As you all know I am fairly active with Rotary International, currently through the Rotary Club of Park Cities. Volunteering has always been something I have been into: as a kid I pulled the drink wagon at my parents' Rotary Club annual outdoor antique show; as a teenager I helped out at the Connecticut Special Olympics and I was a member of Interact; after college and the attacks of September 11th, 2001 I joined the Southport Volunteer Fire Department; it's just something I've always done.
It was brought to my attention (thanks Tim) that Microsoft will be doing a coding challenge this weekend that fits my mantra, they will be coding for charity! The event, dubbed as the "WE ARE MICROSOFT" Charity Challenge Weekend, takes place this coming January 18-20. While the event is still a bit lacking on the details they invite charities through the challenge website to propose projects that they are in need of, which suggests it could be a very interesting weekend!
So who is interested? Who wants to give it a shot? Think we can get a half dozen (or more) Telligenti to get together and have Team Telligenti (to, of course, challenge Team Sogeti)? I think it could be a great weekend - what better way to give back than with what you're best at?
Point of fact it's been far from quiet for me, but I haven't blogged much to support that theory. So here's a quickie of what's been going on in my life.
To start, there's a big surprise, one that I care not give details on (so if you're one of the chosen to know what it is, don't blurt it out in the comments, it's a surprise to everyone else). And no, I, nor anyone I associate myself with in a way that would suggest otherwise, am not pregnant.
I've been with Telligent now for 4 or 5 months now and have loved every minute of it. A few weeks we had the Community Server Developer's Conference - very good time where I got to meet quite a few CS developers from around the world - even learned a few things. I think I'm even, slowly, finding my own little niche within the company. At least, I hope so.
I'm coming up on my one year mark as a member of the Rotary Club of Park Cities. In that time I have been quite active by:
- being webmaster for the Park Cities Rotary Golf website (we raised approximately $45k for The Phoenix Project).
- chairing the A/V committee, committed to raising the value of each weekly luncheon.
- joining the New Membership committee.
- vice-chairing the Ethics committee (this committee is particularly active in February).
- supported the grant application for One Laptop Per Child (check it out, very cool).
It's very cool to be the youngest Rotarian I know - Rotary has been such a HUGE part of my life, from pulling the drink wagon at my parents' home club's annual Antique Show to flying to Jeremy, Haiti for 10 days as a 17 year old to assist dentists at a Rotary sponsored health clinic with the Haitian Health Foundation - it's just nice to be a part of it now on my own accord, not just as a son of Rotarians.
The other of my major time expenditures is related to the podcast - it's Hockey season. The Stars aren't doing as well as we would like to see, but they're still in it for the race: 16 games in and it certainly could be worse! The podcast is great, we're 9 episodes into our second season and we've already gotten to the point where we don't need to edit the shows - we've even tried live recording (it helps to have portable recording equipment). Not only that but the Fanatics have expanded to having a not-so-regular video cast. We've recorded two episodes, though one of them keeps getting blocked for "rights infringement" - something we'll have to work on going forward.
Lastly, I found a pet project to keep me excited about programming on a personal level. I am a contributing developer on a new open source project called LiteWiki. It's a very simple wiki application implemented using ASP.NET and I've already learned a ton and been able to contribute a good amount. I'm very excited about this project, expect to see more and more about it as time goes on.
Suffice to say, the past month has been extremely busy - thankfully I learned very early on that in order to continue to thrive in such a busy environment you need to enjoy everything you do.
And, without getting overly mushy, thanks to everyone who keeps pushing me to do better - I don't know if I say it enough, but really, Thank You.