GeekGirlBlogs

For the Fallen 11.11.2009

kcarruthers — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:46:59 PST

In Australia we commemorate our veterans with The Ode. It comes from a poem by Laurence Binyon called For The Fallen, and seems appropriate today:

They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning
We will remember them. Lest we Forget.

I Would LOVE To Publish Your Comments

(author unknown) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:39:44 PST

Yes this is a DOFOLLOW blog and a tasty PR3 one at that (not that that really means anything nowadays) and I would love to make sure your links appear here. But I am picky. It's only fair, I am offering you an opportunity to benefit from my blog, but ...

A Clogged Filter in Excel

Debra Dalgleish — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:01:00 PST

I love advanced filters, but this week they caused me some serious grief.

Advanced filters in Excel are quick and powerful, and I use lots of them. They’re a great way to pull a list of unique items from a table, or send specific data from one sheet to another.

People sometimes have trouble with an advanced filter, usually because the headings are incorrect, or there are no headings. The advanced filter criteria can be a bit tricky too, if you go beyond the basics.

I know about those problems, and am carefully to avoid them.

A Simple Filter

This week, as part of a larger procedure, I had an advanced filter, similar to the one shown below.

The code was designed to pull a list of unique products from column G, and put it in column K. In this example, all 7 products in column G are unique, so they all should have been filtered to column K.

However, after I ran the filter, there was nothing in column K, except the heading!

Leftovers Clog the Filter

I checked, and the headings were an exact match, so that wasn’t the problem. I checked the code carefully, and everything looked okay. Similar code had run hundreds of times, without a hiccup.

To troubleshoot, I tried to run the advanced filter manually, and this is what appeared in the Advanced Filter dialog box when it opened. Hmmm. There, in the Criteria Range box, was the range from a previous advanced filter.

I cleared out the Criteria Range setting, and the filter ran without problems. All 7 products showed up in column K.

So, even though the advanced filter didn’t use a criteria range, I added one to the code, with the setting as an empty string.

Good Housekeeping Prevents Clogging

With that change, the code ran perfectly, even if a previous filter had a criteria range.

To prevent your own advanced filter headaches, add that empty criteria range to your code, if you’re not using a criteria range. It will clear out the setting, in case a previous advanced filter used a criteria range.

I’ll certainly do that from now on!

__________________

FTC versus Innovative Marketing et al - developments

sandi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:33:51 PST

Innovative Marketing and Daniel Sundin are still unrepresented.

09/16/2009
ORDER denying Motion of Marc D'Souza to Dismiss the Complaint. DIRECTING D'Souza to answer the complaint within 20 days. Signed by Judge Richard D Bennett on 9/16/09.

"Viewing the totality of the allegations through the lens of judicial experience and common sense, this Court finds that the FTC has clearly “plea factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 50). Through its extensive factual pleadings, the FTC has positioned its claims against Marc D’Souza safely within the realm of plausibility."

10/02/2009
MEMORANDUM ORDER granting Motion for Sanctions against Sam Jain insofar as certain conditions are imposed.

“The FTC’s Motion for Rule 37 Sanctions against Defendant Sam Jain (Paper No. 131) is GRANTED insofar as the following conditions are hereby imposed:

“1. the FTC is instructed to re-notice Jain’s deposition for an agreed upon time within the next thirty days of the date hereof;
2. Jain shall again be offered the opportunity to be deposed by video-conference from a location of his choosing;
3. Jain is hereby warned that if he fails to attend this upcoming deposition, this Court will consider imposing a default judgment against him pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(d).”

10/06/2009
ANSWER to FTC Complaint (document 1), by Marc D'Souza

A few minor admissions, lots of denials, a claim that "the FTC has authority to seek restitution, consumer redress or disgorgement with respect to conduct that took place outside the United States and that does not affect domestic commerce", lot of declining to answer under the Fifth Amendment (while at the same time requesting that said refusal be treated as a denial).

