Developer Evangelists Unite!

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Last Thursday, August 23 2007, I had the pleasure to get paid time off from my employer to attend a local Orlando MSDN Developer Evangelist event hosted by Russ Fustino, our Florida MS Developer Evangelist, in Orlando. I was both pleased and excited to see a real turnout of new faces I've never seen before, as well as good friends and several other MVPs who made the trip, either as attendees or presenters.


Russ Fustino surprised me. Although Russ and his MS cohort Joe Healy and I have become friends because of our almost constant interaction at various developer events (Code Camps, MVP Summits, PDCs, Tech-Eds and even local developer user groups like our OneTug Orlando .NET User Group) I had never seen Russ do a full presentation. Bottom line, Russ is an expert presenter. This guy did four hours of "stuff" -- all by himself -- and I gave him an 8 out of 10.

I've done some presentations at public user group meetings, and I intend to do more in the coming months. I can tell you that it is not easy. There is a lot of stuff that has to come together, not just technology (laptops, VPC images, presentation screens and "the unknown") - but you also have to be flexible enough to adjust to real - time developer questions and other kinds of "Curveballs". Russ did an excellent job, and he communicated some excellent basic concepts about LINQ, WCF, and SliverLight - all in one powerhouse presentation. My only regret is that I had to jump out back to the Bromberg Ranch right after the close and was unable to attend the Pub Club afterward.


So this is an endorsement of the entire Microsoft Developer Evangelist cadre and effort - Microsoft brings out an amazing array of new products and technologies -- and they truly understand that they need to bring this home to us, the local level developer community, with these MSDN and related events. If you are a developer, whether new or experienced, you can make an investment in yourself by getting involved in your local .NET Developer Group, attending or presenting at local Code Camps, and developing relationships with your local Microsoft Developer Evangelist.

They gave us some nice presents -- one of the most valuable of which was a DVD with all kinds of very current content related to the presentation. NIce!

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous1:38 PM

    I was there as well and I can give an amen to what you said about Russ and his presentation. I wish he would have asked if there where any C++ developers in the attendance. He only asked for VB and C# :) He did cover a wide range of topics and overall it was a good show.

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