Tatham Oddie

Readify’s CTO Mitch Denny just announced Damian and myself as the first two Readify staff to receive the new title of “Technical Specialist”. This is an additional title to represent technical focus beyond our standard consulting commitments. Over the coming weeks, this will be awarded in a number of key technology areas. Obviously, for Damian and myself, it’s the web.

As part of the position we needed to do a bit of a refresh on our consulting profiles, a component of which is a blurb about why we work in the industry. Having just written mine, I felt like sharing it:

The web was never a platform I explicitly sought out; it was more so somewhere I ended up, but I ended up here for a reason. The shear breadth and power of the web, from both technical and business perspectives, made it a natural fit as I developed my career and skill sets.

I’ve always been fascinated by how a relatively simple set of building blocks designed through the 70s and 80s now underpin so much of what we do today. Video calling might look all fancy and futuristic, but it’s still sitting on much of that same technology. It’s this ability to foster evolution and innovation in an open, neutral and (mostly) democratic way that makes the web both possible and exciting.

Mass organic adoption of the web has today given us a heterogeneous environment of networks, devices and software clients that can be quite accurately described as somewhat hostile. Navigating these challenges to deliver a robust and compelling solution, while also seeking to drive the web forward, is what I do as a web specialist.

Microsoft’s early forays into web development were designed to make it an easy transition for their existing community of developers. This approach has resulted in a generation of developers who work on the web without necessarily being fully aware of its scope or potential. Microsoft’s current push is to now bring these developers across to the next iteration of the web. Engaging these audiences and encouraging them to that take that next step is a key component of what I do as an active community member.

In an ever increasingly connected world, now is the time to work on the web.

Why do you work on the web?

(While you’re thinking about it, check out iworkontheweb.com)

Close on the heels of TechEd Australia, Readify have announced their latest Dev Day event. This time, we’ve also tweaked the structure a little bit so that instead of having two tracks at the same time we’ll be running a morning track and an afternoon track. This way you get to see it all, or just pop in for the half day if you want.

Richard Banks will be presenting in the morning on Software Quality and Application Lifecycle Management, split into:

• Gathering Quality Requirements for Agile Development Teams, and an
• Introduction to Visual Studio Team System 2010.

In the afternoon, I’ll be covering Building for the Web with .NET through three different presentations:

• Building Fast, Standards Compliant ASP.NET Websites,
• ASP.NET MVC: Building for the web, and an
• Introduction to the ASP.NET Web Forms Model-View-Presenter framework.

For my talks, you can find some teasers between my last two blog posts and CodePlex.

To see it all, you’ll just have to come along though.

More info at: http://readify.net/training-and-events/rdn-dev-days/

See you there!

Following up from my last post about the ASP.NET MVC vs ASP.NET WebForms debate, we’ve had a second TechTalk posted, also from TechEd Australia. In this video, Michael Kordahi, Damian Edwards and I sat down to discuss building fast, public websites. It was a bit of a teaser for our breakout session at the conference, which will be available online as a screencast in the next week or two.

If you’re interested in learning more about building large public websites on ASP.NET, remember that the full video from our recent REMIX session is still available online too.

Watch Online or Download

At the recent TechEd Australia conference, Paul Glavich, Damian Edwards and myself sat down to discuss what we thought about the current MVC vs WebForms debate. Our TechTalk has now been posted on the TechEd Online site, and available for anyone to watch.

Check it out, and feel free to continue the debate with any of us.

Watch Online or Download