Recap: TechEd 2010 in New Orleans – We’re Jazzed Ya’ll Were Here!

Posted on June 22, 2010 by saraford

Wow! What a week! I remember the first time I saw a TechEd backpack was back in 2003, where the words “New Orleans” caught my eye. And after 7 years of waiting, my career-long dream came true of attending a Microsoft conference back home.

Earlier this month, TechEd returned to New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, bringing 10,500 attendees to the area. And now considering the oil disaster in the gulf (I must admit I agree with The Daily Show that something is trying to kill N.O.), there was no better time for an economic boost for the city. TechEd even caught the attention of the major local newspaper (The Times-Picayune), describing cloud computing and the technical in-depth training TechEd provided. But Visual Studio 201? Opps! =D

The best part of TechEd for me was being a local among the locals. I’ve said for years that “Community is walking among the people”, but having this sense of Community^2 was incredible. I felt like I’ve known local attendees all my life, and for non-locals, I found myself with every conversation playing tour guide, making sure they had the most enjoyable TechEd experience possible. Fortunately, a local told me about http://www.nomenu.com/ which was a lifesaver in giving people French Quarter restaurant recommendations.

Highlights

In my opinion, the unsung hero of TechEd was Tiffany Ingargiola, an IT Pro at New Horizons in New Orleans. She was the go-to local person for so many of us trying to organize events, but needed a contact on the ground. And she’s awesome to follow on twitter.
Instead of purchasing a center-stage booth, DevExpress decided to purchase the smallest booth possible and donate the rest to build a house
GeekGive.org ran its first successful event by participating in a Habitat for Humanity build the Friday before TechEd, where I got to work side-by-side with my local area MVP Peter Kellner.
I successfully nominated my undergrad professor from Miss State, Associated Dean of Engineering Dr. Donna Reese, to speak at the Women in Tech luncheon about how to retain women in CS programs. Over 400 women attended the event.
The attendee party hosted *the* Zydeco band of New Orleans Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr, and the Zydeco Twisters. I don’t think the attendees realized how much of a treat it was to have the band that plays during the Lundi Gras cerebration every year, where a United States Coast Guard ship delivers The King of Rex to the Riverwalk stage for the Mayor of New Orleans to hand over control of the city to for Mardi Gras Day. Afterwards, I got a chance to shake his hand and let him know what an honor it was to meet him.

Lowlights

N.O. was under a heat wave advisory for that week. Heat index was between 110-115(!) most days.
On Tuesday, there was a city-wide Internet outage for nearly 30 minutes. I never heard what caused outage.
The convention center food wasn’t quite Cajun. “Cajun meatloaf” just isn’t right. But, I said it was to encourage folks to support local merchants by eating at local shops across the street. =D
The effects of the Oil Spill were readily apparent. Just a few blocks away from TechEd was the annual Oyster Festival, where locals held a jazz funeral. Additionally, on that Thursday, a 134-year old Oyster bar closed .

GeekGive.org Habitat build

Last year at TechEd, MVP Steve Andrews, MVP Mark Rosenberg, INETA members and I chatted about what we could do to help New Orleans. We came up with a concept similar to GiveCamp, but instead of donating code, we’ll donate volunteer hours. Driven by Steve Andrews, he created GeekGive.org for conference attendees to volunteer their time at a local charity before the conference starts.

Takeaways

At the first GeekGive event, we had 18 Microsoft MVPs and several Microsoft employees donate 126 labor hours, saving Habitat for Humanity up to $4,000
This first GeekGive event received press coverage, including a worldwide press release by Microsoft:

Nestor Portillo, director of community and online service at Microsoft, was one of the volunteers. "When Steve asked us to be involved, it was an automatic yes," Portillo says. "For us, it’s a privilege to be able to contribute."

The MVP Program also filmed the build. You can view the video on the Microsoft MVP Award blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2010/06/08/video-geekgive-habitat-for-humanity-project-new-orleans-teched-2010.aspx
My local San Jose area MVP Peter Kellner also attended the build. Together we built a concrete pylon corner of the house that will protect the house from future hurricanes and flooding. From Peter’s blog,

I’ve always wanted to help on one of those type projects but never really figured out how to. This seemed like the perfect opportunity, and also, since some of my friends from around the country would be there also, I thought it would be a great time to catch up. What a great time and a great feeling to help.

Special thanks to DEs Dani Diaz, Jennifer Marsman, and Zain Naboulsi for finding a sponsor from within Microsoft to help with the event. And the water bottles from Paulette Suddarth from the MVP Award Program were a huge hit, if not a lifesaver.
GeekGive.org is confirmed for more projects, so stay tuned!

