Sioux Falls .NET User Group

+1: The start of me, version 4.0

Kent Tegels — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:00:00 GMT

After a few months of silence, I am happy to say that I am returning to regular duty in the Microsoft Technical space. The last eight months have been very difficult ones between health issues and the economy. However, I feel like now is the best time to start making a personal investment in community building again. Therefore, to that end, I am pleased to make the following announcements.

Working with the other leaders of The Sioux Falls .NET user group, I have taken on responsibility for getting The Sioux Falls chapter of the Professional Association for SQL Server up and going. As you know, SQL Server is just as much my passion as helping others learn and grow are. I am very excited about this opportunity. We will soon be announcing an organizational meeting for those of you interested in attending.

Second, as many of know, I had a great run with DevelopMentor as one of their SQL Server instructors. So when I read Ted Neward's post about the company, I felt sad.

In much the same way he does, I feel warmly about people like Dr. Sumida and the Niels Berglund. Indeed, I remember my night with "Scary Ron" and agree -- it had a lot impact on me! So much of what Ted has to say resonates deeply with me -- especially the bits about what it meant to be part of that culture. Honestly, that is what I found to be so great about being there.

Sadly, the economic reality of 2009 meant that I could not continue to be part of DM going forward. While there has been a lot of back-and-forth DM's economic future today , there is no doubt in my mind that they will continue to be successful thanks to the hard work their instructors and back office staff.

Still, I love to learn and share what I have learned with others. That is why, today, I am pleased to announce that I have joined the Technical Staff of PluralSight. Again, I feel blessed to be working with "the best of the best" folks like Fritz Onion, Dan Sullivan and many others. This is also a great fit for me since I can work on developing on-line delivered content, cutting down on travel while I work on getting practical experience and data for my Doctorate research. Of course, getting my health back the best it has been in years benefits too.

Last but far from least, I am happy to say that Joe Olson has let me know that I will be speaking at the Heartland Developer's Conference again this year. Of all of the conferences I have done, HDC is the most rewarding and important to me since it directly affects the developers in my community first. This year's talk will be very different for me: rather than doing a deep dive into some facet of the technology stack I will be talking about "how to (and not to) give a presentation."

Maybe a little of "Scary Kent" will finally come out. I'm +1 with that.

What is a successful User Group to you?

David Seruyange — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:03:00 GMT

In discussion yesterday, Brian, Kent and I skirted around the idea of what "success" would be for this user group. What's interesting was how each of us, while being passionate about the idea of having a local user group, had varying ideas of what would define "success." It's not that our ideas conflicted, it was more the emphasis which was put on all the different factors that will define the group. My personal idea of a successful user group has the following elements:

Community
A place where people are able to exchange ideas and grow from one another. We don't have to all be in agreement to grow - bring on all the "controversial" topics from whether stored procedures are useful to static vs dynamic languages to something as trivial as style and whether you put your curly braces on a new line - at the end of the day having good discussion and building friendships will be a big sign of success.

Content
It will be really important to have a steady diet of knowledgeable speakers and information sharing. Although getting along and having fun is good, I'm wary of a group that simply operates as a "club" where some people are "in" or "popular." I hope we can plumb the depths of whatever topic is at hand and be a great resource for those who participate to learn.

Swag
I'm hoping that as time passes we'll get better at getting swag for people who attend.

So that's a few of the things I think would make a good user group. How about you? Post in the forum!

What are you interested in these days?

David Seruyange — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:39:00 GMT

As we commence with planning this user group it will be important to get a feel for what people want to hear about; we'd be a failed group if we focused on topics that were too narrow or quirky for general interest. Left to my own devices I'm into some pretty esoteric things: Perl and other dynamic languages, compilers, code generation, and other things that usually don't make it past the enthusiast to regular life as a "business" developer.

