INETA
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It must be something in the water. I have been evangelizing F# for some time and have had numerous invitations to speak around Milwaukee, WI and elsewhere in this region. Everyone that I speak to about F# "gets it". I have been having a lot of fun.
The good folks in the .NET Users Group in Rockford, IL (NETRUG; note that they are working on updating the web site; even though I'm not listed, I DID speak) were kind enough to invite me to speak at their March User's Group Meeting.
We had a fantastic meeting. The meeting took place on March 29th, 2006 and was located at a local business and we had the use of one of their conference rooms. Gerry and I arrived in Rockford, IL (from Milwaukee, WI) after an easy, 90 minute drive. About 10-12 people showed up. This post is a little late because I had written it and forgot to publish it (and a Rockford Users Group member emailed me to remind me; dude, where's our post?).
The part I like best about these meetings is hearing the issues of the local groups and how they manage those issues. In Appleton, WI, the toughest issue was trying to determine what topics to discuss in presentations in future meetings. Here the issue was organization and leadership. Leanne Fetter has done a great job getting this group together and they have a lot of great ideas. The group is working to solidify their leadership and roles so that the responsibilities are not placed on only one or two people. Many groups have these issues and it was great to hear open discussion in this group. Of course many other topics were discussed as well, but that the group was focused on leadership means that they are thinking about their durability and effectiveness as an organization.
After conversations on local group issues, I gave my F# presentation. Coming in to a new city, I usually don't know what to expect. The topic is not an easy topic, i.e. F# forces you to think in a number of different ways. I still find myself "context-switching" between C# and F# and "thinking in F#" only after a bit of effort. But the members of NETRUG picked up F# very quickly. As I walked through the presentation, there were a number of good questions and we covered a lot of depth. I try to engage each audience (in different cities) and hope that they respond. This audience responded. Given that the group size was 10-12, I could interact, on an almost individual basis, with each person. This provided for great tempo as well. This audience provided me with useful questions and commentary afterwards as well.
The Rockford .NET Users Group has solid membership and is growing. The group, like many others, is always looking for new members, speakers and leaders. If you are in the area, visit their site, attend the meetings or get involved.
I just arrived home from the FVNUG (Fox Valley .NET Users Group) meeting. I presented on F# (as usual). For a young group, i.e. this was only their second meeting, I thought they were well organized. I'm looking forward to visiting with them in the future, hopefully as a speaker, but definitely as an audience member. The meeting was more formal than those hosted by the WI .NET Users Group. One part that I really enjoyed was the "roundtable discussion". After I completed my presentation, I returned to my seat in the audience and the Chapter President, Chuck Goehler, opened the floor to questions about all things .NET. Any question was fair game and the idea was to get the group to talk about experiences in software development and in particular with applications in .NET. Because the group is new, a lot of topics were raised and those topics became future speaker topic items of interest.
I want to thank the group for their time. I also personally want to thank a few of the new officers of FVNUG:
- Chuck Goehler - President
- Christy Giblin - Director of Membership
- David Palfery - Director of Events
There were others to thank as well, but Chuck, Christy and David have started building a first-rate users group. If you are in the Fox Valley area, the group is looking for members and for leaders. I do know that they have a nine person board, for which only five positions have been filled. Visit FVNUG's web site if you are interested in either participating in these events, or are interested in becoming a board member. I can see this group growing quickly, so now is a good time to get in and make an impact.
Don't forget - Deeper in Dot Net is coming April 22, 2006. Space is limited, so register early . . .
Just a reminder that I'll be speaking at the the Fox Valley .NET Users Group tonight. I mentioned the details earlier here.
I'm leaving in an hour or so . . .
Tonight, Dave Bost will be speaking on VSTS and features in Unit Testing and Code Analysis at the WI .NET Users Group meeting. As usual, this is the second Tuesday of the month meeting, scheduled at 7:00-9:00pm. The usual free pizza and soda will be served.
I'll be there . . .
It is that time of the year again. Ok, for me, this is a first time event, but it has taken place in the past. The WI .NET Users Group's Deeper in .NET 2006 is in it's fourth year and this year seems to be bigger and better than ever.
