Colorado Springs Give Camp

It's finally here. This weekend is the first Colorado Springs Give Camp and my first attempt at organizing an event. I'm happy to say that I selected this event to help a charity in need utilizing my skills, and what I love to do; Write Code. Starting Friday evening, we will be at DeVry University in Colorado Springs with a team of developers, database admins and designers to contribute our skills for a local charity.
GiveCamp is the brainchild of Microsoft Sr. Evangelist, Chris Koenig, and since 2007, has been helping non-profit organizations across the country at different locations over different weekends.

This weekend, along with other participating GiveCamps in 14 US cities, we will be writing code and drinking caffeinated beverages and make up a first ever National GiveCamp. Through Microsoft's efforts and logistics, we are lucky to have National Sponsors such as Domino’s (free pizza for volunteers); Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (free coffee); DeVry University (facility space); Coca-Cola (Drinks), and Pluralsight (free training for volunteers). More importantly, I feel our local sponsors share equal recognition, such as TEKsystems and Colorado Technology Consultants.

The heart of the GiveCamp is to develop a system for Crossfire Ministries, a non-profit organization that would probably not have the financial or staffing means to complete these projects. Crossfire Ministries, is a non-profit providing food, clothing and basic living necessitous. They are in need of a redeveloped website, with a donor database, basic scheduling, automated features and social network presence. Our major sponsor, DiscountASP.Net is provided the charity with free hosting and free database service for the non-profit

So what is in it for the volunteers. Developing customer software takes special skills and plenty of time. Aside from this being a selfless task for the volunteers, they will have opportunities to participate in virtual training sessions with organized by Chris Koenig out of the Dallas Microsoft offices. Moreover, we have completed stocking some amazing SWAG bags. Lastly, giveaways.... here is a list of a few prices we will raffle off this weekend:

• Office 2010
• Visual Studio 2010 Pro
• CMS License
• Keurig Coffee Maker
• Pluralsight Training Subscription. 

The 14 U.S locations holding a GiveCamp this weekend are: Austin, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Birmingham, Alabama; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Dallas, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Houston, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas, Pennsylvania; Fayetteville, Arkansas; New York City, New York; Malvern, Pennsylvania; Redmond, Washington; and Clayton, Missouri.

I'd like to thank the people that helped me, starting with my wife, for motivating me and sacrificing the time I spent away from her shooting emails and reading/writing updates at night, and for being our runner organizing meals and buying supplies. There are also the people at the South Colorado .Net User Group and Colorado Springs SQL Server User Group and Julie Yack and her peeps at Colorado Technology Consultants for helping me get connected with the right people and helping me organize the event.

.Lastly, here is a list of our sponsors, whom without them, we could not have put on the event:

TEKsystems for providing Lunch
Dominos for providing dinners
TechSmith for their generous donation to buy supplies, breakfast and snacks
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters for hot caffeinated drinks and the Keurig Coffee Maker
Coca-Cola for cold caffeinated drinks
DiscountASP.Net for hosting the web app and database servers for our charity
Microsoft for their efforts in planning and the goodies to giveaway

You can see more of our sponsors on our website, www.springsgivecamp.org. Follow our GiveCamp of Twitter or Facebook over the weekend to see live updates on the events.

T-SQL Tuesday: What are your SQL Resolutions

T-SQL Tuesday is the brain child of Adam Machanic (Blog|@AdamMachanic). Each month, a lucky blogger is selected to host this blog party. This month, the host is Midnight DBA’s, Jenn McCown (Blog|Twitter). This month’s million dollar question is: “What are your techie resolutions?”
I recently blogged regarding a few “techie” things I have lined up for this year, however, to stay in theme to T-SQL Tuesday, I will tell you all about my SQL Resolutions for 2011.
This month is already filled with several events, the one more SQL specific will be that of presenting at the Colorado Springs SQL User Group. I resolved to participate more with the tech community, and since I moved here in October, I have met some interesting professionals that have made me comfortable to present. This month, I will be presenting for the first time, and my topic of choice is “Fundamental T-SQL Development”. I feel pretty strong on the subject, and am very eager to speak. This attempt at speaking led me to another resolution I have made for SQL 2011, and that is participating in a SQL Saturday. I had submitted two sessions to speak, one being the “Fundamental T-SQL Development” the other is “Securing you SQL Server”.
I have been hearing about SQL Saturday's for over a year now over Twitter and such. It is finally becoming a reality for me to see one in person. Not only that, I resolve to speak at a SQL Saturday and will hope to be doing just that at SQl Saturday #66 in Colorado Springs, come Feb. 12, 2011.
Those who know me well, are aware that I've only been in Colorado for about 3 months now. Last year I became a MCPD in ASP.Net 2008, and the year prior that an MCTS in SQL Server 2008 Development. I wrote about becoming a DBA in 2010, but I left that task unfinished. This year, to conclude the SQL Resolutions, I intend to set this goal that I've yet to achieve: the MCITP level in DBA, or probably Development, and maybe MCTS Implementation and Maintenance (70-432), was that too vague?
I must say though, I came into 2011 wanting to speak, attend a SQLSaturday and get more certifications, so far, two out of three are right around the corner. And I will say this, I hope someone is clever enough to revisit this topic in the SQL Community at years end and recap the outcomes bloggers SQL Resolutions.

