WTF Next?

As you might’ve gathered from my last post, the MVP Summit has energized me and helped me solidify my understanding of the impact I can have as an MVP. This wasn’t the only way that the event personally affected me.

My freshman MVP Summit also brought a clear reality to how my hard work has a purpose as it fits into my career and my involvement in the community. Two years ago I was a complete .NET virgin and learning only as a result of personal motivation to be the best that I can.

Today I take the next step and start at a new position as a Development Consultant I at Sparkhound, a Baton Rouge native company that has been helping businesses remain competitive and efficient since 1998. I am looking forward to working with those who are much smarter and much more experienced than I am, and I am excited about how this will help me become more valuable to the community.

This being my freshman year as an MVP, I had a realization that I perhaps should be embarrassed hasn’t happened sooner. The realization comes much like the iconic M&Ms commercial where the M&Ms run into Santa and exclaim, “He does exist!” My personal realization arguably has a greater implication: Microsoft does listen. This is the most important lesson that I received this year attending the MVP Summit.

My hope is that I can convince you that we are empowered to make a difference. Instead of using “Man I hate how this works / doesn’t work!” as cooler conversation, we can use it as true interaction with Microsoft. We as customers to Microsoft need to stop asking the question “Will this work for me?” and instead ask “How can this work for me?”

There are three quick resources that the average developer has access to today that they can use to be heard by the product teams, and by no means should you think twice if you have a concern that you’d like a real response on.

MVPs
MVPs are members of your community who have a deep relationship with Microsoft and will have connections to their associated product group. Don’t think of them as just a resource for answers, but also as your ambassador for getting your experiences heard. You can find your local MVPs by browsing the directory at:

https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx

Evangelists
Evangelists are employees of Microsoft who work to foster and grow communities in their assigned region. They are first-class citizens of Microsoft and are often deeply involved with the product groups. As a result, they will be more than glad to direct your questions or concerns to those who can answer them most expertly. With that said, evangelists are also very busy people (who do amazing things for the community) and might not be able to get you that conversation as quickly as a local MVP. You can find your local evangelist at the following website:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb905078.aspx

Microsoft Connect
This is one of the resources that I haven’t used enough, but it cannot be understated. Connect is the starting point of the social conversation that happens between Microsoft and the community daily. Connect acts as a portal where you can provide new feedback as well as comment and rate the feedback provided by others. Power is in numbers when it comes to Connect, so the exposure that your feedback can get not only lets you know that you aren’t the only one who wants change, but also lets Microsoft know the same.

https://connect.microsoft.com

Grab the bits and be sure to submit feedback through Connect!

The Baton Rouge Architecture Group is a monthly, informal round-table lunch for developers within the Greater Baton Rouge area. It is open to developers of all skill levels.

This upcoming Tuesday Phillip Jackson will be starting us out talking on the Liskov Substitution Principle and we'll see where we go from there. Should be yet another great meeting. If you would like to come, please use the eventbrite link below to register so that we can get a rough estimate of the space needed.

We hope to see you there!

Where: Fox and Hound Restaurant. 5246 Corporate Blvd., Baton Rouge, LA 70808

When: February 2nd. 12 PM.

Registration: http://brag0210.eventbrite.com/

I’ll be participating in the Baton Rouge .NET User Group’s second Speaker Idol event and doing a presentation on the SOLID principles. This’ll be my first time speaking for the BRDNUG, so we’ll see how it goes. At the least, hopefully those attending will find the presentation entertaining.

You’ll find a link to my presentation included in this blog, please check it out and feel free to adapt from it if you find it useful. Keep in mind that this presentation is designed for 15-20 minutes.

Also I would love to hear any feedback, good or bad. I’ve got a lot of growing to do and the only way I’ll do it is through honest feedback.

