Tobin Titus

I flew to Philadelphia from my home in Pittsburgh to attend and speak at the first Philadelphia area code camp for 2009.

I spoke on Extending IIS 7. You can find my photos of the event on flickr.

I took the opportunity to visit family that I hadn’t seen in ages and to see Philadelphia — a big deal for me as I’m a history buff.

OK, so I had intended to announce that I posted a session submission to CodeStock and that voting was open. However, I procrastinated and Shawn Wildermuth beat me to the punch. So in an act of utter creepiness, I am modeling my post after his and invoking his name for extra copy-cat points.

For those of you that don’t know what CodeStock is, think of it as a CodeCamp done better – in two days instead of one. In their own words:

CodeStock is about Community. For Developers, by Developers (with love for SysAdmins and DBAs too!). Last year and idea started at CodeStock to mix Open Spaces within a traditional conference. This year we’re going to crank things up to 11 and rip off the knob – and you’re being drafted to help.

This two-day conference, of sorts, will be kicked off June 26th and costs only $25 to register.

My sessions are in the running, right along side Shawn’s. As he so eloquently pointed out, CodeStock attendees get to pick what sessions they wish to see from all of those submitted by would-be speakers. If my session doesn’t get picked, perhaps I can just watch Shawn. I’m told he has given a presentation or two in his career

So if you haven’t already, please go register for CodeStock so you can vote on those sessions while you can! Session voting ends on May 15th.

(Thanks, Shawn!)

I flew to Charlotte from my home near Pittsburgh to attend the spring code camp this year.

When I arrived I found out that a Pete Mourfield was not going to make it in time to give one of his presentations. Brian Hitney suggested that I do a presentation at the last minute to fill in. I took the dare and agreed to do a presentation on MGrammar — something I had been checking out for about a week. I had about 50 minutes to prepare. In that time I downloaded the Oslo bits over the slow wifi at the school and installed them on my laptop. I had no slide deck and I had very little idea of how I would procede.

I managed to give a fairly fun presentation and got some great reviews in the process.

You can find some photos of the event on flickr.

Sahil Malik, a prolific speaker, Microsoft MVP and author of “Professional ADO.NET 2.0” is holding a one-day ADO.NET boot camp in Charlotte next month.  If you are in the area, I think this class will definitely give you your money’s worth.  Sahil has a very unique way of teaching that is easy to follow and highly effective.  If you are going to be in the area on July 21st, and want to master ADO.NET, I would encourage you to take a look at this great opportunity in the Charlotte, NC.

Doing a google search for “red pill” and microsoft today yielded 55,700 hits. That same search on MSN search yields 14,433. This term, and other variations, are often used on blogs when someone takes a job at Microsoft. I would be naive to think that all of those hits are new employee announcements, but with these sort of numbers, I might have to buy some stock in a red-pill-manufacturing pharmaceutical company. This particular post will increase the count on those searches by 1 and will be counted among the many search hits that ARE about taking a Microsoft job.

Its my pleasure to announce that I will be packing up and moving to the Redmond, WA area to take a position with Microsoft sometime at the beginning of March. The exact date hasn’t been chosen yet but the offer has been made and accepted.

As many of you know, I’ve been running my own business for the past 4 months. Things are great. I’m finishing up a contract with IPSwitch in February. I’ve been talking with Mark Dunn about doing some developer training for his company. I have more contracts being offered to me and really, the business is doing fantasitc. So why drop it to go be an employee again? The ideas are too numerous to list but I’ll try to give you the highlights.

First off, my entire career has been built around Microsoft. I started coding on an ATARI-800XL in Microsoft BASIC when I was in 5th grade. I’ve used Microsoft development technologies almost exclusively in my life. To be a part of the worlds largest and most successful software company is a great opportunity.