10/22/2009
Second MOTION for Sanctions Pursuant to Rule 37 Against Sam Jain by Federal Trade Commission. Responses due by 11/9/2009

"Sam Jain has made a mockery of this proceeding and has demonstrated nothing but contempt for this Court and the American judicial system as a whole. Together with his codefendants, Jain perpetrated one of the largest online frauds ever prosecuted by the FTC, with a total consumer injury figure that – as the Court will soon hear – exceeds $150 million. After being caught red-handed by the FTC, Jain promptly fled the United States, leaving his lawyers behind to delay the FTC’s efforts to redress the massive consumer injury Jain helped inflict. After nearly a year of delay, Jain has reached the end of the road. Unwilling to comply with this Court’s command that he participate in discovery, Jain has no further ability to stall this litigation. As a result, Jain has washed his hands of this matter, and simply disappeared. Given these facts, it is difficult to imagine a case that better supports the imposition of terminating sanctions, or an individual more deserving of such an outcome than Jain."

11/02/2009
MOTION for Extension of Time to File Response/Reply as to Second MOTION for Sanctions Pursuant to Rule 37 Against Sam Jain by Sam Jain. Responses due by 11/19/2009 (unopposed)

"Mr. Jain respectfully submits that good cause for granting this Motion exists: (1) Mr. Jain has not requested or received from the Court an extension on any other response or reply filed in this case; (2) Logistical obstacles and the important factual and legal issues raised by the FTC’s Renewed Motion necessitate a brief extension of time to respond."

11/03/2009
Paperless ORDER granting Defendant Jain's unopposed Motion for Extension of Time. Response to Second Motion for Sanctions due 11/16/2009

Snowcovered session from Brice Snow

chris.hammond@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:28:27 PST

This post is being updated during the session

Agenda, History of SnowCovered, Developers, Customers, Best Practices, Conclusion

History

Started selling IBuySpy addons in 2002

2003 providing developer services

Current Stats – 768 Active Developers, 11 average listings per developer. 54% US Based, 6% UK, 5% Australia, 4% Canada , 3% Netherlands

Average price of a module $70

Revenues per year, growth considerable (no numbers, just a graph)

2009 close to 5000 reviews submitted. Reviews have grown on a similar pattern to the revenue growth.

Listing Tips

Module Title – function name in the title, compatibility not necessary, technology distracting, good title = good search results

Short description – Functionality in 300 Characters, Marketing Buzzwords mask products with features

Description – Feature list at the top, Offer a product demo when possible, Most important information at the top left

Technical support/docs – Tell people what you offer!

Refund policy – have one, the more liberal/open the better for customer

License types – specify types/usage

Sales Growth Tips

Solicit feature suggestions – new version exposure, increases appeal, sell upgrades

Interface Improvements – Reduces support, improves marketing

Review requests – Improves page position, increases sales, provides validation

Spread the word – forum participation, social media, consultant recommended sales

I had to jet out of Brice’s session before the end to pass out Engage Software t-shirts in Ian and Dang’s session next door. Find Me, Dang, Ian or Pat from Engage to get a free t-shirt! you gotta come find us though (at our sessions is a good place to start).

Welcome Aboard!

joe.brinkman@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:33:38 PST

Last year at OpenForce, DotNetNuke Corporation was on the verge of closing our first round of funding. 2006, 07 and 08 were challenging years as we struggled to find a business model that would support our company of 6 and allow us to grow. Shaun, Scott, Nik and I formed DotNetNuke Corp. with the goal of building a company that would allow us to better manage the project and improve DotNetNuke with access to increased resources. With the investment we received in 2008 we have been able to grow the company to nearly 30 employees and contractors. As we have brought in additional employees, it has allowed us to further focus our efforts rather than running around trying to do everything ourselves.

