Focus Groups

I had the privilege of participating in a Christian Fiction focus group held by Thomas Nelson Publishers tonight.  This was the first one I had ever participated in and I loved it!  I had to apologize at the end as I felt that I had probably spoken way too much, but that's just me.  I am opinionated and when you ask for my opinion, I will most certainly give it.

There were ten of us in all in the group, led by two facilitators, Eric and Aaron.  The breakdown was 2 guys and 8 women.  What was really surprising was the number of women who read the same genres I did, and had the same opinions on romance, historical and modern fiction as I do.  It was really cool to discover that! 

So what exactly did we do?  We answered questions of course.  Questions like: "How do you describe Christian Fiction?", "What types of fiction do you like to read?", as well as "Why do you read Christian Fiction?".  We looked at some book jacket cover art, including some that was in development still and some that is due to be released in the next few months, and gave our opinions on.  Overall it was such a positive experience for me.  I do hope I'll be able to do this again sometime.  The other thing that was cool, or maybe not, is that we were videotaped during this.  I'm just glad I'll never have to see that tape!

Oh, and the other cool thing about it?  Swag.  We each received a bag with a Max Lucado book, (one not released yet!) and a coupon for any three Christian fiction books on the Thomas Nelson website!

If you have never participated in a focus group, I highly recommend doing so.  It is quite an experience.

So have a great evening and God Bless!

Windows 7 Phone

I have traded my work iPhone for a Samsung Focus running Windows 7.  Since I will more than likely be developing against Microsoft's system, it made sense to change them out, even though I really, really like the iPhone and actually own and use one personally.

I'll be writing a blog post about first impressions and my thoughts on my new phone, as well as what I think about the differences between the two in a later post.  For now let's just say that it is going to take some getting used to.

Have a good evening!

Heading To Microsoft in October!

For the first time in a long time I am happy again as a software developer.

The last position I held, I rose from a purely Visual Basic.NET developer at the beginning to bringing the shop around to the C# world to becoming the Information Technology Manager of the company.

But like all things, that position had to come to an end, although the ending was on my terms.  I was blessed enough to become a partner of TDIndustries, hired on to develop software and help grow a department from scratch.  A software development department that had been gutted and was, and still is relying on outside consultants.  Officially I am the Systems Architect for the company, but I prefer to think of myself as a software developer.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that one of  TDIndustries' policies is to send it's partners to at least one conference a year.  Even though I have only been there one day, they are letting me go to VSLive! in Redmond, Washington.  Not only will this be my first professional conference I will be going to, but to go to it AT Microsoft's headquarters!  Needless to say I am excited.

So if you are interested, here is more information for you.  If you can make it, I look forward to meeting you there.