This FREE event takes place at the Milwaukee Hyatt Regency Hotel on April 22nd, 2006. It starts at 7:00am on Saturday morning (dude, are you kidding? like I won't be out that Friday night before or anything?) and runs all day. At the end of the event, around 5:45pm, there will be lots and lots of prizes given away (I know for certain that the number is approaching $20,000 in total prizes; you must be present to receive prizes).
As a member of the Executive Committee for the WI .NET Users Group, I'm really excited to see the progress in the development of this year's event. WI .NET Users Group president Scott Isaacs (the one on the left) talks about the event further in Deeper in .NET 2006!.
Our speaker list is first-rate:
Read more here. Don't forget to register (required for attendance). Oh yeah, it's party time in the Brew City. See you there.
I've completed my presentation for Wisconsin INETA on F#. I was able to leave the room with very few bumps and bruises. Seriously, what a great time it was. I haven't spoken in public in some time and I had a lot of fun. The crowd was fantastic and I'll say this: Everyone in the room "got" it. F# is a fun language and has a number of great uses. I touched on one very simple application using F#. Lists, Tuples, Type Inferencing, etc. were discussed.
You can find the presentation PowerPoint here. Please note that the code for this presentation will follow at a later date. The demonstration was to show "how" to construct a Sharpe Ratio and I hope have a post up a working example (that runs against publicly available data) in the near future. Given the time constraints (2 hours), it would be impossible to cover all of the material, so I wanted to make certain that people were left with a bit of understanding of both F# and Quantitative Finance (in a non quant-professional setting, i.e. for .NET developers).
More importantly, and don't tell anyone you saw these, but rumor has it that there are pictures of me in action here (with the first one here; as this stack will obviously have other eventual photos). Thanks Matt. Given The Liz's observations that I ought to "hit the gym more", I find no evidence of that in these photos. Ironic that in Matt's Flickr stack, I follow photos of "Tuscan-Style Garlic-Rosemary Roast Pork Loin".
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I announced that I'm speaking at Wisconsin INETA for February earlier here. I personally invite everyone that visits this blog to attend.
My topic, as listed on the Wisconsin INETA site, will be An Introduction to F#. The official long title (after a revision or two) is F# - An Introduction Under an Application of Quantitative Finance. As this is my first speaking engagement in a few years, I'm really focused on delivering a clear and fun presentation (no duh?!?). the lower cased one mentioned that he'll keep me in my place if I get out of line with the math. I promise that of all of the slides, there is only one that has funky math symbology and there is a warning on the previous slide for those that don't want to blind.
I need to acknowledge two people for early reviews of and comments on my presentation. Dr. Don Syme, F# Team Lead and Language Designer/Architect, provided early feedback that was useful. Matt Terski also provided an early sanity check of the presentation. A big thank you to both of you. Any revisions since our discussions and errors that result are obviously my own.
If the above is not enough to get you out of the house in this cold Wisconsin winter, let me remind everyone that there will be free pizza and soda served and prizes (books, gift certificates, etc.), compliments of SysLogic, Inc., Apress and JJB Research. I personally thank Patty Pritchard Thompson of SysLogic and James Huddleston of Apress for their generosity.
Alrighty then, I had better declare my non-allegiance to the web. If you know me, you know that I think that http is a substandard protocol, that html is insufficient and while the web provides for many useful "things", I don't like the platforms for most of the technologies on the web. Most are not secure, not robust, allow for insufficient blah, blah, blah. Technologies for the web suck, but the web itself does not.
Scott Isaacs (not MSN's Scott Isaacs, but Milwaukee's very own; President of Wisconsin INETA; owner of The Black Pearl) recently posted on a few utilities that he had written. These utilities are for the web, so while I saw the post, I ignored the content. So how, given my context from the above paragraph, could I complain about the web when he and so many others are writing utilities to improve it? Check these little gems. From an IE menu, you can execute a WHOIS, Wikipedia search, dictionary.com search, etc. ad nauseum.
To summarize, web technologies suck, but with Scott's stuff, they suck less.
