Yesterday, I did a presentation at the Roanoke Code Camp 2009. As promised here is the PowerPoint file, and follow up material.

Creating Advanced User Experiences for Windows Mobile (200)

Description:
Ready to take your mobile applications to the next level? Learn how to create exciting modern user experiences for Windows Mobile. First we'll review good, bad, and ugly of Windows Mobile user interfaces, and then we will explore different ways we can create mobile user interfaces that will thrill our users. This talk is for developers who are new to mobile development as well as programmers with some experience who want to learn new ways to make their apps shine.

PowerPoint: Creating Advanced User Experiences for Windows Mobile.pptx

Screenshots:

We had a good turn out for the presentation, pretty much a full room. And we had a great open conversation about creating modern Windows Mobile user experiences.

Date: Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Speaker: Chris Eargle

Topic: The Future of Managed Code
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.

Newly minted C# MVP, Chris Eargle, will discuss the future of managed code.  How will your code look next year? This presentation is a demonstration of the new capabilities found in C# 4.0 and VB 10.0 using the Visual Studio 2010 CTP. Learn about the new features in each language, how they are converging, and what sets them apart.

Chris Eargle
Chris Eargle is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional – Visual C# and an independent consultant in the Columbia, SC metro area.  He is currently working as a software architect on the South Carolina Integrated Tax System with Revenue Solutions, Inc. Chris is the president of the Columbia Enterprise Developers Guild and is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in ASP.NET
Web Site: www.kodefuguru.com

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Presentations

The Raleigh Code Camp is coming this weekend and you don’t want to miss out.

Details:

ECPI College of Technology
4101 Doie Cope Rd.
Raleigh, NC 27613-7387

Directions:

Http://maps.google.com/....

Information Link:

http://www.ecpi.edu/

Location: ECPI

Here are just some of the great sessions you can see there:

Session Titles

• Ocean
• Introduction to Entity Framework
• Wildcard Searches in SharePoint
• SSIS
• Much Ado About the DLR
• Essential Web Services
• LINQ to SQL
• Getting Down and Dirty with SharePoint Branding
• Building Reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008
• An Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD
• Design Principles
• Something Silverlight
• Automation with MSBuild 3.5 and Team Build 2008
• Spice Up User Experience With Silverlight 2.0
• HttpRuntime.Cache Management and Thread Safety
• Back to the Basics: Developing SharePoint Features
• Care and Feeding of TempDB
• Bending the Asp.Net MVC to do Your Bidding, the Virtues of Extensibility 
• Creating Custom Templatable Controls in Silverlight
• 0wn Your Phone
• Integration SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services with SharePoint
• Turning the Ship: Getting a Traditional Organization to Adopt Agile Practices
• SOA: Building the Arch
• Introduction to the Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET
• Extending the mobile experience for your existing website
• Integrating ASP.NET Dynamic Data into Existing Web Applications & Websites
• Using WaTiN for GUI based testing in Visual Studio
• Implementing Microsoft Virtual Earth in Your ASP.NET Applications
• Mixing Static and Dynamic .NET Languages
• XNA Game Studio 3.0
• Microsoft and Ruby Sittin' In a Tree
• Integrate ASP.NET 2.0 application (FBA Management) with SharePoint 2007

Open Spaces

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Open Spaces

Topic: Open Spaces - Bring your questions and ideas!

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group. 
Open Spaces is the chance for you to discuss topics with your peers.  Any developer topic is fair game and welcome!  This is your chance to gain valuable insight from your peers, so come equipped with your ideas!  This meeting is a general open conversation and there will be no presenters.  See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Open Spaces

MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow - December 2008 Edition

The MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow is a free developer event with a southern flair, where you will learn about some of the latest developments in Microsoft technologies. For December, 2008 the Roadshow will be presented by Architect Evangelist Chad Brooks and Developer Evangelists Glen Gordon and Brian Hitney. Chad, Glen & Brian will be loading up a minivan with lots of goodies, and trying to hit 4 cities in North Carolina and South Carolina in 4 days.

• Take a tour of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and the services that make it easy to give your applications the most compelling experiences and features.  Explore the journey a developer takes, from writing a service to launching that service in the cloud. Learn about the cloud services that enable developers to easily create or extend their applications and services.
• Microsoft Silverlight 2 provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next-generation experiences for consumers and business, and demonstrate building a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft .NET.
• ASP.NET is evolving a very rapid pace, come explore all the latest features of ASP.Net such as Dynamic Data, MVC, and even take a sneak peak at the upcoming features in ASP.NET 4.0!  We’ll look at some new features such as taking control of your Control IDs, using the DynamicImage control, and ViewState management options.   We’ll spend plenty of time talking about MVC and creating applications based on this framework, so if you’re wondering how to leverage MVC in your web applications, this talk is for you!

