I recently spoke at two user groups: The West Michigan .Net Users Group in Grand Rapids and the Microsoft Developers of Southwest Michigan group in Kalamazoo.

On September 9th, I gave my “Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord” talk for the West Michigan group.  I went to Grand Rapids early that day and had lunch with some friends (Steve, Matt and Joel).  I wish I could have talked to them all day, but since they had to get back to work, I ended up spending most of my afternoon at a Panera trying to get a reliable internet connection.

That was my first time attending one of their user groups and I have to say, it was a nice experience.  The Watermark Country Club is a pretty nice venue.  The pizza was really good and it was nice to grab a drink before I gave my talk.   It felt strange having my old boss (Steve) in the audience, but beyond that the talk itself went pretty well.  My only complaint was that the projector could only do 800×600. :-\  That made some of my demos tough, but I got through it. 

On September 25, I opened up MDSM’s 2008-2009 season with a brand new talk: ALT.NET, The Community and You.  I originally wanted to do a talk just on the community, but after talking to the group leader (Mark), I found out the group wanted to know about ALT.NET, so I decided to combine the two.  Actually, talking about alt.net was a great segue into the community in general. 

The alt.net portion of the discussion talked about the history of the “movement”, but I really tried to focus on the positives, especially from the standpoint of David Laribee’s original post.  I also talked about some of the principles and practices and then I jumped into how we as a community can drive change in the world of software development.  I finally talked about how each of us can help affect positive change within the larger community.  I enjoyed giving this talk and might work it into my rotation.

I’m speaking at the upcoming Ann Arbor Day of .Net on October 18th.  This will cap off speaking in the heartland region for me this year, and once again, I’ll be giving my “Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord” talk.  After the Ann Arbor event, I have a month of no events and then on November 15th I’ll be attending the Raleigh Code Camp.    Originally, I was going to this event to help Alan and James with the Open Spaces event, but James said I should submit to speak, so it looks like I’ll also be giving my “Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord” talk one last time this year.