optionsScalper : Community Work

F# Road Trips: Next stop - San Diego

optionsScalper — Fri, 19 May 2006 19:17:00 GMT

Ok, so I've started this hubFS thing. It has been a bit of work, but I had fun getting it moving. The best part now is that I've had a chance to have conversations with a number of people with F# interests from all over the planet. These are the people that I hope will eventually use their collective passions in F# to make The Hub a great place for F# work.

In the meantime, I've been bitten by the speaking bug and have been giving a few presentations recently. I recently spoke at the WI .NET User Group, Fox Valley .NET User Group and the Rockford .NET User Group. I'm hoping to speak at the Chippewa Valley .NET User Group in the coming months. As an aside, it would seem that every valley in Wisconsin has started a .NET User Group.

But the reason that I'm writing this post is because the prefix "F# Road Trips" will hopefully become a new series on this blog (I'm writing this both on The Hub and on my jjbresearch blogs). My goal is to go on the road approximately once every month or so and give F# presentations at various code camps and other venues. I'm currently working through a few different presentations, some of which are already complete:

F#: An Introduction Under an Application of Quantitative Finance
An Introduction to F#
F# and BizTalk 2006: Leveraging functional/imperative/OO programming in the rules engine
F# Functional Programming: Lambdas, closures and other constructs
Interactive Visualization with F#
F# and SQLCLR - Breaking domain encapsulation and placing business logic in SQLCLR with F#

Swarer (XPSD member and self-proclaimed "Ex-ubernerd, recently got himself a life.") and I talk regularly and he mentioned a few weeks ago that the Rock and Roll Code Camp (RRCC) was to take place in San Diego on June 24-25, 2006. I think his exact words were: "Dude. You gotta like, come out and like do this like code camp. It'll be uummmmm gnarly and stuff and like you can like tell everyone about that F# thing and whoa, we can like totally party and skip out of all of the other sessions especially those agile sessions on TDD and unit testing and stuff." (I cut and pasted that from an MSN IM session). I also know that after speaking with him, his tagline is not quite correct; he's still doesn't have a life, but he's borrowing someone else's for a little while.

I'm there. I'm speaking. I'm doing that F# thing. I'll be doing the #2, #3, #4 and #5 presentations.from the above list for RRCC. I'll submit for #6 to RRCC if I can complete my work on it in time to get on the schedule. If you are going to RRCC, DO NOT MISS #5 - Interactive Visualization with F#.

If you are having a code camp and want to hear about F#, give me a comment here or send me an email. I'm going to try to do one code camp per month or so, starting in August. Keep in mind, that the real reason for doing this is to find out where the best .NET parties take place.

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Note: I'm doing an impression of Godzilla and NOT evangelizing F# in this picture.

Deeper in Dot Net 2006 - Follow up

optionsScalper — Fri, 12 May 2006 20:55:00 GMT

Ok. I admit it. I'm totally late to the party with this post. But I wanted to delay writing this post on the "old blog" in favor of writing it here.

Anyways, I'm a member of the WI .NET User Group Executive Committee (and I'm not even an executive; go figure). The annual event for our group is Deeper in Dot Net (DiDN) and 2006 is the first year that I attended. This is also the first year that DiDN was under the direction of Scott Isaacs after Brian Tinkler's acceptance of a position at MSFT had caused Brian to give up the President and chief organizer position.

DiDN was outstanding in every respect. We had five great speakers: Michele Leroux Bustamante, Scott Hanselman, Julie Lerman, Bill Hatfield and Jason Beres. The show was free and we had about 600 people packed into the Milwaukee Downtown Hyatt for the event.

Of course, there were plenty of parties and dinners and other get togethers that were part of the event as well.

Anyways, the highlight of this event for me was the chance to talk with the speakers in person. In particular, I had a chance to talk at length with Julie Lerman (DiDN Links 1 2 3; no, not all drinks in Milwaukee have a sausage in them). I also had a chance to meet Korby Parnell (DiDN link) who came into town on his way to VSLive! up in Toronto. Additionally, unbeknownst to me at the time, but a member of the North America INETA board was also in attendance, having driven up from St. Louis. Scott Spradlin, whom I had not met before, was there and as I had said, I was completely clueless that he was an INETA guy. He just walked around as a regular attendee and took in the show. I think it is really great that this event had been noticed by a number of people and that there was genuine interest from both Microsoft and INETA.

I also met a few other out-of-towners. Doug Rhoten (blogless; get one soon) of the Chippewa Valley .NET User Group, David Palfery (another blogless guy; I'm working on him to get one) of the Fox Valley .NET User Group, Avonelle Lovhaug (DiDN links 1 2 3 4 5 6; ok, six posts; did you have a good time or what?) and Val The C# Gal (DiDN link) were also there.

I personally want to thank the WI .NET User Group, my fellow Executive Committee members and Scott Isaacs (and his wife Kelly) for the work that was done to make this event what it was.

The Hub goes live

optionsScalper — Fri, 12 May 2006 08:01:00 GMT

I have been so busy, I haven't had a chance to announce one of the initiatives that I have been working so hard to complete. So here it is . . .

hubFS - THE place for F#

This is my first effort at an organized community site with focus on F#. Please visit the site to find articles, blogs, forums, code, galleries, etc.

I could not do this alone. I had the help of many people to put this site together. I can't do the list justice, but those that have helped know that I respect their works and talents and most of all, their efforts to get this place going.

Over the recent days, while this blog was under construction (and I missed this milestone), many of my friends and and hubFS contributors made certain that this would get the exposure that it needed. I'll list as many here as I can. Send me a comment if I missed you (as it was unintentional):

Dr. Don Syme's announcement
Robert Pickering (early F# adopter; founder of the F# Wiki and new hubFS contributor)
Scott Isaacs
Chad Albrecht (recently published "F# on a Virtual Supercomputer" in Dot Net Developer's Journal)
Dominic Cooney
The Armed Geometer
Scott Allen

There is a great core group of contributors that have started to produce F# works. I hope that as time goes by, we are able to invite more contributors and build a base of competence in F#.

Please also note, that this is "THE place for F#". I make that statement as a simple gesture with the definite article "THE" in all caps. Dr. Syme and the F# team run the F# mail list server (along with Don's blog); Robert Pickering runs the F# Wiki and hosts a set of fantastic F# tutorials. There are numerous other blogs that have assorted F# works. To be clear, I want The Hub to be THE place to gather, but know that only a concerted effort with others can bring about our common goals. I truly appreciate the works of these others and want to be clear that as F# matures in language, usage and acceptance, the collective works at Microsoft Research, on Robert's site and at The Hub and elsewhere will all work together to make F# more accessible and hopefully provide clear information for those that want to improve their F# skill set.

I invite you to stop by The Hub and get informed on F#. Let me and others know what we do well and what needs improvement.