We will also feature local speakers from each of our stops delivering short talks at the beginning of the Roadshow. These Homegrown Nuggets will sure be tasty!

Every attendee will receive a free MS Press book on Silverlight 2 (while supplies last) as well as pointers to tons of resources for further learning. Register today using the links below.  Each day begins at 9 AM and goes until 3 PM. In keeping with our theme, a nice Southern fried lunch will be served.

• December 2 - Charleston, SC
• December 3 - Wilmington, NC
• December 4 - Raleigh, NC
• December 5 - Charlotte, NC

You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. And you probably know that I present at a lot of user groups and code camp, sometimes I even present on keyboard shortcuts. Recently I learned about some PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts that I didn’t already know and I decided to share them with my readers, since many of you also use PowerPoint to do your presentations.

Here are what I consider the “Top 10 PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts”:

Built-in PowerPoint Slide Show Cheat Sheet (Press F1 during Slide Show)

With most things there are two ways to learn them: the easy way, and the hard way. Visual Studio 2008 is know exception. One option, the hard way, is to spend all of your precious time learning and memorizing hundreds of Visual Studio shortcut key combinations.

Quick, what is the shortcut to perform an incremental search, or to convert selected text to lower case, or to comment a selection of code? Everyone one of these has a handy shortcut key combination. Do you know them all? If not, did you know Visual Studio has a feature you can enable so that it will show you, or maybe I should say teach you, the shortcut keys for most commonly accessed menu and toolbar items?

It is called “Show shortcut keys in Screen Tips”. You have to enable “Show Screen Tips on toolbars” for this feature to work. Both items are located on the same screen for easy access.

Here’s what you need to do:

• In Visual Studio go to Tools, and then Customize….
• This will open the Customize dialog where you will now need to check both the “Show shortcut keys in Screen Tips” and “Show Screen Tips on toolbars” checkboxes.

From now on when you use Visual Studio it will display shortcut key combinations on menus and toolbar tooltips whenever you use them.

If you’ll click on the included image, you will see a larger more detailed screenshot of the areas discussed.

Feedback:

Do you have a favorite Visual Studio 2008 tip or trick? Then tell us all about it in the comments section. I’m keeping score: Me 1 / Readers 0. Don’t let your teammates down. :D

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

I’ve committed myself to taking the knowledge I have learned, over the years, and sharing it more with others. Last month I did 30 Days of .NET Windows Mobile Applications, and this month I intend to do 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.

The material will come from a presentation I have given many times at different code camps and user groups. One of the goals of the series is to start a “conversation” with my readers. I want to share some of my best tips and tricks for Visual Studio, and in return I hope you’ll share some of yours with us as well.

Another goal I have is for the information to be quick and easy to “digest” and as worthwhile as possible. Give me a few minutes every day this month, and I bet I’ll make a difference in how productive you are every day.

Here’s the introduction from my Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks presentation to set the stage:

“Visual Studio .NET is filled with hundreds of features that make our lives as developers more efficient. The number of features that Visual Studio .NET contains is immense. The Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is a compilation of my favorite, and most popular, tips and tricks for this great IDE. Developers who are unaware of these timesaving features miss out on opportunities to increase their programming productivity and effectiveness. This Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is meant to explain how to use Visual Studio .NET more effectively.”

After the last GPS related application, GPS Compass, I’ve been wanting to do another GPS focused application. This time I figured we’d get in the driver’s seat with our friend: SPEED.

Gentlemen, start your engines…

Mobile Speedometer

The application is built off of  Windows Mobile 6 SDK included a GPS Application in the samples folder, C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\Samples\PocketPC\CS\GPS.

This uses the GPS Intermediate Driver. If you are writing a location aware application for Windows Mobile this is definitely the way to go. ;)

The main UI is located at the top of the screen. We have a simple speedometer graphic in the background to add some flair to the application. On top of this we overlay the current speed based off of information returned from the GPS device. We can also use Fake GPS to simulate a GPS device.

Below this we have a readout of various GPS statistics that are updated continuously.

One thing to note is Speed may be return in knots which you will likely want to convert to either miles or kilometers.

We just need to create a method something like UpdateData below.

   1: void UpdateData(object sender, System.EventArgs args)

   2: {

   3:     if (gps.Opened)

   4:     {

   5:         if (position != null)

   6:         {

   7:             if (position.SpeedValid)

   8:             {

   9:                 labelSpeed.Text = (position.Speed/1.15077945).ToString("0.00");

  10:             }

  11:          }

  12:      }

  13: }

Possibilities:

I think a more realistic UI would be a great improvement. And the ability to switch from miles to kilometers would be good too. If the odometer would track miles traveled that would be an awesome enhancement.

