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• Making Lync option visible in Outlook/GAL/AD

  - by Kjensen

  In a big organization, people are slowly moving towards using Lync and away from using landlines. A handful of times per month, I get a meeting invitation that includes a conference call number and a remark about "not sure if everybody is on Lync". Often everybody is, and we start in a conference call and switch to Lync. Is there a good way to make it visible if a user has access to Lync? Like I can hit the "Online meeting" button in Outlook - and it would be great to see, if everybody invited support Lync. Does something like that exist?

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• Online meetings: any recommendations?

  - by T Pops

  There's a few times at work when I have to host a meeting and physical presence is impossible. For these situations I've been using Acrobat ConnectNow. Specifically because it's free. Are there any other recommendations out there? Free or not. What are the pros and cons? I'll start a compiled list of apps from the answers here right now. Anyone with Wiki editing privileges is welcome to edit this: Paid GoTo Meeting Webex TeamViewer (free for non-commercial) Groove (bundled with MS Office) Free Yugma Yuuguu SharedView TinyChat Other Options CoPilot

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• Outlook 2010: How do I mark one recurring event public?

  - by goober

  My office utilizes Outlook 2010 and Exchange for e-mail, and our calendars show free/busy information by default. Background I work from home once a week, so I have created an event that lists me as tentative for the entire workday, titled "Working from Home - Available Remotely". However, those attempting to schedule a meeting with me won't see this title, and therefore won't think they can schedule an event. As much as I'd like to get out meetings (!) it's important that folks be able to schedule with me. Question Is there a way to make the title/details public for this one recurring event so that when others attempt to schedule a meeting with me, Attempted Solutions I've tried creating a public calendar and sharing all the details of that calendar. However, all of my calendars are not included when someone wants to schedule with me, and so I'm shown as free unless someone specifically looks at my public calendar. I've Googled around, to no avail.

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• Exited Emacs without saving, did it save the file somewhere?

  - by rumtscho

  Hi, I am using Emacs on Windows XP. Had it open to take some notes in a meeting, but forgot to create a file first (the text got created in the usual "scratch" buffer). Then I closed a lot of applications after the meeting, forgetting to save the notes in Emacs :( I know that when I am modifying an existing file, it creates a backup of the old file in the same directory. But I don't know if the information from the scratch buffer is available somewhere after an exit without saving. Do you know if I can restore my information? I haven't shut down/suspended/hybernated the system since, so all temp files should be still accessible.

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• Lync client configured as room

  - by captainmish

  We have a few usb cameras in meeting rooms that people can plug their laptops into, which works ok, but we're looking for better... Probably a long shot, but does anyone know of a way to have something like a "common area" client, where a PC connected to a webcam and speakers/mic can become a bookable resource, dragged in to conversations and automatically show video? A workflow I imagine: User books a room with "special" lync client as attendee Meeting time comes, they go to the room and fire up lync on their pc "special" lync client automatically (or is dragged in) joins and starts video, local attendees use audio and video from the special client Any tips welcome!

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• How to get Thunderbird to archive messages automatically

  - by rumtscho

  I want Thunderbird 3.1.1 to automatically move old messages to archive. The definition of "old" should vary by folder. E.g., messages in the "Meeting minutes" folder should get archived after 7 days, messages in "newsletters" can get archived after 2 days, but messages in a folder for a course I am taking should not get automatically archived, because I am going to manually move the entire folder to archive once the course is over. I tried making a filter which moves all messages older than 7 days to an archive folder. It worked when I ran it manually. But I don't know how to make Thunderbird run it automatically once a day on the folder "Meeting minutes". Any ideas how to do it, with or without filters?

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• Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community

  There we go! I finally managed to push myself forward and pick up an old, actually too old, idea since I ever arrived here in Mauritius more than six years ago. I'm talking about a community for all kind of ICT connected people. In the past (back in Germany), I used to be involved in various community activities. For example, I was part of the Microsoft Community Leader/Influencer Program (CLIP) in Germany due to an FAQ on Visual FoxPro, actually Active FoxPro Pages (AFP) to be more precise. Then in 2003/2004 I addressed the responsible person of the dFPUG user group in Speyer in order to assist him in organising monthly user group meetings. Well, he handed over management completely, and attended our meetings regularly. Why did it take you so long? Well, I don't want to bother you with the details but short version is that I was too busy on either job (building up new companies) or private life (got married and we have two lovely children, eh 'monsters') or even both. But now is the time where I was starting to look for new fields given the fact that I gained some spare time. My businesses are up and running, the kids are in school, and I am finally in a position where I can commit myself again to community activities. And I love to do that! Why a new user group? Good question... And 'easy' to answer. Since back in 2007 I did my usual research, eh Google searches, to see whether there existing user groups in Mauritius and in which field of interest. And yes, there are! If I recall this correctly, then there are communities for PHP, Drupal, Python (just recently), Oracle, and Linux (which used to be even two). But... either they do not exist anymore, they are dormant, or there is only a low heart-beat, frankly speaking. And yes, I went to meetings of the Linux User Group Meta (Mauritius) back in 2010/2011 and just recently. I really like the setup and the way the LUGM is organised. It's just that I have a slightly different point of view on how a user group or community should organise itself and how to approach future members. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing others doing a very good job, I'm only saying that I'd like to do it differently. The last meeting of the LUGM was awesome; read my feedback about it. Ok, so what's up with 'Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community' or short: MSCC? As I've already written in my article on 'Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion' I think it is essential in a world of IT to stay 'connected' with a good number of other people in the same field. There is so much dynamic and every day's news that it is almost impossible to keep on track with all of them. The MSCC is going to provide a common platform to exchange experience and share knowledge between each other. You might be a newbie and want to know what to expect working as a software developer, or as a database administrator, or maybe as an IT systems administrator, or you're an experienced geek that loves to share your ideas or solutions that you implemented to solve a specific problem, or you're the business (or HR) guy that is looking for 'fresh' blood to enforce your existing team. Or... you're just interested and you'd like to communicate with like-minded people. Meetup of 26.06.2013 @ L'arabica: Of course there are laptops around. Free WiFi, power outlet, coffee, code and Linux in one go. The MSCC is technology-agnostic and spans an umbrella over any kind of technology. Simply because you can't ignore other technologies anymore in a connected IT world as we have. A front-end developer for iOS applications should have the chance to connect with a Python back-end coder and eventually with a DBA for MySQL or PostgreSQL and exchange their experience. Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of cross-platform development, and it is very pleasant to have pure Web developers - with all that HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and JS libraries stuff - and passionate C# or Java coders at the same table. This diversity of knowledge can assist and boost your personal situation. And last but not least, there are projects and open positions 'flying' around... People might like to hear others opinion about an employer or get new impulses on how to tackle down an issue at their workspace, etc. This is about community. And that's how I see the MSCC in general - free of any limitations be it by programming language or technology. Having the chance to exchange experience and to discuss certain aspects of technology saves you time and money, and it's a pleasure to enjoy. Compared to dusty books and remote online resources. It's human! Organising meetups (meetings, get-together, gatherings - you name it!) As of writing this article, the MSCC is currently meeting every Wednesday for the weekly 'Code & Coffee' session at various locations (suggestions are welcome!) in Mauritius. This might change in the future eventually but especially at the beginning I think it is very important to create awareness in the Mauritian IT world. Yes, we are here! Come and join us! ;-) The MSCC's main online presence is located at Meetup.com because it allows me to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments very easily, and any member can have a look who else is involved so that an exchange of contacts is given at any time. In combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there is a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Trello is also available as free smartphone app. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians! Recent updates The MSCC is now officially participating in the O'Reilly UK User Group programm and we are allowed to request review or recension copies of recent titles. Additionally, we have a discount code for any books or ebooks that you might like to order on shop.oreilly.com. More applications for user group sponsorship programms are pending and I'm looking forward to a couple of announcement very soon. And... we need some kind of 'corporate identity' - Over at the MSCC website there is a call for action (or better said a contest with prizes) to create a unique design for the MSCC. This would include a decent colour palette, a logo, graphical banners for Meetup, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and of course badges for our craftsmen to add to their personal blogs and websites. Please spread the word and contribute. Thanks!

