Next Saturday March 13th Ann Arbor, MI will be hosting SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI). For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various regional and national speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint. This will be my third SharePoint Saturday and second one I’ve had the honor of presenting at. My presentation is titled “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions“ (click here for the SpeakerRate link.)
After taking a look at the speaker and session list I can tell you with great excitement that this event is packed with great speakers and topics. Register here and come on out to SharePoint Saturday Michigan on March 13th. If you’re attending feel free to track me down and say hi. See you there.
-Frog Out
Today marks the official launch day of Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition. This year’s conference will take place on Friday May 7th, 2010. In case you are unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a regional conference hosted in Columbus, OH that focuses on covering topics from Microsoft’s annual Mix conference along with other web, mobile, and development related topics. In addition to great session content from the conference, the day ends with a private screening of the new Iron Man 2 film.
This is the second year for the Stir Trek conference and it is being expanded upon in every possible way. More session tracks, more speakers, higher attendance capacity, and more excitement. Here are a few things that you’ll get with your conference ticket [from the Stir Trek website]:
6 hours of brand-new content, delivered by well-known regional and national speakers Attendee packet Lunch Attendee T-shirt A chance at winning prizes ranging from software licenses to an Xbox 360 and games. Private screening of IronMan 2* at 4PM Refreshments during the movie
* An additional ticket to the movie can be purchased for $10.
Last year’s Stir Trek conference sold out in less than 30 days, so don’t wait to reserve your spot. Click here for registration. Armor up your development skills today!
-Frog Out
As mentioned in a recent post, I attended SPTechCon in San Francisco, CA on Feb 10-12, 2010. This was the first time I had attended this conference (now in it’s second year,) but I can easily say it was one of the best conferences (both personally and professionally) that I have attended since I started actively attending in the past 3 years. Here’s a quick recap of the conference with links at the bottom to the many pictures and videos that I took.
Arriving
Heading out to CA was a bit of a struggle. Due to massive amounts of snow and other bad winter weather I opted to take an earlier (6am instead of 2pm) flight out on Tues Feb 9th. The earlier flight helped, but I still ran into delays with my connection in Detroit, MI. [Ed. note: Kudos to Delta for allowing me to change my flight time free of charge and compensating me with bonus sky miles due to delay.] Despite the delays, I was happy to arrive with all of my luggage only 3 hours later than scheduled. Sadly many other conference attendees and even some speakers were delayed by up to days.
Tuesday night was fun as I met up for dinner and drinks with a number of folks from the SharePoint 911 crew as well as other members of the End User SharePoint Live Blogging team. This was the first conference I had volunteered to be a live blogger for, so it was good to meet some fellow volunteers ahead of time and get a feel for what to expect. You can read archives of the live feeds here and a short explanation about our team of volunteers here.
Conference
SPTechCon was an amazing conference for two main reasons: the conference content and the networking opportunities. First the content. SPTechCon begins on Wednesday with 100-200 level workshops that are offered as full day or half day sessions. Thursday and Friday follow up with 75 minute sessions with 8 offerings per time slot in a wide variety of focus areas ranging from admin to developer to business user and everything in between. Here are the sessions I attended (many of which I live blogged.)
- Phil Wicklund – SharePoint 101: The Developer
- Laura Rogers – Making the Most of Out-of-the-Box Web Parts
- Todd Klindt and Shane Young – Administering SharePoint 2010 with PowerShell
- Heather Solomon – Migrating Custom Branding from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010
- Tom Rizzo – Thursday morning keynote
- Michael Noel – Lessons Learned from Years of SharePoint Deployments
- Paul Swider – The “Humanizing” of SharePoint
- Jennifer Mason – Putting Together an Effective SharePoint Team
- Mark Ferraz – Team Development for Delivering Complex Projects (missed first half due to lunch)
- Mark Rackley – SharePoint Web Services: The ‘Special Sauce’ of SharePoint
What really impressed me was that I was able to learn some new things from some unlikely sources. This includes Phil’s 101 developer, Laura’s out of the box web parts, and Jen’s team building sessions. I like it when I can take a step back from so called “advanced topics” and revisit some of the basics and foundation areas to glean new information. A big thanks goes out to all of the speakers for taking time to develop material, present, and answer countless questions from audience members.