Second, I have ideas — a LOT of ideas. Anyone that has known me for any length of time knows that I am constantly coming up with ideas only to see someone else implement them months or years later. Being a one-man shop makes it very difficult to see those ideas through. Being at Microsoft, I will be able to have that satisfaction of giving my feedback to a company that can debate these ideas, improve/revamp them, and implement them if I’m lucky enough. I know this will happen because Microsoft Learning has consistently listened to and implemented advice that I’ve given on the developer certification exams.

Third, I LOVE soda.

Fourth, the team I met was fantastic. I have always wanted to work among the best and the brightest. While I don’t really fit that category, I’ll likely be mistaken for being smart just for working there. Its not just the folks working at Microsoft either. A recent census bureau survey showed that Seattle was the most-educated city in the US — with a majority (51.3%) of the population holding bachelor’s degrees!

Fifth, the area is absolutely beautiful and inspiring. In Charlotte, when a developer buys land to build houses, they completely strip the trees on the entire lay of the land, and start plopping down houses. If you get a chance, go check out Virtual Earth and pan around with the “birds eye view“. You’ll see that there are trees everywhere — making it a very attractive area. On top of that, you add boating in the sound, hiking in the mountains, and one of the best downtown areas in the country. There’s a lot to do and see.

Lastly, the benefits are great. Ask any employee what they think about the benifits at Microsoft and they will tell you that they are beyond comparison. Microsoft’s total package of compensation w/benefits make the decision to move over a no-brainer.

Overall, I can’t wait to get started. I’m looking forward to diving in torso first. Look out Redmond — here I come!

I just got an email today stating that I was awarded a Microsoft MVP award. This is an honor. In the past, this award was mainly given to the folks who posted a ton of replies to forums and newsgroups (whether the responses were right or wrong). Microsoft has made a shift to try to reward people who do a lot of local work too. I’ve been highly involved with the local code camps, user groups and the like. I’m very excited to receive this award and I look forward to continuing participation in the year ahead.

I’ve been having a blast presenting the latest and greatest Microsoft development tools and technologies to the entire state of South Carolina. In October, I was asked at the last minute to give a presentation on the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 to the Columbia, South Carolina .NET user group. In November, I had the pleasure of presenting Visual Studio 2005 Team System to the Greenville, SC user group. I ended the year doing ASP.NET 2.0 again for the Charleston .NET user group in December. I’ll be continuing this tour by presenting ASP.NET 2.0 to the Greenville .NET user group meeting this month. If you are interested in learning about some of the newest and best features of ASP.NET 2.0, come on out and visit the guild. We’d be glad to have you out.

This year, I was asked to be the INETA community launch champion for my local user group. Essentially, the job is to present at least two topics related to Visual Studio 2005 and/or SQL Server 2005 and/or BizTalk 2006. I was honored to be picked for this role and have done my best to provide the best possible experience for those who come to listen. This month’s topic is “Managing the Software Development Life Cycle with Visual Studio 2005 Team System”. WOW! Here’s the blurb that the UG’s sent out on this topic:

“Today’s software projects have one consistent trait – they fail. They fail to meet budgets. They fail to meet deadlines. In many instances, they fail to even make it to implementation. In 2000, only a fraction of software projects succeeded. That rate did not get much better in 2004. Industry demands such as more complex business requirements, government regulations, and standardization of components will make success all the more challenging. In this presentation, we’ll explore how you can utilize the new tools found in Visual Studio Team Services to increase your own success track record. This presentation will show how requirements can be gathered early, managed, modified, tracked, and reported on all the way through the software development life cycle. Come see the powerful new tools that are provided for architects, developers, testers, project managers, business analysts, and even project stake holders!”

While its always a good thing to prepare for a meeting, I realized while sitting in my hotel room that there are quite a few tools that I use to give presentations. I thought I might post pictures and informationa bout the tools I use so that others who are just getting started in their presentation careers can get a glimps into their future.

