Self employment especially solo consulting skills. I have been running a one-person consultancy for 26 years. I am also an active member of a 190-member consultants network. I’d like to share my insights on how people can make a good living being independent consultants.

AsiaMarketingManagement.com

8th Anniversary Party Featuring "15 Minutes of Fame"
Thursday
Malvern, PA
Our monthly meeting will be held at the Microsoft Greater PA Office in Malvern, PA on Thursday, November 19 from 5:30-8:30. We have a special format planned. There will be 10 presenters each doing a 15 minute session covering one of their favorite .NET topics. We will close with a panel discussion with all presenters. There will be no break this night, but food and drink will be available throughout the evening. Refreshments are provided courtesy of Microsoft User Group Support Services

phillydotnet.org/Default.aspx?tabid=807

barcampphilly.org/

What is BarCamp?

According to Wikipedia, Barcamp is “…an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.”

Read more on the official Barcamp website.
What will BarCamp Philly be like?

BarCamp is an open-format conference where the attendees are the presenters. Our subject matter will be directly tied to what ideas people bring to share with the community. Most of the rooms at UArts are equipped with projectors if participants would like to give a slide presentation. Discussion groups, round tables, Q&A, brainstorming together are also options.

Our second 2009 Code Camp will be held at the DeVry University campus in Fort Washington, PA on Saturday, October 17 from 8:30-5:00. Please register on our web site. Detailed directions are on the DeVry web site.

Lots of code, just say no to slides!
8 hours
60 sessions (8:30, 10:00, 12:30, 2:00, 3:30)
12 tracks including two hands-on Beginner rooms and the Bonus Track
600 seats with tables (laptops welcome)
Free breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack (expanded menu!)
Raffles and prizes at 5:00
Easy parking
After hours party in Ambler (network with speakers and attendees)
All of this is made possible by our Gold partners (Component One, Hosting.com, TEK Systems), Silver partners (Pearson, Redgate, Telerik) and our Platinum site sponsors (DeVry University, Microsoft).

Here is the tentative track list, but room assignments and times are subject to change. Click on the speaker names below to see the speaker bio and session topic. Check here and here for the latest printable agenda:
8:00 Registration, continental breakfast

Alt.NET - Brian Donahue - 125
8:30 Sean Carpenter - Escape XML-Hell! Love Your Builds Again with Rake and TeamCity!
10:00 Stephen Bohlen - Refactoring to a S.O.L.I.D. Foundation
12:30 Dane Morgridge - Crossing the Chasm: Develop, Build, and Deploy .NET Apps Cross-Platform with Mono
2:00 Brian Donahue - The TDD On-Ramp
3:30 John Feminella - Ruby for C#/.NET Developers

Architecture - Stan Spotts - 122
8:30 Len Smith - Test Driven Development with Dependency Injection and Mock Objects
10:00 Stan Spotts - Painless UML in Visual Studio 2010
12:30 Al Katawazi - Enterprise MVC Application Development
2:00 Michael Montgomery - When .NET RIA Services are not the Answer
3:30 Steve Andrews - Easing ASP.NET Web Deployment with VS 2010 and MSDeploy

ASP.NET - Rachel Appel - 110
8:30 Andrea Conti - What's New in DotNetNuke 5 (DNN)
10:00 Andy Schwam - Intro To ASP.NET MVC
12:30 Jeffrey T. Fritz - Asp.Net MVC + Asp.Net Webforms = So happy together!
2:00 Chris Bannon - Build an iPhone feed reader with ASP.Net
3:30 Kevin Griffin - jQuery From The Ground Up

Featured - Marc Ziss - 107
8:30 David Isbitski - Creating Rich Internet Applications on the Microsoft Platform using Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3
10:00 Miguel Castro - Understanding ASP.NET Under the Covers
12:30 Roger Doherty - SQL Server 2008 R2: The Data Platform for Software Plus Services
2:00 Don Demsak - BI for the .Net Guy
3:30 Rachel Appel - Whats new in Asp.Net 4.0