Networking was the other reason I appreciated this conference. I’ve been to a number of regional and national conferences in the past from Central Ohio Day of .Net to Stir Trek to SharePoint Saturdays to TechEd North America and many more. All of these were great for connecting with the community of attendees, but somehow SPTechCon took it one step further. I got to finally meet and get to know a number of great members of the SharePoint community (see pictures below for some of our hanging out.) There are so many I want to list, but a quick few I have to at least thank here. Mark Rackley (@mrackley) for being my roommate and giving us car rides numerous times (especially to ski shuttle at 5am,) Joel Oleson (@joeloleson) for also driving us around throughout the week, Mike Noel (@michaeltnoel) for giving us a tour of San Fran attractions, Eric Harlan (@ericharlan) for initiating the ski event and introducing me to a number of the other folks I met, Jen Mason (@jennifermason) for also introducing me to others, and Lori Gowin (@lorigowin) and Cathy Dew (@catpaint1) for helping when I had live blogging questions and providing lots of laughs. Thanks to all of the others I met; I had a blast and hope to see you again soon at another event.
ShareSki
After many days spent at the conference, my friend Eric Harlan and I took 2 days to head up to Lake Tahoe for some skiing. If any of you don’t know Eric, he’s quite an avid skier. A quick look at the header image of his blog shows off that fact. Eric was able to find a great deal for our ski trip through Bay Area Ski Bus. The deal included shuttle ride from San Francisco to Tahoe, lift tickets for 2 days, 1 night in hotel, continental breakfast both mornings, and an apres-ski party (food, snacks, and drinks) both afternoons for $260ish per person. That is an amazing deal considering lift tickets out West are fairly expensive and then you throw in shuttle, hotel room, food and drinks and it’s hard to believe they are making money. Both Eric and I highly recommend them for anyone looking for a way to ski Tahoe if you are around the bay area in California.
Great deal on shuttle aside, skiing was fun and enjoyable. The first day we skied Northstar ski resort and the second we skied Sugar Bowl ski resort. I’ve been skiing since I was about 10, but both resorts were larger than anything I’ve skied in the mid-west. Weather could’ve been better as it was in the mid to high 40s during the day and not much cooler in the morning. Happily I can report I only fell a handful of times with only one fall that was actually scary (think of a movie where the hero is sliding down a hill and can’t stop because it’s so steep, yea that was me.) Overall I had a great time and don’t look forward to skiing the smaller hills back home from now on.
Photos and Links
Facebook album of below photos (includes tagging and comments, recommend this link more)
Ski video 1 – 360 panorama of Sugar Land
Ski video 2 – Eric showing off some sweet skills
Ski video 3 – Me skiing down the mountain
Conclusion
SPTechCon was a great conference to attend this year. I got to learn some great content, meet amazing people, and get a short break away from work. I’ll definitely look into attending the Boston SPTechCon later this year as I hear great things about that as well. Big thanks out to all of the speakers, vendors, conference planners, and conference attendees for making this such a memorable event. Look forward to the next great event.
-Frog Out
Uploading files to a SharePoint document library through the web UI is a fairly simple process, but did you know it’s also possible to programmatically upload a file (or string) to a document library? Over the past two weeks I’ve had the latter scenario come up with friends and coworkers in several separate instances so I thought I’d post some simple code snippets on how to accomplish this. I can’t take all credit as I borrowed the base code for uploading from a project my coworker Kelly Jones and I are on. Below are two code snippets for first uploading a byte array representation of a string and second for uploading a file.
Uploading a string (converted to file) to a document library
string textToOutput = "Some text I want to put out to a file";
string uploadPath = "<URL for your document library + filename>";
// ex. http://server/myDocLib/SomeFile.csv
ASCIIEncoding encoder = new ASCIIEncoding();
byte[] bytesToOutput = encoder.GetBytes(textToOutput.ToString());
using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
client.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
client.UploadData(uploadPath, "PUT", bytesToOutput);
}
Uploading a file to document library
string localFilename = "<path to file you wish to upload>";
// ex. c:\temp\myFileToUpload.doc
FileStream myStream = new FileStream(localFilename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
BinaryReader myReader = new BinaryReader(myStream);
byte[] bytesToOutput = reader.ReadBytes((int)myStream.Length);
myReader.Close();
myStream.Close();
using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
client.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
client.UploadData(uploadPath, "PUT", bytesToOutput);
}
Conclusion
Programmatically uploading a file to a SharePoint document library is actually a fairly simple process as seen by the short code snippets above. The basic premise is that you are performing an HttpRequest Put operation with the byte array representation of either a file or a string. I’ve used this on a number of occasions at one of my current clients and it’s been very helpful. Feel free to leave feedback if you found this helpful, have any questions, or suggestions for improvement.