Bytes by MSDN interview

I did an interview with Zain Naboulsi for the Bytes by MSDN discussing what’s new in Visual Studio 2010. I’ll let everyone know when it goes live.

Women in Technology Luncheon

I nominated my undergraduate advisor Dr. Donna Reese, Associated Dean of Engineering from Mississippi State, to speak on a panel on how to retain Women in Computer Science.

Takeaways

It was great to watch my advisor speak about her passions. It also made me realize how much she’s inspired me to be outspoken about my own passions as well.
One interesting statistic she shared is that less than 40% of women who enrolled in a CS program do not finish their degrees
There were 400+ women at the event.

GNO.NUG evening event

Local .NET UG leader George Mauer threw together an ad-hoc meeting on Tuesday night during TechEd.

Takeaways

2 MVPs and I presented short sessions to about 10 attendees.
My biggest takeaway was Alan Stevens’ session Does Your Code Tell a Story comparing writing code to writing books. He quoted one author who said, “Write a terrible first draft.” I thought this was great advice on how to get started. Also relates directly to the agile methodology as well.

Booth duty each day at the MSDN Booth

My “actual” job at TechEd was to work the MSDN booth, which ironically is my former team, so I took the liberty of doing CodePlex demos as well. Hey, old habits die hard.

Takeaways

We had nice business cards for quick references for all the MSDN links we were demo’ing. We also gave away Mardi Gras beads, which definitely attracted a lot of people to the booth who wanted to bring some home for their kids, etc. I also made some “Mardi Gras dogs” by twisting the beads together as if they were an animal balloon. Made for nice decorations at the booth.
I wore my Vibriam Five Fingers shoes one day (I was trying something creative to attract folks to the booth, and it worked). Although I hate the pink color – will blog about that tomorrow.
Anyone wearing anything from the local area I invited over to the booth to introduce myself as a native, and chat about whatever was on their minds, how teched was, etc. That’s how I found nomenu.com. again, what a lifesaver that site was for me!

What we demo’ed:

Our primary focus was on the following tools and sites:

Desktop Player http://www.microsoft.com/click/desktopplayer/
Broadcaster http://www.microsoftbroadcaster.com
MSDN Widget www.msdnwidget.com
MSDN Developer Centers for Cloud, Windows and Web Development

We also made sure people were aware of

Bytes by MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bytes.aspx
MSDN Subscriptions http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/default.aspx
MSDN Flash http://msdn.microsoft.com/flash

Habitat for Humanity Build with DevExpress

Instead of purchasing a center-stage booth, DevExpress decided to purchase the smallest booth possible and donate the rest to a Habitat for Humanity build. It was the same house as the first Habitat build, so we got to watch the process first hand.

As the primary sponsors for the house, DevExpress and Habitat did a wall-raising ceremony to kick off the day.

By end of the day, the concrete slab we first started with during GeekGive now had exterior walls up and all interior walls built.

You can see more photos on the DevExpress Community Blog post about the build.

Attendee Party

Attendees were treated to *the* Zydeco band Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr, and the Zydeco Twisters. New Orleans locals and I flocked immediately to the front of the stage to enjoy the absolute best Zydeco performing band.

And maybe we got a little too close. Thanks to my LSU shirt, Beth Massi and I were invited to dance on stage.

Thanks for reading and Geaux TechEd!!!

Speaking at DevDays 2010 in The Netherlands and TechDays in Belgium – Visual Studio Tips

Posted on March 30, 2010 by saraford

Update: You can watch the video of my TechDays Belgium presentation at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2010/videos.aspx . Just search for "Sara Ford" as the speaker.

Update: I’ve updated the Visual Studio Tips Advance section for today’s talk. Cheers!

I’m speaking this week in the Hague, in The Netherlands at DevDays 2010. I’m giving several talks on Visual Studio this week, before we (speakers) head over to TechDays in Belgium for even more Visual Studio talks.

I always post all my content online before I give talks, so that those who attend my sessions do not have to rush trying to write down keyboard shortcuts or names of commands. They can simply sit back and watch.

This blog post will be updated over the next several days, as I continue to give talks. Consider this my personal wiki for the week =D

And make sure to follow Zain’s Visual Studio 2010 Tip of the Day series!