Download executable: mobileSpeedometer.cab

Download Source Code: mobileSpeedometer.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see?

I mentioned to the group that I would post the Prize Picker application we wrote together on my blog as part of my 30 Days of .NET series. I think this was an awesome idea, and it looked like everyone really enjoyed themselves. Hopefully, a few of them will see this post and share their thoughts as well. It was very nice to have a hands on type presentation that everyone got to participate in together. And since only one person was “driving” we didn’t have to stop and fix a disconnected monitor. Ok, we did one time, but just one time.  

Big thanks to everyone that came out and participated! Page Brooks, Donny Craft, Benton Little, , Jamey McElveen , Shawn Morris, and Thad Smith. It was a lot of fun!

Prize Picker

There is probably someone out there who doesn’t think this is the best looking application ever. Well, you’re right! It’s not, but we didn’t really focus on that any until we had a fully functional application. At that point it was time to pick prizes for the lucky hopefuls that became winners at the event.

The only big item we didn’t implement, was an item that came up right at the end, we wanted to show the last winner in the area down at the bottom of the screen in big blog letters. And we wanted to rotate through remaining hopefuls and then finally pick a winner moving them to the winners table.

The application is a firm believer of the KISS principle. We did the entire application in about an hour and a half. And that is including some refactorings, and changes we made along the way. I’m pretty happy with the application, and will love it once we have the “Jackpot” style UI element added.

We added validation as we needed it, and decided to keep the applications logic in the UI, as hard as it was for us to do, to in this case to follow our KISS guidelines.

We have used RNGCryptoServiceProvider class already in the Pocket PasswordGen application on day six. This class makes sure that our random numbers are statistically random and not pretend watered down random.

   1: Byte[] randomBytes = new byte[4];

   2:  

   3: RNGCryptoServiceProvider rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();

   4: rng.GetBytes(randomBytes);

   5:  

   6: // Convert 4 bytes into a 32-bit integer value.

   7: int seed = (randomBytes[0] & 0x7f) << 24 |

   8:             randomBytes[1] << 16 |

   9:             randomBytes[2] << 8 |

  10:             randomBytes[3];

  11:  

  12: int pick = seed % listViewHopefuls.Items.Count;

Download executable: prizePicker.cab

Download Source Code: prizePicker.zip

Feedback

The cool thing is we used this application to actually pick the winners for the prizes, and everything went great. So our intention is to keep using it from now. We are also going to post it on CodePlex soon and allow others to work on it as well.

Wow, today was a busy day. I gave a Windows Mobile Programming presentation today at a .NET user group I help run, PDANUG. I changed it up at the very last minute, and instead of doing the presentation I was planing on doing we wrote a Windows Mobile application together. It was great. I think everyone contributed, and got something out of it. In the end we had a very nice Prize Picker application that we will be able to use again and again in the future. And I have a new talk that I can present. Any takers?

What is My IP?

You may have seen sites like WhatIsMyIP.com, IPChicken.com, and my favorite IPCow.com. Most people prefer command prompt and good ole IPConfig. But sometimes when you are troubleshooting an issue with a friend of family member over the phone that’s not always the best idea. Usually in those kind of situations it is easier to send someone to a Web site and just have them read the value to you. I think some of the sites above will render appropriately on a mobile device, pretty sure IPCow.com does.

But what if you can’t connect to the Internet, and you need to see your Intranet IP address. In this case, and many others, one wants something a little more direct, and clear.

For this reason, “What is My IP?” exists. It couldn’t be simpler. Run the program, then see your IP address, or IP addresses in case you have multiple connections open. Which is very possible with today’s devices, with everything from Bluetooth, cellular connections, wireless connections, and more.

This application only does one thing, so it needs to do it very well. And it needs to be appealing in how it looks and how it does it.

Since the application has minimal features, it has a minimalist style to it. There is only one focus point of attention and that is the large network icon in the center of the screen. Everything else is clean and simple.

There’s only one method of note in this application: RefreshData()

   1: private void RefreshData()

   2: {

   3:     string deviceName = System.Net.Dns.GetHostName();

   4:  

   5:     textBoxDeviceName.Text = deviceName;

   6:  

   7:     IPAddress[] addresses = Dns.GetHostEntry(deviceName).AddressList;

   8:  

   9:     comboBoxDeviceIP.Items.Clear();

  10:     for (int i = 0; i < addresses.Length; i++)

  11:         comboBoxDeviceIP.Items.Add(addresses[i].ToString());

  12:  

  13:     if (comboBoxDeviceIP.Items.Count > 0)

  14:         comboBoxDeviceIP.SelectedIndex = 0;

  15: }

Download executable: whatIsMyIP.cab

Download Source Code: whatIsMyIP.zip

Feedback

Not bad 10 applications in 10 days. Won’t be long before we’re at 20 applications in 20 days, and then 30 applications in 30 days. Keep the feedback coming.

