This weekend I was one of the judges at the Oregon Game Project Challenge 1.0 (OGPC). This state-wide competition had teams of high school students presenting games they had created using GameMaker around this year's theme of energy. The competition was held at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, and sponsored by the TechStart Education Foundation in affiliation with the Oregon University System.

The range of work we saw was amazing, and some of it was simply astounding. The competition was arranged in five categories — programming, user experience, presentation, research and development, and teamwork — with trophies awarded to the top two teams in each category, plus first- and second-prize champion awards. The first-place champion award winner was PHRED (Philomath High Robotics Engineering Division) which scored very well across the categories. As their team name belies, they also competed in the Oregon regional FIRST Robotics Competition. They took home two awards from that competition, and a flier announcing the OGPC 1.0 competition. Way to go, Philomath!

The judges were divided into panels, with different panels judging the technical and presentation categories. With 21 teams attending (there were a few no-shows), each panel saw about one-third of the teams. After judging the teams, all of the judges gathered to deliberate. The challenge here, as head judge Chris Brooks put it, was to try to bring some objectivity into a highly subjective process. It was hard to level-set the judging, and absolutely fascinating listening to what the judges had to say about the teams they saw. We made some difficult decisions, and I was really satisfied with the final results.

Great job to all of the teams who took part, and to everyone who made OGPC 1.0 come together in a few short months. I am looking forward to seeing next year's competition.

Here's a little C# quiz for your brain bones. What will happen when the following code is executed? Explain why.

Do not compile the code, just use your gray matter.

This came up during a conversation last week. I wouldn't want to bet on everyone getting the correct answer, and purely on that basis alone this should probably not be a recommended practice. It's still a gem of a thought problem.

<FunnyPages source="technorati.com">

They have created a monster!

Here's an error page from Technorati that tickled my funny bone. Looks like a server is unavailable.

And, yes, the page title really is "Technorati is borked right now!" On page refresh, they seem to have unborked the great Technorati, and all is once again well with the world.

</FunnyPages>

If your TechEd 2008 plans include arriving the day before the conference, then there's a party with your name on it.

For the TechEd Developers 2008 conference, get down with Party With Palermo: TechEd 2008 Developers Edition on Monday, 2 June 2008. This is the pre-conference party that started it all, hosted by affable MVP Jeffrey Palermo. Visit the website and submit your name so they know you are coming. I'll be there.

For the TechEd IT Professionals 2008 conference, say hello to Party with the Pros: The IT Pro Party on Monday, 9 June 2008. Your sponsoring host is Doug Spindler of Pacific IT Pros, and independent nonprofit association. Visit the website and request a Golden Ticket if you want to get in.

Both parties will be held at the fabulous Glo Lounge, just blocks away from the conference venue.

And if you are with a corporation or organization that wants to be seen, there are sponsorship opportunities available for both of these high-profile, high-visibility shin-digs.

I first saw Seattle-based Tableau Software a few years back at a conference expo, and ended up spending about an hour at their booth. Then I dragged friends over to their booth. Being a big fan of Edward Tufte and his beautiful work on data visualization, I was instantly impressed with what Tableau is doing. If your job includes analysis of data, or creating visual representations of data for others to analyze and draw their own conclusions, then you need to look at this company's award-winning software.

They now have a page of interesting examples of data visualization created using Tableau. It is well worth exploring even if you aren't interested in their product. You can drill into the details of each example, including downloading the data behind each visualization. What better way to convince someone of your analysis than to show them the data?

<warning>

I had a bit of trouble with the dynamic popups on the examples page. When you hover the mouse over an example, a detail window is popped up. If the popup window is displayed so that the mouse is in the window, it immediately closes the popup window. The net effect is an annoying flash — now you see it, now you don't. No, you can't move the mouse fast enough to get it out of the way, and I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to where the page decides to pop up each window.

That's a real UX bummer, Tableau. Can you get that fixed, please?

For now, you can just click directly on the example for a detail page.

</warning>

From what I've seen, Tableau has been hard at work evolving their capabilities and offerings, including a free Tableau Reader. Nice.

Want more? Take a product tour, download a free trial, watch on-demand web seminars, or make plans to attend their first customer conference 20–22 July 2008 in Seattle, Washington.

Time sure has a way of creeping up on you when you're not looking. This Friday, 2 May 2008, is the last change to save $200 on TechEd 2008 conference registration.