Visual Studio 2010 Tips – Part 1

Tip #0 Know your environment settings! For all my talks, I use the General Development Settings. (Tools – Options – Environment – Import / Export Settings)

Searching Tips

Tip #1 How to behold the power of incremental search

Command: Edit.IncrementalSearch

Shortcut: Ctrl+i

Tip #2 Ctrl+F3 to search for currently-selected word

Command: Edit.FindNextSelected

Tip #3 F3 to search for last thing you searched for

Command: Edit.FindNext

Tip #4 Customize what files to find in

Find In Files – Look in – Choose Search Folders

Tip #5 You can use a reg hack for customizing search results

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find String Find=$f$e($l,$c):$t\r\n

Editing Tips

Tip #6 How not to accidentally copy a blank line

Tools – Options – Text Editor – All Languages – General, Uncheck Apply cut or copy to blank lines

Tip #7 How to cycle through the Clipboard ring

Command: Edit.CycleClipboardRing

Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+v

Tip #8 How to use box/column selection in the editor

Command: Edit.LineUpColumnExtend, Edit.LineDownColumnExtend, Edit.CharRightColumnExtend, Edit.CharLeftColumnExtend

Shortcut: Shift+Alt+Arrow

Tip #9 How to use multi-line edit

Shortcut: Shift+Alt+Arrow (with nothing selected)

Tip #10 You can copy a file’s full path / open windows explorer from the file tab channel

Command: File.CopyFullPath

Tip #11 You can use Ctrl+. to show a smart tag

Command: View.ShowSmartTag

Tip #12 Drag and drop code onto the toolbox’s general tab

Shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+x for Toolbox, enter to insert text into Editor

Customizing Tips

Tip #13 You can insert a snippet by pressing Tab Tab

Type in snippet shortcut, then press Tab Tab

Tip #14 You can create temp or throw away projects

Tools – Options – Projects and Solutions – General, uncheck Save new projects when created

Tip #15 Change text editor font size via keyboard (Accessibility macros) or use the new Zoom control

Command: Macros.Samples.Accessibility.DecreaseTextEditorFontSize

Command: Macros.Samples.Accessibility.IncreaseTextEditorFontSize

Tip #16 How to open a file without any UI

Ctrl+/ (or whatever Tools.GoToCommandLine is bound to)

alias fo file.openfile

fo <filename>

Tip #17 Guidelines in the editor registry key hack – You’ll need an extension to do this for VS 2010. More after my Visual Studio 2010 Tips Advanced session

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Text Editor String RBG(128,0,0) 5, 20

Tip #18 You can create a macro for your import/export settings

Tools – customize – commands – macros – drag and drop macro to toolbar

Tip #19 How to not show the start page (or have the last loaded solution open)

Tools – Options – Environment – Startup, At Startup

Tip #20 File tab channel registry hack – No longer needed for VS 2010!!! Tools – Options – Environment – Document, insert files from right

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 key, you can create a DWORD UseMRUDocOrdering = 1

Tip #21How to show Misc Files Project to keep your files around

tools – options – environment – documents, show miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer

Tip #22 Edit project file from within IDE (unload project)

Unload project, edit project, reload project

Debugging Tips

Tip #23 You can use tracepoints to log stuff in your code

Right-click in indicator margin, select breakpoints, select Insert Tracepoint

Tip #24 How to get the find source dialog back – Much better experience in VS 2010!!! In the “No source code” window, there’s now a “browse for source” link

Solution Properties, under Common Properties – Debug Source Files, Delete Do no look for these source files edit box contents

Tip #25 You can disable the exception assistant

Tools – Options – Debugging – General, uncheck Enable the Exception Assistant

Tip #26 XML Visualizers

Visual Studio 2010 Tips – Part 2 (Advanced)

This is still a deep dive into the IDE, and not about coding or actually writing extensions.

For this talk, I’m going to cover a few must-have extensions for Visual Studio 2008, and then go straight into new features and extensions.

Here’s the list of what I’m going to cover:

Must have Visual Studio 2008 Tips

Tip #1 – Behold the power of incremental search

Tip #2 – Customize Find in Files / Registry edit to simply Find results window

Tip #3 – How not to accidentally cut/copy a blank line

Tip #4 – How to open a file without any UI

New Visual Studio 2010 features

Make sure to follow the new Visual Studio 2010 tip of the day with Zain!

Tip #5 – How to use Multi-line edit

Tip #6 – How to insert files from Right to Left in File tab channel

Tip #7 – Automatic Highlighting of Symbols

Tip #8 – IntelliSense “Sub-String” and Pascal Casing searching

Tip #9 – IntelliSense consume first / suggestion mode

Tip #10 – They Fixed the VB Smart tag bug

Press Ctrl+<period> to invoke smart tag, but now in VB, the first option in list is automatically selected, so you can simply hit <Enter> without having to first press the down arrow.