One of our first people we hired after OpenForce last year was Cathal Connolly from the core team. Cathal joined Charles Nurse who already worked for DotNetNuke Corp and brought his deep understanding of DotNetNuke security to the company. At the same time we began to build out our engineering office in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada – not far from Vancouver. We quickly hired Sarah Darkis and John Lucarino who both had prior experience working with Shaun and who also had extensive experience working with DotNetNuke and ASP.Net. This was our engineering team for the better part of the first 9 months in 2009.

More...

Shaun’s Keynote at OpenForce 09

chris.hammond@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:18:41 PST

9:18AM: I’ll be updating this blog post as I can throughout Shaun’s Keynote, so refresh the page to see if you have the latest info! Shaun’s Keynote starts in 45 minutes (10am PST) so I’ll come back at that time and start adding content as he spits it out.

10:02AM: Shaun is up on stage getting ready to start. I’m recording, or attempting to, using my recorder to try to post the audio for the session tonight on DNNVoice.com

Agenda: Project Review, Product Roadmap, DNN Corp Overview, Embracing Industry Trends, Community Choice Awards

From here I’m not posting “times” from the post, but everything is in order.

Project Review

870k downloads (DNN CE) 2009

All time downloads 4.95 Million

DotNetNuke.com registered users 740k, up from 625k this time last year

Production websites running on DotNetNuke (estimate) 500k

Estimated 12k new websites deployed monthly

Conferences: OF EU 10/09, OF NA 11/09

Publications: # of books released in the past year

Packt Publishing: 2008 Best Overall Open Source CMS 3rd place, 2009 Results soon

Product Review

12 Public releases in 2009, 7 in 2008

4.X platform releases over the past year. 4.X end of life’d in September, all new releases are DNN 5 (personal note, you should be on DNN 5.1.4 now! it rocks)

5.X 7 releases in the past year. Working on 5.2

5.1 (released 07/09) Feature enhancements, Content Versioning/Approval, web request caching provider, Google Analytics support, Site Health Monitoring, Extended Permissions, Application Integrity checker, Management UI console, Core Entity Auditing (some of those features were specifically for PS)

Future current release, 5.2, Module and Page Output caching provider, Scheduler Enhancements, Tab Settings API, Portal and Page Template Serialization Improvements, Module Developer Productivity Enhancements, Content Localization API Foundation, Commercial Web Control Suite Integration PUBLIC RELEASE NEXT WEEK

5.3 Features – Abstract Folder Provider (for use potentially with things like sharepoint, amazon s3, azure, other types of items). Need to enhance messaging, storage, delivery providers. Search Engine overhaul. Portal Groups – allowing portals to share authentication. Content Localization within the UI. UI/UX improvements. Google Sitemap Extensibility, Improved User Profile Display and Field Types Goal Q1 2010

Longer term roadmap – Improved install experience. Enterprise Content Staging/Publishing (yay). Social Networking (Tagging, Taxonomy, etc). Document Management. Improved Foundational Core Modules. Contemporary Data Access Layer (ie. ORM). Friendlier URLS and SEO Optimizations. Enterprise Logging Provider. Clustered Caching Provider. New and Enhanced Authentication providers, much more. Planned Quarterly releases schedule

Corporation Overview

Vision, provide the most deployed, valuable, and cost-effective web app framework in the world

Investors AugustCapital and Sierra Ventures, Series A financing 11/08.

Business Growth: Multiple office locations, Australia, UK/Ireland, Vancouver BC, Silicon Valley

Commercial Product: Needed to provide support to business customers. PE is CE with value added wrapper, support, and features.

Professional Edition Benefits: Exclusive product features, unlimited tech support, Network Services, Documentation and Knowledge base, Annual Product Subscription

Elite Edition Benefits: Live telephone support, priority management of trouble tickets, guaranteed 2 hours support response time, extended support house. Installation/upgrade assistance, Source Code Access to PE features

Elite Premier Edition: Deployments of 5 or more product instances, increased indemnification, flexible contract terms

Number of licensed customers today 250

Commercial Roadmap

Community, Express, Professional, Enterprise.

