I have reached a new low in neglecting this blog, I launched an entirely new venture and didn’t even get around to blogging it here. As you have probably already heard if you follow Rob’s blog or follow me on Twitter, Rob and I have launched a new service called TekPub. The purpose of TekPub is to provide high quality technical screencasts, we are focusing somewhat on the .NET space at the moment but will definitely branch out in the future.

Rob wrote a great post on his blog and over on the TekPub blog getting more into the details, so I won’t rehash it all here.

I have been trying to put something like TekPub together for a couple of years, but it always got pushed out of the way for work on The Lounge or contracts. Earlier this year I talked to Ayende about finally getting it off the ground since he was interested as well. Around August when Rob decided he was interested in doing the same thing he approached Ayende as well who told Rob to get in touch with me. Thankfully Rob and I found a way to work together on it and it has been going great so far.

To me the most interesting angle of TekPub is that we are independently producing content and giving more power (and a larger revenue share) to the authors than most (if not all) of the conventional publishers out there. Having written a number of books I know how much work goes into writing a book, and how little the direct monetary reward can be. We wanted to provide a way for experts to get content out faster (we can be live in days not months), provide more revenue (standard royalty rates on books can be as low as 8-10% of publisher revenue), and above all provide more up to date content to our viewers/readers.

I look forward to getting my first couple series out the door next week and joining the fray as an author. We also have a number of other authors working on content that I can’t wait to announce.

-James

If you would like a chance to win one of five $100 vouchers to spend at Amazon then take this short (< 10 minutes) survey about .NET tools: http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1325041

It’s not me doing the survey this time, although I do still have some results to post from the last survey.

-James

It’s that time of year again and Trinug is putting on the annual Raleigh Code Camp. I swore I wouldn’t do a presentation this year but I got talked into it at the last minute. I am going to be doing a tools talk about analyzing the performance of ASP.NET web applications:

Measuring and improving the performance of your ASP.NET applications

This session will be a walkthrough of measuring and improving all aspects of an ASP.NET application. It will consist of coding, testing, monitoring, and making performance improvements using tools like RedGate’s ANTS Profiler and Firebug and maybe even some Ruby or Python. There will be no slides, you have been warned.

I also thought it would be fun to do something other than a straight-forward presentation so I am going to be holding a coding competition. Bring your laptop and stop in to the Library during any session after lunch for a break from staring at bullet points and shiny demos.

Coding Competition

Do you have what it takes? Join us for a fun coding competition where you will implement a simple interface and then have your bot fight against other developer bots. Each round introduces a new challenge and through clever strategies, good code, and some reverse engineering of your opponents great riches will be yours (ok, probably just some books)

-James

One of the things I have always liked about the Alt.Net podcast was that it didn’t get caught up in the meta arguments about what is Alt.Net and what should Alt.Net be. So of course I managed to ruin that in the first couple episodes since taking over, I do think this is a very good conversation to have and I think it sets forth a new definition and goal for Alt.Net that is focused on being positive.

You can check out the episode here.

Jeremy also wrote a great post about it here.

-James

Starting with the next episode I will be running the Alt.Net Podcast. I have been on a number of latest podcasts to slowly transition over and so Mike can show me his workflow on producing the podcasts. I have been helping Mike with sponsorships for the podcast since the first episode and when he mentioned he was thinking of giving up the podcast I volunteered to take it over. I think the Alt.Net podcast has been one of the more positive things in the Alt.Net community and I hope to continue that tradition.

I don’t have any experience running or producing a podcast so this should be interesting.

If you have an idea for a show please drop me an email!

-James

There are more and more one-day local events every year, and each time people come into town, go to the event, then meander home sometime on Sunday. A couple months ago I had the idea to run a separate unaffiliated event on the Sunday morning after one of these local events.

We will be having the first ShadowCamp this weekend on Sunday after the Raleigh Code Camp. It will be held at the same venue (ECPI) and will of course be free. The only catch is that we are capping attendance at 30, but it is first-come, first-serve. Even though Raleigh Code Camp is focused on .NET and ShadowCamp attendance will probably be slanted towards .NET, I am sure there will be plenty of people interested in other languages and technologies so don’t let that stop you from coming.

Many of these code camps now include open spaces events, but I wanted to experiment with a pure open spaces event. There will be no other talks other than open spaces.

So, if you live in the area or are in-town for Raleigh Code Camp go register and participate in this experiment.

-James

Time for another meeting of the new Raleigh Alt.Net Beer Users Group, or Alt.bug for short. We will be meeting tonight (10/20) at O’Malleys Tavern (Guinness and Red Oak on tap) and start around 6:00 PM and go till whenever, hope to see you there.

-James

I am happy to announce that this Thursday (9/25) will be the first meeting of the new Raleigh Alt.Net Beer Users Group, or Alt.bug for short. The basic idea is just to go hang out and discuss whatever comes up. We might consider setting topics for future meetings, but for this first meeting we are just going to see what happens. I have already confirmed that Derik, Dug, and Jayme will be coming and hopefully many more will show up as well.

The meeting will be at O’Malleys Tavern (Guinness and Red Oak on tap) and start around 6:00 PM and go till whenever, hope to see you there.

-James

Since NHaml has broken out of MvcContrib (which is a great decision I think, I hate contrib projects in general since they are very hard to maintain) there isn’t a great place to ask questions about using NHaml so I went ahead and created a NHaml-Users Google group.

-James

Friday afternoon Kevin Hazzard and Justin Etheredge made a stop in Raleigh to pick me on their way to CodeStock. Nothing makes a six hour trip go by as quickly as riding with two very smart and fun developers. We got in around 6 or 7 and went to the pre-conference dinner (open dinner FTW, speaker dinners are elitist) at a little mexican restaurant next to the hotel. I finally got to meet people in person that I have known online for a long time, like Scott C. Reynolds, Alan Stevens, and Michael Eaton.

CodeStock was an excellent conference (the keynote was pure marketing fluff, but everything else was good). I begged to get my talk early so I could enjoy the rest of the day and not worry about having to speak anymore. I did the 10 Open Source Tools talk and I think it went over fairly well. Trying to cram so much into the time was tough and I think I am going to retire that talk or maybe re-work it to just focus on a hand-full of the tools. After my talk I spent most of the time in open spaces and participated in some great discussions around working on a Mac, going independent, and Erlang (which turned into more of a polyglot programing conversation).

After CodeStock we grabbed dinner then headed over to Alan Stevens house to hang out by the campfire, drink some beer, and have a good time.

It has been awhile since I have been to a non-local conference and I am re-motivated to get out and go to more conferences. I already signed up to speak at Richmond Code Camp in October, plan on hitting the alt.net conference, RubyConf, and then the local Raleigh Code Camp.. so it will be a busy fall.

And now for your viewing pleasure, here is Scott C. Reynolds intentionally dropping his iPhone on the concrete. (it was already cracked, but he dropped it about 6 times in a row and it is still working)