Tip #11 – New HTML and JavaScript Code Snippets

Tip #12 – Improved Outlining Collapsing / Expanding

In VS2010, you can select anywhere within the code block to collapse the region. You no longer have to click just the ‘-‘ box in the outlining margin to collapse the region.

Tip #13 – Navigate To

Tip #14 – Call Hierarchy

Tip #15 – Mutli-monitor Support

You can now drag out file tabs from the file tab channel and treat them like tool windows. Also, both these file tabs and tool windows will listen to WindowsKey + Arrow to snap to the monitor’s edge. use ctrl+DoubleClick to put either file or tool window back within Visual Studio in the “tabbed document” state.

Tip #16 – Zoom / Ctrl+Mouse Wheel

Tip #17 – The New and Improved Datatips

Tip #18 – Labeling and Sharing Breakpoints

Tip #19 – Getting Started with IntelliTrace

Tip #20 – WPF visualizer

Visual Studio Extensions

Tip #21 – How to Install Extensions

Tip #22 – Walkthrough of a few extensions

Tip #23 – Getting started writing your own extensions

Lighting up the Visual Studio Editor with Rich Extensions (Channel 9 video)
VSX101 – An Introduction to VS Extensions (Channel 9 video)
More Channel 9 videos on Extensions
Experimental Instance

MSDN Sample used in today’s talk

Tip #24 – How to search project templates

Tip #25 – Add Reference Dialog Improvements

Thank you!

Speaking at DevDays 2010 in The Netherlands and TechDays in Belgium – Visual Studio Tips

Posted on March 30, 2010 by saraford

Update: You can watch the video of my TechDays Belgium presentation at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2010/videos.aspx . Just search for "Sara Ford" as the speaker.

Update: I’ve updated the Visual Studio Tips Advance section for today’s talk. Cheers!

This blog post will be updated over the next several days, as I continue to give talks. Consider this my personal wiki for the week =D

And make sure to follow Zain’s Visual Studio 2010 Tip of the Day series!

Visual Studio 2010 Tips – Part 1

Tip #0 Know your environment settings! For all my talks, I use the General Development Settings. (Tools – Options – Environment – Import / Export Settings)

Searching Tips

Tip #1 How to behold the power of incremental search

Command: Edit.IncrementalSearch

Shortcut: Ctrl+i

Tip #2 Ctrl+F3 to search for currently-selected word

Command: Edit.FindNextSelected

Tip #3 F3 to search for last thing you searched for

Command: Edit.FindNext

Tip #4 Customize what files to find in

Find In Files – Look in – Choose Search Folders

Tip #5 You can use a reg hack for customizing search results

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find String Find=$f$e($l,$c):$t\r\n

Editing Tips

Tip #6 How not to accidentally copy a blank line

Tools – Options – Text Editor – All Languages – General, Uncheck Apply cut or copy to blank lines

Tip #7 How to cycle through the Clipboard ring

Command: Edit.CycleClipboardRing

Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+v

Tip #8 How to use box/column selection in the editor

Command: Edit.LineUpColumnExtend, Edit.LineDownColumnExtend, Edit.CharRightColumnExtend, Edit.CharLeftColumnExtend

Shortcut: Shift+Alt+Arrow

Tip #9 How to use multi-line edit

Shortcut: Shift+Alt+Arrow (with nothing selected)

Tip #10 You can copy a file’s full path / open windows explorer from the file tab channel

Command: File.CopyFullPath

Tip #11 You can use Ctrl+. to show a smart tag

Command: View.ShowSmartTag

Tip #12 Drag and drop code onto the toolbox’s general tab

Shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+x for Toolbox, enter to insert text into Editor

Customizing Tips

Tip #13 You can insert a snippet by pressing Tab Tab

Type in snippet shortcut, then press Tab Tab

Tip #14 You can create temp or throw away projects

Tools – Options – Projects and Solutions – General, uncheck Save new projects when created

Tip #15 Change text editor font size via keyboard (Accessibility macros) or use the new Zoom control

Command: Macros.Samples.Accessibility.DecreaseTextEditorFontSize

Command: Macros.Samples.Accessibility.IncreaseTextEditorFontSize

Tip #16 How to open a file without any UI

Ctrl+/ (or whatever Tools.GoToCommandLine is bound to)

alias fo file.openfile

fo <filename>

Tip #17 Guidelines in the editor registry key hack – You’ll need an extension to do this for VS 2010. More after my Visual Studio 2010 Tips Advanced session

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Text Editor String RBG(128,0,0) 5, 20

Tip #18 You can create a macro for your import/export settings

Tools – customize – commands – macros – drag and drop macro to toolbar

Tip #19 How to not show the start page (or have the last loaded solution open)

