MSDN Flash: Volume 14, Number 15 - July 19, 2010
Editorial News and Notes from Developer Evangelist Dave BostMidwest Community Leader Named New Regional DirectorI'm happy to report that our very own Scott Seely was recently named a Microsoft Regional Director. What is a Regional Director, you may ask? The Region provides us this definition: Regional Directors are members of an elite, worldwide group of technology thought leaders known for their national and international speaking tours, their authorship of books, articles and blogs, and their business acumen. Regional Directors are well-versed on the totality of the software industry. They are recognized for their achievements in communicating the benefits of emerging technologies. Scott has really stepped up in the Midwest community and has gone above and beyond for his service within the community. From leading the planning behind events like the Chicago Code Camp and Windows Phone DevCamp to his efforts behind Tech in the Middle that promise to bring high quality technical conferences to Chicago, in addition to leading the Lake County .NET Users Group and his unselfish efforts to reach out to user groups throughout the area as a speaker and mentor, Scott has thoroughly earned this Regional Director recognition. Here's a little interview I did with Scott for those of you haven't had the pleasure of meeting him yet. DB (Dave Bost): Scott, tell us a little bit about yourself. SS (Scott Seely): I used to work for Microsoft (2000-2006). From 2002-2006, I worked on Indigo (aka WCF). The tracing system in WCF v3.0 is one of the features my team created and one I spent about 2 years on, including ActivityTracing. I also wrote and architected most of the config system in WCF. Many of the ease-of-use things in 4.0 were argued for in some fashion back in 2005. However, getting those decisions wrong was more expensive than providing the core infrastructure that exists today. While at Microsoft, I was in building 42 for 4 years. I desperately wanted to rename all the conference rooms for an April 1 gag to things like "Zaphod Beeblebrox Suite", "Ford Prefect", "Trillian", "Arthur Dent", "Douglas Adams", etc. If you don't get those references and why they would be appropriate for any building numbered 42, please go read this. My wife Jean and I have 3 children (two boys and a girl). We have two dogs: Nina (Westie, Chihuahua mix) and Jimmy (Yorkshire Terrier). I'm a big-time Batman fan. I love the two latest movies and, for a while, bought every new comic with the bat on it. I'm also a huge fan of Frank Herbert's Dune novels (I can't get into the stuff his kid wrote). DB: How did you get involved with the community? SS: A few years ago, I started going to the Chicago .NET Users' Group meetings in Downers Grove. I live in the northern suburbs, which meant I could only make a few meetings a year due to timing issues. With some help from the local evangelists, Dave Bost and Larry Clarkin, I got connected with some other folks who also wanted a users' group further north. Out of that, Lake County .NET Users' Group was formed. And from that, I got connected with all the people in the area who help set up events. DB: Why is it important for technical professionals to get involved with the community? SS: For me, the big thing has been the relationships that I've been able to build. I've got friends and acquaintances all over northern Illinois and a good chunk of Wisconsin thanks to my putting in the time to get deeply involved. However, I started doing this because community involvement provides a way to learn new technologies through classroom settings as well as through short term projects. User groups and other conferences provide the classroom setting where you can attend a number of talks on topics that interest you. Other things, like the recent Midwest Give Camp we had at the Microsoft Downers Grove office, allow us to build a moderate-sized project in two and a half days and get some work experience. Working on projects where everyone is a peer is a lot of fun and lets you get to know people pretty quickly. Also, being involved in the community helps keep you well connected so that when your current gig ends, finding the next one is easier. The people in the community tend to help each other out. If you are known as a good developer, we will help keep you employed. DB: You're our new Regional Director (RD). What is an RD? SS: I've been in the role for a few weeks now, so I'm definitely still learning what an RD really is. We are a smallish group, less than 200 people worldwide. The MVP program dwarfs our numbers! Many of the RDs are Microsoft-geek famous; some famous ones include Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin of DotNetRocks as well as Rocky Lhotka. Then, there are others who are more like me. We run user groups, developer camps, small businesses, and have developed deep ties with Microsoft. As a rule, we are generalists who understand a broad swath of Microsoft technologies. Microsoft teams regularly email or schedule time with the RDs to present information about stuff before it hits the public. We then respond, candidly, about how we see things and how to make things better. The great thing is that Microsoft listens and responds to this group. We also have commitments back to Microsoft to keep doing the things that helped us get invited as advisors in the first place. DB: As an RD, how do you plan on extending your influence in the