So, if you're hiking today, please wear something bright and keep low.
Code Camp 9 this past weekend out at the Microsoft building in Waltham, MA.
This was my first Code Camp to attend, and I learned a lot. Had to tear myself between sessions that were personally interesting (XNA Game Development) and sessions that were good for work (Visual Studio 2008 in the Trenches). Here is a list of the sessions I went to, with a brief take on them:
Day One:
- Extending Powershell -- the speaker was energetic and enthusiastic (for a 9 AM session after two hours in the car) -- Atalasoft's own Lou Franco. Great presentation -- I say that without too much bias -- as I came into the session not knowing Powershell was anything more than a lobster on steroids, and walked out of the session knowing enough to start using it.
- Visual Studio 2008 in the Trenches -- I felt the potential for this one wasn't met. It was an open discussion on anything in VS 08, good or bad, but we stayed focused on a single topic (Linq) for too long.
- Game Development with XNA -- this was a blast. Chris Bowen led us step by step through developing an actual game (well... almost. It was Pong.)
- WPF Mean Business II -- I guess I really needed the first one. I was hoping for more, but the presentation was very dependent on the slides, and my senses were a bit overloaded by them -- too many "words", not enough "pictures". I can not even remember if we made it all the way through the example.
- ASP.NET AJAX -- I was enthralled during this presentation so much, I never looked down to take notes. We have a couple of AJAX-enabled tools in our DotImage product, and it was eye-opening to know just what is making those tick.
Day Two:
- Advanced Techniques for Everyday Development -- I came away from this one with a list of tools to try out -- not because they were really part of the presentation, but more because the presenter had them installed and they looked helpful. The talk was mostly on "Behavior Driven Development", which, to me, meant "write want you want to accomplish in plain English before you start coding". Ummm... right. To me, that should be step one regardless, but I don't think I'm going to name my functions "This_function_will_return_an_integer_value_if_I_send_it_two_integers_to_add" any time soon.
- The AJAX Control Toolkit -- this felt like an extension of the first AJAX session I went to, in both energy and information (I remembered to take notes this time). I learned a lot about the ScriptManager and the way an AJAX page communicates with the server -- great analogy by the presenter, Greg Howe, to make the concepts easy for anyone to understand.
A couple things I would suggest to anybody giving a presentation:
- Resist the urge to put more than 20 words on a PowerPoint slide. If I want to read, I'll buy a book. Having a conversation about the topic, using the slide to highlight areas, is much more effective. Consider handouts before the presentation begins.
- Consider making your examples available to load so that people can follow along on their own machines during the presentation.
- Lead the discussion -- don't let the discussion lead you. Have the, um, cajones to take control when people veer off the path, or when a question does not apply.
On a personal note, Chris Bowen says in his blog there were 300 people on Saturday, and 200 on Sunday. I counted 11 other women besides me. *sigh* Not to get all women's lib in the blog, but that was severely disappointing. And I did not see a single female presenter.
(Methinks I just volunteered myself... darn it.)
But if I kill all the golfers, they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key...
So we've hired a handful of new people here at Atalasoft, including a new Developer Support Engineer (everyone, wave to Kevin). Kevin has got some mad skills, and will soon be up to speed with DotImage and DotTwain. He's already answering the phones -- give him a warm welcome if you speak to him.
Speaking of mad skills, there are two I do *not* possess -- the ability to speak Spanish and the ability to write code in VB as fast as I write C#. For those two items, I use these:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
http://labs.developerfusion.co.uk/
Often, when I need to give a code sample to a customer, I send it off to them in C#, without knowing what they're using. This allows me to get the information across faster and more accurately. The Code Converters by Developer Fusion can translate both directions between VB and C#.
As for the Spanish, well, Dad told me to study it in school, but I didn't listen. Unfortunately, we do not have anyone here who does speak Spanish, but I can type pretty fast into Babelfish.
So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Those of you at Code Camp in Boston this weekend, see you there.
The most tasty and delicious of all that is tasty and delicious. We had pizza and wings today for lunch, provided by a very happy customer.
Pizza, wings, soda -- he went overboard. The delivery guy had to make two trips from his car. I would post a picture, but it didn't last that long.
He bought us pizza to thank me and the Daves for helping him integrate annotations into his website. He'll also be doing a case study with us soon.
To give you a summary, his website allows customers to electronically sign documents. He incorporated annotations to point out where signatures belonged, and to also automatically "sign" the document by clicking those same annotations. He creates the initial template of annotations using our Annotations Demo available when you install the SDK.
Obviously, bribery of support engineers is not required, condoned, or encouraged. But the barbecue chicken pizza is pretty darn tasty and delicious.
Well, of course DotImage 6.0 is better than 5.0. Annotations inside the WebThumbnailViewer, PDF Text Extraction, Black Point Compensation support (just how black is your black?) are just a few of the new features.
I am biased when it comes to Atalasoft, naturally, but the engineers here still amaze me. Sometimes, it's like the Pasadena Star Trek convention all over again. From a consumer's point of view, if I go to upgrade a product, usually I don't expect that much from them. But with DotImage, I was handed a list of 20 new features that went into 6.0. That doesn't include fixes -- that's 20 brand-spankin' new things we didn't do before.
I have been asked, on occasion, to compare our product with other's, with our competitors. I will not do that. I am sure that they have some brilliant engineers working for them who work just as hard as ours do. All I can say is that DotImage is a vibrant, constantly evolving, ECMi toolkit, and that if it doesn't do what you want now, it probably will soon.
Eep. I think I just stepped into marketing and sales territory. Please forgive me, dear reader, and I will go back to being a nerdlinger.
Welcome to the new Developer Support blog. I'll be your host.
My name is Elaine, and I am the Developer Support Supervisor for Atalasoft. Odds are, if you've called us, you've spoken with me.
This blog is to give people a chance to see inside Atalasoft from a new angle -- something with a more personal touch. Sure it will have code snippets, highlights of our products, the usual technical side of things, but I hope to bring more to the table. I want to show the outside world how we handle problems and how we treat people. We're not a "buy now, go away" company -- we're a "try now, let's make it work, we're here for you" company.
I hope you'll all bear my sense of humor along the way (and the random quotes). So sit back, relax, put your feet up, keep your arms inside the car at all times, where'd you get that juice box and does it come in grape-alicious?