Tools – Options – Environment – Startup, At Startup

Tip #20 File tab channel registry hack – No longer needed for VS 2010!!! Tools – Options – Environment – Document, insert files from right

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 key, you can create a DWORD UseMRUDocOrdering = 1

Tip #21How to show Misc Files Project to keep your files around

tools – options – environment – documents, show miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer

Tip #22 Edit project file from within IDE (unload project)

Unload project, edit project, reload project

Debugging Tips

Tip #23 You can use tracepoints to log stuff in your code

Right-click in indicator margin, select breakpoints, select Insert Tracepoint

Tip #24 How to get the find source dialog back – Much better experience in VS 2010!!! In the “No source code” window, there’s now a “browse for source” link

Solution Properties, under Common Properties – Debug Source Files, Delete Do no look for these source files edit box contents

Tip #25 You can disable the exception assistant

Tools – Options – Debugging – General, uncheck Enable the Exception Assistant

Tip #26 XML Visualizers

Visual Studio 2010 Tips – Part 2 (Advanced)

This is still a deep dive into the IDE, and not about coding or actually writing extensions.

For this talk, I’m going to cover a few must-have extensions for Visual Studio 2008, and then go straight into new features and extensions.

Here’s the list of what I’m going to cover:

Must have Visual Studio 2008 Tips

Tip #1 – Behold the power of incremental search

Tip #2 – Customize Find in Files / Registry edit to simply Find results window

Tip #3 – How not to accidentally cut/copy a blank line

Tip #4 – How to open a file without any UI

New Visual Studio 2010 features

Make sure to follow the new Visual Studio 2010 tip of the day with Zain!

Tip #5 – How to use Multi-line edit

Tip #6 – How to insert files from Right to Left in File tab channel

Tip #7 – Automatic Highlighting of Symbols

Tip #8 – IntelliSense “Sub-String” and Pascal Casing searching

Tip #9 – IntelliSense consume first / suggestion mode

Tip #10 – They Fixed the VB Smart tag bug

Press Ctrl+<period> to invoke smart tag, but now in VB, the first option in list is automatically selected, so you can simply hit <Enter> without having to first press the down arrow.

Tip #11 – New HTML and JavaScript Code Snippets

Tip #12 – Improved Outlining Collapsing / Expanding

In VS2010, you can select anywhere within the code block to collapse the region. You no longer have to click just the ‘-‘ box in the outlining margin to collapse the region.

Tip #13 – Navigate To

Tip #14 – Call Hierarchy

Tip #15 – Mutli-monitor Support

Tip #16 – Zoom / Ctrl+Mouse Wheel

Tip #17 – The New and Improved Datatips

Tip #18 – Labeling and Sharing Breakpoints

Tip #19 – Getting Started with IntelliTrace

Tip #20 – WPF visualizer

Visual Studio Extensions

Tip #21 – How to Install Extensions

Tip #22 – Walkthrough of a few extensions

Tip #23 – Getting started writing your own extensions

Lighting up the Visual Studio Editor with Rich Extensions (Channel 9 video)
VSX101 – An Introduction to VS Extensions (Channel 9 video)
More Channel 9 videos on Extensions
Experimental Instance

MSDN Sample used in today’s talk

Tip #24 – How to search project templates

Tip #25 – Add Reference Dialog Improvements

Thank you!

Recap from the Microsoft Women’s Conference 2009

Posted on October 30, 2009 by saraford

The bi-annual Microsoft Women’s Conference was held last week on the Microsoft Redmond Campus. I keep enjoying this conference more and more each year.

In my humble opinion, the Executive Roundtable event was by leaps and bounds the most productive, most rewarding event I have ever seen offered to Women in Technology. I often wonder what more we can do to retain the current talented women in the technology field. This event hit a home run in retaining me.

Highlights

For 2 days, I was surrounded by thousands of my own kind. It really makes a difference.
Overall quality of speakers. Wow.

Lowlights

Dear Speakers: Before you start with Hurricane Katrina references, please acknowledge for a second that this isn’t a “past” event for some people in the audience. It’s almost like a cheap shot to be all introspective in these session and then hear a Katrina reference. But I know, I’m in the minority that felt like this.
They kept running out of hot water for tea. (yeah, yeah, I’m struggling to find some lowlights.)

Top Sessions I Attended

Despite popular belief, I do not have enough energy to be in two places at once. These are my personal favorites, based on the sessions I was able to attend. In no way is this meant to be a reflection of the overall top session at the conference.

Key takeaways from these sessions are below.

