Visited Atlanta User Group with Jeffrey Richter

They said I would never do it -- but I made it to my second user group meeting in the same year -- and in the same month at that!  And this was a great one since we had Jeffrey Richter visit us and talk about threading and reliability.  For those that don't know who Jeffrey is, suffice it to say that he designed some of the APIs in .NET that he discussed!  I've read a few things about how .NET v2.0 was hardened to support hosts like Sql Server, but this was way deeper -- and Jeffrey even made it entertaining.  We also got to see some of the APIs available to us so that we can also write reliable code -- SafeHandles and Constrained Execution Regions (CERs).

I also got to see all my buds from Roche again, as well as Kirk and Marcie (AKA GridViewGirl, formerly known as DataGridGirl), and Andrew (who doesn't live anywhere near Atlanta).  Of course all the usual suspects were there too (sorry I can't name everyone), but I also thought it was telling that the room was nowhere near full.  Sure it was more than half-full, maybe even two-thirds full, but it was not full -- and they were expecting a full house and even required pre-registration.  Are there really this few .NET "experts" in this very large city?  Many of us say its a small town because we've ran into each other many times over the years -- is this proof of this?

By the way, I'm going to be at my third, yes third, user group in another two weeks!  That's right, if you're interested in learning something about O/R Mapping then come out to the C# User's Group on March 6.
Published Wednesday, February 22, 2006 10:05 AM by PaulWilson

Comments

# re: Visited Atlanta User Group with Jeffrey Richter

I noticed that, too - I was very suprised that the room was not full.

His talk was amazing. There are very few people with his ability to take a complex issue and distill the concepts into a few clear lines of code.

He's a great presenter, too.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006 3:31 PM by Jerry Dennany

# re: Visited Atlanta User Group with Jeffrey Richter

I have been meaning to attend user group meeting; however, I have yet to make it and usually justify it by saying, "that traffic sure does suck." I think that there are a lot of .NET developers in Atlanta. They either don't know about the meetings or don't want to make the sacrifice.

Thursday, February 23, 2006 8:43 PM by Ron Cotton

# re: Visited Atlanta User Group with Jeffrey Richter

I've been struggling for going on my third year now to get the word out about all the free training resources in general and user groups in particular (focusing, of course, on Atlanta) and I have to admit some level of frustration. We seem to always see the same faces. I have no idea how to get the word out to people who don't know that we exist, but the ones who do know and don't come out...all I can say is that I hope they're reading books, blogs, and everything else online to keep themselves abreast. If you're doing this kind of work professionally, how can you have no interest in improving your skills and opening yourself up to new ideas.

I'll be the first to admit that User Group presentations aren't always fascinating, heck - they're not even always correct in the technology they present. However, I stand by them as one of the best ways to learn new things because people, the social animals they are, talk to each other about the new and cool stuff.

I can't imagine being successful in this field without following UGs, blogs, books, etc.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006 11:43 AM by Matt Ranlett

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