I’m giving a talk next week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). I happen to be in the fun position where I’m directly following the keynote. I’ve sat in on content reviews and keynote writing sessions so I know the messaging from that talk and the overlap that there will be with my session. One of the services that they offer to their speakers is a speech coach. It’s » read more.
Archives - 2008
Writing good error messages is an art form. It’s important though because the error messages are often the only communication with the user in an already frustrating situation for said user. I was on Plaxo earlier and got this error message. At first, I was a little annoyed that there was an error. But as I read the message, I was amused. The situation was completely defused and I tried » read more.
*Ranting ahead* I’ve been at Microsoft a little over a year and a half. I’m very excited about a number of the new technologies that are here and on the coming roadmap. Microsoft is at a point where it’s more open than it’s ever been. The level of community involvement in projects like the ASP.NET MVC framework, IronRuby and much more has been historic. I get that it could always » read more.
A few weeks back John Hopkins forwarded me a video from TED. Specifically he sent me a talk by Clifford Stoll called “18 minutes with an agile mind” that he thought reminded him of me. Not because of the brilliance that he showed but because of the ADD nature of the speaker. I was blown away. One of many great quotes from the session was “The first time that you » read more.
Jeff Blankenburg called me out with his Software Development Meme. It’s actually a funny thing that he did because I have a much different background than much of the industry. My undergrad is actually English with a minor in Drama and a minor in Communications. When others are talking about programming outside of the box, I ask the really simple question of “What box? – nobody told me about a » read more.
As I’ve started writing about public speaking, I have started getting great questions that lead to more blog posts – keep those coming! I was talking to a fellow speaker (who can identify himself in the comments if he so chooses) and they brought up the fact that it’s hard for them to prepare a demo. I can tell you that this is an art form that I still struggle » read more.
I love community! This weekend I have the pleasure to participate in a very unique event called RIAPalooza. From the web site:“Join your fellow RIA professionals for RIApalooza, a invaluable two day event aimed at exploring and promoting the development of Rich Internet Applications. RIApalooza promises a platform agnostic and “PowerPoint-Free” zone, which means we are going to forgo the boring marketing pitches in favor of talking technology. RIApalooza is » read more.
Preparation is key in giving a great presentation. Apollo Ideas has a great blog post about the speech spectrum. There are basically 4 ways that you can give a talk. *Warning – gross generalizations ahead* 1. Completely written out word for word and read of the script. For this, you can think about your basic graduation speech. 2. Just outlined but not rehearsed. I see these too often. This is » read more.
This is a conference that I’m not going to miss this year. At MIX08, Ray Ozzie laid out early glimpses of what we’re going to see the rest of the year leading up to PDC. Not long after, the Live Mesh Community Technical Preview was released. It’s the beginnings of the realization of Ray’s S+S vision and the future direction of Microsoft. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg » read more.
IOC(S.):IOC(CW):IOC(!):MOC(RM):MOC(MQ):TDD(NU):TDD(MS):SCC(Svn):SCC(Git):SCC(TFS):SCC(Gmail):ORM(NH):ORM(SS):XPP(-):XPP(++):XPP(!):DDD(T+):JSL(MS):CIS(CC):CIS(TFS):CIS(psh+):GoF(++) Last year (December, 2007) I had the honor and privilege of being invited to participate in the ALT.NET Leadership council in NY. I blogged about that here. This generated a large number of comments and a ton of conversations. I was unfortunately, due to health reasons, not able to attend last month’s ALT.NET conference in Seattle. Some of my friends in DPE, like Peter Laudauti from New York. » read more.
