Are you a student in the North East and interested in technology or do you know of any North East based students who are interested in technology?  Would you like the opportunity to change the world and potentially win a free trip to Sydney, Australia?

If you've read this far then you must be interested, so what is this all about?  The Microsoft Imagine Cup, that's what!  The Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world's top student technology competition.  Ever year Microsoft gives students a fantastic opportunity to envisage, create and deliver a technology solution that addresses the Imagine Cup slogan - "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems!"   The Microsoft Imagine Cup theme this year is inspired by the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Sunderland Software City and Codeworks have teamed up this year to run a regional heat of the Microsoft Imagine Cup to highlight the fantastic talent that exists in our great region!

Imagine Cup North East - Are you up for a challenge? from Codeworks Ltd on Vimeo.

The Imagine Cup North East is an exciting opportunity for students to work together in teams to solve some of the worlds toughest problems, learn new skills, make new friends, win prizes (did I mention the grand final is in Sydney, Australia?) and test themselves against the other UK and Worldwide teams.

So how do you get involved?  Why not come along to one of the taster events to find out more on Thursday February 2nd in Newcastle (17:30-20:00) and on Friday February 3rd in Teeside (17:30-20:00).  At these events you'll see presentations from Microsoft about the competition, kits available and outcomes required and then on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th February you'll be whisked off to a secret location for a 36 hour non-stop hackathon to work on your team projects

To find out more check out the Imagine Cup North East website - http://www.imaginecupnortheast.co.uk and follow the Imagine Cup North East on Twitter - http://twitter.com/imaginecupne

If you're not a student but would still like to get involved the competition is also looking for Mentors and Sponsors, so get in touch with the Imagine Cup North East, let's get behind the fantastic talent in our region and show the rest of country and hopefully the world how good they are!!

Finally I'll leave you in the capable hands of Captain Rob Miles to give you some more information on the Microsoft Imagine Cup

We as professionals in the Computer Science industry have a responsibility to aid and assist our individual education systems in educating and encourage the next generations of Computing Professionals, be they Developers, IT Professionals, Testers etc.

Change is Coming!

Michael Gove announced recently that the current Information and Communications Technology (ICT) curriculum in England is to be replaced in September 2012. This was all announced at the BETT show and the current curriculum was described as demotivating and dull.

I have long been concerned about the quality and delivery of the ICT curriculum in schools with the curriculum being insipid and not enough time devoted to it (indeed I am little concerned about how this new change will be implemented as I have heard stories of Teachers who believe that any ICT curriculum doesn't need to be taught anymore!).

I indeed remember countless years spending many hours in Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Access. Indeed my first exposure to Access came with the instruction from my ICT Teacher "learn how to use it and then teach me!" Fortunately for me despite spending year after year doing the same thing I was also learning how to code and make more productive use of my own Commodore 64 at home with the support of my parents.

However had I not had that support and encouragement it's likely I would have become disillusioned with IT and moved away from it, I did consider a career as a solicitor for a while, but the draw of the World Wide Web and the endless possibilities captured my imagination.

It is the imagination of the young fertile minds in our school system which we as an industry have been losing for many years with an insipid and dull curriculum which demotivates and makes Computer Science seem boring and unchallenging. Indeed if I started at an early age and spent the next 5-10 years only being exposed to Office programmes I too would quickly decide that IT/Computing was boring and unattractive. Indeed my own brother went through a process of completing an NVQ in IT at GCSE level but when presented with options at A Level his school decided to only deliver an advanced version of the SAME course rather than the Computing qualification which included programming, scripting and networking. Hence someone who is very competent and enjoyed working with computers quickly determined that he would never move towards a career in IT ever! A great loss to our community! This is just one personal example how many more are there. Indeed when I finished my BA (Hons) Business Computing degree many of my peers were of the opinion that computing was the last field they wanted to work in. This I'm afraid is a sad indictment of the state of Computer Science curriculum throughout our education system.

Call To Action!

