I recently had the honor and privilege to be invited to the Microsoft Influencer Summit in Toronto Canada.  At first I must admit I was curious as to what was meant by an “Influencer”, but it was made very clear while I was at the event.  I made some amazing new friends that will probably last a life time, and met some of the nicest people I have ever run into in technology.  While there is a lot of stuff I won’t mention that went on during the three day Geek festival, here is a quick snapshot of the three days, that culminated with Energize IT!

Awesome Energize IT Keynote

What can I say, that was the best introduction to an event I have seen in a long time. John Oxley kicked things off with a bang and really got the crowd pumped and motivated for the day!  Picture the Tony Robbins of Geek’s, the Alpha Geek!  Want to see the video?  You better be running Silverlight! Double click to put in full screen!

Finding Great Developers and IT People is not just hard, but nearly becoming a crisis in Canada

There is definitely an IT shortage going on as we speak.  And honestly, it doesn’t look good at all for our industry.  It’s great if you are a software developer, but if you are a company owner, or manager charged with finding talent, and keeping them, you are in serious trouble.  Even though technology is in nearly everything these days, and it would seem there are a ton reasons to get into the field, there really aren’t a lot of people out there!

Most everyone agrees that the only real way to get any decent software developers worth their keyboard and mouse, is through connecting with people.  Advertising in papers doesn’t work.  Looking on Monster doesn’t work.  Lots of things don’t work.  The only way to get awesome software developers is to connect via blogs, community events, and geek conventions such as Energize IT.

Wicked Demo’s

We got to see some of the best technology demonstrations I have ever seen.  The Power of Technology – Energize IT Demo competition was the highlight of the Energize IT event.  Three teams were pitted against each other, and a panel a la American Idol judged the contestants.  Oisin Grehan, Microsoft Powershell MVP showed off the power of Powershell.  I was pretty impressed.  I sat beside him at the Influencer Summit and was super curious to see what he was working on the whole time.  Must definitely check out Powershell in more depth, its clearly not just for administrators.  I’ll put up another Silverlight video here when I get back to Winnipeg. The video is now up!  Check it out!  Great job by LandOfSilly.com music master, Sean Kearney.  Also in the video is Oisin Grehan and Rodney Buike.

Not only where the demos a lot of fun, but the MSDN Code awards were given out.  One of them really touched my heart as I just lost a loved one to cancer.  Alexei Kouznetsov developed an analytical software tool for the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer from histology specimens.

The tool provides an objective, reproducible, and automated measure of the architectural complexity of a tumor which has been shown to be related to tumor grade. Hence, it has the potential to determine a patient’s prognosis and thereby guide the choice of better cancer treatment strategies.

Learning Soft Skills

It’s funny, the main reason I started this blog was to give back to the community and share two big things I felt were missing in most software developers.  The first being soft skills training.  How many times have you met a great software developer that is missing the soft skills?  I wanted to help solve that problem by showing software developers how to develop those skills.  The second is showing real world examples of solutions to software development problems.

During the first day of the Microsoft Influencer Summit soft skills training was the focus.  I thought it was amazing!  I loved the whole concept and really enjoyed the day.  Without giving away any details of the day, if you are a software developer, middle manager, or even team lead out there that wants to help shape their company, sector, or even your own teams, YOU MUST LEARN SOFT SKILLS. 

Taking Your Software Development Career to the Next Level

I have been thinking a lot about doing a talk at our Winnipeg .net User Group on “Taking Your Software Development Career to the Next Level”.  I’m curious who would be interested.  It might even be a separate event, and try and get other user groups in the city to send their members, and have the Winnipeg .net User Group be the official sponsor, and do a 10 minute “Silverlight and Expressions in 600 Seconds”, which would give us time to demonstrate the awesome designer developer workflow that is available in Expression Studio.

I really think these things are important, as it seems like the schools are just plainly ignoring this important piece of the puzzle.  As I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion, you need to have a nice blend of technical, and soft skills if you really want to propel your career to the next level.

The Winnipeg Connection

I’m not even kidding, everywhere I turned and mentioned I was from Winnipeg, people mentioned “I am from Winnipeg!” or “My friend is from Winnipeg” or “I used to live in Winnipeg”.  Heck the current Obi One of Software Developers, Scot Gu’s dad is from Winnipeg!  There were some interesting theories from everyone as to why Winnipeg seems to be the Mecca of .net Developers.  The predominant reason is since it is -40 for half the year, our only options are to drink, or develop software.  In fact, there were some interesting theories around how many beers mixed with programming would cause optimal bug free software to be created.

Live Mesh is a Huge Buzz

I’ve talked about Live Mesh before.  I decided I would ware the Live Mesh shirt to the Influencer Summit.  I was able to finally get onto the “Mesh” while I was down here, and it’s pretty freaking cool is all I can say.  I can’t wait for the API’s to come online!

Right now all it has is synch for computers, and remote desktop.  Expect this to expand very quickly over the next few months.  The coolest thing about Mesh is it’s really an “operating system” for building web applications.  The tools to build them?  Visual Studio, Expression Studio, and possibly other awesome tools.