Express, Very small business, less than 20 employees, 2 web based support tickets annually, single portal. same features as CE. Sometime in 2010

DNN Corp Strategic Accomplishments

Acquisition of Snowcovered, Brice is up on Stage.

Partnership with Telerik for use of controls, Rad Controls for ASP.NET Ajax. Rich Text Editors, Grid Controls, bundled with DNN 5.2, more UI overhauls will utilize more features in future releases.

Industry Trends

Things that DNN wants to do

Integrating product and channel, PAAS, platform as a service. Provide a seemless way to integrate DNN and Snowcovered, within your DNN installs.

Cloud infrastructure amazon and azure.

Empowering productivity developer

Mobile devices

Rich Internet Applications

Community Choice Awards

Best Overall and Best Informational Site – Rehab.com

Most Creative/Original Site – SilkRoadProject.org

Best E-commerce Site- SakeSocial

More coming

Starting up OpenForce 09, Tuesday Morning

chris.hammond@dotnetnuke.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:52:38 PST

So OpenForce 09 is starting up. Scott Guthrie (The Gu) is doing his ASP.NET 4.0/VS 2010 presentation, the main keynote for Tuesday morning here in Las Vegas.

Most everyone got to Vegas yesterday and immediately those of us on Twitter started to locate each other and get together to say hello to old friends, meet new ones, and get some food! For those of you who have never been to the west coast, you may not have ever heard of In-N-Out Burger. It’s a chain, I believe all owned by the same family, primarily in California, though there are a few locations in Arizona, Nevada and one in Utah. I organized a gathering to head over to the one not far from the hotel Monday at noon. Unfortunately I spent Monday morning here in Vegas at a dentist due to some pain that started as soon as I got off the plane. The rest of the guys met up and caught a cab or two over to In-N-Out for lunch, I was able to catch a cab from the dentist and meet up with everyone who made it over there for lunch.

I had a great time introducing everyone to the wonders of In-n-Out, I’m not sure if they liked the food or not, but I sure did. I try to make it there at least once every time I come to Vegas for OpenForce. After that we walked back to the hotel, catching up on everyone’s happenings since the last time we were together. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting checked into the conference and locating people as they arrived for the week. I don’t know how many people are actually registered for the DNN side of the conference but most of my friends are here, so I’m enjoying the people. That is why I actually love the conferences, the people, catching up, meeting new, and just geeking out over things with everyone else.

Monday night some of us met up and went to Burger Bar for dinner. If you want to see what everyone is doing this week be sure to check out Twitter, you can search for the hash tag #OpenForce as a lot of us are tweeting about events and such.

This is the first day for the conference, things are just getting started, as they do I’ll post more (assuming I can get a solid internet connection). I may end up playing with a new toy I got this week, a Motorola Droid, to see if I can use that for my internet connection here at the conference, with 2500 people at the conference the free Wiki right now isn’t holding up to well. Which could become an issue for me during my presentation tomorrow about interacting with Facebook using DNN. We’ll see how that goes ;)

Shaun’s keynote starts at 10am PST, so I’ll try to blog again during/after that session to let people know about all the new announcements! Stay tuned for some cool things.

You can get more media from openforce at http://openforce.r2ismash.com

Also be sure to check out our DNNVoice Podcast later tonight, I’m going to be doing audio blurbs from people here at OpenForce throughout the day and trying to get a short file uploaded each night. Not a full blown podcast like Tom and I try to do (somewhat frequently). We’ll see how the internet connection holds out for that as well!

SketchFlow Viewer featured on Channel 9

webmaster@adefwebserver.com — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:12:16 PST

I just found out that the Microsoft Channel 9 program featured my DotNetNuke SketchFlow Viewer.