This recent acknowledgment by the government that our Computer Science curriculum is not good enough and does not match the needs of industry has taken far too long in my honest opinion, but looking at the positive aspect there is now an agenda for change and a visible campaign to increase the quality and breadth of Computer Science teaching. However now is the time for us as an industry to influence and assist our Teachers. In the same way that we spend time educating ourselves and each other on the latest advancements, methods, languages and Computer Science technology we now need to find ways in which to take this enthusiasm and skill into the classroom and lecture theatres.

Get Involved!

Professionally we have user groups and societies in order to foster learning and to advance our own knowledge and equally there are similar avenues for us to take in influencing Computer Science curriculum! Two shining examples of this are STEMNET and the Microsoft Imagine Cup .

STEMNET works with industry to provide opportunities to inspire children and students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), this is achieved by assisting or delivering activities in schools and colleges, I have taken part in an activity in the last six months and found it a very rewarding experience helping a group of students work towards completing a challenge to create a mobile phone application centred around the London 2012 Olympics.

The Microsoft Imagine Cup is another initiative where industry can help Students to solve world problems by using technology and putting their learning into action and ultimately, this year, win a free trip to Sydney, Australia for the Imagine Cup 2012 Worldwide Finals.

These are just two examples of how we as an industry can assist with the Computer Science curriculum to inspire and encourage pupils and students to get more involved with how things work as opposed to just being a user.

Now more than ever we have a chance to make a real difference, it is up to us to help to Make a Difference to Computer Science in Schools!

After enjoying a great day at what we hope will be a fantastic first ever DDD North, please join us to enjoy a fantastic Geek Dinner at the Sunderland Stadium of Light.

Thanks to the fantastic folks at Devexpress we are able host a free Geek Dinner for 120 people!! We hope this will be a fantastic opportunity for speakers and attendees to chat and relax after a fun filled day of great technical content at DDD North

Please join us at the Sunderland Stadium of Light after Developer! Developer! Developer! North for drinks in the Sports Bar and then we will move onto enjoy a fantastic meal and relax with friends and reflect on the day.

The menu is fixed but the choices are below:

Carvery Choices (2 of the following)

Topside of English Beef

Loin of English Pork

Menu

2 Roast Meat Carvery with Yorkshire Puddings, Home Made Stuffing, Market Vegetables and a Rich Roast Gravy

Vegetarian Main Course Option

Chunky Thai Green Curry with Kai Pow Dumplings and Savory Rice

Chef's Dessert/Whole Fruit Selection

Please indicate when booking your ticket if you would like the vegetarian option. If you have any other dietary requirements please indicate too so we can do our best to cater for your requirements.

PASSWORD FOR THE REGISTRATION FORM IS devexpress

Developer! Developer! Developer! North is this coming weekend in Sunderland, UK and is being held at the David Goldman Informatics Centre on the Sir Tom Cowie Campus at St. Peter’s on the banks of the river Wear.  There are many different ways to travel to the University and here are some guides on how to get to the campus.

By Train

Sunderland is well connected by a national rail service.  Grand Central trains run direct from London Kings Cross daily.  East Coast run services into Newcastle Central Rail Station, from here you can take the METRO direct to Sunderland in approximately 30 minutes.

By Air

Newcastle International Airport is the closest airport to the University.  The Airport is linked to Sunderland via the METRO system and is about a one hour journey time.

By Car

From North or South follow the A19 towards Sunderland and leave the A19 onto the A1231 heading for Sunderland.  For the Sir Tom Cowie Campus at St. Peter’s follow the brown directional signs for the National Glass Centre which is also located within the St. Peter’s Campus.

For Satellite Navigation Directions please use the postcode SR6 0DD.

For this Saturday only – the University has given us FREE Car Parking.

By METRO

Alight at the St. Peter’s station, go down the stairs, cross the main road at the Pelican crossing and follow the signs to your destination.  There is a metro map and journey planner at www.nexus.org.uk

By Foot

If you are staying on the Sea Front it is a short walk along the coast line and riverside to the campus.