-Frog Out
This will be a very short post (read below for explanation) with a few upcoming big events that are happening.
This coming Wednesday through Friday I will be attending SPTechCon. SPTechCon is a SharePoint conference put on by BZ Media being held in San Francisco. This is the second year for the conference, my first for attending. I was lucky enough to win a free ticket through some connections at COSPUG and able to convince my company to pick up most of the expenses for the trip. The reason for this being a short post is that it’s currently 10pm tonight, my flight got changed from 2pm tomorrow to 6:30am (to avoid bad weather coming this way), and I still have to pack my bags among other loose ends. I do look forward to meeting a number of people in person that I’ve gotten to hear about through Twitter or their blogs. Pictures and updates will be in a follow up post.
On a related note, I have signed up through EndUserSharePoint to be a live blogger and Twitterbug during SPTechCon. I wish I had more details to share, but go to their site and I’m sure there will be some way of finding myself and the others contributing during the conference. Although there have been many occasions I’ve unofficially blogged and twittered during conferences, this will be the first officially commissioned (or whatever you wish to call it) time I’m doing so. Hope it goes well.
SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMichigan) is coming up on March 13th, in Ann Arbor Michigan. This will be my 3rd SharePoint Saturday so far (recap SPSIndy and SPSCleveland) and it’s in my home state so I’m even more excited for it. One my fellow Sogeti co-workers Jesse Murray is one of the organizers and I hear things are coming together. I will be submitting a talk or two for presenting during the conference, we’ll see if I make it in. If you are in the area that Saturday and wish to get some free info and great networking with the SharePoint community, please register and I look forward to seeing you there.
Unfortunately I can’t talk too much about this event yet. The reason being that I’m on the board of volunteers for this conference and we’re waiting to make the really big publicity push until a later date. What I can say is that Stir Trek started last year here in Columbus, OH as a web development focused conference (based on the MIX conference, MIX => Stir… get it) which was then followed by a screening of the movie Star Trek. I attended last year and enjoyed it so much I decided to help out with the planning of it for this year. This year the event will be taking place on May 7th, 2010 (as alluded to in the teaser link above) and you’ll notice the phrase “Iron Man Edition” as well. Not too hard to guess what we mean by that, but look for more details about this event coming soon.
Conclusion
Well, this might honestly be the first blog post in awhile that I’ve pumped out in under 30 minutes. I guess the time crunch I’m in also necessitated that as well though. These are just a few of the bigger events I’ll be attending or helping out with in the coming months (not to mention all the user group meetings, etc.) Take the time to check them out and hopefully I’ll see a few of you readers out at these events. Until then.
-Frog Out
This past Saturday I spent the better part of my day at SharePoint Saturday Indianapolis (or SPSIndy for the “cool” geeks.) For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint. This amazing community event marked my second SharePoint Saturday attended (read my recap of SPSCleveland) and my first SharePoint Saturday as a regular attendee (not presenting.) From the stats side I heard that over 370 people registered with around 250 attendees the day of. That is definitely a great turn out for Indy’s first SharePoint Saturday. I know that many others like myself drove in (3 hrs each way for me) from far away to attend. So here’s a little recap of my day and the event.
My Saturday morning started off very early leaving Columbus, OH around 5:30am. I was driving with Jennifer Mason (President of COSPUG and one of the SPSIndy presenters) and since she was speaking during first session we couldn’t be late. We arrived with plenty of time so I was able to enjoy some of the wonderful hot breakfast food and drink provided. If you haven’t been to too many conferences, you may not know that hot breakfasts are a rarity so I took full advantage in this case. I also got to meet some local SharePoint developers during breakfast who I ended up talking to quite a bit throughout the day.