The link to the video is here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/This+Week+On+Channel+9/This-Week-C9-IE8-most-secure-Unix-turns-40-SQL-DBA-eBook/ (they talk about SketchFlow for about 5 minutes and mention the DotNetNuke SketchFlow Viewer at about 23.18)

Google Sitemap Provider for DotNetNuke

vmasanas@hotmail.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:58:00 PST

At OpenForce Europe I showed how to create a new provider feature for DotNetNuke. In this case it was a provider for creating Sitemaps (see www.sitemap.org) for google search optimization. In DNN 5 we added a few options to better support sitemaps but the implementation was still very simple.

More...

OpenForce is Coming! OpenForce is Coming! (v2009)

chris.hammond@dotnetnuke.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:48:00 PST

So really, it is just about here! I leave in just over 48 hours to head to Las Vegas for the third annual US OpenForce (DotNetNuke conference), once again being held at Mandalay Bay along with DevConnections.

If the previous two years were any sort of indicators this year is promising to be a good time! I’m excited about heading out to Vegas again, and getting to see all my DotNetNuke brethren. It’s going to be another busy week, registration and such on Monday, a keynote on Monday night. Conference Tuesday through Thursday, and then we (Engage Software) are once again providing post-conference DotNetNuke training.

More...

Participate with OpenForce (From Wherever You Are)

(author unknown) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:56:00 PST

DotNetNuke Corp., in collaboration with R2integrated (R2i), the OpenForce Connections Social Media Sponsor, is launching Smash at OpenForce '09 in Vegas. Smash is a social mashup running on the DotNetNuke framework that drives interactivity with live video feeds, photos and Twitter/ SMS commentary from conference attendees.

More...

Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Geekyboy) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:10:24 PST

Now as you probably already don't know, I am an avid Runescape player, and have been studying it for quite some time. I would like to bring you into my realm of my studies.

Well to start off with, they made a majority of trade between players not actaully be face to face. Like, you would want to buy this item, and you set your price(there is a range for each item) and you would either have your offer in, waiting for someone to sell, or buy it from another player without interaction. This little device is called the Grand Exchange, which looks and sounds surprisingly like the stock exchange, and pretty much is.

Now, prices rise and fall depending on the average price the item was purchased that day. Say at item has a limit of 5 and 12. The "market price" would be 8 or 9. If a lot of an item is bought at more than 9 coins, the market price will rise the next day. The limit will now be 9 and 15, and the market price will be 11 or 12.

Unfortunately, this system is fairly easy to abuse, and a group of rich players can all buy one of an item at the maximum price for a few weeks, and it will rise dramatically then fall dramatically. I call this an unnatural rise.

Example of a rise
Example of a rise and fall

This is horrible. And hear me out. When an item is being "bought out", it makes the item impossible to buy for a few days or even a week or more. And when it is sold or "dumped" it's impossible to sell for several days.

Now this is my job. When the game updates its content, which it does fairly often, I like to find the connection to an item and prepare for it to rise or fall. Recently they changed the herblore(making potions) skill, so that there are new higher level potions to be made. The potions require and herb to make, and which can be farmed. Of course people want to level as fast as possible so I bought seeds that make the herbs and also the herbs themselves. Investment I am still holding on to :).

Now some items like these herbs and seeds rise on their own or a natural rise.

Here is an example
And Another

It's very fun to how these things work and its sometimes hard to find that connection from the update to the item.

Hope you enjoyed.

jo’s Lifestream Daily Digest!