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=t4kc5pgwk5f6&lvl=16&dir=0&sty=b&cid=F697BCD4BD5A1C5A!2194&eo=0&where1=SR6%200DD%2C%20Sunderland%2C%20Sunderland&form=LMLTCC

As the agenda is being formalised now and registration for DDD North opens tomorrow I thought it might be useful to publish some information about accommodation for DDD North.

DDD North is being held in Sunderland, which is a city on the North East coast and has a stunning coastline, so why not stay on the coast with a fantastic sea view?  Take it from one who lives here, this is one of the reasons I love living in the North East.  So I have put together a selection of hotels and guest houses to get you started in finding great value accommodation.

The first on the list is the Roker Hotel, which is likely to be the focal point for meetings outside of the University as it has a large and well stocked bar!  All of the guest houses listed along with the Marriott are within walking distance of the Roker Hotel and the majority are within walking distance of the University Of Sunderland where DDD North is being held.

• Roker Hotel - http://www.bestwestern.co.uk/Hotels/Roker-Hotel-Sunderland-83888/Hotel-Info/Default.aspx
• Anchor Lodge - 0191 5674154 - http://anchorlodgeuk.co.uk/
• Abbey and Areldee Guest Houses - 0191 5140679 & 0191 5141971 - http://www.abbeyareldee.co.uk/
• Abingdon Guest House - 0191 514 0689 - http://www.abingdonguesthouse.co.uk/
• The Balmoral & Terrace Guest Houses - http://www.balmoralandterrace.co.uk/index.html
• The Chaise Guest House - 0191 565 9218 - http://www.thechaiseguesthouse.com/
• The Belmont Guest House - 0191 567 2438 - http://www.belmontguesthouse.com/
• Sunderland Marriott - http://www.marriott.co.uk/hotels/travel/nclsl-sunderland-marriott-hotel/

In addition there are plenty of other guest houses in the area and there is also a Travelodge in the city centre which is about 15 minutes walk from the University.

I’m adding a few more options in case those above fill up!

• Ashborne Guest House – 0191 565 3997 - http://www.ashborne-guesthouse.co.uk/
• April Guest House – 0191 565 9550 – http://www.aprilguesthouse.co.uk
• St George’s Guest House – 0191 514 0689
• Roker View Guest House – 0191 565 7354 – http://www.sunderlandguesthouse.co.uk
• Queen Vic – 0191 565 4732
• Lemonfield Hotel – 0191 529 3018 - http://www.lemonfieldhotel.com/
• Mayfield Guest House – 0191 529 3345 – http://www.themayfieldguesthouse.co.uk
• Pullman Lodge Hotel – 0191 529 2020 - http://www.thepullmanlodge.co.uk/

In addition there are two Premier Inns which are 15 mins drive to the University of Sunderland where DDD North is being held

My name is Andrew Westgarth and Software Development is my passion! Is the role you're in just a job to you or is it your Passion /Vocation and Career? Do you enjoy what you do and are you fulfilled in what you do? I think one of the biggest requirements for a good developer is a passion for what they are doing, in order to be a good developer you need to have a thirst for learning and a desire to improve.

I've been thinking about writing a blog post about this topic for a few weeks but not had time until now. Prompted by a conversation on Twitter today about the distinct lack of good, passionate developers available at present I thought I'd put down a few of my own notes on this topic. I have worked in software development (primarily web) for over ten years and have been on both sides being both the prospective employee and prospective employer. I have been involved in the UK Development Community for many years, running User Groups (NEBytes and previously VBUG), speaking at User Groups and Conferences and am now putting together the very first Developer! Developer! Developer! North.

Software Development is a career that you choose to go into and for me personally it is more than just a job, it's my passion, it's a vocation and it's my hobby. I am always looking to learn even more, every day is quite literally a school day, if I've not learned something new every single day then I'm disappointed. My passion drives me to get better and better with every opportunity. Be it looking to make sure that my code compiles cleanly and has no errors, or that I'm building the best user experience or looking at how new language enhancements can improve the performance of my applications.

