It has been a really long time since I have written a blog entry and it is not because of a lack of interesting information to share. In the last 6 months I have spoken at the Tallahassee code camp, the Tampa code camp, and the Jacksonville code camp. That produced 3 brand new sessions that are now available in the downloads section (one on SQL Server HTTP Endpoints, An updated Software Factories session, and a 20 tips for the CLR v2.0 session). I have also shifted my focus temporarily (in terms of research, writing, and presenting) to a more technically oriented track. Over these past six months I have read through Jeff Richter's CLR book and I am about half way through Steven Pratschner's book on CLR customization.

You might be wondering why I made such a radical shift in my focus. Well without going into detail, let me just say that having technical depth is always a great skill to maintain. You also have to exercise those deep technical muscles or they will deteriourate. I learned a valuable lesson (fortunately early in my career) to never forget the fundamentals. Re-dedicating myself to learning how the CLR works (specifically in .NET 2.0) has been well worth the time invested. This does not mean I've lost interest in the technology stack that is coming out with .NET 3.0. I continue to be very interested in WCF, WF and Infocard (to be honest the last one is still a bit of a black box to me but I'll get into that one as time permits).

I don't have time to dive into everything that has gone on over the past six months so I'll just close with this. There is a big Vista launch event coming up in January of '07 in Tampa Florida. That is likely the next place I'll be speaking. If the VS 2005, SQL 2005, BTS 2006 launch was any indication this will be a great time. Getting to speak again in front of well over 1000 people is a thrill! I also would like to mention that I have a couple of new articles for everyone to take a look at. They are posted in the articles section on my site (soapitstop.com). One was posted in the Architecture Journal (architecturejournal.net) and another was posted in the september issue of SQL Server Standard. I also have another article coming out in the next issue of the Architecture Journal (issue number 9) about software factories.

Hopefully this is interesting to some of you and with any luck some of you have left me in your blog reader even though I went dark for this long. I promise you I'll be updating you all more regularly in the future. I could have some very exciting news in the next few weeks that I would love to post. Be sure to keep checking in!