape mode (with the big side going left to right). Now I usually shoot photos in portrait mode and it's real easy to flip the orientation of a photo by right-clicking on the photo in Windows Explorer and choosing Rotate Clockwise. Well with videos--guess what--this isn't so easy. Plus if you plan on watching the video on a television, portrait videos will look lousy, even after flipping it.

Lesson #2 -- How to Flip a Video
So if you happen to record a video the wrong way (see lesson #1), you will need to flip it unless you want to rotate your head sideways while watching it. Now you'd think this was pretty simple, but it's not. I guess the video editor needs to literally flip every frame of the video and then you need to re-save the flipped video.I tried flipping the video using 4 different pieces of software:

Camtasia doesn't flip videos.
Microsoft's free Windows Live Movie Maker will do the job but it takes forever and then I didn't like the results. http://explore.live.com/windows-live-movie-maker
I downloaded some free video editing DVD Video Software Free Studio from http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/. This software feels cheap but appears to be spyware free. Regardless, the quality of the video was terrible when it was done.
ArcSoft MediaImpression, a version of which came for free with my Kodak camera, did the job and did it well (and faster than Windows Live Movie Maker). http://www.arcsoft.com/en-us/software_title.asp?ProductCode=AMI3

Lesson #3 -- How to Create a DVD That Will Play in a Television DVD Player
Okay, like I said I don't know much about producing videos. Here's what I found out in this regard:

While Camtasia has a great video editor, Camtasia wasn't of much help here because while it does a nice job producing videos for uploading or playing on a computer it doesn't create DVDs that play in a DVD player for televisons. OTOH, if you need to upload your video, Camtasia is a great product.
I didn't even try using the DVD Video Software Free Studio product since I was so unhappy with the quality of it's video flipping.
ArcSoft MediaImpression should be able to do the production but the Kodak Version (version 2.0) couldn't seem to locate my laptop's DVD burner which rendered the Produce DVD feature useless.
This time, Windows Live Movie Maker shined. It had no problem creating titles and transitions (which were also possible using Camtasia and MediaImpression) but most importantly it could burn a DVD with menus that I could then pop in my DVD player and play on the television.

So I was able to produce the final (flipped) video and all was well except that the above still can't fix the fact that I recorded the video in portait mode. Oh well, lesson learned...

Open Spaces at DevConnections Las Vegas on Nov 3rd at 7:30 PM

2010-10-21T20:23:00Z

I love speaking at conferences, in general, and DevConnections, in particular. I also love listening to presentations at user groups, code camps, and other conferences. This standard "highly structured" format with an expert speaker in the front of the room sharing his or her expertise and/or experience on a subject is invaluable and very often a great way to learn a topic. As a conference chair for over ten years, I also know thatconferences can only afford to bring in so many people to speak at a show. For example, DevConnections will spend several thousand dollars for each speaker at the upcoming conference in Las Vegas. DevConnectiosn pays for speaker hotel and travel expenses, speaker party, speaker shirts, speaker honorarium, and all the AV needs for the room. Plus, there is a lot of work behind the scenes creating the call for abstracts, sorting though speakers, and making the final decisions on who will speak. But even if you ignore the cost, there's only so many speaking slots we can have running at any one time during a show. Furthermore, since conferences require advanced planning and marketing, we have to nail down the topics pretty early--usually about 5-6 months prior to the show (with the exception of the talks by Microsoft which are finalized much later).

And because attendees pay so much to attend a show, conference organizers don't want to take risks on new, unseasoned speakers or on oddball topics. Attendees expect (and almost always receive) top notch talks by top notch speakers like Scott Allen, Ward Bell, Scott Guthrie, Julie Lerman, Dan Wahlin, Billy Hollis, Kimberly Tripp, John Papa, and other outstanding Microsoft and indepdendent speakers. Still, there are alternative approaches to sharing technical information at conferences that also can and do work. The Alt.net community in Seattle and other cities regularly sponsor community-based events that are much less structured than a typical highly organized and planned conference like DevConnections. Many of these alternative conferences such as Alt.net employ a methodology called Open Spaces that, according to wikipedia "...is most distinctive for its initial lack of an agenda, which sets the stage for the meeting's participants to create the agenda for themselves..."

Well it doesn't have to be an either/or decision. A year ago, we tried out an evening Open Spaces event that gave attendees as well as vendors and speakers a chance to speak on a topic they were passionate about. And it was well received! This year, we are set to do it again in Las Vegas. Thanks to the generous sponsorship by the Microsoft MVP Award Program, DevConnections is holding its second Open Spaces evening event at the upcoming DevConnections show in Las Vegas. So in addiiton to expert sessions on ASP.NET, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Visual Studio, WPF, WCF, EF, SQL Server, and SharePoint, you will have an additional opportunity to attend less structured sessions on new or emerging technologies, best practices, or passionate discussions by both expert and non-experts in the field. It's also an opportunity for you to stand up and host a session. And thanks to the Microsoft MVP Award Progam we will have food and drink at the Open Spaces event.

By the way, Open Spaces is a great way for new speakers to be heard. And you can bet that as conference chair, I will be using Open Spaces to look for potential speakers for upcoming DevConenctions shows. It's also a way for our invited conference speakers to explore new or emerging topics that didn't fit into the daytime conference agenda. All in all, I think it's a win-win for eveyone involved: structured and unstructured sessions all in one conference.

I've posted a wiki at DevConnections Open Spaces Wiki which people can use to post possible session topics for the event. So if you are already coming to the show (or considering registering), please come to the Open Spaces event and consider presenting on a topic you are passionate about. And use the wiki to suggest a session you would like to deliver, suggest a session you'd like someone else to deliver, or to view sessions that others have proposed. Of course, the final agenda will be decided at the start of the Open Spaces event on Nov 3rd so you by no means have to post them in advance on the wiki. It's just an option for those who like to plan ahead more than others.