Powerpoint:
http://www.filesavr.com/combattingfailure-principlesforoosuccess_1

PDF:
http://www.filesavr.com/combattingfailure-principlesforoosuccess

Event Information:
http://www.brdnug.org/events_view.aspx?eventid=37

We got a couple upcoming meetings for software developers in the Baton Rouge area that are going to be a great amount of fun and learning (what, together? Nahhh…)

BRDNUG Meeting: Tomorrow, Oct 21 2009

Brian Sullivan from the Shreveport area will be coming down to speak on NHibernate with Fluent NHibernate. Should be a great meeting, I’m very sadly missing it.

Agenda
5:45 pm - 6:15 pm:
General Introduction/Food and Drinks

6:15 pm - 7:15 pm:
Brian will speak on NHibernate with Fluent NHibernate

7:20 pm - until:
Open forum for questions

Raffle and Giveaways

• Office SharePoint Designer 2007
• Windows Vista Ultimate
• Several Books

http://www.brdnug.org/events_view.aspx?eventid=35

BRAG Lunch: November 3 2009

Mike Huguet will be starting us off on Repository and Unit of Work, and we’ll see where we go from there. This meeting is open for all aspiring or current software architects, so feel free to join us no matter what level.

http://brag110309.eventbrite.com/

.NET University has a variety of presentations available for download, including code examples and videos. Use the materials to learn or to present at your next DNUG meeting ;)

The presentations cover a variety of different topics, so if you’ve already got a presentation planned and you just want to compare, be sure to check’em out. All the popular topics like Silverlight, WPF, WCF, LINQ, and ASP.NET MVC are covered.

Instant presentations, just add presenter.

http://www.dotnet-u.com

If you are in the Baton Rouge area there is a new event for you to attend! Intended for aspiring and current software architects, the BRAG Lunch is a place for an informal gathering to talk about what works and doesn’t work in real life. Our first meeting is going to start off on the Service Locator pattern mediated by Lance Dunnehoo and we’ll see where we go from there!

I hope to see you guys there, and you can find out the granular details at our EventBrite page. If you plan on attending, please give us a message at the google group thread on the BRDNUG about the lunch.

Today I ran into this problem when setting up the SQL Server Management Tools for SQL Server 2005. Like any good little code slinger, I googled (if you are particular to Microsoft, you can read that as “binged”) to see who’s had the problem, because it’s no news that when you aren’t on the crest of the tech wave that someone else has had the same issue.

In particular, MSXML 6 would fail and the log would have a message similar to:

MSI (s) (40:58) [22:16:00:859]: MainEngineThread is returning 1605

Well, undoubtedly I found many other results for others who have had this issue, primarily those that have XP SP3. To get around this failure, you’ve got to install the tool available at the link below and then use it to remove any entry starting with MSXML 6. For me, I had two entries, one “parser” and one SP2. Afterwards, just start the install over again.

I think what made the experience frustrating for me is that the SQL Server 2005 Setup fails in too friendly of a way. I’m used to the brutal honesty of the NUnit GUI. Give me a big red bar to illustrate how bad I failed or get out.

For the uninstall tool:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

A couple resources about the problem itself:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlsetupandupgrade/thread/493b5a95-1af6-4ec1-aa24-92875e4497c0
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/conversation.aspx?messageid=33740907&threadid=33664744

Although not yet to the big project that I have coming up, I’ve had the opportunity to try out formal user stories for the first time for a project. Before this, I was using a method that mimicked Joel Spolsky’s painless functional specs. Most of this process I will maintain, except I’ve moved to the “As a (role) I want (something) so that (benefit).” user story format proposed by Mike Cohn in User Stories Applied.

I find that using this format really does help me 1) write from the user perspective, which is hard for a developer sometimes, 2) really think about the motivation for the feature and 3) keep the description concise. The details will need to be further fleshed out and explained in greater detail as the feature gets implemented, but this has been a quick route to a common ground understanding of what will be delivered.

The one problem I’ve had via this collaboration is that the first time around I assumed the reason for benefit and I was wrong. This might seem minor, but the truth is that the benefit to the user is the reason for their passion for that feature. I apologized and corrected this and have made a mental note. This was an assumption that I shouldn’t have made.