Like a Fresh Cup of Coffee

It’s a new year and a fresh start. While I drink my latte, Seattle's Best Organic I might add (and recommend), I spill my thoughts for the year. As I’m writing, I’m finishing a site, a portal if you will, for the community my family and I now reside in. Just a few months back I relocated to Colorado Springs, CO., you might of read about my career move. It has been an interesting move, one that I took the tech community into consideration. Colorado Springs is very active in their .Net and SQL Server user groups, my forte. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve met some interesting professional in the SQL and .Net arena, and inspired me to participate alongside with them.
This year, I have started new, like a fresh cup of coffee. January will be very intense for me, with the first ever Colorado Springs GiveCamp taking place, an event I been working hard over the last few months with help from other tech volunteers. This year, our give camp will develop a solution for a charity in need, at no cost, and over one weekend. So far, we have about 10 volunteers helping us make this happen. I'm very glad I was able to help organize this and has allowed me to meet some new people that are very similar to me. From these professionals that volunteer their technology skills, I been inspired to share my knowledge as well.

February will also be an interesting month this year and a first for me. Not only is the Colorado Springs SQL Server User Group putting on a SQL Saturday, but I have submitted two sessions to speak at the event. This year will debut my skills as a presenter. Not only that, I was asked to present in this month's User Group meeting, so my debut will come even earlier. As of right now, I know I will have one speaking engagement this month, the other will be confirmed I believe by the end of this week. Regardless, attending a SQL Saturday will be a great way for me to learn new skills I might not know, or polish some other skills.

On the same wave for events for the beginning of this year, Denver is holding it's 3rd Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta in March. At this event, I intend to increase my .Net skills. Going back to Windows development from ASP, I lack the skills in WPF and want to also do more in LINQ. I also gave it a shot by submitting my SQL sessions there as well, since it will be a good experience to speak to larger audiences.

Somewhere along the way, I intend to organize what I call, EP Tech Lunches, via my new site www.eptech.info. El Paso County in Colorado consist or Colorado Springs and surrounding areas as in the 2nd most populated county in Colorado next to Denver. This new project is more of an information portal, a meta network, where individuals or groups can share their contact info, (IM, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and post tech announcements. Those participating member will also be invited to attend a monthly Tech Luncheon to meet in person. The reason behind lunches is that many professionals might be interested in attending User Group meetings but might be conflicted with personal obligations after work. Having a lunch meeting would resolve this since you intend to take a lunch anyways during your workday, might as well have it with people interested in networking and talking shop.

I invite you all look into the CodeCamp, SQL Saturday, EP Tech Info and Trifecta. I am looking forward to seeing you participate in these tech events.

My Favorite Free Dev tools for 2011

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The first time I laid eyes on code, it was HTML. With an account to Geocities, I wrote my first webpage by piecing together bits of code on Notepad. I wasn’t planning to write software for a living, although I was working in engineering at the time and had a degree in Mass Communications. I began to like the fact that I could write code and turn into something like a webpage. So I explored a bit more and found myself in the realm of MS QBASIC 4.5 then Visual Basic 5.0. I didn’t have many choices then for development tools, and for a while I limited myself to the tools Microsoft could provide from VB 5.0 to Visual Studio 6.0, Access, VBA and so on. When I explored the likes of Linux and Open Source, I knew there should be tools to use to develop at no cost.

Enter, present day. It is very possible to develop solutions at no cost, and even with a license to Visual Studio and SQL Server, I use these tools I'm sharing with you today and will continue through this new year.

Visual Studio Express I use Visual Studio and SQL Server on a daily basis, and my list is called “Free” Dev tools of 2010, You should be aware, Microsoft has a development studio with the basic IDE and lightweight development sets.

SQl Server Express Is the answer to data backend for Express applications. It provides basic data storage and lack the larger scale capabilities such as mirroring, server Agent, profiling and is limited to one physical processor.

ExamDiff Is a great tool to compare code files. It is very easy to use and comes very useful when working with various versions of code files. It compares almost any kind of code file and I have done this in for C#, Vb, XML, SQL, COBOL, HTML, PHP and more.

Notepad++ Is a daily must have. Like I mentioned, I have a soft spot for MS Notepad to jot down Quick and Dirty code, but Notepad++, does it with style. By style, I mean this source code editor has keyword recognition depending on the language you choose and has a component to execute your code in Win32 API and STL.

PowerShell When I first heard of PowerShell I though of MS-DOS on steroids. It's now clear to me that PoSh is the answer to the many Linux Shells around. At version 2.0, it is growing as a popular scripting language used in conjunction with the .Net framework.

Firebug Is an awesome plugin to run (on Firefox for me) mostly for debugging JavaScript. It is the perfect too for web development, either ASP or PHP even Cold Fusion developers - yes I said ColdFusion, I heard about this tool from a CF Developer.

Drupal To me has been my Content Management System of choice for PHP sites. I can build an entire solution on Drupal, with mySQL of course. Drupal has a large variety of modules and themes, more so that other PHP CMS I've used.

Eclipse for PHP and Eclipse for JavaScript Web Developers I mentioned PHP a few times, I dabble in the code often, and although I'm more of a Microsoft Technologies developer, when I develop in PHP, I prefer this tool. Also, I include in this recommendation, the Eclipse environment for JavaScript, something I can use in both the ASP and PHP world. Eclipse has a variety of IDE's to choose from, including Java and C++, but I mainly use the editor for PHP and JavaScript.

Python 2.7 Finally, a guilty pleasure I've had for the last year. Python hasn't really gotten me out of a bind or has performed something in my job that I couldn't accomplish in C#, but it has been proven to work well to teach programming or develop on Linux systems.

I wish I had read a list much like this 15 years back and had made my job a lot easier. To some, this might be a great list, to others, I'm open minded and would like to hear what free development tools you will be using in 2011. Happy New Year!