June 11, 2009
Foundation Series Is a Hit!
by Brian Donahue
Last night, we held our 4th and final (for now) workshop in our Foundation Series. The response from the community has been fantastic, and we averaged almost 40 developers at every session! I received a ton of help in putting this series together, and I’d like to thank some of the folks that were involved. If I miss anyone, feel free to slam me in the comments :)
- Dani Diaz - Our local Microsoft Developer Evangelist. Dani’s a huge supporter of our group, offering ideas, encouragement, and sponsorship for several of our meetings and workshops. (@danidiaz)
- Bill Wolff - Leader of Philly.NETBroken Link: http://phillydotnet.org/ - our huge Microsoft User Group. Without Bill’s inclusion of Philly ALT.NETBroken Link: http://phillyalt.net/ in Philly.NET events, Code Camp, etc, we never would have met the number of developers we have, or even conceived of the Foundation Series. All the Philly.NET leadership (Andy Schwam, Marc Ziss, to name just a couple) have been incredibly helpful and generous with their support. (@billjwolff, @schwammy)
- Bob Bunson, Steve Eichert, Brian Frantz, Jon Graves, Erik PetersonBroken Link: http://erikbase.blogspot.com/ - These longtime Philly ALT.NET members took the time to develop content and lead sessions during the Foundation Series. They did the bulk of the hard work of making this series happen (@steveeichert, @cerikpete, @jon_graves)!
- John Pharo - As our "Chief Swag Officer," John has been getting some great books and other giveaways for our meetings which takes a good bit of effort off my plate. In addition, he’s a dedicated, core member, actively involved in planning, and coming up with ideas for the group.
- The rest of the Philly ALT.NET and Philly.NET community for your questions, suggestions, and feedback that led to creating this series and giving us ideas for many other events we hope to bring to fruition in the future!
Philly ALT.NET will be slowing down over the summer. We’ll likely get together for a pub night or similar social gathering to review the year so far and talk about what we want to do next. Follow our discussion list (web | emailBroken Link: mailto:phillyaltnet-subscribe@yahoogroups.com) to be notified of any future events.
In the meantime, your feedback is incredibly important to the future direction of the group, so we’ve set up two suggestion/feedback sites on UserVoice.com to hear your thoughts. Please, please take a minute to submit ideas or vote on suggestions!! You can do so anonymously, or register so we know who you are.
Use the site below to comment on the Foundation Series - what you found most valuable, what wasn’t as valuable, what you wished has been included, etc. We will use this to not only revise the content for any future presentations of the 4 sessions, but possibly we will create new sessions based on your feedback:
http://foundationseries.uservoice.comBroken Link: http://foundationseries.uservoice.com/
For general Philly ALT.NET feedback/suggestions, use the following site. Here is where you can give any feedback on events, past or future. Suggests topics you would like to see covered, workshops or tutorials, volunteer to speak/help, or suggest anything related to the .NET software community that you think we could help out with. Definitely take a minute to vote on the ideas that are already posted there!
http://phillyaltnet.uservoice.comBroken Link: http://phillyaltnet.uservoice.com/
This has been a great year so far for us, and I look forward to pushing the envelope even farther in the second half of the year. Thanks to everyone for your dedication to growing a strong community of software developers that are always striving to improve and help each other do the same!