Skip to main content

Another Reason to visit SW Fox: Software, Software, Software

Doug recently linked to Kevin Ragsdale's post about why people should attend Southwest Fox. If you've been listening to the FoxShow recently, we've been interviewing speakers and there are more interviews to come in the next few weeks.

AKSEL is also proud to announce that we are offering two subscriptions to MSDN Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate for attendees. If you don't already have MSDN, this is effectively your way of getting every piece of business/developer related software from Microsoft.

Rick, Doug and Tamar will be drawing for the lucky attendee at this year's conference - so you have to be there to win it.

As a note, if you DO already have MSDN, Pay it forward and be sure to throw the subscription back into the hat for others who may not be getting it to get the chance to work with the latest development tools from Microsoft. Note: this subscription also includes great designer tools like Expression with Sketchflow which I love for prototyping applications.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction...

From Writing to AI: the pattern repeats itself

When I was ten years old, my dad bought a computer and, thanks to an advertising supplement in a Superman comic I read, it was a TRS-80. A month later, he dragged the entire family (my mom and brother were not the most enthusiastic) to a class at Radio Shack teaching how to use microcomputers. At the time, I understood why my mom wasn’t that excited: the computer was yet another gadget in the house. But today I find it fascinating. My mother went to Vassar in the 50s. She learned how to type — not a common skill at the time — but it opened doors. Her ability to communicate effectively led her to a career in adult education and later communications work with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). This isn’t a nostalgia post. Today, the ability to use artificial intelligence, be it through Copilot or simply writing the right prompt, is becoming a critical skill. But is it really that novel? In the 1500s and 1600s, the printing press gradually made reading accessible beyond cler...