jokay — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:59:59 PST

	6:59am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. Awww.. the Count is counting google.. i love sesame street
	7:47am	jokay posted an item. Coming Up @ jokaydia This Week!
	7:49am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. Coming Up on jokaydia this week! http://bit.ly/aDBjd .. Storyquest workshops & reactiongrid Q&A.. signup and add your questions now!
	8:47am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. RT @UWAinSL: UWA 3D Art & Design in Metaverse Journal:http://bit.ly/zsvwH
	11:10am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. Wave invites going… going….. nearly gone.. hey jokaydians… who wants last ones?
	11:10am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. @teacherman79 Class again tomorrow – we’ll try to make sure every kid gets at least one comment
	11:20am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. @teachandlearn Done! waves
	11:20am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. @geonou Ooo thanks for coming…come visit us @ reactiongrid sometime soon.. meetups on Sunday nights
	11:42am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. Dear assets server…. i can haz my inventory now??? #SLissoslooooowtoday!
	11:50am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. @j9j Aww thanks… sounds interesting.. keep me posted
	11:52am	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. @kerryank Go you Ms Super-Duper-Event-Broadcaster!
	12:27pm	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. ooo look.. storyquest workshops filling up fast! Add your name if you wanna participate! http://bit.ly/39ATuc
	12:57pm	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. What do u think about guidelines for educator’s avatars? Do Ken’s survey & let him know http://bit.ly/49w7eI ..
	12:58pm	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. My take on rules for avatars = eeeeeek! .. but here at jokaydia-corp we have a fairly relaxed dress code.. lolz
	3:08pm	jokay posted a tweet on jokay@twitter. Meh Blizzard.. i needed 15mins of wow therapy.. not 15mins of downloads!

Hypnotizing Silverlight Splash Screen

crocusgirl — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:13:19 PST

I wanted to test the Adobe Photoshop (PSD) File import feature in Expression Blend3 for a while now and it just worked flawlessly. So I decided to take my plan one step further and create a sample Splash screen with my illustration files. You can find the final result by clicking on the image:

In order to observe the loading experience and get a chance to test a simple animation, I included two sample video files in the project. Therefore the initial loading is incredibly slow. The animation has no complicated tricks; it only manipulates the opacity property and runs forever in autoreverse mode. Actually it runs until you are hypnotized by all the blinking!

As for the progress bar, I basically used the same idea explained in the “Splash Screen in Silverlight 3“ article by Diptimaya Patra. I track the download progress with a “onSourceDownloadProgressChanged” Javascript function and increase the size of the colored content based on the progress percentage.

A few tips+tricks

Splash Screen – Design

Your Splashscreen Xaml will be placed in your Web project folder, which will make it available for display while your Silverlight app is downloading (loading). But once you try to open that file in Blend to do some fixes, you will discover that you don’t have the option to display it in design mode. In fact, while playing around with the animation, I copied my Splash screen Xaml file back and forth between the Web and Silverlight project folders. Not very practial, yet it works.

File Paths

The blinking belle is made up of several illustrations. When I placed the splash screen Xaml in my Web project folder, I had to reset the images’ source info and point the file path to the Web project folder.

Browser Cache

Despite enlarging the project file to test the splash screen, it is sometimes necessary to clear the browser cache. In fact, once the content is cached by the browser, the slow loading experience might completely disappear.

Event Triggers

When you create an animation Storyboard through the Objects and Timeline panel in Expression Blend 3, the Storyboard will be placed as a resource in your Container (Grid/Canvas etc.). Since there is no option to start the Storyboard explicitly (except with Javascript), the Storyboard has to be attached to an object with an event trigger. In this particular example, once the Grid is loaded the event trigger starts the animation:

<Grid.Triggers>
<EventTrigger RoutedEvent="Grid.Loaded">
    <BeginStoryboard>
      <Storyboard x:Name="Storyboard1" RepeatBehavior="Forever" AutoReverse="True">
        ........
        ........
        {ANIMATION Definitions}
        .......
        ........
      </Storyboard>
    </BeginStoryboard>
</EventTrigger>
</Grid.Triggers>

For further information on Silverlight Splash Screen scenarios and displaying animations, check out the Splash screen articles in the MSDN library.

Barry Sellers: Distinguished Fellow, International Technology and Professionalism Top-Authority, Chair CNP Council, Chief Judge International Awards for Professionalism, Executive Board Director and Vice-Chairman NPA

Stephen.Ibaraki — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:05:00 PST

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with top-echelon and renowned professionals. In this blog, I interview Barry Sellers: Distinguished Fellow, International Technology and Professionalism Top-Authority, Chair CNP Council, Chief Judge International Awards for Professionalism, Executive Board Director and Vice-Chairman NPA.