The actual conference kicked off very well with an introduction by Rob Bogue (head of the local SharePoint user group and all around great guy) and the rest of the steering committee. For sessions, I attended a variety of topics mostly focused on the development or administrator side. These included:
- Woody “Windy” Windischman (@WoodyWindy) - “Intro to SharePoint Designer 2010”
- Steve Pietrek (@SPietrek) - “Developing Silverlight for SharePoint”
- Darrin Bishop (@bishopd) - “Goodbye STSADM, Hello PowerShell”
- Fabian Williams (@FabianWilliams) – “Business Connectivity Services…<long title>”
- James Curtis (@piercove) - “Intro to Client Object Model”
- (Caught tail end of session) John Ferringer (@ferringer) & Sean McDonough (@spmcdonough) - “SharePoint Disaster Recovery”
Overall I learned a great deal, met a bunch of great speakers and attendees, and even won a SharePoint Reporting book in Darrin Bishop’s session (hooray for my PowerShell knowledge being useful!) It was especially nice getting to hang out with some new friendships I’ve developed through the SharePoint community. Below is my album of pictures I snapped throughout the day. Feel free to take a look through them. The next SharePoint Saturday I’m planning on attending will be SharePoint Satuday Michigan on March 13th. Mark your calendars and register for it if you’ll be around the area that date. Hopefully I’ll see you there.
Ohh, one last note. A big thanks goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSIndy. Without all of you this event couldn’t have been possible. Please continue to support the SharePoint community. It has a lot to offer and it’s all made possible because of these people, companies, and events that continue to amaze me every time I get involved. Thanks so much.
-Frog Out
How many times have you been filling out an online form and halfway through filling in your responses you accidentally press the Enter key which then attempts to submit the form? This can be a common problem when the online form is wired up to have a "submit” button be the default form button on a page.
The most complete solution to this issue is having your submit process be able to handle all scenarios of submission (incomplete, invalid, etc). If you are looking for a quick (partial) fix though, it is possible to trap the Enter key press and convert it to another key press (e.g. Tab key.) A few simple lines of JavaScript and adding a client-side event handler to your input controls can accomplish that. I wish I could claim the credit for this, but I found this on many online resources (reference 1 and reference 2.) Note: My example focuses on Internet Explorer; I have not tested against other browsers at this time. Please read these references for more information on cross-browser compatibility.
My silly attempt at humor
First, you’ll need to add a JavaScript function to trap the Enter key press (keyCode 13) and convert it to a Tab key press (keyCode 9). Since my current work is on SharePoint development I place most of my JavaScript functions into an external file (previous blog post details) to be referenced by web part code. Below are two examples, first on an HTML or ASPX page (includes <script> tag) and second in an external file (without <script> tag.)
<script language="JavaScript">
function ModifyEnterKeyPressAsTab() {
if (window.event && window.event.keyCode == 13) {
window.event.keyCode = 9;
}
}
</script>
JavaScript block on HTML/ASPX page
function ModifyEnterKeyPressAsTab() {
if (window.event && window.event.keyCode == 13) {
window.event.keyCode = 9;
}
}
JavaScript block in external file
The next step is to call the above JavaScript function from an added client-side event handler to any input controls users will be filling out. These input controls include textboxes, radio buttons, etc. A client-side event handler (vs. server-side) are used so that any key press will be intercepted before the server is able to respond (e.g. accept a premature form submit.) Below is an example of adding the event handler to a Textbox.
TextBox textbox1 = new TextBox();
textbox1.Attributes.Add("onKeyDown", "ModifyEnterKeyPressAsTab();");
In the above example, any time a user has focus on the Textbox and presses a key our JavaScript function will be called. If the key press is Enter, the function will return a Tab key press which moves focus to the next control in TabIndex order. Note: Since we are converting to a Tab key press, you’ll want to make sure the TabIndex of your controls is set appropriately so user’s are progressed in the desired order down/across the page.
Conclusion
Converting your Enter key press into another key press, such as Tab, is a rather crude workaround to a common problem of early form submission, but it’s a starting point to alleviating issues your end users may run into. If you read the resources I linked to above you’ll notice there is additional information on how to make this solution more cross-browser friendly (specifically for FireFox vs. IE.) If you have any comments on this topic or found this post helpful, feel free to leave feedback below.
