So I made the trip tonight to the .NET User group in Cincinnati. I've made it to a few, and hope to make it a regular event for me.
Came in and saw my friends Andy Erickson (manager type) and Rich Rayburn (.Net developer, among other skills)... both in need of jobs due to their employer having some bad times.
This month was the last meeting for their membership drive so they had some very valuable swag (free stuff!). An XBox 360, two MSDN Premium subscriptions (10K each), $1000 of free Max Technical Center training, and a few other items. Unfortunately I didn't win a thing, though Andy and Rich did!
The meeting was on REST. Basically a new way to do web services. Was pretty cool. Instead of calling functions you call URI's. The code looks exactly the same with one small difference, an attribute above the function (similar to [WebMethod] attribute). Wondering how I can implement this professionally because I think it could be useful.
Finally got a tour of Azure, the new 'cloud' computing solution from Microsoft. Can't say I get it.
Rich and Andy are the first people I know really affected by the soft economy. Not the fact that they are out of work, because I think some dynamics to their employment led to that... but because of a delay in finding new employment. People are afraid to spend money.
Well that is my recap for this month's meeting.