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• What I don&rsquo;t like about WIF&rsquo;s Claims-based Authorization

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  In my last post I wrote about what I like about WIF’s proposed approach to authorization – I also said that I definitely would build upon that infrastructure for my own systems. But implementing such a system is a little harder as it could be. Here’s why (and that’s purely my perspective): First of all WIF’s authorization comes in two “modes” Per-request authorization. When an ASP.NET/WCF request comes in, the registered authorization manager gets called. For SOAP the SOAP action gets passed in. For HTTP requests (ASP.NET, WCF REST) the URL and verb. Imperative authorization This happens when you explicitly call the claims authorization API from within your code. There you have full control over the values for action and resource. In ASP.NET per-request authorization is optional (depends on if you have added the ClaimsAuthorizationHttpModule). In WCF you always get the per-request checks as soon as you register the authorization manager in configuration. I personally prefer the imperative authorization because first of all I don’t believe in URL based authorization. Especially in the times of MVC and routing tables, URLs can be easily changed – but then you also have to adjust your authorization logic every time. Also – you typically need more knowledge than a simple “if user x is allowed to invoke operation x”. One problem I have is, both the per-request calls as well as the standard WIF imperative authorization APIs wrap actions and resources in the same claim type. This makes it hard to distinguish between the two authorization modes in your authorization manager. But you typically need that feature to structure your authorization policy evaluation in a clean way. The second problem (which is somehow related to the first one) is the standard API for interacting with the claims authorization manager. The API comes as an attribute (ClaimsPrincipalPermissionAttribute) as well as a class to use programmatically (ClaimsPrincipalPermission). Both only allow to pass in simple strings (which results in the wrapping with standard claim types mentioned earlier). Both throw a SecurityException when the check fails. The attribute is a code access permission attribute (like PrincipalPermission). That means it will always be invoked regardless how you call the code. This may be exactly what you want, or not. In a unit testing situation (like an MVC controller) you typically want to test the logic in the function – not the security check. The good news is, the WIF API is flexible enough that you can build your own infrastructure around their core. For my own projects I implemented the following extensions: A way to invoke the registered claims authorization manager with more overloads, e.g. with different claim types or a complete AuthorizationContext. A new CAS attribute (with the same calling semantics as the built-in one) with custom claim types. A MVC authorization attribute with custom claim types. A way to use branching – as opposed to catching a SecurityException. I will post the code for these various extensions here – so stay tuned.

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• Sam Abraham to Speak about MVC2 at the Florida.Net Miramar .Net User Group on July 13 2010

  - by Sam Abraham

  I am scheduled to give a presentation at the Miramar .Net User Group on July 13, 2010 about MVC and the new features in MVC2. This will be similar yet will have more advanced content since the group had already had a introduction to MVC in a previous meeting. Here is the topic and speaker bio: Sam Abraham To Speak At The LI .Net User Group on June 3rd, 2010 As you might know, I lived and worked on LI, NY for 11 years before relocating to South Florida. As I will be visiting my family who still live there in the first week of June, I couldn't resist reaching out to Dan Galvez, LI  .Net User Group Leader, and asking if he needed a speaker for June's meeting. Apparently the stars were lined up right and I am now scheduled to speak at my "home" group on June 3rd, which I am pretty excited about. Here is a brief abstract of my talk and speaker bio. What's New in MVC2 We will start by briefly reviewing the basics of the Microsoft MVC Framework. Next, we will look at the new features introduced in the latest and greatest MVC2. Many new enhancements were introduced to both the MS MVC Framework and to VS2010 to improve developers' experience and reduce development time. We will be talking about new MVC2 features such as: Model Validation, Areas and Template Helpers. We will also discuss the new built-in MVC project templates that ship with VS2010. About the Speaker Sam Abraham is a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS ASP.Net 3.5) He currently lives in South Florida where he leads the West Palm Beach .Net User Group (www.fladotnet.com) and actively participates in various local .Net Community events as organizer and/or technical speaker. Sam is also an active committee member on various initiatives at the South Florida Chapter of the Project Management Institute (www.southfloridapmi.org). Sam finds his passion in leveraging latest and greatest .Net Technologies along with proven Project Management practices and methodologies to produce high quality, cost-competitive software.  Sam can be reached through his blog: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/wildturtle

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• JCP Party at JavOne and other JCP events

