Colt Kwong Blog

A free WebChart control for ASP.NET was published by CarlosAg from the ASP.NET Team recently, it rocks!

Just complete my first presentation for my local Hong Kong .NET User Group yesterday, well, the number of attendee/members is a little bit out of my expectation! The venue provide 40 seats to me originally, but it turn out over (approximately) 120 (when I look at the audience on stage) members come here!!

(Here, I'd like to thanks to the The Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) - Department of Computing providing the venue and cooperation of increasing the room capability immediately for us!)

Based on the conversation between a couple of members and me after the presentation, I've noticed that... They're not quite satisfy for my presentation at all... the reason is "Too few codes", "To few demo", "You say too much", etc.

Yes, based on my experience in giving presentation to 'beginners', showing too many codes or demos is not cool, they feel confused and just like 'watching a cat playing a ball on sofa' - they've no much feeling or don't feel exciting about the demo/code, yes, I enjoy coding even on stage and a few of member may feel interesting, but the majority of beginnners who have no concept / idea about what I'm doing actually, well, but the situation is obviously changed now... Maybe I should change my mind and material for the next presentations...

Confused?! :(

There's a new Add-In control for Web Matrix as known as DbDiagrams, while I'm sure majority of people who like or dislike ASP.NET Web Matrix somehow is because it's lack of functionality and features compared with VS.NET 2003.

Well, these 2 products have 2 different design goal and target users. It's hard to compare them in 1-2 sentences. Anyway, more and more cool control / add-in come for this tool MUST increase the interest and usage for developers in this FREE (reloaded) ASP.NET Development Tool.

Therefore, CarlosAg, who work in the ASP.NET Team and as a quality assurance for the latest Web Matrix Reloaded version, recently wrote an article and teaching our fellow developers about how to write a add-in for Web Matrix.

Currenly, DbDiagram from Carlos is an interesting idea and add-in, while if any of you want the features like "IntelliSense", DB Layer code generator, multiple languages switch... These are potential add-in and I think this article is the way to go.

CarlosAg from the ASP.NET Team just release a very cool Add-In for the ASP.NET Web Matrix, and the name of this cool control is:
DbDiagrams for Web Matrix.

Being a contributing author of the ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook, I got the complimentary copy today!! Thanks to SAMS, Steve and Rob at first.

However, when I get the mail from the lobby and discover that...
the envelop WAS OPENED!!

Yes, I think of PaulWilson immediately as I remember he mentioned his experience about the Book in his blog in the past:

What's a good web page with attractive content and meaning ?

That's definitely one of my favorite:  ;-)

http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html 

My local .NET User Group will organize a series of technical presentation session for a tertiary education institution starting from July, and I'll be the first speaker in this series who are not MS employee :)

Yes, this is my first presentation to students for my User Group (We invited a local MS office developer evangelist as our speaker in the past presentations).
I don't know why but I don't feel any pressure for this presentation, it may due to the fact that I read lots of Presentation Tips here, such as Julia's Presentation Tips.

Ah... I still haven't mention the topic of the presentation - it's called Web Form Basic, Beginning ASP.NET, ASP.NET Getting Started, or whatever you like to name it.

I choose this topic as majority of the students in that institution are young and have few (or none) knowledge about ASP.NET . The lecturer in that institution just recruiting trainers to train themselves in this summer vocation extensively.
(Why the syllabus in tertiary educational institution or university still not yet include .NET?)

I hope I can draw the attention from the students, inspire and give some idea to them for their coming yearly-long project  :)

Preparing the slide for that presentation is quite easy, at least easier than my previous presentation in TechEd, anyway, I hope the students have interest in my presentation and don't fall asleep inside the lecturer threatre, although it's summer vocation for students here. ;)

My local Microsoft office annouce 3 new MVPs who have received awards for the 2003 first half award cycle, and their names were displayed on the official Microsoft local office web site!
* Yes, you can't see my name on the new web page and it's really odd that they even forgot I'm a MVP too or don't know who I am?!

haha, that's just kidding, I know these 3 MVPs in person and we 're friends and committee members of the HK .NET User Group, and 2 of them are the Vice Presidents in our .NET User Group, and the third one is an active member in other .NET community like CSharpFriends and CSharpCorner.