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Chris Craft

Topic: Windows Mobile Programming

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.

Chris Craft will be presenting at Microsoft Mobility Roadshow alongside Brian Hitney, Glen Gordon, and Lou Vega in Charlotte - June 18, 2008 and Atlanta (Alpharetta) - June 24, 2008. These are full day Windows Mobile device application development events.  PDANUG will be hosting our own special "Welcome to the World of Windows Mobile" event to keep in theme these two MSDN events.
Focus will be Windows Mobile 6.x and using Visual Studio 2008 to developer mobile applications.
Topics to be covered:

•       Intro to Windows Mobile
•       Data Guidance (some discussion of line of business applications)
•       Whole New Level

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Presentations

Just caught sight of a really good post by Robert McLaws: Windows Vista Edition : Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Beta – FINALLY!

Awesome. This is really good news.

What is Windows SideShow?

Windows SideShow is a new technology in Windows Vista. With Windows SideShow, developers can write gadgets to send data from a computer to devices connected to that computer.

The beta requires you to have a device with either Windows Mobile 5.0 or  Windows Mobile 6  Professional or Standard Edition. You will also need a Bluetooth-enabled Vista PC.

Even though Robert warns that the Beta is "version 0.01", I didn't have the first problem. It just worked. :D

The ScreenShot Tour

No gadgets available	No gadgets are turned on	Options

Things are pretty dull when you first set up Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile.

Let's enable some gadgets for our Device. The HTC-8900 you see above is my AT&T Tilt phone. "Inbox - Windows Mail", and "Windows Media Player" gadgets are installed by default in Vista. And I think the "Office Outlook 2007 Calendar" find its way into your machine if you have Office 2007. I download the "Countdown" gadget, and the "Office PowerPoint Remote" from the SideShow Gadget Gallery.

[ Stopped ]	Albums	Browse Media Library	Genres
Play now	[ Playing ]	Let's Get It Started	[ Stopped ]

Great background. It's just eye-candy, but it really adds a lot of polish and class to the application. Nice feature set for this Windows Media Player gadget. And since it is so simple, it is fast. You can get to Albums, Artists, Playlists, and Genres very easily and get to your media quickly. You can see album art for the currently playing song, but it is very small. I think this should be updated. Notice, I added a second gadget, "Office Outlook 2007 Calendar, between the first screenshot and the last one.

[ Playing ]	No information available	Inbox - Windows Mail

You can see the SideShow gadget from the desktop which is a really good idea. And I've included a couple of screen shots of the calendar and mail gadgets. Not a lot to see here but it is mostly because I don't have good data to see it shine on this machine.

 

Hmm, I couldn't resist I had to try the Microsoft Office PowerPoint Remote for Windows SideShow.

Office PowerPoint Remote	Session 5 Mobile Data.pptx	Next Slide	Presenting: Session 5

Wow, this gadget is just awesome. People pay really good money for PowerPoint remote and how many can show the PowerPoint deck on the screen. It even works from the Today screen, and you can just use the hardware buttons to control the presentation. This is going to be really popular.

Feedback Wanted:

If you decide to give Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile a try, please consider posting what you think, or maybe even do a Screenshot Tour of your favorite SideShow gadget.

Heroes Happen {Here}: Hands On Lab Manuals [Source: Paulo's Blog]

Windows Server 2008

• Windows Server 2008: Assessment and Planning
• Creating Windows PowerShell v2 Script Cmdlets
• Scripting with Windows PowerShell v1
• What's New in Windows PowerShell v2
• Windows Server 2008: Server Manager
• Introduction to MS Deployment Tools

• Lite Touch Installation with MS Deployment
• Zero Touch Installation with MS Deployment
• Deploying SSTP Remote Access
• Failover Clustering with Windows Server 2008
• MS Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 Beta 2
• Lifecycle Manager 2007 Meta Directory Sync

Visual Studio 2008

• ASP.NET AJAX, New Features
• Visual Studio Tools for Office with MOSS 2007
• .NET Compact Framework 3.5 Development
• Visual Studio 2008: Developing Outlook Add-ins
• Windows Communication Foundation and REST
• Integrating WCF and WF

• Developing a WPF Application
• Lighting up MFC Applications on Windows Vista
• Building Web Applications
• Client Application Services using WPF
• C# 3.0 Language Enhancements
• Visual Basic 9.0 Language Enhancements

