Upcoming Talks

March 31, 2017
Indianapolis, IN

Event Details

Indy.Code()

ASP.NET Core’s Built-in Dependency Injection Framework

ASP.NET Core comes with its own built-in dependency injection (DI) framework. DI allows you to write better, more loosely-coupled code, and now with it built right into your favorite web development framework, you don’t have to do anything extra to be able to use this important design pattern in your code.

Already have your own favorite DI framework? No worries, you can use that too. I’ll show you how to integrate a few popular DI frameworks into the highly-extensible ASP.NET framework. I’ll show you how to do it all and show you examples in this session.

March 31, 2017
Indianapolis, IN

Event Details

Indy.Code()

TypeScript: The Why and the How

With the growing popularity of libraries like Angular 2, its underlying language–TypeScript–is also growing quickly in popularity.

In this session I’ll give you much more than just a basic introduction to the language and its syntax and constructs–I’ll give you the reasons why you should care from a software engineering perspective. We’ll also take a look at the tooling that comes with TypeScript and how it can help you incorporate it into your next JavaScript project.

April 4, 2017
Grand Rapids, MI

Event Details

Computing Seminar

Seeing Your Career as an Adventure

In my 18-year professional career, I have had many adventures for many kinds, and some misadventures too. People, opportunities, and my own choices have all played a role in changing the trajectory of my professional life in ways I couldn’t have dreamed when I was first starting out.

These twists and turns have allowed me to work for startups, travel the world speaking at conferences, start my own company, and recently, they even lead my family and I to tour the entire country for a year while living in an RV–all while I continued working for my employer remotely.

I hope that hearing about some of my adventures will inspire you to see your own experiences and opportunities in a different light, and to look for opportunities to join in on your own adventure already in progress.

 
 

Recent Talks

April 30, 2016
Chicago, IL

Event Details

Chicago Code Camp

Work Remote: Extreme Edition

Have you already been to enough deep technical dives today? Take a break from all that and join me as I take you on my year-long adventure to the all 48 of the contiguous states which was enabled by technomadism–that is, being a technological nomad. I’ll talk about how I was able to work remotely–including some practical tips from my experience, and answer some of the most common questions: how we lived, where we went, what we did with our house, how we taught the kids…all of it! I’ll also tell stories about some of the best (and worst) experiences.

At the end, I hope you can walk away with some inspiration and ideas that might spark your own adventure, whatever that may be.

May 6, 2016
Columbus, OH

Event Details

Stir Trek

Work Remote: Extreme Edition

Have you already been to enough deep technical dives today? Take a break from all that and join me as I take you on my year-long adventure to the all 48 of the contiguous states which was enabled by technomadism–that is, being a technological nomad. I’ll talk about how I was able to work remotely–including some practical tips from my experience, and answer some of the most common questions: how we lived, where we went, what we did with our house, how we taught the kids…all of it! I’ll also tell stories about some of the best (and worst) experiences.

At the end, I hope you can walk away with some inspiration and ideas that might spark your own adventure, whatever that may be.

 

April 13, 2016
Ann Arbor, MI

Event Details

Ann Arbor .NET Developers Group

Dapper: Using a Micro ORM for Maximum Data Performance

During it’s history, .NET data access has evolved–first from raw ADO.NET, the to DataSource components, LINQ-to-SQL, and finally Entity Framework and other full-service ORMs. If you’ve used any of these feature-bloated ORMs, you’ve probably wished at times for something simpler and more direct. Micro ORMs attempt to solve these problems, and also bring a major performance boost along for the ride.

In this session we’ll look at Dapper, a popular micro ORM for .NET, and several of it’s extensions. You’ll learn how to use these components to create fast, readable, and easy data access for your applications.

March 12, 2016
Grand Rapids, MI

Event Details

Grand Rapids DevDay

ASP.NET Core 1.0: Someone Moved Your Cheese

With the release of ASP.NET Core 1.0, Microsoft has made great strides in creating a very modern and powerful platform for web developers. They’ve embraced open source tools like grunt and NPM, and brought ASP.NET into the cutting edge of web development.

These new features come at the cost of moving some things around and changing how some familiar features of ASP.NET worked before. In this session, I’ll walk you through those changes so you can use them to your advantage instead of having them feel daunting when you’re ready to do your first ASP.NET Core 1.0 app.

February 17, 2016
Southfield, MI

Event Details

Great Lakes Area .NET User Group

Dapper: Using a Micro ORM for Maximum Data Performance

During it’s history, .NET data access has evolved–first from raw ADO.NET, the to DataSource components, LINQ-to-SQL, and finally Entity Framework and other full-service ORMs. If you’ve used any of these feature-bloated ORMs, you’ve probably wished at times for something simpler and more direct. Micro ORMs attempt to solve these problems, and also bring a major performance boost along for the ride.

In this session we’ll look at Dapper, a popular micro ORM for .NET, and several of it’s extensions. You’ll learn how to use these components to create fast, readable, and easy data access for your applications.

November 14, 2015
Detroit, MI

Event Details

Detroit DevDay

ASP.NET 5: Someone Moved Your Cheese

 

With the release of ASP.NET 5, Microsoft has made great strides in creating a very modern and powerful platform for web developers. They’ve embraced open source tools like grunt and NPM, and brought ASP.NET into the cutting edge of web development.

These new features come at the cost of moving some things around and changing how some familiar features of ASP.NET worked before. In this session, I’ll walk you through those changes so you can use them to your advantage instead of having them feel daunting when you’re ready to do your first ASP.NET 5 app.

 

October 24, 2015
Milwaukee, WI

Event Details

Milwaukee CodeCamp

Model-View-Whatever: A Comparison of JavaScript MVC/MVP/MVVM Frameworks

 

It seems like there is a hot new MVC/MVP/MVVM framework for JavaScript every few days. You’ve probably heard of many of them, but which one should you use for your project?

