Last weekend Nas and I were speaking at the Pittsburgh Code Camp and we had a great time and we meet a lot of great people.  While in the speaker room we met Amanda Launcher and she introduced us to http://twitter.com/.  If you don’t know anything about it I would suggest going out and taking a look because to my understanding it’s the next new fad.  I would think that “twitter” is something that could complement a blog or if you don’t have much to say at one moment.  To my understanding you are only allowed 140 characters per post and you can do it from either you’re phone or IM.

Nas and I didn’t have a chance to sit in on any other sessions because we were doing some deep dive discovery on FBA and MOSS (MySite) configuration and trying to really understand how and why it’s configured the suggested way.  I must say its pretty complex at first but it gets a lot simpler once all the SQL permissions are set correctly on the FBA database.  Once we got done with this I spent more time on InfoPath Forms Services/FBA and got everything working correctly for my demo but when I tried to do the demo I couldn’t get logged into the SharePoint site because of some “unknown exception”.  When adding FBA to SharePoint it has been really unpredictable and frustrating for me.  I’m hoping that I can get all the bugs worked out by the Richmond Code Camp on April 26^th.

Cheers,
Michael

Nas and I yesterday drove up from North Carolina to Pittsburgh threw Virginia and West Virginia and we really enjoyed the mountains.  This morning we are getting ready to head over to the Pittsburgh Code Camp and finish preparing for our sessions this afternoon and meet some of the other speakers.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been here and I totally forgot how beautiful the downtown is when you come out of the I-279 tunnel into downtown.  We planned on going to the Pirates and Reds game last night but storms kept rolling in and out and we just stayed inside and worked on are demos instead.  Nas and I have had a great time traveling together to all these different cities and getting to meet all the local speakers and we are hoping to get some more chances in the near future.

Cheers,
Michael

I'm happy to say that I'll be speaking at the Orland Code Camp on March 22^nd and the code camp is already at 92 percent capacity. I'm really excited about this code camp because I'll be doing my InfoPath 2007 and Visual Studio 2008 session but will be adding FBA (Forms Based Authentication) content into the mix. I'm really not sure if it will be a good idea to add the extra complexity to the session but I wanted to change it up a little because I've been doing the same presentation for the last 3 or 4 code camps. In this presentation I'll be writing code into the VS 2008 VSTO project and showing how to debug the InfoPath 2007 form after it has been deployed to InfoPath Forms Services. In the future I'll be building a new .NET Class for retrieving the FBA user information like I do for AD user information and show how the code will know which user data store to query. Below are a few links for the Orlando Code Camp and I hope to see you there.

Orlando Code Camp home page

http://www.orlandocodecamp.com

Registration Page

https://www.clicktoattend.com/register.aspx?eventid=124997

Cheers,
Michael

It's true, I'll be speaking at another code camp and I'm really excited about this code camp because I'll be featuring a new session.  My new session is called "SharePoint Security Management for the Business User" and it will have a lot of demos on how to setup and maintain SharePoint user security from the business user perspective.  I'll also be doing the InfoPath 2007/InfoPath Forms Services and Visual Studio 2008 session which is my bread and butter session.  You might be thinking that I'm losing my mind because I'm doing so many of these code camps but let me assure you that I'm really having a goodtime sharing my experiences and not losing my mind.

I'm also very proud to say that Nas will be doing his first code camp session at Roanoke and I'm really excited about attending his session on configuring FBA for MOSS.  His session goes into details on how to do the FBA for regular SharePoint sites but also My Sites.  He and I have already talked a lot about the session details during are 24 hour road trip to the South Florida Code Camp.  I also think he will be talking about setting up a custom ASP.NET application for creating user accounts.  This should be another good session.  He has got me so revved up about FBA and I'm already thinking about creating some InfoPath 2007 browser based forms for creating FBA accounts and roles and maybe doing a joint session with him.