SQL Server 2008

• SQL Server 2008 Change Data Capture
• What is new in SQL Server 2008 for DBA's
• Using SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor
• Partition Processing for DW
• SQL Server 2008: Reporting Infrastructure
• Managing SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
• Analysis Services through MS Office
• Data Mining with SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Policy-Based Management
• Performance Studio in SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Database Mirroring
• SQL Server 2008 Online Operations

• SQL Server 2008 Peer-to-Peer Replication
• SQL Server 2008 Database Architecture
• SQL Server 2008 Table Index and Partitioning
• SQL Server 2008 Data Snapshots
• SQL Server 2008 Data Recovery
• SQL Server 2008 Instant Initialization
• Table Valued Parameters in SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 DATE/TIME Data Type
• Occasionally Connected Applications
• SQL Server 2008 Spatial Capabilities: GEOGRAPHY
• Plan Freezing with SQL Server 2008
• Transparent Data Encryption in SQL Server 2008

Hands On Lab Manuals

Windows Server 2008

• Windows Server 2008: Assessment and Planning
• Creating Windows PowerShell v2 Script Cmdlets
• Scripting with Windows PowerShell v1
• What's New in Windows PowerShell v2
• Windows Server 2008: Server Manager
• Introduction to MS Deployment Tools

• Lite Touch Installation with MS Deployment
• Zero Touch Installation with MS Deployment
• Deploying SSTP Remote Access
• Failover Clustering with Windows Server 2008
• MS Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 Beta 2
• Lifecycle Manager 2007 Meta Directory Sync

Visual Studio 2008

• ASP.NET AJAX, New Features
• Visual Studio Tools for Office with MOSS 2007
• .NET Compact Framework 3.5 Development
• Visual Studio 2008: Developing Outlook Add-ins
• Windows Communication Foundation and REST
• Integrating WCF and WF

• Developing a WPF Application
• Lighting up MFC Applications on Windows Vista
• Building Web Applications
• Client Application Services using WPF
• C# 3.0 Language Enhancements
• Visual Basic 9.0 Language Enhancements

SQL Server 2008

• SQL Server 2008 Change Data Capture
• What is new in SQL Server 2008 for DBA's
• Using SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor
• Partition Processing for DW
• SQL Server 2008: Reporting Infrastructure
• Managing SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
• Analysis Services through MS Office
• Data Mining with SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Policy-Based Management
• Performance Studio in SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Database Mirroring
• SQL Server 2008 Online Operations

• SQL Server 2008 Peer-to-Peer Replication
• SQL Server 2008 Database Architecture
• SQL Server 2008 Table Index and Partitioning
• SQL Server 2008 Data Snapshots
• SQL Server 2008 Data Recovery
• SQL Server 2008 Instant Initialization
• Table Valued Parameters in SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 DATE/TIME Data Type
• Occasionally Connected Applications
• SQL Server 2008 Spatial Capabilities: GEOGRAPHY
• Plan Freezing with SQL Server 2008
• Transparent Data Encryption in SQL Server 2008

Due to the scheduling conflict with the Heroes Happen Here Event in Charlotte, the April PDANUG Event has been moved to April 29th, 2008.  More details to follow.  See you all in Charlotte tomorrow!

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
Chris Reeder, Chris Craft, and Page Brooks
Topic: SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 (Respectively)

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.

Chris Reeder, Chris Craft, and Page Brooks will be presenting on the latest exciting new products from Microsoft.  First, Chris Reeder will give us a run down on a few cool features in SQL Server 2008.  Next, Chris Craft will take us on a tour of some excellent new features in Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7).  Page Brooks will finish off the presentation with a few cool tips and tricks in Visual Studio 2008.

Please click the link below to register.  We use this information to determine how much food to buy!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Presentations

Well, how cool is this, the Lower Alabama .NET User Group, or as I'd like to call them, the Mobile .NET User Group which of course is located in Mobile, Alabama.

And I thought we were cool with the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group, or as I like to call us, the PDA .NET User Group.

People like to ask, "What is a Pee Dee"? So, in case you been wondering, here's everything you ever wanted to know and more about what the Pee Dee is: Pee Dee - Wikipedia. Since we meet in Florence, SC a lot of people ask us what is Florence famous for? Without further delay: Florence, SC - Wikipedia.

One thing Florence County has is "one of the few instances of a dropping of a nuclear device on a civilian community in the United States and the only site where a civilian structure was destroyed." [see Mars Bluff - Wikipedia]

During my "Welcome to the World of Windows Mobile" presentation at the Atlanta Code Camp 2008 I used Remote Display for Windows CE to allow the attendees to see my device, on my desktop, on the presentation screen. After my talk was over, a few people from the audience approached me, and asked me how I was able to run Remote Display on Vista, and connect with it to my Windows Mobile 6 device.

