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Last weekend was New England GiveCamp 2011, in which 100+ developers, designers and other volunteers gathered to donate time and skills to some 30 charities who needed IT help.

This year, I was project lead for Alex’s Team Foundation, based in Andover, Mass. Our team was Saurabh Moondhra and William Wade, both experienced ASP.NET developers.

Alex’s Team Foundation, named after 16-year-old Alex Miliotis, who passed away from leukemia in 2002, raises money to support nurses and other oncology professionals, and supports youth sports. The foundation is largely the labors of Patti Rae Miliotis, Alex’s mother, and a handful of reliable volunteers. Like every small nonprofit, Alex’s Team doesn’t have a lot of money.

From the right to left: William Wade, Doug Vanderweide, Saurabh Moondhra and Patti Rae Miliotis of Alex's Team Foundation. The lady with her feet up is Deanna Lohnes, who worked on another project; the woman in green, whose name I do not know, was her charity's contact person.

Like every other leader of a small nonprofit, Patti is pulled in a lot of different directions and has all she can do to keep track of the people with whom she comes in contact, nonetheless all the donations she gets. Patti also hosts a few events every year. She basically needs a way to keep track of who attends those events or otherwise supports her organization, and to mail merge thank-you notes.

So that was the project I led this weekend: Converting a bunch of data stored in (of course!) Excel spreadsheets into a more relational database, with the ability to export that data in order to mail merge thank-you and fundraising letters.

Continue reading: New England GiveCamp 2011: What A Weekend! »

The first New England GiveCamp was this weekend at Microsoft’s Northeast Research and Development building in Cambridge, MA, and it was, by far, one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in the 15 years I have been professionally coding.

About 100 technical and non-technical volunteers spent the weekend of June 11-13 writing code for charities. Most projects were Web site upgrades — either installing a content management system, or extending that system to do something it didn’t do before, such as collecting very specific data, integrating with a customer relationship management tool, etc.

Other projects were more complex. For example, my project was data normalization and version control.

I was assigned to the Goshen Land Trust, a charity that protects open and green space in Goshen, CT. My team members were Kriss Aho and Pat Tormey, both from the Boston area; and Chris Craig, the president of GLT.

Prior to last weekend, GLT tracked all its customer relationships in Excel spreadsheets. They do their accounting in Quickbooks.

If someone was a volunteer, his name went into the volunteer spreadsheet. If he owned land, his name was in the landowner spreadsheet. If he was a land or money donor, his name went into another spreadsheet. And so on, and so on; this story has been told a thousand times before, we all know it by heart.

And, of course, there were several versions of each of these spreadsheets out there: They were exchanged back and forth via e-mail, meaning no two copies of the same spreadsheet were alike. Again, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Finally, donor payments are managed entirely separate from the spreadsheets, via entries into Quickbooks. So there’s a completely different store of around 800 mostly duplicate names in Quickbooks, too, which isn’t easily compared to a spreadsheet of about 2,000 names.

So we had to figure out a way to impose some version control on these sheets; we had to create a master data store, so we could have an authoritative source of customer relationship information; and we had to sync customer information in Quickbooks to match the master data store.

Sounds like fun, I know. It actually was, after it stopped being awful.

Continue reading: New England GiveCamp 2010: What A Great Experience »

So I’ve got my assignment for New England GiveCamp, and by this time Friday I’ll be clacking away on my laptop, alongside some 100 other computer programmers, graphic designers and other volunteers at Microsoft’s New England Research & Development Center.

That’s right, NERD. Silly acronym, absolutely awesome building right on the MIT campus in Cambridge, at Memorial Drive and Main Street.

According to the coordinators, I’ll be working on a project for the Goshen Land Trust, helping them integrate Quickbooks, Giftworks and Excel. They also want to talk about social media.

This charity is after my own heart: They preserve open and green spaces in Goshen, Conn. I am a sincere believer in open space / green belt concept — that is, ensuring every community has fields, woods and otherwise undeveloped land — is valuable; the bigger the community, the more important open space becomes.

Of course, one would expect that; I do live in Maine and I was raised on hunting and fishing.

I also live next to a playground that is essentially a pool, basketball court, swing set and large, open field; and every day, from the first time the thermometer tops 50° to the first snowfall, that playground is full of people from all walks of life, enjoying fresh air and exercise.

Is this project the most exciting thing I’ve ever been asked to do? No, it is not. Is it the most challenging thing I’ve ever been asked to do? Again, no. And I’m not entirely sure it’s going to take all weekend to do it. I’m not even sure it’s going to take past lunch on Saturday.

But I was reminded by my project leader that the object of the camp is to help out people who need it, even if what they need isn’t the next Facebook. And I’ve also been promised that there will be plenty for me to do, even if we finish early.

I was planning on staying at NERD this weekend, since they offered, and they have showers, and hotels anywhere in or near Cambridge aren’t exactly cheap.

But then I found out they have three showers for guys, and there are 50+ people planning on staying at NERD, almost all of them men.

Believe me, I’ve roughed it. I’ve spent several nights camping with others during winter, when washing wasn’t an option. I’ve been elbow-deep in ruptured game-animal entrails on many occasions. Stench and grime isn’t a problem for me.

But there is no way I am getting into a shower that’s been immediately used by at least 10 people before me. That’s simply unsanitary. I don’t care how clean and healthy everyone at this thing is; showering like that is begging to get ill.

Anyway, time and circumstances allowing, I plan to blog, or at least tweet, over the weekend. Stay tuned.

All links in this post on delicious: http://delicious.com/dougvdotcom/at-new-england-givecamp-this-weekend

Now that I’m a day or so removed from the Visual Studio “Launch 2010″ event in Boston, have plenty of sleep under my belt, and the benefit of hindsight, I’d like to recap my impressions.

I still consider Launch 2010 a significant disappointment, especially compared to the “Heroes Happen Here” launch of Visual Studio 2008 / SQL Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 that was held in Manchester, NH, two years ago. But I should explain why, and maybe at least put in context, if not rephrase, my criticisms of Thursday.

Attendance: I need to clarify my attendance estimates from Thursday.

I’m guessing there were about 1,000 people in attendance at Launch 2010, which had three tracks: two all-day tracks for developers and IT professionals, and a half-day track for managers / decision makers. Of the total number of attendees, well over half  — at least 500 — were in the developer track. I don’t have an exact count because I don’t know who to ask for one, and I doubt there is an accurate count in any event, because Microsoft was allowing walk-ins throughout the event.

However many people were there, it was too many, at least for the developer track. They ran out of seats by 9:30 AM and it only got worse until 3:30 PM, after the ASP.NET session, after which a large number of people left. I did pop in on the IT pro track, after I couldn’t regain my seat following lunch; there were a few empty seats available there.

Allowing such a significant overflow is a huge kick in the balls. I took the time to register ahead of time. I took great pains to ensure I would arrive on time. If you’re letting people filter in six hours after they were supposed to show up, you’re not being fair to me — especially if I can’t fully enjoy the event.

Continue reading: The Visual Studio Launch 2010 Boston Event, Reconsidered »