First off I gather it would only be polite to introduce myself (i'll keep it short). My name is Brian H. Madsen and i work as a senior software engineer for an ISV in Perth, Western Australia. In April '06 i received what i first thought to be an Aprils Fools gag on my behalf, but after getting more than just one congratulations I quickly found out that the MVP nomination and award had come through. I was awarded in the Visual Developer ASP.Net category.
On a daily basis i blog, code, blog some more and then code some more. I also run the SQL Server user group here in Perth seeing as my second secret love is SQL Server. To cut this short, my passion for C# fell fast into ASP.Net, Web Services and SQL Server - a natural combination for a web developer - but since moving to the job i'm currently in i've been planted firmly in the Windows Forms group instead.
Of all the languages and platforms i've worked on, Visual C# for the .Net platform is by far the one i've felt most comfortable with.
To that end, I decided to build up a community, consisting of C# and the technologies that support it. To start with I actually planned to build the community from scratch, developing the modules that I wanted included on whatever technology I felt comfortable with integrating (be it beta releases or CTPs for that matter) - but i soon found that with family (wife and two kids + neurotic dog), work and the community work I did outside of this (user groups and presentations) that there simply wasn't enough hours in the day to finish it.
So, after having spent quite a bit of time grumbling about my own lack of progress i finally decided to approach Telligent Systems and see if they still offered their brilliant community platform to development communities. And lo and behold, they definitely did.
So far i've set up these forums as a base for the community, consisting of C# supporting technologies:
Visual C#.Net - General
ASP.Net
Windows Forms
Web Services
ADO.Net
Visual Studio 2005 and Orcas
SQL Server 2005
I'm certain that with time (or requests??) the structure will grow and if anybody feels that we should cover more areas, either more specifically within each technology branch or because you're keen on it, just sent me an email.
Lastly, since Community Server also supports blogs, i'd be more than happy to host anybodys blog (provide the focus is on C#, obviously) so if you want a blog hosted here with the rest of the zealots, again just swing me an email.
as i normally say, cheers and happy coding - Welcome to CSharpZealot
Regards
Brian H. Madsen - CSharpZealot
Microsoft MVP Visual Developer ASP/ASP.Net
blog: http://www.msmvps.com/blogs/brianmadsen
site: http://www.csharpzealot.com
Microsoft SQL Server UG Perth - President
http://www.sqlserver.org.au