From a more mainstream angle, here are some topics that I'd be interested in hearing about at our user group:

1. Dependency Injection and IoC

2. ASP.NET MVC and other .NET MVC platforms

3. Dynamic Languages in .NET (IronPython, IronRuby)

4. Visual Studio 2010

5. Blend

6. Silverlight/WPF Techniques

7. SCM (I dislike TFS and would prefer to hear about other products but anything on this topic would be interesting to me)

8. Functional Programming Techniques

9. Data modelling, Object Relational Mapping, and Entity Framework

10. Communication Frameworks (WCF etc... ) and methods (RPC / REST / etc... )

Some other places one could go to dig into what topics (and speakers!) we could pursue are conference schedules. For example, the TechEd Developer Track. There are a lot of other conferences to look for topics: CodeStock, CodeMash, and so on.

So what do you want to learn about? Post your answer in the forums: http://sfdnug.com/forums/p/7/8.aspx#8

Welcome to my Splendid Isolation

Kent Tegels — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:17:00 GMT

Hello to those of you who are new to my world, and welcome, again, to those of you following me here. My name is Kent Tegels. I am currently an adjunct Professor at Colorado Technical University here in Sioux Falls as well as student finishing up my Master of Science in Management. I have also been involved in the SQL Server and .NET communities since their inception. My passion is for learning and teaching, my areas of focus center around databases. Otherwise, I'm into food, wine, beer, music and gaming (both board and role).

My goals for this blog include:

Sharing information about the technologies I am interested in
Helping to create awareness of and interest in the Sioux Falls .NET users group as well as our partners and affiliates like the Heartland Developers Conference
Having fun, making friends and helping others achieve their personal best

You can also find me on Twitter and FaceBook as ktegels.

But why Splendid Isolation? As you may know, the musician Warren Zevon has had tremendous impact on my life. One my favorite songs of his is Splendid Isolation, so this name is really in homage to his work. And, in sense, I always used to think of Sioux Falls as my splendid isolation from the demands of being a travelling trainer. It was nice to come home to a place where I could just be me, not the talking head up on stage. That said, when David and Brian came to me with the desire and a plan to get a .NET users' group going in the Sioux Falls area, I just couldn't resist throwing myself in it. We are no longer isolated from one another as developers and database in this community. I think that is truly splendid.

For those of you who are familiar with another blog I once did that had this same name -- sorry, the content here will be nothing like that. That part of my writing has gone into its own splendid isolation indefinitely.

In the words of my favorite teacher: "Go. Do."

Endtroducing

David Seruyange — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:56:00 GMT

I call it an endtroduction because of two things: a reference to an artist that pegs my youthful salad days and also because it will be the last time I veer from programming topics into my personal life. You ought to know who writes this blog, however, so I’ll add that dimension especially since upon finding interesting things on blogs myself I always look for that introductory post to know more about the writer.

I’ve been writing software since just before the “dot com” era, beginning my web applications on platforms like ASP and desktop applications with Visual Basic. Over the years although I’ve tinkered in other environments, most of my living has been made from Microsoft development tools. My first truly object oriented language was Java and for a few years I worked with the web application side of the Java world: Servlets, JSP and java application servers. I’ve been working with the .NET Framework since the first beta releases from Microsoft. It doesn’t feel like it, but it’s been a while.

Aside from the stalwarts of McBusiness I’ve always had an interest in other languages and tools. An old college friend of mine inspired me towards Perl as programming language and culture so for a long time I was a wallflower in that world. I still love Perl and will always return to it as my first multipurpose dynamic language. At my first TechEd I developed an interest in dynamic languages that cooperate with Microsoft’s .NET platform and for the single reason it was ready for public exploit before IronRuby, IronPython is my language of choice for Microsoft Dynamic Language Runtime.

I'm writing this blog as a journal of trying to get the Sioux Falls.NET User Group going. I and my cohorts have hatched a plan to get people from the area together to learn and grow in our understanding of software development with the Microsoft technologies as our backdrop.

I’ve lived many places in my short life – I’m a Ugandan by birth but spent most of my childhood in one of three places:
Nairobi, Kenya
San Bernardino, California
Portland, Oregon

I remember Nairobi best and loved Portland the most.

As an adult I’ve lived in southern California and South Dakota. I’ll never leave the Californian in me behind but for the foreseeable future, Sioux Falls will be home.

Thanks for stopping by. If you’re in South Dakota I hope to see you at one of our meetings.