My talk at SQL Saturday just ended. My topic was CLR integration - Integrating CLR assemblies to support custom image creation and encompassing complex business logic in SQL server/SSRS.  I posted all the code and slides on Sky Drive. You can scroll down to that section or just follow this link: http://cid-2383900f69b808e0.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/SQL%20Saturday/SQLSaturday.zip

As always it was a pleasure to talk in front of my fellow developers.

--Sergey.

I will be speaking at the upcoming SQL Saturday in Atlanta on April 25, 2009. 

What is SQL Saturday?  It's a one day free training event for SQL Server professionals organized by a local user group. It takes a lot of work and a lot of volunteers, but it's also a lot of fun!  It is held at Microsoft's offices in Alpharetta, GA.

My topic is CLR integration - Integrating CLR assemblies to support custom image creation and encompassing complex business logic in SQL server/SSRS.

Here is the link to the event: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/eventhome.aspx?eventid=17

--Sergey

It is official now.   I will be speaking at the next Atlanta .NET Users Group (http://atldotnet.org/).  The topic is Introduction to Silverlight.  It has been a while since I got an opportunity to talk in front of Atlanta users group, and I am quite excited about it.

--Sergey

Yep, I broke down and joined the Twitter.

www.twitter.com/SergeyBarskiy

--Sergey

I had a ton of fun yesterday at Atlanta Code Camp.  I always enjoy hanging around fellow developers.  In this instance Magenic also had an impressive showing at the event.  Colin Whitlatch, James Ashley, Jason Rainwater , Whitney Weaver and I had presented at the code camp.  I would like to thank everyone who spent their Saturday at this happening, and particularly those who attended my session :-)

--Sergey

This year’s code camp is upon us.  I have volunteered to speak at this code camp.  My topic is “Building Silverlight Business Applications using CSLA.NET for Silverlight”.  Please check out the Code Camp web site for more details.  As always, I am excited to speak in front of my fellow coders.

I am posting my presentation at the SkyDrive.  Here is the link to sample project, or you can scroll down to SkyDrive area of my blog and follow that link.

http://cid-2383900f69b808e0.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/AtlantaCodeCamp2009/Rolodex.zip

--Sergey

I encountered one more aspect of collaboration, and I would like to elaborate on.  This involves communication with the user.  Here is how the story goes.  A designed lays out the UI.  Proposed UI is discussed  with the user, who subsequently approves the design.  At this point the UI is given to developer to work on.  Well, developer finds that the UI is not workable within the constraints of the development environment.  For example, UI design results in highly inefficient communication between UI layer and business layer or database layer.  Or, the sample UI lists a handful of items on the screen, but database has hundreds, and the full list does not even fit on the screen and looks unreadable.  So, what is the solution you ask?  Involve a developer in review process prior to demonstrating UI to the user.  I think this procedure should minimize the changes to UI after the user's sign-off.

Sergey

We now have a new site for Atlanta area .NET users' group.  The group's focus is more broad than just .NET.  It actually focuses on all Microsoft development technologies.   Here is new address: http://www.atldotnet.org/default.aspx.  There is also an RSS feed on the new site so that you can stay current with what is going on at the users group.

Sergey

Yesterday I went to my first SQL Server Users Group meeting in Atlanta.  There were about 50 people there, way more than I expected.  I went to see Whitney Weaver's, my colleague at Magenic, presentation on dynamic management views.  I enjoyed the presentation as well as overall environment of the users' group.  I am definitely planning to attend more of their meetings whenever I have a chance.

Yesterday I attended the first meeting of GGMUG.  There were about 30 or so people there, which is really more than I expected for the first meeting.  Both Microsoft developer evangelists in Atlanta, Glen and Doug, attended the meeting.  Doug presented on WCF.  There was one more presentation by Noah Subrin on WF.  Overall I was very pleased with how the first meeting turned out.

It is sometime hard to make it all the way to Alpharetta from Gwinnett to attend Atlanta .NET Users group.  It is much easier to stay in  Gwinnett.  Having said that, I will probably keep on trying to attend meetings at Microsoft headquarters anyway.

The first ever Magenic Technology Summit is being held on Friday June 20 in Downers Grove near Chicago, and yours truly is invited.

This is a full day of Magenic-provided training, available by invitation only to customers and potential customers of Magenic. We have lined up an impressive array of speakers and topics in two tracks, .NET development and Microsoft servers. And we have lined up two keynotes.

Our first keynote speaker is Jay Schmelzer, who is the Group Program Manager for RAD tools. This basically means he runs the teams for all the Visual Studio designers and related RAD tools. He’s an excellent good speaker and should provide some great insight into the present and future of RAD development tools from Microsoft.

Our second keynote speaker is Rockford Lhotka, Magenic’s Technology Evangelist and the creator of the very popular CSLA .NET development framework.

But more importantly, two tracks of in-depth technical content straight from the experts at Magenic. Topics covering the present and future of .NET development and key Microsoft server products. An event like this doesn’t come along every day, and shouldn’t be missed!

The event is FREE to customers (though they’ll need to cover any travel costs), and includes lunch and a reception at the end of the day.

Click here to see the agenda.

Today I went to Microsoft Launch Event.  It was dedicated to the launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.  I registered for developers' track and attended three training sessions as well as keynote address.

Here are the sessions I went to:

1. Breakthrough Challenges with Visual Studio 2008

This session was not impressive.  The presenter seemed unprepared, and no running code samples were shown.  The presentation seems to be very marketing-oriented.  The presenter's demeanor seemed inappropriate, as he kept "begging" for a round of applause almost constantly.  I have not learned anything at this session.

2. Reach End-Users with Next Generation Web Applications

This was a good session in my opinion.  The presenters were familiar guys that I have meant on numerous occasions at the user group events.  The key features that were shown were:  Java script debugging and intellisense, various asp extenders object, such as watermark extender, password strength extender, etc...  Update panel feature was also demonstrated, although it is not really "new."  Linq was part of presentation.  I found it easy to understand conceptually, although I have looked and "played" with Linq already.  Presentation overall was good.  Split code/preview screen for ASP applications was shown.  This feature looked pretty cool.

3. Exploring Business Intelligence and SQL Server 2008

This session I have to admit went over my head a bit.  It was oriented toward BI folks though, so the result was not at all unexpected.  Ability to predict future results based on existing data I found super cool.  This feature actually could be used by itself inside Excel as long as there is SQL server SSAS is running somewhere.  Performance Point and Excel applications also looked impressive.  I can see why many companies would spend a ton of money on this t3echnology.

On March 29th I had my first ever talk at Atlanta Code Camp. You can click on Speakers menu to see my name.  It really was a fun experience for me. I enjoyed spending the entire day with my piers. There were quite a few folks at the code camp who work with me at Magenic. I attended as many sessions as I could in time allotted.
My own presentation went pretty well, based on the feedback that I got after it.  I taught a session on CSLA.  You can download the Power Point presentation here.  You can also download it from my shared folder - Projects.  See link below.
I certainly hope that I will get an opportunity to talk more in front of other people. I guess I am a glutton for attention...