2008 Community Excellence Award Winner Profile: David McCarter

David McCarter is a Microsoft MVP and a principal software engineer in San Diego. He is the editor-in-chief of dotNetTips.com... a web site dedicated to helping programmers in all aspects of programming. David has written for magazines like the Visual Basic Programmers Journal and has published three books (the latest is David McCarter's .NET Coding Standards available at: www.cafepress.com/geekmusicart.165478704). He is one of the founders and directors of the 14 year old San Diego .NET Developers Group (www.sddotnetdg.org, formerly the San Diego Visual Basic User Group).

David gives lectures on programming at colleges, high schools, conferences such as Code Camp, VSLive, Microsoft DevDays and he teaches at the University of California San Diego. He also runs his own software/consulting company called NicheWare.

Competencies: VB.NET (since that is what I am an MVP in) and C# and pretty much all areas of .NET programming from ASP.NET, Windows & Mobile apps and back end services.

Speaking Engagements: I speak often at my user group and at the following Code Camps: Fullerton Ca, San Diego Ca, San Luis Obispo CA, Los Angeles Ca and Phoenix Az. I also teach the following classes throughout the year at the University of California San Diego: Building Rich & Interactive Web Applications with ASP.NET AJAX, Fundamentals of the .NET Framework. I'm proud to say that I got UCSD to teach .NET one year before it was official released! I developed one of the first classes and continue to develop course ware for our .NET classes at UCSD. I am also a member of the .NET Professional Certificate Review Board at UCSD.

Published Content: I have published three books under my own name and have written chapters for other publishers like MS Press. My latest book is "David McCarter's .NET Coding Standards". I am working on the third edition of that book currently. Also publish hundreds of tips, tricks and articles on my web site that has been around in one form or another since 1994, http://dotNetTips.com.

Web Discussion Boards: I mainly participate in the MSDN newsgroups on a regular basis. My display name in these newsgroups is: dotNetDave

User Group: Over 14 years ago I co-founded the San Diego Visual Basic Users Group and we are now called the San Diego .NET Developers Group (http://sddotnetdg.org). I am the only founder left and have been president of the group for the majority of the 14 years and still do about 80-90% of the work to keep the group going. We also participate in local southern California events. We provide job placement to our members via our web site and by having recruiting firms sponsor our meetings. I know that not only have I gotten jobs being part of this group but other members have too. We do mentor or members at the meeting, via the web site and emails. We also help new speakers by giving them helpful tips before or after their talk. We average 50-80 people each meeting and have 900+ people signed up on our web site.

You can also find out more about what I'm up to by going to my MVP profile at: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=FA3C6870-ADBC-404D-B826-9A4185B3F0E6