They told me they had tried to do the same thing, but all they ever got was a "the OS or CPU of this device is unknown to this application" error. I explained that this wasn't due to Vista, but actually was caused by a missing file on most newer Windows Mobile devices.

In order to use Remote Display the first thing you will need to do is download the Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys, and install the ActiveSync Remote Display application.

Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys

ActiveSync Remote Display - Display Pocket PC applications on your desktop or laptop without needing any device side configuration.

Work Around:

Copy the cerdisp2.exe file from the desktop's "\Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys\ActiveSync_Remote_Display\Devices\wce400\armv4\" folder, and paste it into the device's "\windows" folder of your Windows Mobile device.

Dear Chris Craft,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way to say thank you for promoting the spirit of community and improving people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. We appreciate your extraordinary efforts in Device Application Development technical communities during the past year.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities. Microsoft MVPs are a highly select group of experts that represents the technical community's best and brightest, and they share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others.

Daniel Moth mentioned Chris William's post "my 21 thoughts on starting a user group".

Chris did an excellent job listing what it takes to start a user group.

I wish Page Brooks, Chris Reeder, and I had this list when we decided to start PDANUG. Fortunately, I think we were able to learn the ropes quickly.

Here are a few tips and tricks we have learned over the years that I think have made all the difference:

1. Check Lists:
   • There are a ton of things to track, remember, and jungle to make each and every user group event a success.
   • It's a good idea to have a To Bring Check List and a To Do Check List.
   • To Bring Check List covers things like plates, napkins, ice, cups, sign in sheets, evaluations, related SWAG, and so on...
   • To Do Check List handles the details like reminders, announcements, notifications, Web site updates, and so on...
   • Without the check list, inevitably when the user group event rolls around everyone will be busy and someone will forget something.
2. Online Community:
   • Have a Web site for the user group. I recommend keeping it simple and using something like DotNetNuke here. Sure, you could code it yourself, or you could "stand on the shoulders of giants".
   • Have a Blog for the user group, and take advantage of RSS feeds for group notification of events. We like DasBlog.
   • Send Email Notifications and Reminders. It is easy for members to lose track of when events are happening. We try to remind a week in advance and either the day before of the day of the event.
   • Event Registration. There are a lot of great sites that both promote local events and help manage them. We are big fans of Eventbrite.
3. Local Community:
   • Recruit: Get together with all your friends and invite them to your user group. Also make sure they invite all their friends as well.
   • Geek Lunches: Low commitment opportunities for people to have a "taste" of what the user group meetings will be like.
   • Colleges and Universities: Tons of possible members, but if events are held off campus it will really effect student turnout.
     • Build relationships with the professors and the university itself. Great opportunity for everyone to work together.
   • Local Media. Sometimes local newspapers will list events for non-profits, and local public access stations may as well.
   • Speakers Wanted: Make sure to encourage members to present. Also, consider having "Open Mic Nights" where anyone can speak on anything for 5-15 minutes. Lots of fun and low commitment.
4. Local User Groups:
   • Build relationships with all the local user groups and user group leaders in your area. We have bunch in our area and you probably do as well. They can help you, and I'm sure they will.
   • Inform local user groups of your user group's events and activities. If your user group is have the right event or a special speaker there is a good chance people want mind making a trip out to see you.
   • Also educate your members about local events from other user groups, but also include any MSDN events, developer conferences, and related opportunities to your group.
   • If you are creating flyers for your user group consider sharing them with other groups to help busy user group leaders to promote your group's events.
   • Speaker Exchange: Instead of speaking at your user group for the Nth time consider agreeing to speak at another user group's event in exchange for someone coming and speaking at your next event.
   • Code Camps: Attend code camps and present if possible great opportunity to spread the word and recruit speakers as well.
   • Speaker Awareness: We learned there were people traveling from south of us to present in user groups north of us, and vice versa. Once we knew this we knew we had found some potential speakers.
5. Sponsorship:
   • User groups do take some small amount of money to keep going. This is just a fact of life, and at least for a while there will be the times when you just have to "eat" the costs of the pizza and soda.
   • Contact local developer shops and companies and ask them to sponsor meetings. Pizza and soda are not expensive and it is a great way for companies to get their names in front of passionate developers.
   • Donation Jar: Donations will never cover all the costs of user group events, but they can help.
   • Paid Membership: Some groups have optional paid membership that includes extra benefits.
   • Book publishers, magazine publishers, and many software companies will donate books, magazines, and software to user groups. You just have to take a few minutes and let them know you exist.

At first starting a user group may appear a little intimidating but really it is a lot more fun than work. You get to meet a ton of great people and learn so much more than you would on your own.