His post. Get the code.
Well, life has been a bit easier lately. The Liz is behaving herself. She makes it easy to be a Dad. She had a four day weekend off from school which she spent almost exclusively in her room. She's been sick and would probably would rather be out with friends. But she is focused on what matters. When she is focused, it frees up my time to be focused. Good girl and I love you for it Liz.
On that note, I'm presenting at the Wisconsin INETA meeting. The official presentation announcement was just posted. My presentation is on February 21st, 2006 and is titled publicly as:
An Introduction to F#
The official working title is:
F# - An Introduction under the Application of Quantitative Finance
I didn't want that posted on the INETA web site for fear that no one would show up. Seriously, this will be a fun session. This is my first presentation at Wisconsin INETA, my first public speaking on F# (see my blogroll for useful F# links) and my first public presentation in about six years. I'm not nervous, just excited. I tend to talk very quickly, so the usual comments that I hear from my friends and colleagues is "You are going to have to talk slower." That is not possible. Of course, I'm presenting during the same month as Don Haleyione, the Godfather of Interesting Finds, just in a different city. Those Beantown guys are going to get a dose of Debris and practical dissassembly. Nice.
((marketing hat on; warning, imprecise language in use))
If you are interested in investing in stocks, I'll be covering a few simple techniques to measure characteristics of those stocks. We'll build a few applications that use publicly available data from the major sources like finance.yahoo.com and others. I hope that anyone in attendance will get a flavor of F# and it's capabilities within the .NET framework as well as a perspective for some of the basic ideas used in quantitative finance (finance by the numbers). The target audience is the .NET developer and not the capital markets professional, so the ideas in finance are straightforward and simple to implement.
The part about this that has me excited is the use of F# to do this work. I've been using F# now since last summer (again, thanks to Marty for the pointer). Because F# is based on ML and OCaml, it was not unfamiliar to me, i.e. I had some competence in the language, but needed to improve my skills. That is still true now, but I've at least had the opportunity to build some real world stuff in F#. To me, F# represents the first core competence platform under .NET for scientific and engineering based computing that is (or may be) mathematics intensive.
I invite you to come and spend some time at this meeting. I hope that I can give some basic ideas on F# and it's usage, some basic ideas for the everyday .NET developer in finance and just have a lot of fun. In case you cannot decide whether to attend or not, I will mention that there will be free pizza and soda. How can you pass up an offer like that?
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As always, contact me here.
Boy, oh boy, where is my head? I almost forgot this bit of usual news. My friend Sean McCormack is speaking at tonight's Wisconsin INETA meeting. The topic is Automated Testing: Tools and Techniques. For those that don't know Sean, he's a C# MVP, the author of Zanebug (a unit testing tool; go figure) and Codus (an ORM tool) and is the quintessential beer software architect (ok, his official title is Technical Architect).
If you live in Milwaukee or nearby and are not at PDC, you have no excuse not to attend this meeting. Hope to see you there.
I just got back from a double-secret, ultra-sensitive geek-o-rama. Hosted by Scott Isaacs and his lovely and talented wife Kelly ("Her Royal Highness of the Order of the Geek"), this backyard cookout was a great get-together. Geeks, spouses and their children all gathered at an undisclosed location in Waukesha, WI for some summer fun. Good food, good conversation and fun playtime (for the kids) was the prescription of the day. Comfortable weather in the 80s with sunshine made this a perfect outing. My hat is off to Scott and Kelly for the great time. Thank you both.
More congregations of nerdiosity and geekology may be had at the Aug/Sep Milwaukee Nerd Dinner (as always, with 33% more nerd). As The Agile Developer is off in far-away lands (OK, someplace in upstate NY, but NOT doing time in the prison system), Dan Bartels has put together this little meeting for drinks, food and of course, .NET Geekery. Show up, make a pig of yourself, talk some .NET with some of the locals and just have a great time. Unlike the recent INETA meeting, where my buddy, Travis Feirtag spoke on C++, I promise that my brother will not be in town, so I will show up at this event. I should be easy to spot. I'll be wearing Green Bay Packer's Green and Gold Face paint and a rainbow wig. That and you'll find me in some corner using a TabletPC and mesmerized by this award-winning software.