You can register and view the schedule for the Roanoke Code Camp at the below link.  Hope to see you there.

http://www.rvnug.org/codecamp.aspx

Cheers

For most of the people that read my blog don't know that I live in a small town outside of Raleigh, NC and unfortunately I'm not that involved in the local SharePoint or .NET community because I travel so much but I'm going to get the great pleasure to speak at the Raleigh Code Camp this weekend.  This is a big surprise for me because I missed the call for speakers for the Raleigh Code Camp (don't know how but I did) and I didn't think I had a chance to get in but I figured I would try and pull some strings and see if I could sneak in and to great surprise I was able to pull it off with help from Josh Carlisle.  Josh and I used to work together at a past company called TAKE Solutions but since we both departed we haven't seen much of each other unless we bump into each other at a conference or code camp.  The funny thing is that Josh's company (Viewfusion Solutions) and B&R Business Solutions do a lot of business together but he works almost a 100% remotely so we sort of stay in contact but not really (if that makes since).  Enough of my rambling and to the point, so I sent Josh an email several weeks ago about the code camp and asked him to see if he could get me squeezed in since he knew Chris Love from the Triangle .NET User Group.  Well weeks went by without hearing anything and I figured things didn't work out and I wasn't going to have the chance to speak but thankfully I was wrong because I got an email from Josh while I was in NYC.

For this code camp I'll be doing the same two sessions that I did for the South Florida Code Camp but the STSADM session will be a little bit longer because when I presented last time it was to short by 10 or 15 minutes.  I think I'm going to add a custom command that does something with InfoPath Form Services.  I'm pretty excited about adding the new example because it's going to give me a chance to work with the InfoPath Forms Services API.  The titles and descriptions of each session is listed below and if anybody wants more details please fill free to leave a comment or  send me a email through my blog.

Session 1 - Creating custom commands for STSADM Utility

The session walks through creating a Visual Studio 2008 C# Class Project for writing code to extend STSADM Utility and what needs to be done to deploy and have STSADM Utility recognize the new custom command.  Additional time will be spent on how the code is structured and what the debug parameter is used for.

Session 2 - InfoPath 2007 and Visual Studio 2008

The session walks through building a new InfoPath 2007 form, Web Service, .NET Class, Workflow and LDAP query with Visual Studio 2008.  The form will call web service on opening and retrieve the current user Active Directory information and State list from SQL 2005 database to populate an InfoPath form drop down list.   A simple workflow will be created and deployed with Visual Studio 2008 for sending an email.

If you're in driving distance please attend because to my understanding this code camp is going to be slammed full with great content and speakers just like all the other code camps I've attended.  You can register for the code camp at the http://www.codecamp.org/ website.

Cheers

Just wanted to let everybody know that I am now doing 2 sessions at the South Florida code camp and my second session title is "Creating custom commands for STSADM with C#".  The session goes into the details of extending the STSADM utility and how to debug the code.  The code being reviewed is currently being used in the real world.  I'm pretty excited about doing this session because it's something totally different from my normal subject.  Please come out to the code camp on February 2^nd but remember you need to register first.   You can check out the agenda and register from the http://codecamp08.fladotnet.com/ website.

Cheers

That's right it's time for the South Florida Code Camp and I'll be down there giving a new session on InfoPath 2007 and Visual Studio 2008.  For this session I'm thinking about changing a couple of things around and doing some really new stuff that includes C# code for updating AD and XMLFormView control for displaying an InfoPath 2007 form.  I'm thinking that the InfoPath 2007 form will be a data entry form that allows users to update their AD information.  I've been thinking about this new presentation for a while and since Visual Studio 2008 was officially released I figured that I should also change up the InfoPath part.  I'm really excited about building the new code and presenting it and after the code camp is over I'll post it on my Code Camp and User Group page.

All the information about the South Florida Code Camp can be found on the http://codecamp08.fladotnet.com/ website.  From what I heard while at Philly Code Camp from other speakers this code camp is suppose to be as big as or bigger than the Philly Code Camp one.  To see what sessions are currently on tap checkout the agenda page http://codecamp08.fladotnet.com/agenda.aspx.  The code camp is going to have 12 different tracks and that means tons of sessions.  The "SharePoint/ Office" track already has my "InfoPath 2007 and Visual Studio 2008" session and "Utilizing Visual Studio 2008 capabilities for better SharePoint Development Part 1 and Part 2" sessions on tap.  In my opinion this track is already shaping up to be a killer track.

