The thing about Top Tips is that everyone who has one to give away always thinks that everyone knows them so they don’t bother giving them. However, it is true that not everyone knows everything so someone somewhere will find the Top Tip useful so they must always be told. Here’s one that is probably obvious to many people but I hope it is still useful to someone...

There are loads of presentations that are available either as part of a conference DVD (like TechEd) or are just available online for free downloads (like DDD and MIX). The problem is that there just isn’t time to watch all of these presentations. So often what I do is convert the WMV files to WMA (I use Digital Media Converter but you could use anything) and listen to them in the car or on an MP3 player. Yes, obviously you don’t get to see the pictures and that’s a bit of a loss but from experience I can tell you that it is quite interesting how much of a presentation you can pick up just by listening to the audio track. And let’s face it after you’ve finished listening to NxtGen, Craig Murphy, .NET Rocks, Hansel Minutes, Mark Kermode and everything else what else are you going to listen to ?

Technorati Tags: Podcasts, TechEd, MIX, Digital Media Converter, NxtGen, Craig Murphy, .NET Rocks, Hansel Minutes, Mark Kermode

The trouble with getting lucky once is that it is very hard to do it twice. My NxtGen debut in Coventry went really well but now they want me to come back and make it go really well again.

So I’m off to Birmingham to the home of Dave "Swag Miester" McMahon and Geff "Been To More User Group Meetings Than Is Good For Just One Person" Lombardi (I’m still working on those snappy, pithy quips). The date is Monday 24th September 2007 and the subject is:-

• Using ClickOnce and XBAPs To Deploy Windows Forms and WPF Applications
  ClickOnce provides the ease of web form deployment for Windows Forms applications. The same technology is used in XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs) which are Windows Presentation Foundation applications that are hosted in a browser. This session introduces the ClickOnce technology and demonstrates its use in many scenarios including: zero touch deployment, one touch deployment, reversion to previous versions, uninstallation. We also cover deploying WPF applications through the browser (known as XBAPs) and illustrate the similarities and differences between XBAPs, MSI-deployed WPF applications and Windows Forms applications deployed using ClickOnce. This session represents an opportunity to understand how to get the ease of web deployment together with richness of Windows Forms or WPF.

Full details here. See you there.

Those Next Generation User Group boys have been busy again and their latest podcast is the one from DDD5. Lots of interviews and fun with the boys and people from the community.

Technorati Tags: DDD5, NxtGenUG, Richard Costall, Dave McMahon

Last night we had the July meeting of the .NET Developer Network. This meeting was an experiment as it broke from the normal formula of one or more traditional user group presentations by a single speaker. Instead the evening was split into two halves: 4 grok talks and a group discussion. The 4 grok talks were presented by members of the .NET Developer Network: Chris Myhill did Refactor For ASP.NET, Will Holley did MbUnit, Jeremy Nevill did Beyond Compare and Mike Doherty did Resharper. This is what user groups are all about: 4 people distributing their knowledge and enthusiasm about a subject to the rest of the group. Each speaker simply presented an honest opinion of why they liked their product and why it made a difference to them. This kind of directness is so compelling and I, like others I spoke to, were compelled to try out new products that we wouldn’t normally had done because we had been given a kick start. I was also impressed with the effectiveness of the presentations and would like to thank Chris, Will, Jeremy and Mike for their work in preparing and presenting their subjects - well done, chaps.

The second half of the evening was a group discussion on development practices led by Adam Towler of Bluewire Technologies. The group discussion was Adam’s idea to harness the potential of the user group. The idea is that the traditional user group format is a worthy one but it is missing an opportunity. Adam proposed this idea some time ago and I am delighted that he did as I would have to say that it demonstrated a side of the user group that could have gone untapped. We moved the chairs into a rough circle and Adam moderated the discussion. Naturally there is one part of me that wondered "will anyone have anything to say ?" but then I remembered that we were at a user group and I recalled Princess Fiona saying to Shrek about Donkey "It talks!" and Shrek replying "Yeah, it’s getting him to shut up that’s the trick" and I realised we had nothing to worry about. Adam did a great job not just of moderating the discussion but also of verbally poking people and good naturedly ensuring that a contribution was mandatory. I was very pleased with the discussion itself but also because people can see that the members of the group have faces and personalities and that user groups need not be a uni-directional flow of information from the speaker to the group. I would recommend this kind of meeting to other user groups.

For everyone who wanted to know more about the hastily prepared Microsoft Codename "Astoria" grok talk that I did you can get more information at http://astoria.mslivelabs.com.

Finally, if you are a member of the group please take a moment to fill out the surveys on the site (after you log in you will see a new menu item called Surveys). There are 4 as of this morning.

Technorati Tags: DotNetDevNet, Chris Myhill, Will Holley, Jeremy Nevill, Mike Doherty, Adam Towler,