Bonus - Marc Ziss - 109
8:30 Alvin Ashcraft - Introduction to Microsoft HealthVault Development
10:00 Evan Hoff - Master Data Management Using SQL Server 2008 R2
12:30 Douglas White - What the heck is Drupal and why should I care?
2:00 Ken Lovely - Developing a WCF Service Library and Hosting it as WCF Web Service
3:30 Sara Chipps - Making Your Personal Projects a Reality

Framework - Jess Chadwick - 106
8:30 Max Zilberman - Tour de Enterprise Library 4
10:00 Jess Chadwick - What's New & Hot in .NET 4.0
12:30 Danilo Diaz - The Managed Extensibility Framework
2:00 John Blumenauer - Developing WPF Applications with Prism
3:30 Michael Montgomery - Retrofitting Your WCF SOA for Silverlight

Tools - Travis Laborde - 105
8:30 Chris Love - Bigger, Stronger, Faster - Making Quality .NET Applications Fast and Bug Free
10:00 JP Toto - Using Git & GitHub Source Control for .NET Development
12:30 Travis Laborde - Continuous Integration Part 1 - MSBuild from 0 to Wow in 90 Minutes
2:00 Travis Laborde - Continuous Integration Part 2 - CruiseControl.NET from 0 to Wow in 90 Minutes
3:30 Nick Berardi - Extending Visual Studio 2010

Silverlight - John Angelini - 108
8:30 John Baird - Building Silverlight LOB Apps
10:00 Todd Snyder - Building Applications with RIA Services
12:30 John Angelini - XAML Animation Made Easy
2:00 Bill Wolff - Silverlight Data Access Methods
3:30 Joel Cochran - Templating and Data Binding in Expression Blend 3

SQL & BI - Sharon Dooley - 104
8:30 Joshua Lynn - Advanced Workflow Process in T-SQL (Aka advanced uses of temp tables)
10:00 Joey D'Antoni - Using SQL Profiler to tune your SQL
12:30 Lisa Roszko - Reporting Services Group Therapy
2:00 Hilary Cotter - Stress Testing SQL Server
3:30 Wayne Kurtz - KPIs: What They Are and How to Define them in SSAS

Beginner I - Judy Calla - 113
8:30 Judy Calla - The Basics before Getting Started in Visual Studio
10:00 Nick Berardi - Introduction to the Visual Studio Development Environment (IDE)
12:30 Dan Clark - Relational Databases and Data-Driven Applications
2:00 Rob Keiser - Creating Web Applications and Web Services in Visual Studio
3:30 Judy Calla - Creating Windows and Batch Applications

Beginner II - Judy Calla - 111
8:30 John Petersen - Looking at the BI Stack of Stuff
10:00 Said Salomon - T-SQL for Beginners
12:30 Edwin Ames - Object Creation and Destruction with C#
2:00 John Blumenauer - Exceptional Exception Handling and Automatic Memory Management
3:30 Rob Keiser - Data Access Methods

IT + Cloud - Scott Stumpf - 102
8:30 Doug Henry - Introduction to Windows Server 2008 R2
10:00 Scott Stumpf - Introduction to Windows 7
12:30 Paul Begley - Exchange Server 2010 Preview
2:00 Tim Dodd - Case Study: Clouds Demysitified
3:30 Chris Rolon - Introduction to SQL Azure

11:30 Social networking in the break room, hoagies, drinks and snacks

Social Media for Social Good

Social media offers organizations an indispensable tool set for a wide variety of philanthropic activities including activism, education, donor and volunteer development, and direct fundraising. Because of its inherently personal and community-based nature, social media provides an ideal canvas to work within, allowing causes to not just communicate, but also to activate and invigorate significant grassroots activity. [source: Geoff Livingston on Social Media for Social Good]

On Tuesday, August 25th, we'll have local do-gooders discuss how they utilize social media for their specific causes. We'll have panelists representing the following causes:

Blame Drew's Cancer - blamedrewscancer.com/
Twestival - twestival.com/ / Philadelphia Twestival - philadelphia.twestival.com/
American Red Cross - redcross.org/
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network - pancan.org/index.html


More info

markm.com/markm/SocialMediaClub/Index.htm