I'm really excited about this code camp and I'm glad to have the chance to speak at it and I hope to meet some new SharePoint colleagues there to.  Well I'm about all posted out for the night.  Hope to see some of you there.

Cheers

Last weekend was the Philly Code Camp and Nas and I had a blast with the other 375 people that attended the event.  The one day extravaganza featured 50 different speakers and in many sessions it was standing room only.  If you work with Microsoft technologies on the dev side and local to the area or in driving distance then I would definitely try to make it out to one of their other two code camps this year.  My InfoPath 2007 and Visual Studio 2008 session went really well I think and I really enjoyed myself.  I would like to thank David Mann for letting me speak and all the other people that put together this great event.

When at the Philly Code Camp I got to meet a couple other great SharePoint speakers.  After my session I got to speak with Susan Lennon (http://wss.lennontechnologies.com/blog/default.aspx) who did a session on "Using SharePoint Designer to Build a Dashboard-type View of Lists" and got to sit in on the session by Tony Testa (http://www.tonytestasworld.com/) called "AJAX in SharePoint".  Susan and I didn't have a long time to talk but she seemed to be a great person with some interesting experience with SharePoint 2007.  I'm hoping to have another chance to talk with her while out at Office Developer Conference in February.  Dave Mann did his session after mine and it was a great session on you guessed it Workflow and SharePoint.

As promised my presentation and code solutions are up on my Code Camp and User Group page and I just sent them to Philly Code Camp organizers and should be posted on their site shortly.  If anybody has any questions about the code please fill free to email at ml@(nospam)bandrsolutions.com

Cheers

Over the last few months I've spoke at 4 different events and have really enjoyed myself but I hadn't got around posting my presentations and code projects because other things kept me busy and I kept forgetting to.  This week I'm at home finishing up some code projects and have found some extra time to spend on my blog and catching up on other things.

Today I got around adding a new page to my blog for the presentations and code projects and just a few minutes ago uploaded all my presentations.  You can find them at http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mdlotter/pages/code-camp-and-user-group-presentations.aspx and later this week I'll add my code projects to.  I've really enjoyed speaking at these events and meeting a lot of new people.  I'm hoping that I'll have a lot more entries on this page this year and mean years to come.

Cheers

The Philly.Net Code Camp is coming up on Saturday, January 12^th at DeVry University in Fort Washington, PA and I'm happy to say that I will be giving a presentation at the event.  The presentation is titled "InfoPath 2007 with Visual Studio 2008".  The session walks through building a new InfoPath 2007 form, Web Service, .NET Class, Workflow and LDAP query with Visual Studio 2008.  The form will call the web service on opening to retrieve the current user Active Directory information and State list from SQL 2005 database to populate an InfoPath form drop down list.   A simple workflow will be created and deployed with Visual Studio 2008 for sending an email.  This presentation will cover more details than what I usually do and it will all be using Visual Studio 2008 and not 2005.  Information on attending and a list of all the tracks for the code camp can be found at http://www.philly.net.

In my opinion the Office track is jammed pack with great sessions and we have Bob Fox doing a session on SharePoint Disaster Recovery and Backup (Wow can't what to see what type of code Bob has).  A full list of all the Office sessions is listed below.

David Mann - Delivering Modular SharePoint Workflow Functionality via Components
Bob Fox - SharePoint Disaster Recovery, Backup and more...
Tony Testa - AJAX in SharePoint
Michael Lotter - InfoPath 2007 with Visual Studio 2008
Russ Basuira - Programming Composite Applications that use the SharePoint Business Data Catalog
Gary Blatt - Using OpenXML to Access Excel and other Office 2007 Files

I'm really excited about this opportunity because it gives me another opportunity to meet new people and to work on my speaking and presentation skills.  The last 2 code camps were a blast and I'm sure this one will be to, please come out and join us for a great time talking about writing code (things we love to do) and meeting new people.

Cheers