CSharpZealot

Yet another thing i was aiming at - getting the community further together.

So, when FeedBurner finally got my setup in place i decided to create the CSharpZealot FeedBurner Network.

What is it, you may ask? well it's a service which allows members of CSharpZealot.com to get their blog feeds incorporated with the community.

it will also bring some more publicity to the members blogs by exposing them via a FeedBurner Network Feed.

To sign up, the member simply just have to send me an email to brianmadsen[@]csharpzealot.com with the email address that they want the invite to be sent to.

The first FeedGhost competition to run on www.csharpzealot.com has been concluded.

It was slow month but that was to be expected considering the young age of the community - barely 2 months in total.

The two winners are:

Bronwen - www.soulsolutions.com.au

Michael Minutillo - http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com

Both will receive a 1 year subscription for FeedGhost, courtesy of Stu and Lee.

Congratulations guys!!

We will continue the competition for May - so start posting.

It's been a busy month as i've been working on getting the two Spotlights readied, plus not to mention get some swag for community members as giveaways.

I had a long talk with Stu from FeedGhost, mostly about the brilliant product they've put together and surprisingly he offered 5 x 1 year licenses for members.

I've been thinking long and hard and here's what i've come up with.

To win 1 of 5 Licenses for FeedGhost you obviously have to be a member. The first two licenses will go to the two top posting members at the end of April.

So, top posters will be getting a free license.

Better get cracking - for obvious reasons i'm not participating so don't worry about my post count. If you'd like to see more topics set up, just go over to the forums and reply to my post in there.

Cheers and happy coding

Another feature i've wanted to introduce is the Community Supporter Spotlight - let the community know who is supporting them and what's making this little place on the interweb stay alive.

And tonight the first supporter is being revealed..

[read more]

As i mentioned earlier, i've been looking for companies or individuals who would be willing to support the community.

Surprisingly it was easier than i originally expected.

Individual giveaways are meant to be used as prizes in competitions and for the next round of competitions i spoke to Darren Neimke about donating a signed copy of his book ASP.Net 2.0 Web Parts in Action, a book which i personally think is THE source of information on how to develop Web Parts with ASP.Net 2.0. Scott Guthrie named the book "A must-buy for every ASP.NET developer using Web Parts".

Not only did Darren agree to support the community, but he donated two books!!!

So i'd advise you to stay tuned, read the announcements in the forums for updates and news on competitions.

A big thanks is going out to Darren Neimke for supporting us!! thanks mate!

Well, the first community competition for CSharpZealot.com is in the works and kicks off at the 1st of April 2007.

the grand prize - be amongst the first to be published on CSharpZealot.com and gain some recognition. Not to mention there's a US$50 Amazon.com gift voucher up for grabs towards buying one of those nice geeky books we all love.

Read the details for the competition here

As I mentioned in an earlier post i wanted to put the spotlight on the community and the members - and I thought about who to do the first spotlight on.

The choice fell on James Green, an eastern states based Australian developer with a great sense of humour.

I had a great chat with him and you can see the full interview here.

It was good to get to know James further, eventhough he's been active in the both community and on my own personal blog i didn't really know him that well.

Have a read - he's an (almost) reformed VB.Net developer with one good trait - he does C# as well, so we can't quite shoot him...yet.

As a tradition, i want to put the spotlight on a CSharpZealot community member.

This month i've decided to have a chat to James Green and see what type of fella he is.

the outcome of the chat will be posted on the CSharpZealot.com home page and announced in the forums.

I've started looking for suitable swag, as prizes, for the community members and are planning on giving it out in the following categories:

1. Article with the most votes
2. Most active community member
3. Most helpful community member as voted by the community members

The "hope" is to have a monthly prize and so far i've seen a few which i believe is suitable.

If anybody has any ideas please let me know and i'll put it on the list of items to look into.