The Laptop

Its an HP Pavilion zd8000 series laptop that has been customized for the best performance I can get out of it. It has 2GB of ram, a 100 GB hard drive, Lightscribe DVD burner, and the like. I love this laptop because it has 4 USB ports (5 if you count the HP usb digital drive port), firewire, built in wireless, bluetooth, 5-1 media reader, built in speakers, and the list goes on. It even has a media remote control (meant for use with Windows Media Center Edition) that works very well for remotely moving forward and backward in powerpoint slides. Its a varitable swiss army knife of laptops and the kicker, of course, is the 17″ widescreen LCD.

The External Hard Drive

I use a Maxtor 300GB exernal hard drive to keep all of my VPC images on. This serves as both a repository and a backup for my Virtual Server (or Virtual PC) images. Having your VHD image on a hard drive other than your system drive is essential for performance. This drie is particularly useful because I can use either firewire or USB to connect to any system. Using Maxtor’s software, I can also use this device to automatically backup files from any of my systems too — and literaly at the touch of a button!

The Bluetooth Headset

On occassion, depending on the room setup, I can use this Motorola headset in place of a mobile mic. I pair the headset with my laptop and use the mic to output to my speakers at a podium. If I bend the podium mic to the speakers, I have a virtual walking mic. Obviously if a mobile mic is available, I use that instead for better clarity.

The Tablet PC

You may be asking why I use both a laptop and this new Gateway Tablet PC. Actually, this makes great sense if you ask me. I can set up the tablet as a sort of teleprompter during my presentations. The tablet can hold my demo scripts and walkthroughs (in case I lose a bolt during the presentation and need to remember where I’m at). Also, I didn’t buy the top of the line tablet. While the 14″ widescreen LCD makes this item look expensive, I only paid $1300 for this one — and that’s standard pricing. It only has 512 MB of ram, but thats all I need for my tablet PC needs — particularly when doing presentations. This tablet has a directional mouse-like input device on the left hand side that allows me to easily scroll up and down in my document without using the stylus.

The Thumbdrive

While I do have wireless connections, bluetooth and infared that can share data, I prefer to use the tumbdrive for quick transport between the laptop and the tablet when neccessary. I also carry a copy of the presentation materials on it in case someone asks me for them. Then its as easy as plugging the thumbdrive into their machine and letting them drag them onto their desktop.

The Smartphone

I use the smartphone to help keep my timing in presentations. I leave the phone clipped to my belt and set up vibrating reminders to tell me when I should be at a certain point in my presentation. If I’m not there, I can speed things up. If I’m off to the races, I can slow things down and take a few extra questions when needed. I wouldn’t recommend buying one of these if you just want it for these purposes. I just happened to already have this phone so its what I use.

I love my tools. Its taken me a little while to learn what works and what doesn’t. I would imagine what works for one person wont neccessarily work for another. Let me know what you think.

OK guys and gals. Some pretty big names are rolling into Charleston on Saturday, September 17th to present, free of charge, all those fancy topics we love to yap about so much. This is Charleston’s first code camp. Chris Williams tells me that enrollment is low. What would it take to persuade a few more folks to take a nice weekend trip to a college/beach town, watch some cool technology in a demonstration and go have a few drinks?

Check out the sessions and the speakers. If you don’t find anything you are interested in, come anyway and enjoy the beach with your fellow geeks! Please register quickly!

I spoke at this months GSP Developers Guild meeting as the “short presenter”. We typically have two presentations each month — one is a short presentation and one is a long presentation. I had to cut my Code Camp slides in half, but I managed to only overrun a 30 minute presentation by say, 15 minutes Glen Gordon was our “long presenter” today. He gave a great presentation on ASP.NET Mobile Controls. I knew the presentation material, but its always great to see people respond to the technology like they did. Glen is a beast — he gave a 4 hour long presentation at the Greenville MSDN event today too. From 1pm to 5pm today he discussed Web Services, SQL Server 2005 with end point registration, Infopath consumption of the web services and end points, ClickOnce deployment and more. He then took a quick drive over to the guild meeting to give another hour-long talk on mobile web development. It was a geek decathalon!

Thanks for the great day guys. I had a blast giving my presentation again. And I really enjoyed watching your presentations again Glen.