“Achieving Peek Performance” by Bonnie St. John
“Working for you isn’t working for me” by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster
“Become a Change Master: Mastering the art of mind and body change” by Dr. Pamela Peek
“Microsoft 2.0: An interview with Mary Jo Foley??

Achieving Peek Performance… No Matter What

Wow, what a session to kick-off the conference. Bonnie St. John won the Bronze medal for downhill skiing in the Paralympics, but if you check out the picture, you’ll notice that she has one leg. Besides being an Olympic athlete, she’s a White House economic official, a Rhode scholar, and a consultant to the Fortune 500. NBC Nightly News refers to Bonnie as one of the five most inspiring women in America.

Key Quote

"Winners aren’t those who don’t make mistakes. Winners are people who can get up after a fall the fastest."

Main Takeaways

The most successful people are those who accepted the most help.
Courage is just like a muscle. It has to be built step by step by taking risk after risk.
Never forget to find joy in life.

Other Notable Quotes

“You have to take that first risk, and when you get through it, you get stronger, than you take another, and you get stronger, until you get to a place where fear has no power over you.” – via President of Liberia
“I [Bonnie] thought I would never get a date, since I have only one leg. But my sister said, ‘Just think. You’ll never have to date jerks!’”
“Disable sport is all about world class excellence, since you are competing in a world without perfect resources, just like today’s business world.”

1-1 with Bonnie

Bonnie asked me what was my biggest takeaway was from the talk. I said “it was the story about never forget to find joy in life. I get so focused on problem solving that I forget to see the forest for the trees.”

Working for You Isn’t Working for Me

They brought in a Harvard-trained psychotherapist to explain how to get along at work! I love it! Katherine Crowley, a Harvard trained psychotherapist, and Kathi Elster, a management consultant, started their company K Squared Enterprises. They also wrote the book Working with You Is Killing Me.

Quite possibly the best session at the conference. The speakers not only clearly defined their objectives, but also delivered them. The pace, the format, the audience interaction was spot on.

Key Quote

“Do NOT take the other person’s behavior personally. They are not attacking you as much as you think they are.”

Main Takeaways

Handle yourself first, then handle the situation
Don’t forget to breathe. It really does change things.
Partnership are challenging. First thing you have to do is build trust. Put in the time, and handle with care.

Other Notable Quotes

“Revengeful thoughts is where you take poison and hope for someone else’s demise"
“Your mind is dangerous if left to its own devices"
"Slow motion gets you there faster"

Become a Change Master: Mastering the art of mind and body change

This was a fun talk! But then again, since I was 5 years old, I’ve wanted to be a 97-year old bodybuilder so I can be featured on the local news. Dr. Pamela Peek is the Chief Medical Correspondent for Discovery Health TV. She also wrote the book Body for Life for Women.

Key Quote

"Take your dog for a walk, even if you don’t have one."

Main Takeaways

Scientists have just recently discovered that we create new neurons. It was previously believed that we only have as many neurons as we’re born with. The upside to this is that it is possible to change habits. We just need to retrain our brains using reward as a positive reinforcement.
When afraid of change, honestly ask yourself “what’s the worst that can happen?” Say the answer out loud, step on the fear, and move on. But you have to say it out loud to confront your fear.

Other Notable Quotes

“Not having a friend to talk to is as dangerous to your health as being a smoker.”
“If Nike had a women’s brand tagline, it would be ‘Don’t overthink it.’” Because we’re hard-wired in our DNA to care, we can’t stop trying to problem solve.
“The fundamental piece is taking care of yourself, so that you can make good decisions.”

1-1 with Dr. Pamela

I told her how I wanted to be a 97-year old weightlifter and how motivating it was to see 90 year old women competing in athletic events. She suggested that I try out powerlifting, even though I tried to explain to her that I am really not that strong. She also told me if I was interested in starting triathlons, I should check out http://www.irongirl.com

Microsoft 2.0: An interview with Mary Jo Foley

This was fun to see the interviewer and interviewee swap seats. Mary Jo Foley is a journalist and blogger who has covered the technology industry for more than 25 years.

Key takeaway

Not surprising, my key takeaway was her answer to my question during the Audience Q&A session. For a second there, the format of the session and ambiance of the conference room made me feel like I was one of the theater students at Inside The Actors Studio, especially with the dramatic waiving of my arms for the microphone person to see me in the back row.

My question was “You’ve stated that you picked journalism over broadcast because you wanted to stay behind the pen. But, when you became a blogger, you now had your personal bio out there in the public light. If you could go back in time, what is the one thing you wish you could tell yourself about blogging.”

Her answer was, “To grow thick skin. Knowing this would have helped to avoid many sleepless nights.”

I wholeheartedly concur.

