First, a link to the blog I can no longer edit because Office Live blew away my digital identity and so I can no longer log into it (the source of a loooong blog about protecting your digital identity sometime when I have more time and after it has played out to the end)
http://greentug.spaces.live.com/
The following are the communities I participate in:
Green & Sustainability. I run a virtual user group on Green and Sustainability as it relates to developers and software architects. It was located at greentug.groups.live.com, and we will need to find a new digital location for it, because I am locked out of that site as well.
BizSpark Tampa Bay: I run a BizSpark group for Microsoft technologists (meetup.com, search for BizSpark Tampa Bay) and speak at Code Camps about "No Better Time to Start Your Own Tech Business". The meetup group facilitates a balanced presentation that is respectful to anyone wanting to start their own business, whether part-time or full-time, whether micro (just you), sustainable (grow to 2-25-ish, self-funded), high growth (get venture capital or other funding, grow it, sell it within 5 years, do it again), or hybrid (the new model going forward). It is an "action" group, with assignments and homework if you want to get the most out of it. At the end of a year you will either have your business on the path to where you want it to be, or you will know the steps you need to do to get it there.
Women in Technology Have been participating in the Women in Technology community since 2008, my main interests in this area are mentoring women in the workplace to have them believe they can become geeks and double their income, and to mentor them with respect to starting and running their own business.
Access 2010/SharePoint 2010. This is a game-changer with respect to the Access community (the ap both devs and IT Pros love to hate, the other a-word that's not a fruit). I conducted Lunch n Learns and Brunch n Learns around this topic before the Office 2010/SharePoint 2010 launch, and spoke on the topic at SharePoint Saturday Tampa in Nov 2009.
Interested in learning more about:
Using Silverlight HD Streaming out in the non-technical world (horses and equestrian sport).
Migrating to Access Web Services and VB .Net from VBA (see the Access 2010/SharePoint 2010 interest above)
Windows Phone 7! Exciting opportunities both for Green and Sustainability and for my "day job" of Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS).
My day job is Environmental, Health & Safetey (EHS) consulting and software solutions, where that interfaces with the developer world is with respect to opportunities around Green and Sustainability,
The SmartGrid and Juval Lowy's EnergyNet, both of which will require a lot of technology and software to make them work,
The new Microsoft Partner competency for "Digital Home", and
The Y2K kind of deadline around how managing chemicals in ERP systems is changing because of Global Harmonization, which hits the EU with a hard deadline on 11/30/10 (yes, this year), and hits the USA about 15 months later.
Hope you enjoy my contributions to the digital geek community, and feel free to email me,
[email protected] (the email leftover after my digital identity was blown away), and
[email protected] (this one could go away at some future point)
Best,
Kathy Malone