Fellow Blog Readers:

I figured I use my first blog post on GeeksWithBlogs to introduce myself.

 

I recently relocated from Long Island, NY to South Florida where I joined a local company as Software Engineer specializing in technologies such as C#, ASP.Net 3.5, WCF, Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 and LINQ, to name a few. I am an MCP and MCTS ASP.Net 3.5, looking to get my .Net 4.0 certification soon.

 

Having been in industry for a few years so far, I figured I would share with you my take on the importance of being involved(at least attending) in local user groups.

 

I am a firm believer that besides using a certain technology, the best way to expand one’s knowledge is by sharing it with others and being equally open to learn from others just as much as you are willing to share what you know.

 

In my opinion, an important factor that makes a good developer stand-out is his/her ability to keep abreast with the latest and greatest even in areas outside his/her direct expertise.

 

Additionally, having spoken to various recruiters, technical user group attendees are always favorably looked upon as genuinely interested in their field and willing to take the initiative to expand their knowledge which offers job candidates good leverage when competing for jobs.

 

I believe I am very blessed to be in an area with a very strong and vibrant developer community. I found in the local .Net community leadership a genuine interest in constantly extending the opportunity to all developers to get more involved and encouraging those who are willing to take that initiative achieve their goal: Speak in meetings, volunteer at events or write and publish articles/blogs about latest and greatest technologies.

 

With Vishal Shukla (Site director for the West Palm Beach .Net User Group) traveling overseas, I have been extended the opportunity to come on board as site coordinator for FladotNet's WPB .Net User Group along with Venkata Subramanian, an opportunity which I gratefully accepted.

 

Being involved in running a .Net User Group will surely help me personally and professionally, but my real hope is to use this opportunity to assist in delivering the ultimate common-goal: spread the word about new .Net Technologies, help everybody get more involved and simply have fun learning new things.

 

With my introduction out of the way, in the next few days I will be posting some notes on an upcoming talk I will be giving about MVC2 and VS2010 in mid-April.

 

Environment.Exit(0);

--Sam