  - by heathervc

  Don't miss all of these great opportunities to get involved with the JCP program at JavaOne next week. The details are listed below and listed on the JCP at JavaOne page  as well. Join us for the annual JCP community party on Tuesday evening, 2 October, to be held at the Infusion Lounge. Drop by starting at 6:30 pm to meet fellow Java Community members, JCP members and EC representatives, enjoy appetizers/beer, pick up a door prize, enter a raffle and congratulate the winners and nominees (newly updated nominee information available now) of the 10th annual awards in three categories: JCP Member of the Year, Outstanding Spec Lead, and Most Significant JSR. The day by day breakdown is as follows... Sunday 9/30/12JCP and OpenJDK: Using the JUGs' "Adopt" Programs in Your Group Session ID: UGF10434Location: Moscone West - 2002Date and Time: 9/30/12, 12:15 PM - 1:00 PMJCP Public Executive Committee Face-to-Face Meeting Open to Executive Committee Members and the Java Developer CommunityLocation: Clift Hotel, 495 Geary Street, San Francisco - Rita Room (downstairs from Lobby)Date and Time: 9/30/12, 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM; Agenda includes open Q&A, JCP.Next, EC Elections - no JavaOne pass required! Monday 10/1/12JCP in the OTN Java DEMOgrounds Location: Hilton Hotel Grand BallroomDate and Time: 10/1/12, 4:00 PM - 4:30 PMJCP.Next: Reinvigorating Java Standards Session ID: BOF6272Location: Hilton San Francisco - Plaza A/BDate and Time: 10/1/12, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PM101 Ways to Improve Java: Why Developer Participation Matters Session ID: BOF6283Location: Hilton San Francisco - Continental Ballroom 4Date and Time: 10/1/12, 5:30 PM - 6:15 PM Tuesday 10/2/12JCP in the OTN Java DEMOgrounds Location: Hilton Hotel Grand BallroomDate and Time: 10/2/12, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PMSpec Leads Meeting with the JCP PMO Location: Hilton San Francisco - Van Ness RoomDate and Time: 10/2/12, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PMCome learn how you benefit from the changesMeet the JCP Executive Committee Candidates Session ID: BOF6307Location: Hilton San Francisco - Golden Gate 3/4/5Date and Time: 10/2/12, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PMThe 10th Annual JCP Awards Presentation and Party Enjoy an evening with this year's JCP Award nominees and watch as we announce the winners -  no JavaOne pass required! Location: Infusion Lounge - 124 Ellis Street, San FranciscoDate and Time: 10/2/12, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM Hope to see you there!

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• Logging WebSocket Frames using Chrome Developer Tools, Net-internals and Wireshark (TOTD #184)

  - by arungupta

  TOTD #183 explained how to build a WebSocket-driven application using GlassFish 4. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will explain how do view/debug on-the-wire messages, or frames as they are called in WebSocket parlance, over this upgraded connection. This blog will use the application built in TOTD #183. First of all, make sure you are using a browser that supports WebSocket. If you recall from TOTD #183 then WebSocket is combination of Protocol and JavaScript API. A browser supporting WebSocket, or not, means they understand your web pages with the WebSocket JavaScript. caniuse.com/websockets provide a current status of WebSocket support in different browsers. Most of the major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari already support WebSocket for the past few versions. As of this writing, IE still does not support WebSocket however its planned for a future release. Viewing WebSocket farmes require special settings because all the communication happens over an upgraded HTTP connection over a single TCP connection. If you are building your application using Java, then there are two common ways to debug WebSocket messages today. Other language libraries provide different mechanisms to log the messages. Lets get started! Chrome Developer Tools provide information about the initial handshake only. This can be viewed in the Network tab and selecting the endpoint hosting the WebSocket endpoint. You can also click on "WebSockets" on the bottom-right to show only the WebSocket endpoints. Click on "Frames" in the right panel to view the actual frames being exchanged between the client and server. The frames are not refreshed when new messages are sent or received. You need to refresh the panel by clicking on the endpoint again. To see more detailed information about the WebSocket frames, you need to type "chrome://net-internals" in a new tab. Click on "Sockets" in the left navigation bar and then on "View live sockets" to see the page. Select the box with the address to your WebSocket endpoint and see some basic information about connection and bytes exchanged between the client and the endpoint. Clicking on the blue text "source dependency ..." shows more details about the handshake. If you are interested in viewing the exact payload of WebSocket messages then you need a network sniffer. These tools are used to snoop network traffic and provide a lot more details about the raw messages exchanged over the network. However because they provide lot more information so they need to be configured in order to view the relevant information. Wireshark (nee Ethereal) is a pretty standard tool for sniffing network traffic and will be used here. For this blog purpose, we'll assume that the WebSocket endpoint is hosted on the local machine. These tools do allow to sniff traffic across the network though. Wireshark is quite a comprehensive tool and we'll capture traffic on the loopback address. Start wireshark, select "loopback" and click on "Start". By default, all traffic information on the loopback address is displayed. That includes tons of TCP protocol messages, applications running on your local machines (like GlassFish or Dropbox on mine), and many others. Specify "http" as the filter in the top-left. Invoke the application built in TOTD #183 and click on "Say Hello" button once. The output in wireshark looks like Here is a description of the messages exchanged: Message #4: Initial HTTP request of the JSP page Message #6: Response returning the JSP page Message #16: HTTP Upgrade request Message #18: Upgrade request accepted Message #20: Request favicon Message #22: Responding with favicon not found Message #24: Browser making a WebSocket request to the endpoint Message #26: WebSocket endpoint responding back You can also use Fiddler to debug your WebSocket messages. How are you viewing your WebSocket messages ? Here are some references for you: JSR 356: Java API for WebSocket - Specification (Early Draft) and Implementation (already integrated in GlassFish 4 promoted builds) TOTD #183 - Getting Started with WebSocket in GlassFish Subsequent blogs will discuss the following topics (not necessary in that order) ... Binary data as payload Custom payloads using encoder/decoder Error handling Interface-driven WebSocket endpoint Java client API Client and Server configuration Security Subprotocols Extensions Other topics from the API

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• WCI Analytics Installation / Configuration Support Webinar