Enjoy,
Stephen Ibaraki

Barry Sellers has served as a member of the NPA Board of Directors for 9 years for the Network Professional Association (NPA) and most recently as Treasurer/CFO. During his tenure, he has championed, revamped, documented and implemented the NPA Certified Network Professional Certification and is currently working on the Associate Certified Network Professional Certification that focuses on professionalism and ethics, which will be a requirement for the Certified Network Professional Certification. He has held all of the officer positions on the Board of Directors including Chairman over that time. Prior to his time on the Board of Directors, he was the founder and president of the Shreveport Chapter of the Network Professional Association (1993 -1995). He served as the head judge for the Network Professional Association Awards for Professionalism (2002 - 2008). He was awarded the Distinguished Fellow of the Network Professional Association (DFNPA) in 2005.

To listen to the interview, click on this MP3 file link

DISCUSSION:

Interview Time Index (MM:SS) and Topic

:00:43:
Barry comments on what triggered his initial interest in technology.

:01:03:
Can you describe your current job roles and do you have any lessons you wish to share?
"....My current job role is an infrastructure architect for a Fortune 500 financial institution....Some of the key lessons I've learned over the years....Never stop learning....Soft skills such as learning how to do presentations to different types of audiences....How to negotiate and how to influence are also excellent skills to have.....Breadth of knowledge is better than deep knowledge in a single area...."

:03:21:
What were the catalysts to your involvement with IT groups?
"....Wanting to find other people who shared the same interests as I did and a place where we could share problems, solutions and experiences...."

:03:42:
Can you go into more detail about your contributions to IT communities?
"....I always felt that we as an IT community should give back to the community as a whole so I do a lot of pro bono work in places like schools, churches and clubs (such as the YMCA), with fellow members of our local IT community. The work usually involves finding new equipment, troubleshooting, helping with upgrades and doing support work...."

:05:00:
Barry is one of the longest standing members of the NPA holding every position within the organization and he provides information on its history and his role in it.

:06:09:
You talked about the Certified Network Professional (CNP) designation, could you expand on that? What are your views on professionalism?
"....The CNP is the first attempt (I'm aware of) to get an industry-neutral certification. You must have at least 2 different kinds of certifications. We have a very strong position on professionalism. We have an ethics document that everyone must sign when they join the CNP. You also must have a minimum of three years experience....."

:08:22:
You are the Chair of the CNP Council. Can you describe the CNP and its value?
"....The CNP as a certification gives the employer or potential client the knowledge and security that you understand the basics of the vender certifications you have, you have experience, you have a strong belief in ethics and a quest for continuing education...."

:09:02:
You are the Chief Judge for the Awards for Professionalism, the global industry's only awards of this kind. Can you profile the history of the awards, the partners and the next award cycle?
"....The Awards for Professionalism was started because there was nothing out there that recognized people for doing amazing things in the industry. These global annual awards are held in conjunction with the NetWorld Interop conference and have had various partners over time. Some of our partners include Network Computing, Pearson Publishing, Microsoft...."

:10:26:
What is the value in working with professional organizations?
"....First you get like-minded folks together to work through problems....Also from a bigger picture (national or international perspective) it lends credence to the picture that you want to support the industry to accomplish things that are much bigger than your local area...."

:11:25:
Where can people find out more information about the Network Professional Association (NPA) and the Certified Network Professional (CNP) designation?
"....See the NPA website at http://www.npa.org. Also see the CNP website at http://www.cnp.org. They both have excellent information and applications available...."

:12:45:
How would you describe your top innovative achievements in terms of the problems you were trying to solve, your solutions, and the impact it has today and into the future?
"....Where I work we have a constantly changing environment so we have to keep coming up with innovative solutions to meet the business needs....It's a constant challenge and I enjoy it...."

