I'm Back!

So, I haven't posted much for a while. That's because I've been travelling and speaking and talking to old friends and meeting new folks. I've got a bit of a "break", so I hope to catch up on some articles I've been meaning to get to. Overall, the last 6 weeks have been a lot of fun (and a bit tiring).

Here's a recap:

Pluralsight Author Summit
At the beginning of March, I was in Salt Lake City (UT) for the Pluralsight Author Summit. This was a great weekend of talking to the folks at Pluralsight and spending time with other authors from around the world. It was also great to see Pluralsight's commitment to education, and it makes me want to produce more courses. (Stay tuned; I'll be starting a new course soon.)

Code Camps
I also spoke at 2 Code Camps: Utah Code Camp in Salt Lake City (UT) and Desert Code Camp in Chandler (AZ). Both of these events were a lot of fun. It was my 2nd time at the Utah Code Camp, and it grew a lot in the last year. It was cool to meet some people who already knew me through my Pluralsight courses. And (as usual), I found some people I didn't know to have lunch with. It was a great facility with nice, big rooms. I had about 100 people in each of my presentations.

It was my 7th time out to Desert Code Camp. The weather in the Phoenix area is actually very pleasant in April and November. And since I've been out there so many times, I've got lots of friends. It was great to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while and to meet more new people.

Distant User Groups
I've been travelling for user groups as well. I went out to Las Vegas (NV) for dotNETGroup.org. That group is also growing, and I had a really great time talking about Dependency Injection. One of my favorite things is to see a group that has grown since the last time I spoke there. Getting more and more people involved in our developer community events makes us stronger as a whole.

And last week, I went up to Berkeley (CA) to speak at EastBay .NET. It turns out that Berkeley and Phoenix are the same distance from where I live in So Cal. I spent a couple days in the Bay Area and got to see some friends I haven't seen for a while. And I met new people as well. I ran into someone who came to the user group on the BART platform (Hi, Nicolay!), and we got to talk for a while.

Local User Groups
And I spoke at a bunch of local user groups as well (where "local" means Orange County, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and San Diego -- basically, within 100 miles of where I live). I see the local folks a bit more often, but even so, I got to catch up with some folks I haven't seen for a few months.

In addition, the San Diego .NET Developers Group celebrated its 20th anniversary (and before you ask, it used to be a VB group). David McCarter has done some great things with the group over the years, and he invited some of the "founding fathers" to come and talk about the beginning of the group. In addition, he got Scott Hunter from Microsoft to come down and speak (pretty impressive since it was the same week as BUILD).

For a full listing (and links to a user group that may be near you), you can check out March Speaking Engagements and April Speaking Engagements.

I don't have anything scheduled for the next few weeks. But I'm working on some new events. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I love to speak -- actually, I love to teach and watch people learn. So, there will definitely be more to come.

Happy Coding!