  - by brian.harrison

  Based on the success of the OAM / WCI integration webinar, the second in our series of Technical Support "brown bag" webinars will be delivered on Tuesday, March 30 at 8AM Pacific Daylight Time. Please review the details below, if you would like to attend the webinar, please take a moment to send an email to the address provided for registration and you will be enrolled in the meeting. What are the best practices for installing and configuring Analytics for the WebCenter Interaction (formerly "ALUI") Portal Application? What are some of the most common failures that occur in this implementation and what can be done to correct these common issues? What are the most common reasons for the tables to be "empty" when I try to produce utilization reports? These are just some of the main areas that will be covered in this one hour webinar which will demonstrate the WCI Analytics installation and configuration in action. Our demonstration will focus on areas where Technical Support sees the largest numbers of customer questions become support incidents in an effort to help avoid the need to create an incident to get the implementation working properly in the customer environment. We will demonstrate the most recent version of WCI Analytics (10.3.0.1) for this presentation, but naturally specific issues known to specific versions will be covered as well. Please join us for what we know will be a valuable and relevant learning session. If you would like to attend this session please send an email to [email protected] indicating your interest, and we will respond to you with a meeting invitation including all of the required access information.

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• Dutch ACEs SOA Partner Community Award Celebration

  - by JuergenKress

  When you win you need to celebrate. This was the line of thinking when I found out that I was part of a group that won the Oracle SOA Community Country Award. Well – thinking about a party is one thing, preparing it and finally having the small party is something completely different. It starts with finding a date that would be suitable for the majority of invited people. As you can imagine the SOA ACEs and ACE Directors have a busy life, that takes them places. Alongside that they are engaged with customers who want to squeeze every bit of knowledge out of them. So everybody is pretty busy (that’s what makes you an ACE). After some deliberation (and checks of international Oracle events, Trip-it, blogs and tweets) a date was chosen. Meeting on a Friday evening for some drinks is probably not a Dutch-only activity. But as some of the ACEs are self-employed they miss the companies around them to organize such events. Come the day a turn-out of almost 50% was great – although I expected some more folks . This was mainly due to some illness and work overload. Luckily the mini-party got going, (alcoholic) beverages were consumed, food was appreciated, a decent picture was made (see below) and all had a good chat and hopefully a good time. (Above from left to right: Eric Elzinga, Andreas Chatziantoniou, Mike van Aalst, Edwin Biemond) All in all a nice evening and certainly a "meeting" which can be repeated.  For the full article please visit Andreas's blog Want to organize a local SOA & BPM community? Let us know we are more than happy to support you! To receive more information become a member of the SOA & BPM Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: Eric Elzinga,Andreas Chatziantoniou,Mike van Aalst,Edwin Biemond,Dutsch SOA Community,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,ACE

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• Going Paperless

  - by Jesse

  One year ago I came to work for a company where the entire development team is 100% “remote”; we’re spread over 3 time zones and each of us works from home. This seems to be an increasingly popular way for people to work and there are many articles and blog posts out there enumerating the advantages and disadvantages of working this way. I had read a lot about telecommuting before accepting this job and felt as if I had a pretty decent idea of what I was getting into, but I’ve encountered a few things over the past year that I did not expect. Among the most surprising by-products of working from home for me has been a dramatic reduction in the amount of paper that I use on a weekly basis. Hoarding In The Workplace Prior to my current telecommute job I worked in what most would consider pretty traditional office environments. I sat in cubicles furnished with an enormous plastic(ish) modular desks, had a mediocre (at best) PC workstation, and had ready access to a seemingly endless supply of legal pads, pens, staplers and paper clips. The ready access to paper, countless conference room meetings, and abundance of available surface area on my desk and in drawers created a perfect storm for wasting paper. I brought a pad of paper with me to every meeting I ever attended, scrawled some brief notes, and then tore that sheet off to keep next to my keyboard to follow up on any needed action items. Once my immediate need for the notes was fulfilled, that sheet would get shuffled off into a corner of my desk or filed away in a drawer “just in case”. I would guess that for all of the notes that I ever filed away, I might have actually had to dig up and refer to 2% of them (and that’s probably being very generous). That said, on those rare occasions that I did have to dig something up from old notes, it was usually pretty important and I ended up being very glad that I saved them. It was only when I would leave a job or move desks that I would finally gather all those notes together and take them to shredding bin to be disposed of. When I left my last job the amount of paper I had accumulated over my three years there was absurd, and I knew coworkers who had substance-abuse caliber paper wasting addictions that made my bad habit look like nail-biting in comparison. A Product Of My Environment I always hated using all of this paper, but simply couldn’t bring myself to stop. It would look bad if I showed up to an important conference room meeting without a pad of paper. What if someone said something profound! Plus, everyone else always brought paper with them. If you saw someone walking down the hallway with a pad of paper in hand you knew they must be on their way to a conference room meeting. Some people even had fancy looking portfolio notebook sheaths that gave their legal pads all the prestige of a briefcase. No one ever worried about running out of fresh paper because there was an endless supply, and there certainly was no shortage of places to store and file used paper. In short, the traditional office was setup for using tons and tons of paper; it’s baked into the culture there. For that reason, it didn’t take long for me to kick the paper habit once I started working from home. In my home office, desk and drawer space are at a premium. I don’t have the budget (or the tolerance) for huge modular office furniture in my spare bedroom. I also no longer have access to a bottomless pit of office supplies stock piled in cabinets and closets. If I want to use some paper, I have to go out and buy it. Finally (and most importantly), all of the meetings that I have to attend these days are “virtual”. We use instant messaging, VOIP, video conferencing, and e-mail to communicate with each other. All I need to take notes during a meeting is my computer, which I happen to be sitting right in front of all day. I don’t have any hard numbers for this, but my gut feeling is that I actually take a lot more notes now than I ever did when I worked in an office. The big difference is I don’t have to use any paper to do so. This makes it far easier to keep important information safe and organized. The Right Tool For The Job When I first started working from home I tried to find a single application that would fill the gap left by the pen and paper that I always had at my desk when I worked in an office. Well, there are no silver bullets and I’ve evolved my approach over time to try and find the best tool for the job at hand. Here’s a quick summary of how I take notes and keep everything organized. Notepad++ – This is the first application I turn to when I feel like there’s some bit of information that I need to write down and save. I use Launchy, so opening Notepad++ and creating a new file only takes a few keystrokes. If I find that the information I’m trying to get down requires a more sophisticated application I escalate as needed. The Desktop – By default, I save every file or other bit of information to the desktop. Anyone who has ever had to fix their parents computer before knows that this is a dangerous game (any file my mother has ever worked on is saved directly to the desktop and rarely moves anywhere else). I agree that storing things on the desktop isn’t a great long term approach to keeping organized, which is why I treat my desktop a bit like my e-mail inbox. I strive to keep both empty (or as close to empty as I possibly can). If something is on my desktop, it means that it’s something relevant to a task or project that I’m currently working on. About once a week I take things that I’m not longer working on and put them into my ‘Notes’ folder. The ‘Notes’ Folder – As I work on a task, I tend to accumulate multiple files associated with that task. For example, I might have a bit of SQL that I’m working on to gather data for a new report, a quick C# method that I came up with but am not yet ready to commit to source control, a bulleted list of to-do items in a .txt file, etc. If the desktop starts to get too cluttered, I create a new sub-folder in my ‘Notes’ folder. Each sub-folder’s name is the current date followed by a brief description of the task or project. Then all files related to that task or project go into that sub folder. By using the date as the first part of the folder name, these folders are automatically sorted in reverse chronological order. This means that things I worked on recently will generally be near the top of the list. Using the built-in Windows search functionality I now have a pretty quick and easy way to try and find something that I worked on a week ago or six months ago. Dropbox – Dropbox is a free service that lets you store up to 2GB of files “in the cloud” and have those files synced to all of the different computers that you use. My ‘Notes’ folder lives in Dropbox, meaning that it’s contents are constantly backed up and are always available to me regardless of which computer I’m using. They also have a pretty decent iPhone application that lets you browse and view all of the files that you have stored there. The free 2GB edition is probably enough for just storing notes, but I also pay $99/year for the 50GB storage upgrade and keep all of my music, e-books, pictures, and documents in Dropbox. It’s a fantastic service and I highly recommend it. Evernote – I use Evernote mostly to organize information that I access on a fairly regular basis. For example, my Evernote account has a running grocery shopping list, recipes that my wife and I use a lot, and contact information for people I contact infrequently enough that I don’t want to keep them in my phone. I know some people that keep nearly everything in Evernote, but there’s something about it that I find a bit clunky, so I tend to use it sparingly. Google Tasks – One of my biggest paper wasting habits was keeping a running task-list next to my computer at work. Every morning I would sit down, look at my task list, cross off what was done and add new tasks that I thought of during my morning commute. This usually resulted in having to re-copy the task list onto a fresh sheet of paper when I was done. I still keep a running task list at my desk, but I’ve started using Google Tasks instead. This is a dead-simple web-based application for quickly adding, deleting, and organizing tasks in a simple checklist style. You can quickly move tasks up and down on the list (which I use for prioritizing), and even create sub-tasks for breaking down larger tasks into smaller pieces. Balsamiq Mockups – This is a simple and lightweight tool for creating drawings of user interfaces. It’s great for sketching out a new feature, brainstorm the layout of a interface, or even draw up a quick sequence diagram. I’m terrible at drawing, so Balsamiq Mockups not only lets me create sketches that other people can actually understand, but it’s also handy because you can upload a sketch to a common location for other team members to access. I can honestly say that using these tools (and having limited resources at home) have lead me to cut my paper usage down to virtually none. If I ever were to return to a traditional office workplace (hopefully never!) I’d try to employ as many of these applications and techniques as I could to keep paper usage low. I feel far less cluttered and far better organized now.