-Frog Out
Aside from the facts that I’m blatantly ripping off borrowing from the movie Forrest Gump and also straying away from my usual technical content, I had a notion this morning that I felt like I needed to explain. In case you missed a tweet of mine from earlier today, here it was.
Now you might be saying to yourself “I know exactly what he means” or “I don't know what the heck he means”. Never fear, that’s why I’m here to explain. First things first, I recently went through a break up with a girl that was a bit different than past break ups. You see, this girl decided to give me constructive criticism about our relationship. So naturally I’ve been thinking over what she had to say and I started to see parallels between how I approach relationships and how I approach work. Here are a few of the big things that stood out for me (and perhaps will be relatable for you.)
Communication is a must
Open communication is necessary for any healthy relationship (work or social.) You may have heard a phrase like "you need to tell me what’s going on, I’m not a mind reader” at some point in your life. Being able to put thoughts, ideas, and feelings into words is how we as humans relate to others. The same is needed with your employer. I’m sure many of you have regular reviews with your manager or superiors, but those meetings once, twice, or however many times a year should only be affirming the communication that is continually going on between you and your employer. Keep the lines of communication frequent and flowing.
Honesty is a must
Without honesty, all that open communication you’ve been working on can pretty much be thrown into the trash. Honesty has major implication for relationships of all types, and it takes more forms than just telling the truth or being ethical. In addition, sometimes dishonesty will manifest through deliberate omissions (I didn’t find any bugs in my code), to white lies (I found one minor bug that isn’t a big deal), all the way to blatant lies (there’s no way this one bug will crash the entire application, oops.) Honesty is important for both sides of a relationship so that each side is accepting who the other person truly is.
Don’t be afraid to fluff your feathers
I’m not a zoologist by any means, but I hear that when some birds are looking for a potential mate they fluff out their feathers to make themselves appear larger and thus propagate Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Just as we humans like to show off our positive qualities to potential significant others, so too should you show off your positive work to your employer. I’m a consultant, so whenever I receive a praising email from a client or have a notable success I like to pass that along to my superiors. Not only does this help my case for getting a raise or promotion at review time, it also reaffirms my employer that they made the right choice hiring me and I’m bringing positive value to the company. As a side bonus, it also means I want them to share in my joy/celebration over a job well done.
Conclusion
This has been just a brief glimpse into what I think it means to view your employer-employee relationships like your relationships with a significant other. Glad to see my psychology minor getting put to a little bit of use. If any of you are interested in singularity type ideas (seeing the relatedness of everything) then I highly recommend you read The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. It is one of my favorite books of all time and really digs into that “everything is connected” notion in a science fiction / mathematics type of ways. So enjoy this short break from my technical posts and expect me to return to my usual types of posts next time.
-Frog Out
After my last post about goals for 2010 when I realized it has been over 6 months since I started blogging, I began to think about my blogging process and how it has changed over that time. I’ve made quite a few changes and upgrades to various portions of my blogging process over that time. Here’s a quick overview of where I’m at now as well as some tips for those of you thinking about starting up a blog but not knowing where to start.
Tools
- Live Writer – Based on various buzz from other bloggers I gave Live Writer a shot when I began and haven’t needed anything else ever since. Live Writer allows me to write up drafts, insert pictures, markup code (via numerous plug-ins), preview my post using my blog’s theme, publish finished posts, and pull up old posts quickly and easily. All in all it’s a solid tool and has served my needs quite fine.
- Twitter Notify – Live Writer has a nice plug-in called Twitter Notify that allows you to link your Twitter account to Live Writer. Every time you publish a post it will give you the option of sending out a tweet with the title of your post and a link to the post. I use this as my primary method to notify (aside from automated RSS feeds) others when I have new content posted.
- Live Mesh – Live Mesh is a Microsoft tool that allows you to sync the content of folders across multiple computers and have 5 GBs worth of backups online. I really can’t say enough about how much time Live Mesh saves me when it comes to blogging. I use this to sync screenshots, Live Writer files (drafts and posts), and code snippets between my work laptop and my home desktop. As an added bonus I also get all these files backed up into the glorious “interwebs cloud” should I ever have an issue with my personal backups.