Money has never motivated me, as long as I've got enough to have a reasonable standard of living and can pay for my season ticket then I'm happy. What really motivates me is an opportunity to learn and to work with equally passionate people. The most enjoyable and highest quality work is always completed when a team is passionate about what they do. I've worked together with fantastic developers and designers to produce fantastic results. The infectious nature of passionate people rubs off on the others in a team and carries them along and reignites that spark.

I've been thinking about why there aren't more passionate developers available/in the industry and have my own opinions on why that is the case and here are some of my thoughts. Some developers don't see software development as a career they see it as a means to an end. They come to work at nine and finish at five and are not interested in learning anything other than what is directed by their company. Some developers are happy to work with older technologies day in day out and are not interested in raising their head above the parapet to take a look at what's going on in the world outside. This creates problems for them and the teams they work with because in the long term they will become obsolete as do the technologies they are working with, and it causes divisions as teams are held back from moving forward and the passionate developers are held back.

Some developers see training and personal technical development as something they should get paid for and something which should only happen during work hours, they will only attend events if their company pays for them to go and gives them time off to go. This attitude is seriously flawed when under hard times the first thing that is often cut is a company's training budget, so hence personal technical development stutters and stall.

Other developers are passionate about software development and see their role as a long term career which they are always looking to build on. Some developers want to work with code all day every day, some want to move towards architecture and beyond. They spend huge amounts of their own personal time learning, reading blogs, RSS feeds, tweets, journals, attending User Group events and community conferences, taking part in online seminars. They will bring this enthusiasm back to the team, distribute the information and hope that their enthusiasm and passion rubs off on the other developers in the team. Even better if there are a number of passionate developers within the team they feed off each other and drive standards higher and higher.

So we have roughly three groups, the 9-5ers who just see software development as a job, those that see their own technical development and progression as the responsibility of their employer and not themselves and finally there are the passionate developers who want to share their passion. So why are there so few of the last category both in the industry and available?

The possible options are that:

• The passionate developers are employed in teams of equally passionate developers by employers who recognise that passion and how to nurture it
• Those developers who once were passionate about software development have been taken advantage of by colleagues and employers who rely on those individuals to provide training and technical development for the whole team, and have now lost their passion
• They have left the industry/country and taken their passion elsewhere.
• ???

I'd really be interested to hear your views on this topic so please leave comments below and I'll follow up this post based on your comments. One group of developers who I haven't discussed in this post are graduate/student developers but that would be a complete post on it's own.

I’m very pleased to announce that Session Submission has opened for DDD North, the first Developer! Developer! Developer! event to be held in the North East!

DDD North will be held at the University of Sunderland on Saturday 8th October 2011 – http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/north.  We are looking forward to hosting a fantastic free community led event where you the community define the agenda.  So what are you waiting for, get your session submissions in now!!

Stay up to date with DDD North through the twitter account – http://twitter.com/dddnorth and with the hashtag #DDDNorth.

When I presented at NxtGenUG in Birmingham last month I was asked which podcasts I listen to and I promised to write a blog post listing some of my favourites.  So here it is!

