Connect

I didn't blogged a lot recently. The main reason is my commitment to the community working on a usergroup built up.

It's really getting there now, and I will have an official opening of Ireland .Net Developers Alliance on the 3rd of November in MediaLab Europe in Dublin.

Last week was an exciting time spent mostly in Barcelona for the Microsoft Connect event, where I met a lot of interesting and smart people coming to exchange and discuss communities efforts in Europe and over.

Thanks to Lenn Pryor for an amazing session on Channel 9, which I hope to see more focus now on Europe initiatives.

One of the most awaited session was about CodeZone, the new community toy launched by Microsoft but initially started in Germany.

It seems this project now will go worldwide, and has raised already some concerns by different community leaders, including myself.
I would like to see (this is my own opinion!) CodeZone staying an european project. The idea of worldwide with Microsoft usually finish with a 'Redmond centric location' and I am sure of one thing, european culture is somehow different than in the US (no anti americanism here :-)).

CodeZone should also be operated fully by the community. At the end of the session, I was anyway very positive on the project, but still confused on the implementation.

If you want to understand what is really CodeZone, check the Argentinian implementation in MSDN.(It's called PanoramaBox there)

Note: Codezone has nothing to do with MSDN. It's really a portal for the usergroup to pull their resources to a broader audience, including their local resources.

My usergroup will surely join Codezone, as long as each country is clearly represented.