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• The Next RAC, ASM and Linux Forum. May 4, 2010 Beit HP Raanana

  - by alejandro.vargas

  The next RAC, ASM and Linux forum will take place next week, you are still on time to register : Israel Oracle Users Group RAC,ASM and Linux Forum This time we will have a panel formed by Principal Oracle Advanced Customer Services Engineers and RAC experts Galit Elad and Nickita Chernovski and Senior Oracle Advanced Customer Services Engineers and RAC experts Roy Burstein and Dorit Noga. They will address the subject: 5 years of experience with RAC at Israeli Customers, lessons learned. It is a wonderful opportunity to meet with the people that is present at most major implementations and helped to solve all major issues along the last years. In addition we will have 2 most interesting Customer Presentations: Visa Cal DBA Team Leader Harel Safra will tell about their experience with scalability using standard Linux Servers for their mission critical data warehouse. Bank Discount Infrastructure DBA Uril Levin, who is in charge of the Bank Backup and Recovery Project, will speak about their Corporate Backup Solution using RMAN; that includes an end to end solution for VLDBS and mission critical databases. One of the most interesting RMAN implementations in Israel. This time I will not be able to attend myself as I'm abroad on business, Galit Elad will greet you and will lead the meeting. I'm sure you will enjoy a very, very interesting meeting. Best Regards Alejandro

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• Clean Code Developer & Certification in IT - MSCC 21.09.2013