And this concludes my 3^rd Microsoft’s Women’s Conference. Thank you Microsoft for yet another AWESOME event. Until next time.

DevLink 2009

Posted on August 28, 2009 by saraford

Another year, another DevLink.

Highlights

Tweets about me moving the ship from Jim Holmes and Leon. I am here to do epic battle with Microsoft, so their tweets me the world to me.
Telling my Uncle Jimmy stories one night at the bar. I so have to go into standup comedy.
Setting Leon up for that spike about “well get a better compiler” in the Deep Fried Bytes podcast
Meeting the nature boy rick flair
I discovered PockeTwit for the Windows Mobile phone
And of course Open Spaces more on that below.

Open spaces

I really liked Jeff’s puzzle one, because I got to have a childhood moment about the NES game Shadowgate. I might actually have to buy (another) Super NES now.

I really liked getting to use a projector during the open space i proposed on agile development. I was happy to see others stand up and start using the whiteboard to describe their agile processes, despite . It was nice that I was able to share what I wanted to share, but learn stuff from others (the Honda agile approach with swim lanes and what goes in and out. We don’t do this quite this visually in the CodePlex team, but there is a notion that this is happening in our releases).

Lowlights

The conference wasn’t long enough for me =D I only get to see these folks twice a year, maybe 3 times if I’m really fortunate. I only got 3-4 hours a sleep (and this was after a red-eye) because I wanted to max hour the time I got to hang with everyone.
I wished I had submitted a talk called “How To Program Manage an Agile Team” I’ll definitely submit for CodeMash

OSCON 2009: One of the greatest weeks in my Microsoft Career

Posted on July 31, 2009 by saraford

Yep, it’s a bold statement to make, but I like to live life in capital letters. Last week at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention was truly epic. The Community Leadership Summit + OSCON 2009 epitomized everything I’ve ever wanted to do in community as a Microsoft employee.

I didn’t realize how special last week was until we Microsofties went out to dinner on the last night. As we discussed how much interest there was in the guitar hero competition, someone commented how we (Microsoft) were invited to participate to play. It was Ubuntu’s idea to put together the competition. We provided the guitars and the venue. When I first heard my coworker’s comment, I nearly rolled my eyes thinking I was listening to classic PR/marketing talk (yes, I’m obviously a proud female developer), but then the significance of the statement hit me.

Community is about focusing on what we have in common, while putting aside what makes us different. The Community Leadership Summit and the Guitar Hero competition gave everyone common ground to come together and talk. I’ve done community for Visual Studio and for CodePlex my entire 8 years at Microsoft, but I’ve always wanted to engage with the open source community to say “Hey ya’ll. This is what I do at Microsoft. Come teach me your expertise, and I’ll share what life is like promoting OSS within Microsoft.” For a total of 7 days, I was given this opportunity, which was truly one of the greatest weeks of my career at Microsoft.

Highlights

When I grow up, I want to be like Jono Bacon, the Community manager for Ubuntu. I want to be cool enough to organize an event like the Community Leadership Summit. I cannot wait for his Art of Community book to come out. @JonoBacon I know you hate me for beating you in the guitar hero finale =) but please sign my copy of your book when it comes out.
"Don’t cut people off before they have a chance to grow.” This comment from the CLS had the biggest impact to me personally.
Empower people by asking them “what do you like doing? what do you do best?” This comment from the CLS had the biggest impact to me as a program manager / community manager.
Larry Rosen remembered me! I attended a talk by Larry Rosen a few years ago on the Microsoft campus. I was surprised that he had remembered me from such a brief introduction years ago. But then again, there are not many 5’1 women on crutches hobbling around declaring how they are going to tame the Microsoft Legal department. (don’t ask me how that’s going.)
I learned a lot outside the Microsoft platform bubble. Working in Redmond day in and day out, I’m not really exposed to much going on in the outside world. I had a great time visiting the various booths to learn what’s out there. Oh yeah, and there really is an OSS version of Guitar Hero called Frets of Fire. Who’d a known?
The guitar hero competition. I will *never* forget when, right as Jono and I were about to play in the finale, someone screams “JONO! THE FUTURE OF OPEN SOURCE DEPENDS ON YOU” OMG, that was a top 5 moment of my career right there.

Best Opposing t-shirt photo op

New friends from CLS

Little Kid rockers

Putting together guitar hero bracket

First comes denial in who won the guitar hero competition

Then acceptance =)

See ya’ll at OSCON 2010!