- Paint.Net – Paint.Net is a free tool that gives you basic PhotoShop-like image editing. I use this for cropping screenshots, pixelating images with sensitive information, and many other minor tasks. I find the software very easy to use and it’s hard to beat free. Please support the tool providers with a donation if you end up using and liking it.
Hosting/Online Services
- Geeks With Blogs – As this if my first blog, I took a recommendation from my coworker Kelly Jones and I signed up for a free account with Geeks With Blogs when I started out. In the future I may look to get a most advanced solution offering, but so far this has been a great hosting site and suited my needs just fine. There are dozens, probably hundreds of different sites that will host your blog. If you are looking for specific features and capabilities take the time to research what they have to offer before choosing.
- Google Analytics – What good is blogging if you can’t track statistics like number of visitors or which of your posts are the most popular? With a simple sign up and just a small snippet of javascript on a layout page within your blog you can track page views and visitors, see who is linking to your content or where visitors came from, and get some nice charts and graphs trending usage over time. This has helped me get a glimpse into what type of content and posts are the most popular for my audience. For example the top 3 posts all time for me are:
- Alternative Modal Popup in SharePoint 2007
- Deploying Files to SharePoint Web App Directories
- The Power Of PowerShell and SharePoint: Enumerating SharePoint Permissions
- FeedBurner – I have to admit, FeedBurner is one of the only blogging tools that I use but don’t fully understand. The basic premise as I understand it is that it allows you to customize your RSS feeder by taking the current output and redirecting it through their services. You can add functionality to your RSS feed, cross promote your feeds amongst multiple sites, track subscribers who are reading your posts through RSS vs. actually hitting your site, and do a host of other things. The piece about tracking RSS subscribers is the main thing that attracted me to FeedBurner. If anyone has feedback on what else FeedBurner is or how to better use it please let me know in the comments below.
- GoDaddy – A few months ago I attended one of Jeff Blankenburg’s presentations called “Making A Name For Yourself” in which he talked about a number of ways to create a solid identity of who you are and promoting that identity in various forms. One of those ways is reserving a domain name for your site that helps customize and personify your site. I chose to go with GoDaddy.com because they are one of the cheapest and easiest to get started with. My current primary domain is BrianTJackett.com which happens to coincide with my Twitter handle, username on various social sites, and if you couldn’t tell contains most of my full name to make it fairly easy for others to remember.
Tips for Starting Out
So, if you’ve read this far and you yourself don’t have a blog but are interested in starting one here are a few tips.
- Know your content – What is it that you want to blog about? Will your blog contains posts about cool robotics work that you are doing, video game reviews, or perhaps your super cute cat Mr. Mittens? Decide on an area or related group of topics (such as SharePoint and general .Net like I have) and focus on those.
- Know your audience – Relating to the above, who are you writing your content for? Are you writing posts for personal reference in the future (I know some people who do this), for internal company coworkers, or for the community at large. This will shape what, how, and why you write.
- Set goals – Define some goals for yourself about how often you plan to publish content, how many visitors/subscribers you are aiming for, or some other means of measuring how you are doing with your blogging. As stated in my previous post I’ve set some blogging goals for myself and have done fairly well sticking to them. This not only helps motivate you to keep writing but also offers some level of consistency for your audience. Nothing is worse than starting out great publishing 10 posts in one month and then going silent for a year, don’t be that guy/gal.
- Write when it’s right – You like that play on words? I bet you chuckled for brief second before shaking your head. I have never been great at writing, literature, and all those book type things. For me it’s very rare that I can sit down and just let my thoughts flow onto paper (or monitor/screen as it were.) When I do get those moments of clarity I shut out distractions, turn on some music, and capitalize on the moment. Don’t force your writing, but when a good idea comes to mind start to write it out or at least jot it down for future use.
- Read other blogs – Seems obvious, but really go out there and start reading some blogs that interest you. Perhaps they are written by coworkers, people you’ve met at user groups, or some super awesome person in your field of work that everyone talks about. This can help you find your footing for style, content, and many other things.
- Get feedback – This one is huge. Find some trusted friends, coworkers, or even your family to read over your posts and give you feedback on what they like/dislike about your posts. Just like giving a presentation to a practice audience, having others review and comment on your writing can be very helpful to making you a stronger writer.