  It was a very busy weekend this time, and quite some hectic to organise the second meetup on a Saturday for the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) but it was absolutely fun. Following, I'm writing a brief summary about the topics we spoke about and the new impulses I got. "What a meetup... I was positively impressed. At the beginning I thought that noone would actually show up but then by the time the room got filled. Lots of conversation, great dialogues and fantastic networking between fresh students, experienced students, experienced employees, and self-employed attendees. That's what community is all about!" Above quote was my first reaction shortly after the gathering. And despite being busy during the weekend and yesterday, I took my time to reflect a little bit on things happened and statements made before writing it here on my blog. Additionally, I was also very curious about possible reactions and blogs from other attendees. Reactions from other craftsmen Let me quickly give you some links and quotes from others first... "Like Jochen posted on facebook, that was indeed a 5+ hours marathon (maybe 4 hours for me but still) … Wohoo! We’re indeed a bunch of crazy geeks who did not realise how time flew as we dived into the myriad discussions that sprouted. Yet in the end everyone was happy (:" -- Ish on MSCC meetup - The marathon (: "And the 4hours spent @ Talking drums bore its fruit..I was doing something I never did before....reading the borrowed book while walking....and though I was not that familiar with things mentionned in the book...I was skimming,scanning & flipping...reading titles...short paragraphs...and I skipped pages till I reached home." -- Yannick on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship 1st Meet-up "Hi Developers, Just wanted to share with you the meetups i attended last Saturday - [...] - The second meetup is the one hosted by Jochen Kirstätter, the MSCC, where the attendees were Craftsman, no woman, this time - all sharing the same passion of being a developer - even though it is on different platforms(Windows - Windows Phone - Linux - Adobe(yes a designer) - .Net) - but we manage to sit at the same table - sharing developer views and experience in the corporate world - also talking about good practice when coding( where Jochen initiated a discussion on Clean Coding ) i could not stay till the end - but from what i have heard - the longer you stay the more fun you have till 1600. Developers in the Facebook grouping i invite you to stay tuned about the various developer communities popping up - where you can come to share and learn good practices, develop the entrepreneurial spirit, and learn and share your passion about technologies" -- Arnaud on Facebook More feedback has been posted on the event directly. So, should I really write more? Wouldn't that spoil the impressions? Starting the day with a surprise Indeed, I was very pleased to stumble over the existence of Mobile Monday Mauritius on LinkedIn, an association about any kind of mobile app development, mobile gadgets and latest smartphones on the market. Despite the Monday in their name they had scheduled their recent meeting on Saturday between 10:00 and 12:00hrs. Wow, what a coincidence! Let's grap the bull by its horns and pay them an introductory visit. As they chose the Ebene Accelerator at the Orange Tower in Ebene it was a no-brainer to leave home a bit earlier and stop by. It was quite an experience and fun to talk to the geeks over there. Really looking forward to organise something together.... Arriving at the venue As the children got a bit uneasy at the MoMo gathering and I didn't want to disturb them too much, we arrived early at Bagatelle. Well, no problems as we went for a decent breakfast at Food Lover's Market. Shortly afterwards we went to our venue location, Talking Drums, and prepared the room for the meeting. We only had to take off a repro-painting of the wall in order to have a decent area for the projector. All went very smooth and my two little ones were of great help. Just in time, our first craftsman Avinash arrived on the spot. And then the waiting started... Luckily, not too long. Bit by bit more and more IT people came to join our meeting. Meanwhile, I used the time to give a brief introduction about the MSCC in general, what we are (hm, maybe I am) trying to achieve and that the recent phase is completely focused on creating more awareness that a community like the MSCC is active here in Mauritius. As soon as we reached some 'critical mass' of about ten people I asked everyone for a short introduction and bio, just in case... Conversation between participants started to kick in and we were actually more networking than having a focus on our topics of the day. Quick updates on latest news and development around the MSCC Finally, Clean Code Developer No matter how the position is actually called, whether it is Software Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Architect, or Craftsman, anyone working in IT is facing almost the same obstacles. As for the process of writing software applications there are re-occurring patterns and principles combined with some common exercise and best practices on how to resolve them. Initiated by the must-read book 'Clean Code' by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) the concept of the Clean Code Developer (CCD) was born already some years ago. CCD is much likely to traditional martial arts where you create awareness of certain principles and learn how to apply practices to improve your style. The CCD initiative recommends to indicate your level of knowledge and experience with coloured wrist bands - equivalent to the belt colours - for various reasons. Frankly speaking, I think that the biggest advantage here is provided by the obvious recognition of conceptual understanding. For example, take the situation of a team meeting... A member with a higher grade in CCD, say Green grade, sees that there are mainly Red grades to talk to, and adjusts her way of communication to their level of understanding. The choice of words might change as certain elements of CCD are not yet familiar to all team members. So instead of talking in an abstract way which only Green grades could follow the whole scenario comes down to Red grade level. Different story, better results... Similar to learning martial arts, we only covered two grades during this occasion - black and red. Most interestingly, there was quite some positive feedback and lots of questions about the principles and practices of the red grade. And we gathered real-world examples from various craftsman and discussed them. Following the Clean Code Developer Red Grade and some annotations from our meetup: CCD Red Grade - Principles Don't Repeat Yourself - DRY Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Short) - KISS Beware of Optimisations! Favour Composition over Inheritance - FCoI Interestingly most of the attendees already heard about those key words but couldn't really classify or categorize them. It's very similar to a situation in which you do not the particular for a thing and have to describe it to others... until someone tells you the actual name and suddenly all is very simple. CCD Red Grade - Practices Follow the Boy Scouts Rule Root Cause Analysis - RCA Use a Version Control System Apply Simple Refactoring Pattern Reflect Daily Introduction to the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - here: Red Grade As for the various ToDo's we commonly agreed that the Boy Scout Rule clearly is not limited to software development or IT administration but applies to daily life in general. Same for the root cause analysis, btw. We really had good stories with surprisingly endings and conclusions. A quick check about who is using a version control system brought more drive into the conversation. Not only that we had people that aren't using any VCS at all, we also had the 'classic' approach of backup folders and naming conventions as well as the VCS 'junkie' that has to use multiple systems at a time. Just for the records: Git and GitHub seem to be in favour of some of the attendees. Regarding the daily reflection at the end of the day we came up with an easy solution: Wrap it up as a blog entry! Certifications in IT This is kind of a controversy in IT in general. Is it interesting to go for certifications or are they completely obsolete? What are the possibilities to get certified? What are the options we have in Mauritius? How would certificates stand compared to other educational tracks like Computer Science or Web Design. The ratio between craftsmen with certifications like MCP, MSTS, CCNA or LPI versus the ones without wasn't in favour for the first group but there was a high interest in the topic itself and some were really surprised to hear that exam preparations are completely free available online including temporarily voucher codes for either discounts or completely free exams. Furthermore, we discussed possible options on forming so-called study groups on a specific certificates and organising more frequent meetups in order to learn together. Taking into consideration that we have sponsored access to the video course material of Pluralsight (and now PeepCode as well as TrainSignal), we might give it a try by the end of the year. Current favourites are LPIC Level 1 and one of the Microsoft exams 40-78x. Feedback and ideas for the MSCC The closing conversations and discussions about how the MSCC is recently doing, what are the possibilities and what's (hopefully) going to happen in the future were really fertile and I made a couple of mental bullet points which I'm looking forward to tackle down together with orher craftsmen. Eventually, it might be a good option to elaborate on some issues during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions one Wednesday morning. Active discussion on various IT topics like certifications (LPI, MCP, CCNA, etc) and sharing experience Finally, we made it till the end of the planned time. Well, actually the talk was still on and we continued even after 16:00hrs. Unfortunately, we (the children and I) had to leave for evening activities. My resume of the day... It was great to have 15 craftsmen in one room. There are hundreds of IT geeks out there in Mauritius, and as Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community we still have a lot of work to do to pass on the message to some more key players and companies. Currently, it seems that we are able to attract a good number of students in Computer Science... but we have a lot more to offer, even or especially for IT people on the job. I'm already looking forward to our next Saturday meetup in the near future. PS: Meetup pictures are courtesy of Nirvan Pagooah. Thanks for sharing...