Community Leadership Summit Trip Report

Posted on July 20, 2009 by saraford

Jono Bacon, the community manager for the global Ubuntu community, organized the first Community Leadership Summit for community managers to come together and share ideas. I loved the fact it was run as an unconference or open space. I get so much more high quality information from open spaces than I do from traditional style conferences. The saying that the room knows more than the speaker is very true. Just attended an unconference for proof.

It’s been a long time since I’ve attended a conference where all we talked about was community. It was a totally re-energizing experience (as if i needed more energy). Pictures at bottom of blog post.

I hope folks from #cls will swing by the Microsoft booth at OSCON on Weds and Thurs to say hi as i wear my CodePlex banner as a cape. I’m jealous of the Brazilian flag guy. (you had to be there for it.)

Quotes

“Understanding community is about understanding the human condition.”
"Everybody deserves to have a great community."
"Don’t cut people off before they have a chance to grow.”
"It takes a village to build a program."
"It’s amazing what people will do to get a badge on a forum site. If it worked in kindergarten, it will work forever."
"Marketing should not be allowed to use the word ‘community.’ They should especially be banned from using the phrase ‘join our community."
"In today’s online world we speak glob-ish as our default language"
"People like people who help them."

Other Takeaways

We need to design a reputation system that goes beyond just what the person does online. We need a way to track offline events, like running user groups, public speaking events, etc.
Similar to design personas, we need personas for members who participates in our online communities so we know how best to engage and empower them.
You have to assign tasks to community members to make them feel inclusive. Otherwise saying "look at the list" will cause them to leave.
People don’t want to take surveys when they are upset with your product. It’s like pouting. You got to make the feedback channel personal.
Empower people by asking them “what do you like doing? what do you do best?” The example used here was in a user group meeting, an attendee who wasn’t technical turned out to be a professional meeting organizer. They were significantly more productive in that meeting because of her help.

Misc

Very cool tool for people to take notes at same time: http://etherpad.com/cls-tools
Interested read about breaking down the Dunbar number (150 is the most you can organize): http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/02/dunbar_triage_t.html

Pictures

The Microsoft (Microspotting.com) “I am the empire” t-shirt and the Free Software Foundation’s GPLv2 t-shirt.

Picture of the CodePlex agile talk suggestion

Thanks again Jono and everyone who helped put together this summit. It was awesome!

Open Source Bridge 2009 Trip Report

Posted on June 22, 2009 by saraford

Last week, I attended the Open Source Bridge conference in Portland. It’s a volunteer-run conference that came about because OSCON moved to San Jose this year. They had a great turnout and the organizers did an amazing job, especially for a first time, volunteer conference.

I was most impressed with Selena Deckelmann (co-chair of OSBridge) and her ability to network and organize this event. She had an initial goal of 50% female speakers (and to think this is for an Open Source conference). She was able to get 30% female speakers using the same quality bar as the guys. Now that’s networking.

To Selena, THANK YOU!!! Finally someone who truly, truly, truly gets the Women in Technology issue. It is a breath of fresh air to see someone really do something about this.

Highlights

I started off my CodePlex talk mentioning how Selena accepted my talk because “peeking into CodePlex might give you ideas that you can embrace and extend.” I said, “Because of this, Microsoft has instructed me that you all will have to sign these NDAs.” The room erupted in laughter. I am the stuff of legend, trying to get an OSS audience to sign Microsoft NDAs.
Got called “the queen of open source at Microsoft” after my talk: http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/06/welcome-to-codeplex.html
Spent 2 hours at lunch chatting with faculty and staff of Ohio State University doing research into OSS communities and their behaviors. This area of HCI is like crack cocaine to me, so I definitely enjoyed chatting theories of human behavior and gaming the system.
Had a geek dinner in Portland for the local .NET User Group to share my stories of the day.

Lowlights

Only real lowlight was that I could only spend a day there. Our boss gives us one day a week to work on a pet project, so i used that day to drive down to Portland to give talks. =)

CodePlex – Free as in Beer

Posted on June 4, 2009 by saraford

Last week, I spoke at Microsoft DevDays 2009 in The Netherlands. After the conference, I was able to do a little sightseeing in Amsterdam on my own, which included buying a small souvenir from the Heineken Plant, a CodePlex labeled Heineken bottle.

The conference was held at The Hague (which btw is a city, and not a building). We had beautiful weather for the conference, so I was very happy to get a chance to go out to the beach and grab some photos.

Since i grew up on a coast beach facing South, I’ve never seen a sunset on the water before.

And one picture to prove I did actual work instead of just sightseeing, I tried to capture just how large the 400 seat room was, but alas, my poor little camera just couldn’t handle it. To give you an idea, there were 3 projection screens from behind the stage, and 6 monitors within the audience.