It has been my pleasure to spend the last 2+ years writing with Mike Wienhardt. I remember fondly his first piece. When I give feedback, I work very hard to let the author know just exactly what I think so that they can bring their work to its highest possible potential. When Mike sent me his first draft, I was as careful as I could be to point out the parts that I liked to let him know that he had real potential, but basically, I ripped it apart. I have literally caused authors to tear up reading my feedback in the past, but I give Mike credit — he turned his piece around and came right back for more. We did this 5 or 6 times, but by the end, his first piece was better than most of the experienced authors filling magazines and web sites. It has been a real pleasure watching him grow into his writing talent and it made me very happy when he accepted the major writing duties on the 2nd edition of Windows Forms Programming in C# and when he took over my Wonders of Windows Forms column.

In his most recent blog post, it was very interesting to read about Mike working his way through the worst part of writing: writer’s block. Nearly all authors get this occasionally and it’s a real killer (and a pox on those authors that don’t suffer from it). It makes me proud to see him so concerned about his writing that he’s willing to share these kinds of experiences with the world. I wish more engineers took that kind of pride in their work. You’re setting an example for us all, Mike.

Don suggested that I change the topic of DevCon5 to XAML or some other topic. So far, the DevCons have run the course of topics from ATL to Web Services and then to Applied XML/Web Services.

My primary concern when throwing a DevCon is that there is a sufficient user base of the technology that it’s more than a vendor show. Even the original ATL DevCon only had a few MS employees and one MS talk. The rest of it were practitioners and experts from outside the big house and that makes for a better conference, imo.

So, as much as I love Longhorn and Avalon specifically and see them at topics for future DevCons, the technology’s not ready yet. Most of the real Avalon experts are MS employees and while there are some notable exceptions, we’re just not at a critical mass of folks yet for a XAML DevCon.

The great thing about multiple language teams in .NET is that each team can provide tools specific for their audience, like this leaked image of the Visual Basic 2005 context menu.

[via Don Box]

Sellsville…

The old Sells Mansion…

The Sells Brothers’s love of elephants…

All this and more in an article from The Short North Gazette in Columbus, Ohio.

Are you interested in presenting a 45-minute talk on some applied XML or Web Services topic? It doesn’t matter which platform or OS you’re targeting. It also doesn’t matter whether you’re an author or vendor or professional speaker or a developer in the trenches (in fact, I tend to be biased towards the latter). We’re after interesting and unique applications of XML and Web Services technology and if you’re doing good work in that area, then I need you to send me a session topic and 2-4 sentence abstract along with a little bit about yourself.

I’ll be taking submissions ’til the end of June, but don’t delay. Passion and a burning story to tell count twice as much as anything else.

And don’t be shy about spreading this announcement around! I’ve got good coverage in the .NET and Windows communities, but don’t know very many folks in the Java or Unix or hardcore XML worlds, so if you’re in that world, let those guys know! Thanks.

BTW, the conference itself is likely to be in Oregon during the 2nd or 3rd week of September, 2004, but we’re still working the details out. One of the fun things that we’re thinking about this year is to have the Dev.Conf. in Sunriver, Oregon, a resort and spa town in central Oregon where sun is plentiful and rain is scarce. There are no major airports there, so we’d provide bus transportation from Portland, OR for anyone that wanted it. It’d be a 3.5 hour road trip. What do folks think about that?

The problem with fame in the IT industry is that when someone dreams about me, it’s a dude. : )

Just to be clear, Marc Clifton’s MyXaml framework for adding a declarative UI mark-up language to today’s .NET framework is not a clone/sub-set of Microsoft’s XAML or Avalon targeted at Longhorn. In other words, while MyXaml provides a number of the benefits of declarative UI mark-up for building smart/rich clients today, MyXaml is not a way to write WinForms code today that will seamlessly turn into Avalon code tomorrow.

The reason I mention this is because I’ve seen some folks get a bit confused by the use of “Xaml” in the name (Marc is using XAML as the generic Extensible Application Mark-up Language and not as related to Microsoft’s XAML).

On the other hand, there are two other projects that are aiming to clone/sub-set XAML/Avalon on .NET today: Xamlon and Mobiform’s XAML products. I can’t claim that either of these will actually help you transition to Longhorn when it comes along, but I know that Xamlon’s XAML samples work with minor tweaks on their parser and on the WinHEC build of Longhorn.

So far, it's provided the information required for two of my Orkut friends to wish me a happy birthday. Other than that, I haven't found a use for the site, however...