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• wynapse.com down last night, SC tonight

  - by Dave Campbell

  In an industry segment that nobody is ever 'asleep', I suppose no time is a good time to take SQL Server down for upgrades, and I had forgotten that my host was going to be doing that. Last night about 9pm (Arizona), in the middle of working on a blog post, things started going wonky and I finally realized everything was ok except for SQL Server. I turned in a ticket on it and was reminded about the maintenance schedule... guess I file those away in memory and just assume they'll happen while I'm asleep :) So, looking at the schedule, it appears that SQL Server for SilverlightCream is going to be down tonight. Minimum is 9-12pm Arizona time... mileage and time may vary. Since all the posts are run through SC to get the Skim count, having SQL down sucks, but I'd rather we got maintenance than have to react to a crash because of something that wasn't maintained. I'll try to get the next 'Cream post out early so that the bulk of folks can dig through it prior to the outage. Meanwhile, for those of you in Phoenix, tonight is our Phoenix Silverlight User Group April meeting, and Joel Neubeck is going to be giving us the run-through on Windows Phone 7! We're not as advanced as those MVP rock-stars in California like Victor Gaudioso who streams his user group meeting, so you'll just have to show up for the goodness! And for anyone that's interested, here's some WP7 bling for your desktop... I want some of this real bad for my laptop! Get the full image in the post by Ozymandias:

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• Azure Florida Association

  - by Dave Noderer

  Herve Roggero, SQL Azure MVP,  has created a virtual community to focus on Azure. Here is the outline from Herve:   User Group Name:  Azure Florida Association Purpose: Start a virtual Florida user group that targets the Azure platform Venues: Most meetings will be virtual; however I plan to host a few physical events across Florida if possible from time to time; physical events may be a few hours long with potentially more than one speaker Possible Topics: The topics will touch Azure generally speaking, but can have a wide array of concern such as Integration, Data Migration, Hosting, Security, Scalability, Mobile Device integration, successful ventures/lessons learned, cross cloud integration patterns, testing in the cloud, deployment management, reporting… Target Members: Architects, Developers, IT Managers Membership: Membership will be free; virtual events will be free; physical events may involve a minimal cover charge Speakers: If you are interested in speaking or if you have topic ideas, please let me know Frequency: Initially these meetings will be held every other month   The first meeting will be held on January 25, 2012 at 4PM EST. Vikas Sahni, SQL Azure MVP, will be presenting on Demystifying SQL Azure. Vikas will introduce SQL Azure, value proposition, usage scenarios, concepts and architecture, what is there and what is not, including Tips and Tricks.  The actual meeting link will be available in January but please join the linked in group now to be kept informed of this and future events: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4177626.

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• Which problem(s) do YOU want to see solved?

  - by buu700

  My team and I are meeting tonight to come up with a business plan and some community input would be amazing. I've been mulling over this issue for the past few months and bouncing ideas off of others, and now I'd finally like some input from the community. I have come up with a fair selection of ideas, but most of those amount to either fun projects which could potentially be profitable, or otherwise solid business models that have one or two major hurdles (usually related to resources or legality). For our team meeting tonight, my idea is to take inventory of our available skills, resources, and compelling problems which interest us. The last is where I would greatly appreciate some community input. Hell, even entire business ideas/plans would be appreciated. No matter how big or small your thoughts, any input would be appreciated. We're a team of computer scientists, so our business will be primarily based around software/technology/Web solutions. Among my relevant available resources (entire Internet aside), I have the following: A pretty reliable connection to an SEO company a large production company. A stash of fairly powerful server hardware. A fast network with static IPs. The backend for Hackswipe, which includes credit card payment processing and a Google Voice-based SMS gateway. This work in progress design for something completely unrelated but which is backed by some fairly decent infrastructure. Direct access to the experts in just about any relevant field (on-campus Carnegie Mellon professors). A sexual relationship with the baron of a small nation. For further down the line, some investor relationships. Not likely to be so relevant, but a decent social media presence (Stack Overflow reputation, modship in some major reddits, various tech forums). The source code for Eugene fucking McCabe. Pooled with the other team members, the list of projects we can build off of would be longer (including an Android app). So, what are your thoughts? Crossposted to reddit

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• What relationship do software Scrum or Lean have to industrial engineering concepts like theory of constraints?

  - by DeveloperDon

  In Scrum, work is delivered to customers through a series of sprints in which project work is time boxed to a fixed number of days or weeks, usually 30 days. In lean software development, the goal is to deliver as soon as possible, permitting early feedback for the next iteration. Both techniques stress the importance of workflow in which software work product does not accumulate in development awaiting release at some future date. Both permit new or refined requirements and feedback from QA and customers to be acted on with as little delay as possible based on priority. A few years ago I heard a lecture where the speaker talked briefly about a family of concepts from industrial engineering called theory of constraints. In the factory, they use an operations model based on three components: drum, buffer, and rope. The drum synchronizes work product as it flows through the system. Buffers that protect the system by holding output from one stage as it waits to be consumed by the next. The rope pulls product from one work station to the next. Historically, are these ideas part of the heritage of Scrum and Lean, or are they on a separate track? It we wanted to think about Scrum and Lean in terms of drum-buffer-rope, what are the parts? Drum = {daily scrum meeting, monthly release)? Buffer = {burn down list, source control system)? Rope = { daily meeting, constant integration server, monthly releases}? Industrial engineers define work flow in terms of different kinds of factories. I-Factories: straight pipeline. One input, one output. A-Factories: many inputs and one output. V-Factories: one input, many output products. T-Plants: many inputs, many outputs. If it applies, what kind of factory is most like Scrum or Lean and why?