:14:03:
What are the best job resources for IT professionals?
"....The best resource I found is the local IT community....Another excellent resource is the job board run by the NPA and other professional organizations...."

:15:00:
What are your suggestions for managing the economic challenges?
"....There are lots of opportunities out there to do low cost or even free training to further your career...."

:15:42:
How do you manage change?
"....I approach it as an opportunity because in the business I'm in we are in constant change - so it hasn't been a huge factor in what we do. We just have to work at more efficient and effective solutions...."

:16:07:
What are the best ways of making connections?
"....I still come back to networking within professional organizations...."

:16:37:
As a prominent leader, what were your greatest challenges and how did you overcome them?
"....The greatest challenges I had when I was a Chapter leader was managing what was going to be delivered at the next meeting, trying to manage getting vendors in. There was a lot of co-ordination there and I had a lot of help from others who were in the leadership position at the NPA...."

:17:43:
Please make predictions for the future, their implications, and how business executives and IT professionals can best prepare?
"....The best way you can prepare for the future is continuing to learn, not just technical skills but also soft skills...."

:18:22:
What do you see as the top challenges facing us today and how do you propose they be solved?
"....Economic challenges....Ongoing technical challenges because things are changing rapidly....Getting out and being part of the community, both in the professional methodology and just giving back to the community as a whole....

:19:25:
Please provide your views on the IFIP IP3 program on professionalizing the profession. [http://www.IPThree.org]
"....I think the IP3 certification is the perfect way to go and gives the world something to point at and say these people know what they are doing...."

Free Holiday Wifi in Airports from Santa Google

marianmerritt — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:04:40 PST

Google announces a program to offer travelers free high speed wireless web access in airports across America and on Virgin Air flights through the holiday season. Names of the secure Google wireless networks will vary so be sure to check with airport officials in the terminal before logging on. Turn off Bluetooth and file and printer sharing so you can enjoy Google’s gift without any hacker side effects. Now that the wifi is free, can I get some more power outlets in the terminal?

Overheard - ZenServer physical block device

Margaret Rouse — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:26:10 PST

In cloud computing and virtualization, choosing between open source and commercial offerings means trading off between speed to market, features, support and development costs on the one hand and up-front licensing fees on the other. In a fast-moving market like cloud computing, many organizations will choose to jump-start their efforts by going with a commercial offering.

Sam Charrington, as quoted in Cloud computing provider chooses XenServer over Xen

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is physical block device.

The Children Have Taken Over

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:20:07 PST

They do have their own blogs, I promise. But for some reason, it's more fun for them to blog here. I think they like the audience. You can see the challenges I face: the sarcasm, the way-too-smart-for-their-own-good attitude. That comes from Mr. Geeky's side of the family, I promise.

At any rate, expect another post from Geeky Boy later today, who will be blogging about virtual economies. I swear he has a future on Wall Street. He regularly discusses cornering the market on things. Yesterday, he discussed some kind of 6-point connection thing for how he determines what to corner. It scares me.

And I have a couple of posts brewing myself: on the pitfalls of attending academic conferences, on why we feel guilty about creating art, and WoW Wednesday on my new love of PvP. So the joint's gonna be hopping around here. And now I have to go try to catch up on NaNoWriMo. Cue the music.

Tech Ed Europe Day 2

kate@gregcons.com (Kate Gregory) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:04:25 PST

Yesterday was the first day of Tech Ed. I went to Marian Luparu's talk on Visual C++ 2010. He did mostly demo, and showed a ton of hot new C++ features.

If you missed this one (it was the very first talk of the conference) be sure to look for the recording.

After lunch I headed out to be part of the anniversary celebrations. Despite the rain, it was a great outing, and the crowds were very orderly. I had a bratwurst and took a few pictures:

No place I'd rather be.

Kate