What do you think? Did I leave anything off? Do you have an idea that might help someone start a user group? Please share it with us all. Feel free to post a comment or even better blog about it yourself.

I couldn't resist making the trip down to Columbia, SC to experience the Columbia Enterprise Developers Guild's Visual Studio 2008 Install Fest.

Glen Gordon and Chris Eargle did a great job hosting this event.

There were a little over 25 attend, and everyone walked away with a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

During the event everyone had an opportunity to experience Halo 3 and Rock Band for the XBox 360.

And there was a special appearance by Halo's Master Chief himself. I don't have any actual pictures, but the image below is close to the experience.

Microsoft has created another awesome resource for Windows Mobile developers!

INNOVATE ON Windows Mobile located at http://www.innovateonwindowsmobile.com/.

Yesterday, Saturday, October 20, 2007, I did a presentation at the Fall 2007 Charlotte Code Camp. I actually ended up doing an encore presentation due to the overwhelming number of people who showed up. My presentation was titled "Visual Studio 2005 Tips & Tricks".

Presentation Highlights:

• Tons and tons of Visual Studio 2005 keyboard shortcuts
• Windows keyboard shortcuts
• Internet Web browser shortcuts
• Many developer utilities and tools for Visual Studio 2005
• and more..

If you attended the event, or are just curious, and would like to have the slide deck I presented just use the link below:

Visual Studio 2005 Tips & Tricks Presentation PowerPoint

Last week I did a presentation at our South Carolina Code Camp 2.0. It was a great event, and I think the presentation went very well. My presentation was titled "A Lap around Windows Mobile", and I showed it during my Welcome to the World of Windows Mobile Development session.

Presentation Highlights:

• What's new in Windows Mobile 6
• Demonstration of AT&T Tilt 8925
• Overview of Compact Framework .NET
• Overview of SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition
• Overview of OpenNETCF's Smart Device Framework
• Demos
• Silverlight Mobile
• And more...

If you attended the event, or are just curious, and would like to have the slide deck I presented just use the link below:

Welcome to the World of Windows Mobile Development: A Lap around Windows Mobile Presentation PowerPoint

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Topic: Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks - Part II

Tuesday, September 11, 2007, is our next meeting of  Pee Dee Area .NET User's Group.

Chris Craft, from ACS Technologies, will be presenting Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks - Part II.

Material from Part I will be recovered for any of those who may have missed it, and new tips and tricks will be presented.

Visual Studio .NET is filled with thousands of features and capabilities that make our lives as developers more efficient. The number of features that Visual Studio .NET contains is immense. The Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is a compilation of my favorite, and most popular, tips and tricks for this great IDE. Developers who are unaware of these timesaving features miss out on opportunities to increase their programming productivity and effectiveness. This Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is meant to explain how to use Visual Studio .NET more effectively.

See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM Drawing and Wrap Up
Please subscribe to the PDANUG Upcoming Events and News Feed here.

Corporate Comedy by Corporate Comedian Don McMillan.

This is a great PowerPoint presentation on how NOT to do PowerPoint presentations . It's about 4 minutes of pure PowerPoint wisdom, plus its hilarious.

How NOT to user PowerPoint by comedian Don McMillian

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Topic: Real-World Windows Communication Foundation
Our next event will be held on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007. Thad Smith, from ACS Technologies will be presenting real-world development with Windows Communication Foundation. This presentation will include pragmatic approaches to utilizing the Windows Communication Foundation in your solutions.  See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:

6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM Drawing and Wrap Up

PDANUG serves the Pee Dee Area of South Carolina. Our group focuses on the .NET Framework and related technologies. We cordially invite anyone that is interested to join us at our monthly gatherings. You can find more information on our meeting location and topcis below. You may also contact us by emailing admin@pdanug.net for more information.

If you are interested in our group, please register! This helps us gain an understanding for who is interested in attending our events.

Click Here for detailed driving directions

The code camp is Saturday, May 12, all day, at the Central Piedmont Community College.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.developersguild.org/codecamp/2007/.

The 2007 Charlotte Code Camp will be held on Saturday, May 12th with CPCC and Microsoft to bring another Code Camp to Charlotte! A full Saturday of "primo" hands-on labs and tech presentations covered up with code, code, and more code.

I'd love to attend the XNA Simulation Labs, but I think I'll attend the Presentations track.

.NET University Labs

This track is designed to give you a good technical introduction to the four new technologies that ship with .NET 3.0: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and Windows CardSpace.

XNA Simulation Labs

XNA is Microsoft's new game development platform for Windows and the XBOX 360. This track is designed to give you a good technical introduction to how to develop a game on these platforms.

