On the side, when I got the time for it, I help to manage the Microsoft Islands in SecondLife. After a long struggle, we finally got full control over the Visual Studio island, one of the initiatives in this Virtual World. Together with Zain Naboulsi, I represent Microsoft in a community called ‘.Net Developers’. At this time we are well over 400 users, and on every event, we get between 20 or 30 people who show up to discuss technical issues, coding issues or just to network.

One of the big starter events we had to establish a better connection between us and the members of the group was the big C# Day, last Saturday. I’m pretty happy with the turn-up of people, and we really had a fun tutorial thanks to Kyle and Robin [and their team], who’ve been coding around the clock to get this thing up and running.

So, I think all went well. All participants had to click a cube, and they then received a cube that floated above their heads. It then said which piece of code they had, and which piece they were looking for. If two participants then had a match, the cubes turned green. In a notecard, they could then compile the code to form a script. [more detailed info about the cube-thing: here]

I’m pretty thrilled with the progress the group is making and the turn-out at the meetings, I really hope we can kick this even further and invite external speakers to share knowledge, to give hands-on presentations and to publish podcasts, vidcasts and so on. If we can organize Microsoft Island in a way so that it offers tutorials and useful information, I’m sure we can please a rather large audience and reach out to a group of people who code to live and live to code.

More information on the SLDNUG website.