The possibilities that are coming with Live Mesh and Silverlight are truly awesome.  I can’t wait to see these things come out fully for everyone to develop on.

Miguel, Why Getting So Involved in Community Suddenly?

I’ve been involved for a few years now, but honestly?  Two reasons. 

The first thing I should say is I was scared to get really involved at first because I didn’t want to be seen as an attention grabber or something like that.  There are enough of those “fakers” in our industry, as Justice Gray points out. My personal character is the most important thing to me.  But I was getting really worried!  Seriously I saw the resumes coming in, I saw the decline in great people coming out of schools.  At the same time, Darcy Lucier and Sasha Krsmanovic had started really getting the community going in Winnipeg and I wanted to help.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to get involved was: There is definitely a shortage of talent in Canada, especially in Winnipeg lately.  Trying to build a team of developers, and launching some really cool products, I am extremely worried that I won’t have the people I need locally to get the job done.  Some might say, focus on building the products and what you are doing, but honestly, what is the biggest problem?  People!  I’m not worried about being able to build cool stuff people want to use at all.  What scares me to death is that kids in Colleges and University’s, even in High School, are not getting into IT like before!  Why?  There are many reasons, but I truly believe that a passionate team of leaders across Canada, through user groups and other software development events like the one’s Microsoft puts on every year, can change this trend! 

Let me be clear: If this does not change, and if we can’t get more people ENERGIZED about Software Development and IT, we are going to have a HUGE issue in Canada as Technology is the backbone for nearly EVERY business sector.  Period.

The second reason?  I wanted to give back.  My family came to Canada with barely any money at all.  My dad worked his butt off to get me through private school, and software development really changed my life.  I really want to give back.  I figure if I can change the lives of even 10 developers a year (hopefully more) for the next 10 years even, and if those 10 can change other people’s lives, the impact it can have on making our profession grow to levels we can’t even imagine, will be huge!  Everyone will benefit!

So To Summarize

For those that think Microsoft doesn’t innovate anymore, they should check this out.  Here are just a small percentage of some of the best things that are coming out from Microsoft, some of which are already out:

1. IIS7.  Freaking amazing and rocks!  As Derek Hatchard pointed out, think of billions of Web Servers being shipped in one package.
2. Live Mesh.  It’s going to change the web.  “The Windows” of the” Web”
3. Community Stuff.  There is some awesome stuff coming next year.  Can’t say anything yet, but stay tuned!
4. Silverlight.  It changed the Web!  It woke up the sleeping giant in Adobe, and forced them to actually come out with a new product.
5. PowerShell.  Microsoft Windows PowerShell command line shell and scripting language helps IT professionals achieve greater control and productivity.
6. Live Search and other Live Products.  They are actually getting really cool.  I can honestly say that Live Image Search, and Live Video search is way better than Google’s tools.   In a few months, Live Search for Web will get even better.
7. Windows Live Messenger Development.  Rocks!  If you want to add web chat to your web site, you can now do so, and its free.
8. Tons of other stuff like Hyper V, Windows 2008, BitLocker, SQL Server 2008, SharePoint 2007, Microsoft Dynamics, PhotoSynth, WorldWideTelescope.

Microsoft has really focused on the software developers with all of their tools.  That is was makes them so different than every other Web 2.0 company out there.  The fact that I can develop for nearly all of their Live products using the same syntax and tools that I am used to when building business applications, is truly powerful.  Check out ComputerWorlds article that shows that most developers are happier with Microsoft Live Development Platform, over any other company including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay.

What A Blast!

Anyway, I had a blast.  Thanks to everyone at Microsoft for putting this together.  Microsoft tends to get a pretty bad rap about being evil and what not, but the reality is, the guys and ladies I met at Microsoft Canada are world class, and really trying to make a difference in the world by leveraging technology.  The efforts they are putting into community are nothing short of amazing.  The amount of money they put into R&D to get software to the next level is insane.

It was awesome to talk to people like John Oxley, Director Community Evangelism at Microsoft, and just hearing the passion he has for building the software development community in Canada.  It was great to hear the stories from Phil Sorgen, President of Microsoft Canada on how he was in Winnipeg this past February.  Clearly he must have lost a bet or something?

A special thanks to John Bristowe for getting me involved in all this.  It was definitely a highlight in my career.

Larger post coming, but it was a crazy week with Microsoft at the Influencer Summit that culminated with Energize IT today in Toronto!  I have to say, Microsoft is lucky to have a team of passionate and brilliant people like they do running the Microsoft Canada operation.  World class team that’s for sure.  What an amazing experience, and I have to be honest, the stuff that Microsoft is doing in the next year is going to blow people’s socks off.  Probably their shirts and pants as well.  Not only are they innovating from a product perspective, but from a community perspective as well!  I have tons of notes, pictures, and videos that I will be posting once I can digest everything. 

I had an incredible time, saw some old friends, and made some new connections that are going to last a lifetime.  The one common trend was, it seemed like everyone knew someone from Winnipeg, or was originally from Winnipeg.  It’s freaky to tell you the truth.   Sasha made a great observation that the only real thing he can think of for this being the case is that their is not much more to do in Winnipeg other than program during the winter.  I would have to agree. 

Stay tuned!