Dan Rigsby - Coding Up Style

Live blogging this event, expect updates throughout the day.  Pictures will be available in a day or two after the event.

I made it out to Grand Rapids, MI around 8am today to attend the West Michigan Day of .Net (WMDoDN). It was a 5 hour drive from Indianapolis.  However, I spent the night with my In-Laws in Ft. Wayne which cut the trip this morning down to only 3 hours.  Much like with the Central Ohio Day of Dot Net there hasn’t been much representation of Indianapolis in Michigan thus far either.  It seems if you are in a different Microsoft district, you either don’t know much about what is going in other districts, or are afraid the break the barrier.  I have met with a number of people know from Ohio and Michigan, and we are hoping to change that over time. I have another session over Wcf up here, and again no one seems to know any other speakers from Indiana.  I ran into a few familiar faces from other events and meet a few new people(Wally McClure, Bruce Abernathy, Dan Hibbitts, Chris Woodruff, Amanda Laucher,  Steven Harman, Tim Wingfield, James Bender, Jay Wren, Josh Holmes, Jeff McWherter, Dave Redding, Joe Wirtley, Dan Hounshell, Joel Ross, Jennifer Marsman, Patrick Foley, etc).

I liked the layout of the event.  The 4 rooms, but the were a little bit spread out.  I saw a number of people get lost between rooms.  However the amount of space was very refreshing.  There were a few “break out” areas and there was a dedicated speaking room.  The vendors and sponsors were spread out throughout the hallways which was good.  Many times attendees try to avoid the “sponsor” corner, which is unfortunate for everyone.  The sponsors make these events possible and really do have good things to say.

Soft Skills - They’re not just for humans anymore

I am trying to attend as many sessions as I can and learn as much as I can while I am here.  I started the day attending Josh Holmes session on Soft Skills.  I had seen Brian Prince’s presentation before and wanted to watch Josh’s perspective on it.  Josh got thrown this session at the last minute and piggy-backed on Brian’s slide deck.  However, he brought his own unique perspective to each of the topics:

• Mentoring: Always have a mentor.  In fact get 3+. Josh attended the toastmaster’s club to find speaking mentors
• Manage your Career: You are your business.  Your employer just happens to be the person paying you to do your job right now.
• Creativity: Like myself Josh doesn’t have a CS degree and it does give us a creative edge because we think outside of the box.  This is true for everyone.  Stay creative and think in other ways.  Keep a log or use something like OneNote or a notepad.
• Brain Storming: Josh asked the question, “If you have an infinite supply of bricks, how would you raise money for your user group, school, or church”.  The audience threw out some of the standard responses, but
• 3 Illegal Topics to Talk About: Sex, Politics, and Religion - don’t talk about these at work, just don’t do it, unless the setting is totally appropriate.
• Don’t Assume all People Above you are Idiots: Sometimes they aren’t the smartest people, but there is a reason they have their position.  They are bringing something to the table and at the very least have power and control.
• Communication Skills: Communicate like a human, not like an alien.  Know your audience: geek talk is ok only if all people are geeks.
• Know when to say “I don’t know”: It’s ok not to know everything, and if you give wrong answers, you lose all respect.  Don’t be an encyclopedia, be the index.
• Ask Open Ended Questions: If people just answer Yes/No you never really learn much
• Don’t Take Reactions Personally: People don’t always mean what you think.  Especially in things like emails.  Some people come off more rigid than others as well.
• Be an Active Listener: Don’t have distractions, ask smart questions, don’t multi-task in your head.  Take what a person says and rephrase it back to them, and if they can confirm that, then you can answer the question.  Also avoid filler words, enjoy the silence.
• Take Notes: Notes don’t have to be a distraction, but write down things as much as you can.
• Tape Yourself: learn to find the filler words in your presentations and how you can improve yourself.
• Avoid Bad Language:  There is no need for it.
• Integrity & Honesty:  always tell the truth and remember that its hard to get respect back.
• Everything you know today will be obsolete in 2 years: which is true from a technology standpoint, but soft skills will always be with you.  So eat like a bird and poop like an elephant.

Josh ran out of time during the presentation, but that’s ok.  Its unfortunate that some of the most important topics are at the end of the slide deck, but it’s better to get a few points across well rather than just throwing out a mess of information sometimes.  A presentation like this is more training rather than a survey of some technology.

Overall, I would say Josh did just as well with the presentation as Brian did.  Brian overall probably had the better pitch of the ideas, but that is understandable since he put together the slide deck.

I did enjoy watching Josh after reading a couple of his latest posts: Words as Filler when Public Speaking and Public speaking and movement onstage.  You could actually see the 2 points on the floor that Josh positioned himself as “home” and “away”.  I didn’t go as far as to try to count his “filler words”, but I either didn’t notice many or at the very least they weren’t a distraction.

You can download the Soft Skills presentation here: http://cinnug.org/files/folders/cododn2008/entry1045.aspx

How to Architect Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

I went ahead and stayed for Josh Holmes’s second session. Josh is a good speaker and potential “mentor” for me, so I wanted to learn all I can.  I always feel awkward talking to Josh in person sometimes though.  The session was packed.  I think I only saw 3 empty seats which brought the audience total up to 60+.

What is a Rich Internet Application?  Its all about context.  The challenge in an RIA is to not make things more difficult by adding some flash.  RIA is web application that has the attempt to bring features and functionality of a traditional desktop application to the web.  There is some overlap between desktop and web, but the differences are killer such as: lack of state on web, non-text layout on desktop, business logic in UI on desktop, limited runtime on web, the nasty back button on the web, etc.

“The Inmates are Running the Asylum” and “About Face” by Alan Cooper bring out the idea of treating the user of your application as “God”.  If “God” says close the application, are you going to ask “Are you sure”?  The reality is that we treat our users as morons.  You need to know when to trust your users, put the user first, and know when to help them.  A big anti-pattern that we often get into is making our SOA layer look like our pure CRUD operations.  Instead we want to think about it more from an end user perceptive.

“Hype” is often very misleading.  Sometimes a manager will say something like, “We need a better web UI.  Let make it more Web 2.0 or Ajaxy”.  The problem is that you want what is best for the user and that shouldn’t mean attaching words and labels to it.

The C# Variety Show

The yield statement as compared to beer: If you ask your wife to get you beer, and she brings you a 6-pack, that would suck to have the entire 6-pack dropped in you lap.  Instead you would want them one at a time.  Yield allows you to get a item one at a time and consume them as needed.

Operator overloading: Barely class, Hops class, Water class, overload the plus operator to add them together to create beer.

Unfortunately, I only attended these 3 sessions.  I had some last minute testing to do of my presentation and spent some time talking in the speaker room.  My session went pretty well.  I had a packed room which was probably around 40-50 people. I felt I was a bit dry, but I did have a lot good questions and comments.  I only had two people doze off, which actually isn’t that bad for a session that late in the day.  I didn’t have any presentation glitches, but I really need to add more images and “real world” examples to my slides.