A few weeks ago I had the fabulous chance to attend again at KulenDayz as a Speaker, with the topic of .NET 4.5 Asynchrony. It also happened to coincide with the MVP Summit for CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) so I ended up attending both events thanks to the organizers mainly Bernard Katic and Alessandro Teglia (if you want to know more, check http://www.kulendayz.com and http://belead.me/2012/08/06/regional-cee-italy-mvp-summit/ )

First things first, a big thank-you to the event organizer Bernard Katic and, regarding the MVP side, thanks Alessandro!!!

It was such a great event which is based on slowing down – ironically the contrary of what we do when we attend a conference, as we end up running from one session to another – it was fabulous to see good friends and such an outstanding and vibrant community, seeing good friends, like Tomislav Bronzin, Dobrisa Adamec, Damir Dobric, Bernard Katic, Maja Janic, Alessandro Teglia, Tibi, Catalin, Domagoj, the great Tobiasz!, and much more people that I was surprised to meet there, like Andras Velvart and his wife. Was great meeting all of you guys!!

Well, I also happened to give a session which went pretty well and received a lot of questions and good feedback & congratulations at the end , from some MVP’s and also from some students who were there so I am really happy, as a speaker and as a Toastmaster.

I’d like to give a special thanks to Sandra Saenz, my girlfriend who helped me review and improve the slides and presentation  and to Marion Chevalier, a good friend and excellent toastmaster & speaker who helped me polishing the presentation slides and the session outline. Thank you girls!!

Oh yes, also there were slides and code and here they are!!

Code: http://sdrv.ms/SwbaKY

Slides: http://sdrv.ms/Swbklu

I also promised to give the “recipe” of my cookbook which relates to Async and Await, and here it is too.

The Async/Await recipe: http://sdrv.ms/SwbyZW

You can get all of this directly from the SkyDrive Kulendayz folder here http://sdrv.ms/SwbFEL

Additionally In the next week I expect to put a post of more advanced examples regarding Async/Await and the usage of its combinators. I will put also an example of using asynchronous web services as it is curious to see this behaving the same exact way but with web services. To mention that this is now the preferred way of implementing asynchronous web services, with the TAP (Task Asynchronous Pattern).

Have fun!

.NET 4.5 is on my way

 

And I mean it. Months ago I was proposed to do one of the things I have always wanted to do in my life: write a book.

And I said YES – to write a .NET 4.5 Book (in fact at the beginning it was a Silverlight book but with the latest Microsoft apathy for what has been named its best creation ever… finally we opted for a .NET 4.5 book).

It was a bit of foolishness because the how wide is the topic (and the effort), but also I decided to take action, step forward and take the chance to do something cool. I accepted :).

Anyway I have done a lot of .NET aspects and touched practically all the flavors of .NET in my professional life.

And I remembered that quote that I personally love of “Life is a daring adventure – or nothing”, from Helen Keller (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helen_Keller ). which my friend MA Garcias is making me remember from time to time.

What I didn’t know is that at the middle of writing it my life would change (see http://silverlightguy.com/2012/09/22/a-new-life/) and all my clients when notified of my change kindly asked me to finish all the projects before moving on to Switzerland…

Oh my…

I guess that May 2012 is the month I have worked more hours in all my life, closing three projects for three different clients, all scared of me not being able to finish everything in time and pulling me.

Felt god. Got tired. Finished everything. Felt better. Moved on.

 

Meanwhile, I did nothing regarding the book… and when I arrived to Switzerland I had a whole new world to “setup and configure”, get used to it, to the new work and well, for a month and a half could not do much…

But I moved on, adapted, got everything solved and my publisher, Packt publishing, was quite understanding of my situation and supported that “time off” as a necessity…

Thanks Rashmi and Packt Publishing for your understanding!!! That is really appreciated!! It has definitely been a bumpy road but a worthy one of traveling with such a great team as you… so Thanks!!

 

This weekend, if the stars do not fail me, I am finishing the book – at least the drafts will be, pending some revision work – and the main and most complicated part of this book will be over…

 

It’s been a long road, looking for inspiration, for the most important things to say, how to say them and make them as practical and knowledge–full as possible. I really believe the book is a high quality one and will truly deliver very valuable information in a very short time. And in a very practical way.

So, hopefully I will finish it this weekend… and see it soon on somebody else’s hands. That would make me very happy; see others benefiting from my creativity and work.

After this book is finished I will translate it to Spanish as I have written it from the start in English and for this I have had a good friend of mine, Jesus Salillas, who has an incredible level of oratory in English. He is an outstanding Speaker, a highly recognized member of the Toastmaster’s international community and an even better photographer. Thanks in advance for your great help and support on this project – I owe you a lunch at Switzerland… and maybe some Gin Tonics, of course!.  The other person who has – and is – helping here is my girlfriend Sandra Saenz, who is helping me with formatting support, design and image processing, thanks a lot for your great support and patience!!

Well, guess you already know why .NET 4.5 is on my way. Hopefully I will find more obstacles worth surpassing in a near future but for now I can tell you that .NET 4.5 is such an outstanding technology which if you are a developer, coder, software architect or just curious in .NET technology, you have to check!!! It’s evolution is simply amazing and the fact of having the “portable libraries” feature makes it worth every learning effort.

I want to give additional thanks also to Layla Driscoll and Leon Welicki for becoming technical reviewers of my book, this is truly an honor. And I have worked hard to be able to deserve it, hopefully the end results will stand up to having such great reviewers. I want to make you know that having you as reviewers has made me do double efforts to make the book as best as possible.
I also would like to give a big thank-you to my friends at Crossfit Zurich who have helped me much in burning my obviously increased levels of stress, and well, in the way, losing quite a few pounds of fat… Thanks Ozi, Roberta and Stephen

Thanks!!!

Yes, I have been pretty much silent for the latest months, so first things first, sorry for this!!

Second, I had a very important reason as I was offered quite a change in my life, I’ve recently joined the Accenture team in Switzerland to come to Zurich for working for Roche Diagnostics.

I just can say that I am extremely happy, the people here is simply amazing, amazing developers, project managers and also really interesting projects that, without being able to speak anything about them I can tell you clearly that is outstanding and is using the latest of the latest in technology, both in medical and development.

Also here the development quality is highly valued, so everything is done well, very well.

It’s highly satisfying being here, also there are challenges, a healthy culture of recognizing quality work and talent so I can truly say that I should have done this before. I am having great times and becoming an even better professional thanks to my colleagues in Roche.

Thank you guys, I am really enjoying being here with you.

Oh, and for those who might be interested, give me a touch. We are hiring… 😉