Conclusion
So there you have it, my current blogging tools, a little about my process, and some tips for starting out. If you’d like to share anything about your own blogging experience or have some feedback of your own feel free to comment below. Thanks to everyone who has been reading my blog over the past almost 7 months now and giving me encouragement to keep writing. I find it very fulfilling and hopefully you do as well.
-Frog Out
Updated 2010/1/6 – added Android Development
In the past few days I’ve been catching up on various blogs and ran across a few listing goals for 2010 (notably Matt Nowack and Jeremiah Peschka.) As in years past I’ve made goals for myself, but this year I’d like to formalize them and revisit this at the conclusion of this year to see how well my grit and determination stood up. Similar to Jeremiah I have a PDP (personal development plan) that contains work related goals I work towards and update throughout the year. Here’s an expansion of my current list of goals broken up by relevant areas.
Professional
- Blog – I can’t believe it’s been just over 6 months since I started blogging. When I started I tried to set a few ground rules for myself. I wanted to keep my posts mostly tech-related focusing on “how-to” or “here’s where I messed up and you can learn from my mistakes” types of articles. I also wanted to write at least 2 posts a month, closer to 4 or more if my schedule allowed. All of these goals I still want to keep, perhaps expanding article topics to also include “hey check out this cool new feature I’m researching at the moment.”
- Speaking – Last year I was graced with the opportunity to speak at a number of events both at my company and in the community (notably COSPUG and SharePoint Saturday Cleveland.) I hope to have the opportunity to speak at more events this year, but that won’t be a huge focus for me. I feel like my efforts can be better utilized with the next item and spending more time on research and learning new technologies.
- Volunteering – Ever since a very young age I have always been a big proponent of volunteering time to the community at large. In the past few months I volunteered to help out with the COSPUG steering committee and the Stir Trek Conference volunteer board for 2010 (and beyond if possible.) I greatly look forward to helping out with these in an official role as well as other events such as Columbus Give Camp, all of which have been very worthwhile endeavors in my experience.
- Android Development – About 2 months ago I made the leap from my old served-my-limited-needs phone to the new hotness Droid. (You can tell my old phone is old because it’s on the “discontinued” page from LG :) ) In addition to getting all the nice features of GPS, web access, and Google Marketplace apps, the Droid also runs Android 2.0 which offers open development. I’d like to test the water of mobile development by creating a very simple app or two, perhaps something related to some of the groups I’m working with (thinking Stir Trek schedule app at the moment.) This would also give me a chance to brush up on my Java as I spent half of my college classes in it, got my current job at Sogeti in large part due to my Java knowledge, and later got certified in Java development.
Personal
- Getting in Shape – In general I’d say I’m a fairly healthy guy, but when I recently started playing indoor soccer with some coworkers in a league I noticed how badly I got out of breath after just a few minutes of running on the field. I’m going to continue playing on multiple softball and volleyball leagues throughout the year, but also work in some cardio and light running to get my wind back.
- Volunteering – Yes, I can hear you through your monitor saying “Brian you already listed this one.” This is a different form of volunteering. For the past 2 years I’ve been helping out at my local parish’s high school youth group with weekly meetings and chaperoning special events. In addition to continuing that I would like to get back to working with Habitat for Humanity. Throughout my 5 years in college (I had a co-op, wasn’t because I was slow or anything) I worked with our college chapter of Habitat building houses and leading the group in some fashion. I’d like to help with house builds or events at least every other month this year.
- House/Condo – I’ve been living in an apartment close to 2 years now. I really love my place and all the benefits it offers (free hot chocolate/coffee machine, pool, rentable movie theater, and others) but I’d also like a little more space and an area where I can have a work bench. Back to the Habitat mention above, I love working with my hands on carpentry projects and the like, but haven’t really been able to since moving into my apartment due to the space limitations. I’ll be looking around in the summer when my lease comes up. If you know any great places in the northern Columbus area let me know.
So that wraps up my current goals. I’ll be checking back in with these periodically throughout the year to measure how I’m stacking up. If any of the following people are reading this, consider yourselves tagged because I’d love to see you post your goals for 2010: Kelly Jones, Dan Luciano, Don Zielke, Jennifer Mason, and Sean McDonough. Here’s to the start of a great 2010 :)
-Frog Out