Presentations

This non-lab track will present upcoming technologies including Orcas (VS 2007) and LINQ as well as solutions to everyday developer issues like the Building Blocks of a production ASP.NET application and building custom webparts for WSS V3.

Sign up now!

Mark you calendars! The .NET University is coming to Florence, SC! Are YOU ready for Vista? Don't miss this BIG event.

PDANUG Event Reminder
Tuesday, January 9, 2006
Topic: .NET University - Windows Workflow Foundation

.NET University in Florence, SC

Event ID: 1032315697

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 6:00 PM - January 9, 2007 8:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

McLeod Medical

800 Cheves St.
Florence South Carolina 29506
United States

Event Overview

This class will take place over four consecutive user group meetings: 

11/14/2006 – Windows Cardspace – taught by Page Brooks
12/12/2006 - Windows Communication Foundation – taught by Glen Gordon
01/09/2007 - Windows Workflow Foundation – taught by Brian Hitney
02/13/2007 - Windows Presentation Foundation – taught by Chris Craft 

The Pee Dee .NET User Group is proud to present .NET University as a 4-part series during this winter's meetings!  Join us to get an overview of the next version of the .NET Framework (.NET 3.0), including Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. All topics are covered at a 100-level, and labs will be included with the courseware. Upon completion, registered attendees will receive their official .NET University alumni T-Shirt and a Certificate of completion. Space is limited, so register early to get your seat at .NET University!

Mark you calendars! The .NET University is coming to Florence, SC! Are YOU ready for Vista? Don't miss this BIG event.

.NET University in Florence, SC

Event ID: 1032315697

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 6:00 PM - Tuesday, November 14, 2006 8:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

McLeod Medical

800 Cheves St.
Florence South Carolina 29506
United States

Event Overview

This class will take place over four consecutive user group meetings: 

11/14/2006 – Windows Cardspace – taught by Page Brooks
12/12/2006 - Windows Communication Foundation – taught by Glen Gordon
01/09/2007 - Windows Presentation Foundation – taught by Chris Craft
02/13/2007 - Windows Workflow Foundation – taught by Brian Hitney

The Pee Dee .NET User Group is proud to present .NET University as a 4-part series during this winter’s meetings!  Join us to get an overview of the next version of the .NET Framework (.NET 3.0), including Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. All topics are covered at a 100-level, and labs will be included with the courseware. Upon completion, registered attendees will receive their official .NET University alumni T-Shirt and a Certificate of completion.

Mark you calendars! The .NET University is coming to Florence, SC! Are YOU ready for Vista? Don't miss this BIG event.

.NET University in Florence, SC

Event ID: 1032315697

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 6:00 PM - Tuesday, November 14, 2006 8:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

McLeod Medical

800 Cheves St.
Florence South Carolina 29506
United States

Event Overview

This class will take place over four consecutive user group meetings: 

11/14/2006 – Windows Cardspace – taught by Page Brooks
12/12/2006 - Windows Communication Foundation – taught by Glen Gordon
01/09/2007 - Windows Presentation Foundation – taught by Chris Craft (That's me! You don't want to miss this one! <wink>)
02/13/2007 - Windows Workflow Foundation – taught by Brian Hitney

The Pee Dee .NET User Group is proud to present .NET University as a 4-part series during this winter’s meetings!  Join us to get an overview of the next version of the .NET Framework (.NET 3.0), including Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. All topics are covered at a 100-level, and labs will be included with the courseware. Upon completion, registered attendees will receive their official .NET University alumni T-Shirt and a Certificate of completion. Space is limited, so register early to get your seat at .NET University!

Click Here for Driving Directions

Directions to the Classroom
Enter the McLeod Medical Plaza using the 800 Cheves St. entrance (Bottom Right-Hand Corner of Map)
Take a left and look for room (PC - Plaza Classroom) it’s on the first floor.

I am a cofounder, along with Page Brooks, for the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group located in South Carolina, which has just recently been accepted into the International .NET Association (INETA).

The International .NET Association (INETA) provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups. Our mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft's .NET technologies. INETA welcomes all facets of the .NET user community, from developers and architects to project managers and IT professionals.

I thought it might be helpful if I shared what I've learned about INETA for anyone else that might be interested.

INETA Speaker Bureau - listing of individuals who speak for INETA.

INETA Speaker Bureau FAQ - good FAQ on requesting speakers, etc.

INETA Newsletters - large listing of newsletters that will bring anyone up to speed on INETA.

INETA Live! So You Want to Hold a Code Camp? - Web cast, but I am not sure there will be a recording.

Northeast Regional User Group Leadership Summit - maybe Page or I can make this.

INETA Birds of a Feather - think of these as mini-presentations during the TechEd 2006.

[I've added some more information in the comments to keep this topic up to date as I've learned more about INETA.]