Now that the first quarter of 2012 is just about over, and spring is in the air, there’s no better time to take advantage of Magenic’s incredible thought leaders. Take a look at just some of the great things they have been up to lately and what they have in store.
Rockford Lhotka: CSLA .NET Creator, CTO, Microsoft Regional Director & MVP
Recently, Microsoft hosted their annual MVP Global Summit in Redmond. The summit is intended to get the MVPs to interact with product teams to gain insight into current and future technologies coming from Microsoft. Rocky was one of six Magenic MVPs that made their way to the Summit. The other Magenicons that joined him were Jason Bock, Michael Cummings, Anthony Handley, Corey Miller, and Sergey Barskiy.
After releasing the beta of CSLA 4 version 4.3 in February, Rocky released CSLA 4 version 4.3, which adds support for Silverlight 5, in March. Now that Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Visual Studio 11 beta are available, Rocky’s working on CSLA 4 version 4.5. That version will target Windows 8, and WinRT specifically. Because CSLA 4 version 4.5 is a major release and will support and require Microsoft .NET 4.5, the plan is to release it shortly after Windows 8 and .NET 4.5 are released. To read more about it, Rocky and his wife, Teresa Lhotka, recently published an Overview of CSLA white paper on magenic.com. Rocky will continue to update his progress on his website. Additionally, he will be presenting at the Twin Cities Windows 8 user group on April 24, talking about CSLA support for Windows 8 and WinRT.
Coming up, some big events Rocky will be a part of are Visual Studio Live! (VS Live) and Dev Connections, both in Las Vegas at the end of March. Several Magenic consultants will also be speaking at one or both of the events, including Chris Williams, Sergey Barskiy, Jason Bock, and Steve Hughes. In fact, Magenic will be hosting a party on Thursday, March 29.
Ted Krueger: Senior Consultant, Microsoft MVP (SQL Server Stack)
Ted has kicked off spring in a big way. First and foremost, he’s been doing a lot of writing on SQL Server 2012. Still shooting for an April publish, Ted’s continued his work on his book, Expert Performance Indexing for SQL Server 2012. He also managed to conclude the writing stages of the new SQL Server 2012 Certifications Exams. As always, Ted’s been regularly updating his blog on LessThanDot, including topics like SQL Server Installation Error, Automating Index Statistics Collection, and Row-Level and Column-Level tracking in Merge Replication. Believe it or not, he recently surpassed 250 blog posts with over a half million views!
In addition to writing, Ted’s been making some presentations as well. He held a Data Mobility demonstration for the Madison SQL Server User Group and found it to be a great success. He’s also taken some time to mentor both the PASS regional membership and directly with future SQL Server professionals.
Upcoming, Ted will be making appearances at SQL Saturday in Madison, Chicago, and Indianapolis and is helping organize the Madison and Chicago events. In the approaching months, he plans on continuing his extensive writing and testing on SQL 2012.
Jason Bock: Principal Consultant, Microsoft MVP (C#)
Jason has plenty of things planned for the upcoming months. After speaking to the Twin Cities Silverlight User Group, Jason will be making his way to Las Vegas for VS Live at the end of March. While in Vegas, Jason will also be doing a presentation for the local .NET User Group. Following his excursion to Vegas, he will be back in Minnesota running the Twin Cities Code Camp where he’ll give a presentation as well. Further on down the road in May, Jason will be speaking at the Black Hole .NET User Group in Marshall, Wisconsin and VS Live in New York. On top of that, he is also getting close to finishing his book, Metaprogramming in .NET.
Michael Cummings: Principal Consultant, Microsoft MVP (Direct X and XNA)
Following the MVP Summit, Michael made a presentation to the New England Mobile.NET Developers Group on push notification services on a Windows Phone. Around the corner, Michael plans on continuing his spring appearances with a showing at the New England Code Camp on March 31. Then in April, Michael will be making a presentation for the Boston Azure Cloud User Group on the 24th and speaking at Boston SharePoint Saturday on the 28th.
The Magenic thought leaders have industry-leading knowledge that they go out of their way to share. Make sure you capitalize on the opportunities to learn from their experience.