community? SS: My larger goal is to continue working with others in the area to make this a better place to be a developer. One of the problems I am working on with a few others is the issue of how developers are learning. Classroom environments with labs to learn new technology aren't being backed by actual practice of the new skill. One thing I want to collaborate on with others is building real applications for real customers immediately after a training session. Cutting edge technology shouldn't take three years to adopt in our market. Developers should be able to get real experience right now in building this stuff. The other thing I want to do is work on getting more decision makers involved in the community. Our events have a lot of good people showing up, but I know many other people who don't show up and should. I know the bigger companies in our area have folks with titles like "Architect", "Development Engineer Lead", and so on, but they aren't participating. I want to work with Microsoft to find out who these people are and then get them involved in mentoring, speaking, and discussing what is going on. DB: Tell us about Tech in the Middle. SS: Tech in the Middle, techinthemiddle.com, is a paid attendance conference that Gabe Garms and I started organizing in 2009. The name comes from the fact that Chicago is a major international hub and we are doing developer-focused conferences: hence "Tech in the Middle." In the past 9 months we have hosted two conferences: Day of Cloud in October 2009 and Day of Mobile in March 2010. We recognize that developers in the area are evaluating cloud and mobile platforms but don't have the time or energy to investigate everything about these offerings. The goal behind the two conferences was to bring all the information to one location and let people dig in and absorb everything they could. Our other goal has been to bring the big name speakers to Chicago. For example, on Cloud we had Don Schwarz from Google who is one of the lead developers behind the Java implementation on App Engine. On Day of Mobile, our keynote was Jay Freeman. He is the owner/creator of Cydia - an iPhone APT front end that is used on over 2 million jail-broken iPhones. On September 11, 2010, we are hosting a one day conference that focuses on Cloud and Mobile called Tech in the Middle 2010. We will have experts to talk about Windows Phone 7, Android, and iPhone development. On the cloud side, we will have talks about Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google App Engine. For general discussions, we also have folks coming in to talk about legal issues in cloud and mobile software. We are running workshops for people who want to learn hands-on. Finally, we have a hackathon where we will be giving out prizes for the best applications in several categories. Overall, we are expecting over 750 people to attend. DB: What will Tech in the Middle bring to Chicago for the technical community? SS: We connect folks who normally wouldn't meet up because our conference does cross the various encampment lines. 15% of the ticket sales are going to be put into a fund to help out Chicago area user groups. We also want to continue to educate the technical community about the other issues they will run into if they decide to become entrepreneurs. Teach them how and when to protect their intellectual property. Show them how to market their products, find investment capital and so on. Gabe and I also work with several other conferences in the area to help them address the needs of their users. For example, we've worked with the folks involved in Social Dev Camp Chicago to help each other's conferences get good speakers, sponsors, and so on. DB: What are you most excited about coming out of Redmond? SS: I love the Windows Server AppFabric that just shipped. The extra monitoring that is baked into IIS 7.x is a great way to watch your active work flow and WCF instances. The caching layer finally gives us something that is better than memcached. I've also been a huge fan of Windows Home Server. I've lost 2 or 3 hard discs on various machines since I bought it and I've never lost any data. I can't wait to see Aurora. I expect enterprise development teams will jump on it early in order to back up their machines on a regular basis. DB: What's on your horizon for the next 6 - 12 months? SS: I'm developing a lot of content for Pluralsight on Demand. October 9, I'll be speaking at the Houston TechFest. By November 1, I need to finish writing Essential Windows Communication Foundation, 2nd Edition for Addison-Wesley. A few of your co-workers and I want to write another book to close out the winter. We are planning Chicago Code Camp 2011 for March. Between all of that, I'll be speaking at a number of user groups throughout the region, and trying to figure out what an RD is really supposed to do. If folks in the community have an opinion on what I should be doing, email scott.seely@friseton.com. Since I also do consulting gigs, they can contact me for work too! Thanks Scott, and congratulations! Happy coding! Dave Dave Bost is a Senior Developer Evangelist based in Chicago, Illinois, covering the Midwest states of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Dave is the co-host of the Thirsty Developer Podcast. He enjoys discovering new music with his Zune Pass, defending the universe against 13-year olds on Xbox Live, and playing golf (whenever his wife lets him). Subscribe to his blog. | 
