As a consultant I am expected to be up to speed, if not an expert, on a wide range of technologies.  With the pace that technology changes, staying current can be an exhausting and seemingly never ending challenge.  One of my favorite avenues for satisfying these expectations is attending local user groups and conferences. 

My favorite local conference is easily Twin Cities Code Camp.  This fall?s camp takes place October 9th and 10th and will be held at the University of Minnesota (yep, a weekend but the Vikings don?t play until Monday so that?s no excuse not to attend).  The organizers do a fantastic job of lining up quite a few locally and nationally recognized speakers and (as always) it is a free event!  The schedule, except for a few slots, has just been published.  There are 45 different sessions scheduled and topics include good old ASP.Net, mobile app development, security, Silverlight, WCF, ALM, Windows Azure and about 10 other subjects (some of which I haven?t even heard of yet).  I?ll be speaking at this event for the first time this year, I?m doing the Intro to Azure session at 3:45 on Saturday so come on out and join me, heckle me, quiz me, grill me ? whatever.

A couple other upcoming events I?ll be attending include this week?s Azure (virtual) Users Group talk on 10 Architectural/Design Considerations for Running in the Azure Cloud and the talk on Expression Blend for Developers at the September 15 MN Visual Studio user group.

I hope to see you out at one or more of these events.