Fitzsimon IT ConsultingWelcome

Now and then comes an opportunity to work on a project that not only makes the client happy, but is also fun.

ClickNColour.com is the online art gallery of local artist Debbie Neale.  As a teacher aide, Debbie noticed that most colouring-in artwork was directed at younger children.  She has now produced a portfolio of designs which are challenging enough for older students and adults, even rehabilitation patients.

On the website you can purchase downloadable copies of Debbie's artwork as well as order Debbie's printed colouring-in books.

Mike updated his SharePoint skills at both the APAC SharePoint conference in Sydney in May and Tech.Ed on the Gold Coast in August.

Contact us today to find out how you can benefit from the improved communication and collaboration offered by this latest version of MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server).

Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 & Windows Server 2008 Launched

Mike attended Microsoft's sold-out launch event marking the official Australian release of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 & Windows Server 2008.  With tips from the experts on using these new products, we are well placed to start using them straight away.

Contact us today to find out how you can benefit from the increased productivity offered by our use of these latest system development tools.

Code Camp Oz

Mike and Peter will be attending Code Camp Oz again this year.

Code Camp Oz is a .NET developer community driven event.  It allows Australian software developers to come together in one location to meet each other and hear from a range of speakers, many of whom are international experts in their fields.  Code Camp Oz offers a packed program over two solid days, Sat 26 - Sun 27 April, 2008.  It will be held in Wagga Wagga at the Charles Sturt University campus.

Andy speaks to 2nd Libre Graphics Meeting in Montreal, Canada.

Andy presented at the 2nd Libre Graphics Meeting held this year in Montreal, Canada on 4-5-6th May.  In March 2006, Andy was invited to demonstrate Inkscape & GIMP at the first Libre Graphics Meeting.  This was held on 17, 18 and 19 March 2006 in Lyon, France.

Following last year's conference, Andy spent a week in Paris catching up with business opportunities.  He also visited some of the worlds greatest art galleries, Le Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, an invaluable experience for a graphic designer.  (Hmm… what would an impressionist, say Monet, have done with SVG?)

His presentation at LGM followed on from his tutorial on Open Source Graphic Design at linux.conf.au in Dunedin, New Zealand in January 2006.

Read more …

Andy speaks to the Beijing GNU/Linux User Group.

Andy was in China from September 9 to October 6.  On Wednesday 13 September, he spoke on Open Source Graphic Design to the Beijing GNU/Linux User Group.

About 100 people attended.

Brisbane SharePoint User Group

Mike shared some of his experience with the Brisbane SharePoint User Group.  The topic was a bit of a mouthful; Using Impersonation and Single Sign-On to access corporate data from within a custom SharePoint web part.  Slides and sample code are now available for download.

Andy's Tutorial voted "Best of Linux.conf.au"

Andy presented at linux.conf.au 2006 in Dunedin, New Zealand in the last week of January.  His 3-hour tutorial on Open Source Graphic Design was voted by conference attendees as one of the top four "Best of Conference" sessions.  This meant his tutorial was repeated on the final day of the conference.

In another pleasant surprise on the Tuesday evening, he was honoured to be joined at dinner by Linus Torvalds. 

Thanks to ctudball for this photo, released under Creative Commons.

Press release and more photos …

Developer Community

Local Developer User Groups

Qld MSDN User Group
Mike is honoured to manage QMSDNUG, the Queensland Microsoft Developer Network User Group.  The group holds monthly meetings of .NET developers in Brisbane.

We also support these local developer user groups:

• QSSUG Queensland SQL Server User Group
• BSPUG Brisbane SharePoint User Group
• Brisbane Web Design, The Brisbane Web Design Meetup Group

Brisbane and Queensland Developer Events

For upcoming Microsoft-aligned local developer events see the Queensland Developer Events page on Mike's Blog.