I’ll take you through several popular and important options and help you compare and contrast them. When you leave, you should feel more comfortable telling your boss which framework you should use for your next project and–more importantly–why.

 

October 24, 2015
Milwaukee, WI

Event Details

Milwaukee CodeCamp

ASP.NET 5: Someone Moved Your Cheese

 

With the release of ASP.NET 5, Microsoft has made great strides in creating a very modern and powerful platform for web developers. They’ve embraced open source tools like grunt and NPM, and brought ASP.NET into the cutting edge of web development.

These new features come at the cost of moving some things around and changing how some familiar features of ASP.NET worked before. In this session, I’ll walk you through those changes so you can use them to your advantage instead of having them feel daunting when you’re ready to do your first ASP.NET 5 app.

 

October 15, 2015
Grand Rapids, MI

Event Details

Grand Rapids DevNight

Visual Studio 2015

Visual Studio 2015 has long been a powerful IDE, and the 2015 release doubles-down on that tradition with many new and improved features to help unlock your potential as a developer. In this session we’ll review some of my favorite new features including refactoring assistance, shared projects, debugging improvements, mobile development capabilities, better design support, and revision control enhancements, to name just a few. We’ll also cover some of the underlying changes that power these features, such as the new Roslyn compiler, .NET Framework 4.6, and .NET Core 5. If you’re overwhelmed by Microsoft’s newest IDE and would like a tour of its coolest features, join me for this hour-long deep-dive.

June 9, 2015
Parsippany, NJ

Event Details

Northern NJ .NET User Group

Take Control of your ORM with Entity Framework Code-First

Entity Framework has long been a great ORM (object-relational mapper) for .NET developers. In the last few years the team at Microsoft has even added support for additional workflows in addition to the original “database first” one.
 
In this session, I’ll show you how you can flip the old EF workflow on its head by starting with your C# code, then generating a database from it. We’ll also look at creating your own entity classes, mapping your new entities to a data store, and versioning your database. 
 

Join me as we look at this powerful new way to use Entity Framework.

May 25, 2015
New York, NY

Event Details

New York Alt.NET User Group

Take Control of your ORM with Entity Framework Code-First

Entity Framework has long been a great ORM (object-relational mapper) for .NET developers. In the last few years the team at Microsoft has even added support for additional workflows in addition to the original “database first” one.
 
In this session, I’ll show you how you can flip the old EF workflow on its head by starting with your C# code, then generating a database from it. We’ll also look at creating your own entity classes, mapping your new entities to a data store, and versioning your database. 
 

Join me as we look at this powerful new way to use Entity Framework.

May 20, 2015
Arlington, VA

Event Details

DC Tech Talk

SPAs with ASP.NET: Don’t Forget the Server-Side

Single-page applications (SPAs) are very popular right now, but they can also be difficult to create. In this session, we will see how SPAs work and see how you can get started creating your own. We will also look at a number of different client-side libraries that will help you create better SPAs.

The client-side is only half of the story, though. In this session we’ll also cover the most overlooked part of a SPA: the server-side technology. We will look at the different ways that ASP.NET running on the server can help you create better client-side applications including things like data services, partial views, localization, validation, and security.


April 23, 2015
Blacksburg, VA

Event Details

New River Valley .NET User Group

30 Tools for Modern .NET Web Development in 60 Minutes

Are you a .NET developer interested in crafting high-quality, modern web applications? I’ve got 30 tools I want to show you in just 60 short minutes. I’ll introduce you to these tools that I think will help make your software and life better.

Buckle your seat belts and come prepared to jot down some notes on the items that will be the most helpful to you. You might want to reference them later, because to finish them all, we’ll be moving fast!


April 16, 2015
Louisville, KY

Event Details

Louisville .NET Meetup

30 Tools for Modern .NET Web Development in 60 Minutes

Are you a .NET developer interested in crafting high-quality, modern web applications? I’ve got 30 tools I want to show you in just 60 short minutes. I’ll introduce you to these tools that I think will help make your software and life better.

Buckle your seat belts and come prepared to jot down some notes on the items that will be the most helpful to you. You might want to reference them later, because to finish them all, we’ll be moving fast!

angularkendoui
March 24, 2015
Charlotte, NC

Event Details

Enterprise Developers Guild

Kendo UI s AngularJS

Telerik’s Kendo UI framework provides everything you need to create great JavaScript applications, including a world-class UI widget library. But in recent years, AngularJS has exploded onto the scene and is increasingly becoming a popular and elegant framework for creating web applications. Angular, however, lacks its own built-in widget library.

This could have created a nearly perfect match, but when Angular first came along, using it with Kendo UI wasn’t easy. That all changed recenty when Telerik added support for AngularJS into Kendo UI, and now the two can finally be together!

Join me as I walk you through an introduction to both frameworks and show you how you too can make amazing web applications with AngularJS + Kendo UI.

“Mobile Web Development is Easy with Kendo UI Mobile”

September 20-21, 2014 – San Francisco, CA
@ FalafelCon
Details

“30 Tools for Modern .NET Web Development in 60 Minutes”

September 20-21, 2014 – San Francisco, CA
@ FalafelCon
Details

“30 Tools for Modern .NET Web Development in 60 Minutes”

August 7, 2014 – Salt Lake City, UT
@ North Utah .NET User Group
Details

“SPAs with ASP.NET”

August 6, 2014 – Provo, UT
Utah County .NET User Group
Details

“30 Tools for Modern .NET Web Development in 60 Minutes”

June 19, 2014 – Minneapolis, MN
@Twin Cities .NET User Group
Details