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• A quick hello to the Western Kentucky .NET User Group

  - by Muljadi Budiman

  A few days back, I got a chance to speak at the Western Kentucky .NET User Group meeting in Murray, Kentucky.  The opportunity came up because the original speaker, Jeff Blankenburg, had another obligation and was thus unable to come to this meeting.  I volunteered to deliver his presentation, which is an overview of MIX10 conference. It was a great experience for me; got to drive around and do a little bit of sight-seeing – can’t say I’ve ever been to Kentucky before, so first trip ever there.  I got to meet the user group’s current lead, Tom Turner and got to chat and discuss about all kinds of stuff with the other members.  Cheers to Matt Gawarecki and Brandon Sharp! The presentation itself mostly covers new features in Visual Studio 2010, which was recently released on April 12 – got to demonstrate Historical Debugging in IntelliTrace, Parallel Stacks, View Call Hierarchy and show some Extensions.  We also covered some of the new functionalities in Silverlight 4 (using webcams, drag & drop support among others) and I got to show off Scott Guthrie’s Windows Phone 7 Twitter app.  Altogether, it was quite a bit to cover in 70 minutes or so, but I think everyone enjoyed it. Jeff provided me with the presentation slides (which I modify a bit) and demo applications; so I’m putting it up here for those that may be interested in downloading them.  Please keep in mind that all the demos were made with VS2010 RC, so there may be slight tweaks to get it to work on the RTM version.

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• New XAML-Based User Group started in Birmingham, Alabama.

  - by mbcrump

  I’m pleased to announce that a new XAML-Based User Group has started in Birmingham, Alabama. The group is being hosted by Michael Crump and Jonathan Marbutt. The reason is very simple: we feel that Birmingham needs a fresh start. We are both very passionate about .NET and are hoping to share our experiences with the community. We have created a site (http://allaboutxaml.net) and our first meetup is now scheduled. We are here to discuss all things that have to do with xaml. This includes Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone 7, Surface, Lightswitch and Silverlight with SharePoint 2010. We: believe strongly in xaml and are passionate about what we talk about. believe in an open-forum. believe a user group should be FUN as well as educational. do not claim to be an expert on anything, we are here to share. record every presentation and put it on the web for others to benefit. meet monthly but are flexible on the actual date. do our events outside of technical colleges. have families and our meetings start and stop on time. welcome new speakers. welcome adult beverages. Our first meeting is going to be on February 15th, 2011 (6PM), at Logan's on HWY 280. It is going to be more of a meetup than a meeting. I would like to discuss current xaml-based projects that you are working on and get to know one another. If you are interested in coming then please sign up here so that we know how many to expect. Please visit our site to find out more about us: http://allaboutxaml.net.

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• My 2012 Professional Development Goals

  - by kerry

  Once again I am going to declare some professional goals for my upcoming year. Convert my blog to Jekyll hosted on github – I am tired of wordpress, tired of spam, and would like to try something new.  I have already started on this.  Just need to finish it up. Launch my GWT / Google App Engine application – I am currently developing a GWT application to be deployed to Google App Engine. Do another presentation at the user group – At least a few lightning talks.  I have a few ideas. Attend a tech conference – Dev Nexus is the likely target Post more often – I did 10 posts last year, would like to maybe double that next year (including this one) Attend a user group meeting outside of Nashville JUG – A rollover from last year, I will probably be regularly attend the Interactive Developers meeting Study another language – I have been thinking about looking in to Dart or perhaps Go Launch an Android app – Another holdover from last year I am thinking of doing a small app having to do with managing the silent state of the phone

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• Oracle OpenWorld Highlights

  - by Doug Reid

  We are in the final days of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and the data integration team have been hard at work giving sessions, meeting customers, demonstrating product and conducting hands-on labs.    It has been a great conference, but the best part is meeting our customers and learning about all the great implementations of our products.  Wednesday was the last day that the exhibition hall was open and attendees were getting in their final opportunities to see our products and meet with the product management team.   Two hours before the close of the hall, people lined up to learn about GoldenGate 11gR2, Monitor, Adapters, Veridata, and all the different use cases.    Here's a picture of Sjaak Vossepoel, who is our DIS Sales Consulting Manager for EMEA speaking to a potential customer on the options of using Oracle GoldenGate for heterogenous data replication.  Over the last two days, the GoldenGate team ran two labs; Introduction to Oracle GoldenGate Veridata and Deep Dive into Oracle GoldenGate.   Both of the labs were completely booked out and unfortunately we had to turn away people.   BUT,  all of our labs were recorded recently so if you were not able to get into the lab or did not have enough time to complete your labs, visit youtube.com/oraclegoldengate to see a  complete recording of the labs we used at OpenWorld plus more.  Here are a couple pictures from the Deep Dive into Oracle GoldenGate lead by Chis Lawless from the Product Management team.   Thanks to the GoldenGate Hands-on Lab team for putting on a great session!!! We will post more information about where you can find additional details on OpenWorld as they become public.   

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• People != Resources

  - by eddraper

  Ken Tabor’s blog post “They Are not Resources – We Are People” struck a chord with me.  I distinctly remember hearing the term “resources” within the context of “people” for the first time back in the late 90’s.  I was in a meeting at Compaq and a manager had been faced with some new scope for an IT project he was managing.  His response was that he needed more “resources” in order to get the job done.  As I knew the timeline for the project was fixed and the process for acquiring additional funding would almost certainly extend beyond his expected delivery date, I wondered what he meant.  After the meeting, I asked him what he meant… his response was that he needed some more “bodies” to get the job done.  For a minute, my mind whirred… why is it so difficult to simply say “people?”  This particular manager was neither a bad person nor a bad manager… quite the contrary.  I respected him quite a bit and still do.  Over time, I began to notice that he was what could be termed an “early adopter” of many “Business speak” terms – such as “sooner rather than later,” “thrown a curve,” “boil the ocean” etcetera.  Over time, I’ve discovered that much of this lexicon can actually be useful, though cliché and overused.  For example, “Boil the ocean” does serve a useful purpose in distilling a lot of verbiage and meaning into three simple words that paint a clear mental picture.  The term “resources” would serve a similar purpose if it were applied to the concept of time, funding, or people.  The problem is that this never happened.  “Resources”, “bodies”, “ICs” (individual contributors)… this is what “people” have become in the IT business world.  Why?  We’re talking about simple word choices here.  Why have human beings been deliberately dehumanized and abstracted in this manner? What useful purpose does it serve other than to demean and denigrate?

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