So, my brother Mike from Cleveland, OH was in town for the day with his wife. They were staying at my other brother's house. My other, other brother lives out of town, so he wasn't with us. For the record, my sister was not in town, but let's not muddy the story here. Brothers, spouses and kids all went to the Wisconsin State Fair for some good old fashioned fun. Play a few games on the midway, ride the Big Slide, eat some fresh corn on the cob and take in a big old steak sandwich (from the Wisconsin Cattleman's Association, no less) are just some of the evening's activities. Later, we all headed to my brother's house (no, the other one) and sat around and talked and played some poker. There is nothing better than cleaning out the teenage nephews of their summer fun money in a game of poker.
Mike and Amanda are back on their way to Cleveland as I write this. I need to spend more time with them. We don't see enough of each other.
So while all of this fun was taking place, across town in Pewaukee, WI at the Microsoft offices, the INETA executive committee (EC) was meeting. With the Sales Ninja's departure from his job at Serlio Software to become some kind of marketing guy at Microsoft, a vacancy was created within Wisconsin INETA. And what a vacancy it is. Brian will be missed. So the EC (no, not Emergent Computation) did some shuffling and the results are:
- Scott Isaacs - President of Wisconsin INETA
- Gerry Heidenreich - Vice President of Wisconsin INETA
- optionsScalper (You are already here, so I'm not linking myself) - Newest member of Wisconsin INETA Executive Committee. My official title as listed in the meeting minutes is "Vice President in Charge of Looking out the Window" which is good, because I'm really, really good at that. Of course this means that I must stop wearing my Spiderman, Batman and other Halloween costumes to the INETA meetings.
The amazing thing about all of this is that I was likely on the Big Slide at the Fair when I was given this position. I'm hoping to spend more EC meetings contributing in this fashion . . .
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NOTE: Everyone should click into Julie Lerman's "old fashioned fun" link. That post is easily my favorite of any of her recent posts. I have a daughter that loves dogs and the simple way that Julie describes the driveway and "playing with my dogs" is a treasure ((Scalper reveals a soft underbelly for a fraction of a second)).
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Contact me here with comments, etc.
I'm not going to Travis' talk ".NET C++ with VS 2005" this evening at tonight's Wisconsin INETA meeting. My brother from Ohio is in town (I thought it was tomorrow Mike). Anyways, I'm off to the Wisconsin State Fair or something to hang out with my two brothers and families.
If you are looking for me in the INETA pizza line, I won't be there. I gave Gerry my Spiderman costume because he is now concocting a story as to why I won't be there. Besides, everyone knows that I do love C++ and (C# and Haskell and Ada and ML and F# and Scheme and Erlang and Smalltalk and . . .)
I almost forgot to mention this. Our next Wisconsin INETA Meeting is on Tuesday, August 9th from 1900-2100. Travis Feirtag, who is currently subcontracting through the same firm that I use, SysLogic, will be the speaker on the topic ".NET C++ with VS 2005". Particulars can be found on the Wisconsin INETA site here. Travis is one of the best, so bring your difficult questions. FREE SODA AND PIZZA will be served. See me there for details on the usual INETA-Meeting-after-party.
If you blog, read my blog or are just a cool .NET developer and attend these meetings, introduce yourself. To spot me, just look for the guy in the pizza line with at least five slices on his plate wearing the Spiderman Halloween costume and the "I program in VB.NET at work - Kick Me" post-it on my back.
Brian Tinkler, Wisconsin INETA president, expectant father, sales ninja and all-around good guy has some great news here. In the post, Brian mentions that he was elected to the position of Vice President - Marketing for INETA. Additionally, he is now a member of the Board of Directors of INETA.
Anyone and everyone that knows Brian knows that he is dedicated to building community for .Net in Wisconsin. Through his efforts, the Wisconsin INETA group has become a first-rate organization that has expanded in many ways. INETA will now have the benefits of Brian's talents.
Please join me in congratulating him on the new appointments.
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