If you're just waking up and smelling the coffee, due to the popularity of this conference in recent years, this year TechEd is two separate conferences on two subsequent weeks. TechEd Developers 2008 is 3–6 June 2008, and TechEd IT Professionals 2008 is 10–13 June 2008, both in Orlando, Florida, USA.

I am looking forward to the new split-week format. The last few TechEds have so large it's been easy to feel lost in the vast sea of attendees. While I am certain that this year won't exactly be intimate, it will be more approachable and on the whole a better experience for all concerned.

Join in the fun at BarCamp Portland 2008 this weekend. It is a free developer event for people to share and learn from each other. The content is determined by the attendees at the event. Friday evening is a kickoff reception, session planning and networking. Saturday and Sunday are the real-deal BarCamp sessions.

All activities are at CubeSpace, 622 SE Grand, Portland, OR, 97214. Be sure to register at Upcoming.

Here's a handy trick for whipping C# using declarations into shape. Visual Studio 2008 will remove unused using declarations, or sort them, or both in one shot. Here's how.

In Visual Studio 2008, open a .cs file. Right-click anywhere in the block of using declarations at the top of the file and select Organize Usings. Now you can select Remove Unused Usings, Sort Usings, or Remove and Sort which does both.

The new, redesigned INETA website launched and it is well worth checking out. INETA is the world-wide association of .NET user groups, and the new website makes it even easier to find local user groups, locate speakers in the Speakers Bureau, watch INETA Live videos, and much more.

I have been involved in a number of ways with INETA since 2002. In fact, Bob Goodearl and I co-chair the Birds-of-a-Feather track at TechEd Developers 2008 on behalf of the .NET community under the auspices of INETA. They are good folks.

Kudos to everyone who's devoted time and effort to the site redesign — ineta.org is looking good!

I attended the Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2008 in Seattle and Redmond, Washington last week. Great technology and it is always nice to mingle with 1,700 of my closest übernerd friends. Monday and Thursday we were all together in Seattle's WSCTC for keynotes, general meetings, and Open Spaces sessions. That formed the crunchy outer shell around the dense chewy inner nougat of breakout sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday held at various locations on the Redmond campus.

I attended the Connected Systems Division (CSD) track, where the first session answered one question on everyone's mind, "can we blog/twitter/podcast/text/talk about the track sessions?" There were several answers: no, no, no, no, and no. Okay, we are allowed to say that we were at the MVP Summit in the CSD track, and that we talked about Oslo. And that's it. Here goes:

I went to the MVP Summit and attended the CSD track. We talked about Oslo. It was cool.

Now what else can I talk about? Great Party with Palermo on Sunday evening. On Monday, Sean O'Driscoll, who will be leaving Microsoft shortly, gave a great speech about community. I liked the Open Spaces sessions on Monday afternoon, they were fairly similar in nature to Birds-of-a-Feather sessions that I help run at TechEd and PDC, so I was right at home. Michelle Laroux Bustamante led a WCF discussion, and Roman Kiss talked about his WCF null channel on Code Project. It was great to catch up with Roman on several issues during the Summit. Monday evening I I geeked it up with Sam Gentile and other folks from Neudesic, and then I ducked out of the reception to work on the TechEd BOF sessions.

At Tuesday night's CSD dinner I had the pleasure of dining with Don Box, and then discussing deployment woes and aspirations with Sasha. I was so engrossed in the conversation I didn't realized everyone else had left the restaurant, and sprinted back to the shuttle bus just in time. Wednesday night was the attendee party at the EMP, where I had some fun sharing around my new light-up juggling balls. Lots of geeks juggle.

Thursday we heard keynote sessions and Q&A with Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzy and Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. Ozzy's keynote was interesting, but I personally felt it missed the mark on being inspiring. In fairness, MVPs are a tough crowd.  Ballmer, by contrast, is a dynamic character on and off the stage, and had some good answers to tough questions. Thursday afternoon I was back on campus for some follow-up CSD sessions about some very exciting technology.

Thursday evening I met up with Australian Regional Director Adam Cogan and we had dinner and discussed versioning for services. Adam was asking all the right questions. How come we don't have any of the right answers? And why aren't they baked into the platform?

Friday the Summit was over, but I had some meetings on campus. While waiting for a public transit bus from Seattle to Redmond, I got an added bonus to my trip: Pat Helland walked up an introduced himself. As luck would have it, that's his daily commute bus. We had a great conversation on the ride in.

All in all, it was a great geek week.