• .Net Rocks! – Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell publish a podcast twice a week and cover a wide range of .Net related topics for .Net Developers
• RunAs Radio – Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes host a weekly talk show primarily aimed at IT Professionals.  I’m a developer but pretty much an all round geek, so love hearing about additional technology such as Exchange, Hyper-V and Lync.  Plus to be a good developer I believe you need to have an understanding of the systems you are interacting with.
• Hanselminutes – Another weekly talk show this time hosted by Scott Hanselman, covering a wide range of topics from how-to advice, tools, utilities and issues and workarounds.
• Deep Fried Bytes – Deep Fried Bytes is a podcast with a Southern (US) flavour hosted by Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff, a huge variety of topics are covered as they say in their description “Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery.”
• This Developer’s Life – This is a fairly new podcast but a great listen.  Scott Hanselman and Rob Conery talk about different aspects of being a developer and most of it is really relevant, especially the Disconnecting episode.
• NEBytes Bytecast – Of course our very own NEBytes Bytecast – I always listen back to see how good or otherwise it was.
• PC Pro Podcast – This is a weekly podcast from the team behind the PC Pro Magazine, covering a wide variety of topics and technology, quite an easy listen.
• Polymorphic Podcast – This is a great podcast which I only found last year, Craig Shoemaker covers Object Oriented Development, architecture and best practices (.Net).  Unfortunately there haven’t been any new episodes for a while but the archives are certainly worth listening to!
• Pixel8 – Podcast centred around building great user experiences.
• Sod This – Podcast by Oliver Sturm and Gary Short two normal guys interested in technology, software, programming and lots of other things.
• The Thirsty Developer – A fairly new podcast to me, been running quite a while though – podcast with MS Developer Evangelist Dave Bost and Clark Sell
• SEO 101 – As I’ve been getting more and more into SEO I came across this easy to listen to podcast, unfortunately what’s not easy to listen to are the four long advert breaks per episode, thankfully I can fast forward through them!
• Radio TFS – What it says on the tin – a podcast dedicated to Visual Studio ALM (Team Foundation Server)
• Pragmatic Programmer – If you’ve read the Pragmatic Programmer then you should check this podcast out from the Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Windows Weekly – This Week In Tech’s Windows Weekly podcast with Paul Thurrott, a weekly look at all things Microsoft.
• NxtGenUG Podcasts – Podcast from Rich and Dave although they haven’t produced many new podcasts lately their back catalogue is certainly worth a listen.

Finally I have just found the Herding Code Podcast and will be adding that to Zune for synchronisation and automatic download.  That finishes quite a long list but are there any podcasts I don’t have in that list that you listen to and would recommend?

I’m currently in Redmond, Seattle at the 2011 MVP Global Summit but next week I’m embarking on a User Group tour back home in the UK. I’m covering a number of IIS topics including IIS 7/7.5 for Developers, IIS Media Services and IIS SEO Toolkit.  I’m starting off in Bristol at DotNetDevNet on Monday 7th March 2011 and finishing in Cambridge at NxtGenUG on Thursday 10th March.  I’m really looking forward to visiting new groups and talking to the attendees about these great sessions.

I decided to take a week off work to travel and talk to groups I usually wouldn’t be able to take time out to do so.  Hope to meet lots of new people and catch up with old friends too as I work my way back up the country!  Hope to see you there!

Event Details and Sign Up links:

• “Ba-da-Bing!” Using the IIS SEO Toolkit to Improve Your Site’s Ranking – DotNetDevNet, Bristol, Monday 7th March 2011.
• Say Yes to IIS – NxtGenUG, Oxford, Tuesday 8th March 2011.
• IIS SEO Event – NxtGenUG, Coventry, Wednesday 9th March 2011.
• The Information Super Highway – NxtGenUG, Cambridge, Thursday 10th March 2011

I’ve been sitting writing and submitting session proposals for Developer Day Scotland this evening.  I really enjoy speaking at User Groups and Conferences and am always looking for ways to improve and share knowledge.  In our User Groups i.e. North East Bytes and the Developer Community we actively encourage new speakers, indeed that was the original mandate of the DDD events.  We’re always looking to discover new speakers and to encourage new speakers, be they starting out with a short 10 minute Grok Talk or standing up and delivering a full one hour conference session.

Guy Smith-Ferrier, well respected speaker with over 20 years experience of speaking at User Groups and Conferences such as Tech Ed, has recently published a series of 8 videos on How To Give Great Presentations in addition to his paper which he has previously written on the subject.  Guy is a great speaker and these sessions address key elements of giving great presentations with plenty of tips and information which both new and experienced speakers can use to improve their presentations.  Check them out now,