Last week I did the Agile Estimation session at the NYC Agile Firestarter. Thanks to Alex Hung for taking the video and posting it!

Some back story: all the presenters were trying to out do each other in making up words. :)

Agile Estimation from Alex Hung on Vimeo.

I have been to Nepal several times and trekked to the Everest Base camp twice. Since 2003, I have used a sherpa, Ngima, who totally rocks. Here is a photo of him on top of Mt. Everest:

While trekking to Everest base camp last year, Ngima invited me to come visit him at his home village Chyangba. I wanted to eat his mother’s cooking (dal bhat!) and visit the school children in his village. (They can help me improve my soccer skills.)

One thing led to another and it turns out that his Uncle, Pemba, is in the States and is working to build a school, library, and bring running water to the village. They are leading a trip this September that will raise money for the library via a US based charity called Elevation Education. We will be going to Chyangba with Ngima, Pemba, and Elevation Education on September 25th, to both raise money and do physical labor in the town. (Yes think of me giving up the laptop for a week and chopping wood and building a library.)

You can donate here. Please do.

Thursday, June 18, 2009
An Introduction to Oslo

Subject: 
You must register at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=138919 in order to be admitted to the building and attend.
"Oslo" is the code name for a family of new technologies that enable data-driven model based development. First we will explore the nature of model driven development and then apply the concept of model driven development to Oslo. Learn about the three major components of Oslo: the new “M” language, the “Quadrant” data visualization tool, and the Oslo repository. An M tutorial will show you how to capture all aspects of an application schematized in the Oslo repository and use Oslo directly to drive the execution of deployed applications. In addition to learning how to use M to model an application, we will use M to build and interact with domain specific languages (DSLs). See how Oslo interacts with Visual Studio and .NET. We will finish up with a discussion on where Oslo is going and how and when you can adopt it. (Note, there will be enough time for an enjoyable Q&A.)

Speaker: 
Stephen Forte, Telerik
Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik, a leading vendor in .NET components. He sits on the board of several start-ups including Triton Works and is also a certified scrum master. Prior he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Corzen, Inc, a New York based provider of online market research data for Wall Street Firms. Corzen was acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN) in 2007. Stephen is also the Microsoft Regional Director for the NY Metro region and speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development including Programming SQL Server 2008 (MS Press). Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City and also was co-founder of the New York based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He currently an MVP, INETA speaker and is the co-moderator and founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group. Stephen has an MBA from the City University of New York.

Date: 
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Time: 
Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:15 PM

Location:  
Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor

Directions:
B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr
1 to 50th St./Bway
N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.

Are you just starting out with Agile, XP or Scrum and need to get up to speed? Or do you know a thing or two about Agile but want to learn the basics so you can implement it in your organization? Then this Firestarter is for you. We’ll take you from 0 to 60 in 8 hours. Bring a laptop with Visual Studio 2008 Express edition or better for an all day hands on seminar led by some of the NY area’s Agile practitioners.

When: Saturday June 27th

Where:

Kaye Scholer LLP
425 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Time: Registration and welcome 8:30am

Cost: $8 (to cover the pizza and materials)

To Register: http://agilefirestarter2009.eventbrite.com

Agenda:

• Registration and Welcome

• Intro to Agile (Steve Bohlen)

• Agile Estimation (Steve Forte)

• Test Driven Development (Steve Bohlen)

• Pizza!

• Continuous Integration (Alex Hung)

• Refactoring (Mark Pollack)

• Dependency Injection (Mark Pollack)

• Retrospective Erik Stepp

• Wrap up

Register today, space is limited! More info is here: http://www.agilefirestarter.net

Here is the code from Mary and my session about building front ends to SQL Server with spending any money. It is an Access 2007 Front end that consumes the Twitter RESTful API and eventually allows the user to augment that data in Access then dump it back into a SQL Server table via a SQL TVP. Pretty cool.

Here is a recording of the Daily Scrum Q&A talk that Joel and I did at the Enterprise Development and Solutions Conference in New York City earlier this month.

Last week at TechEd and this week up at the Montreal Users Group (yes I spoke in French! :) ), I presented the “Data Access Hacks and Shortcuts” a session where I walk through 5 different scenarios and have 5 solutions/hacks/tips. It is a unique style of presentation and people either love it or hate it. If you hate it, well, no worries, just go find a presentation that works for you. If you loved it, here are the scenarios and download link to the presentation and code:

• Passing a custom .NET collection (that uses IEnunerable) to a Stored Procedure (SQL Server 2008 TVP)
• Using SQL Server Profiler to spy on your LINQ queries and write better LINQ queries (or debug LINQ queries)
• Modeling complex 1 to many relationships as flatter views for better data access
• Binding to REST (ADO .NET Data Services) data in Silverlight, also has a nice hack on dealing with Silverlight asynchronous processing issues
• Using reporting tables and data warehouse tables as part of your application architecture

You can download the slides and code here. Enjoy.

I am spending my off day (no panels, no TLCs, no breakouts) doing MVP interviews for the MVP web site. I have interviewed:

• Dan Griffin
• Billy Hollis
• Bill Wolf (where he trash talks the Mets and Phils)
• Richard Campbell (this is funny since he is the master interviewer)

In addition I was also on 4 panels yesterday, here are the links to watch:

• Migrating Your Data Tier to SQL Server: Strategies for Survival
• The World Turned Upside Down: Development Strategies for Lean Times
• The Data Access Menu: Making Intelligent Choices
• The Most Persistent Microsoft SQL Server Myths (And Why They Are Wrong)

Tonight is the finals of Speaker Idol, hopefully the finals will make it on the web somehow. Tomorrow is my last talk: Data Access Hacks and Shortcuts @ 10:45.

TechEd is going strong, even in this hard economy. Some of the content is already up online for everyone to watch, the first is

The Pros and Cons of Stored Procedures

and

Agile: A process or an Excuse?

More content on the way…

TechEd is about to begin and Richard and I are going to do an awesome data access keynote, all demos, this is going to be fun, no power points:

DAT403
What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Stephen Forte and Richard Campbell
5/11/2009 1:00PM-2:15PM
Room 151

An Aglie TLC, Joel and I will show off a cool new (and secret) Telerik tool.

DPR04-INT
Tools and Agile Teams
Stephen Forte and Joel Semeniuk
5/11/2009 4:30PM-5:45PM
Blue Thr 2

Two panels, should be fun, these will be recorded and you can view them online at TechEd.com (or somewhere):

PAN67
The Pros and Cons of Stored Procedures
Adam Machanic; Jeffrey Palermo; Maciej Pilecki; Michael Wang; Stephen Forte; Tobias Ternstrom
5/11/2009 9:00AM-10:00AM
501C

PAN59
Agile: A Process or an Excuse?
Chris Menegay; Joel Semeniuk; Richard Campbell; Stephen Forte
5/11/2009 11:00AM-12:00PM
501C