We started a little late to let the stragglers wander in, but before the end of the event we had between 20 and 22 people at the meeting.  I think that it went great!  We were very developer heavy, with most of the people interested in how to develop mobile applications, some people interested in showing off their mobile applications, and some people looking to learn about the newest up and coming devices.  Great crowd with several questions and loads of varied experiences.

Paul Lockwood kicked things off with an introduction to the mobility community.  He had us go around the room and introduce ourselves, helping to put names to faces.  He also let us know what else was going on in town.  Notes:

It seems that the Atlanta Pocket PC group is dissolving, so I'll be looking for the founder and organizer to help contribute to this group.  I figure his group was well attended for a reason, there is a lot of interest in the gadgets behind mobility and we might be the right group to address that interest.  There is also a Palm developer group in town; they apparently meet out on the east side of town.  I'm going to try to find them - maybe we could hold some joint meetings and show some Palm people that there is more to life than Palm OS.  Maybe they can show us why Palm has been so successful for so long in the handheld market.  Maybe this whole Windows thing is a mistake?  Maybe not!  We'll see.  I bet we can get some interest in a joint meeting (maybe not permanently joining the two groups, but maybe once or twice a year).  Plus, they are an established group with great sponsorship and we could probably learn a lot from them.

We also learned that the Microsoft office is being moved up GA400 earlier than expected.  They will be going up to Mansell Rd on the 10th.  So now we are faced with either having our meeting in an empty office (if it is possible for us to use the current building even though MS isn't in it), moving the group up 400 (which will cut membership as more than 90% of the people don't come from the Alpharetta area), or finding a new sponsor where we can host the meetings.  As the group blue skied about the last possibility, several candidates were put forth - HP has a huge office building practically across the street from the current MS offices.  Apparently there is a Compaq building around there somewhere too.  Other names were bandied about, but none so promising as HP and Compaq.  I'll start calling...

I followed Paul with a presentation on Mobile Development.   I was actually prepared with two presentations, a basic review of the Mobility Roadshow and one on Data Access Strategies for the Compact Framework.  I polled the audience and since all but three people in attendance went to the Roadshow (that points to a great deal of commitment out in the community!) we jointly decided to talk about Data Access Strategies.  Now, I personally am fascinated by the way SQL Server CE provides SQL access to what is basically a flat file on disk, as well as the way it uses bi-directional merge replication (with compression) across HTTP to a SQL Server 2000 database.  Very cool, IMHO.  I got lots of great questions on the subjects, loads of which I couldn't answer.  My box has been misbehaving and won't let me 1) install SQL Server CE and 2) create publications for replication.  Time to repave.  But lucky for me, one of the folks from the MATRA office over in the UK was in town with nothing to do for the evening, so I dragged him along with me.  Martin (the guy from the UK office for those of you who can't keep up) has actually done REAL work with all this CF mobility stuff, including the SQL Server CE product.  He was able to answer a lot of the questions of the group while Doug T was out of the room (I think he said he was playing video games).  Martin thanks for coming along so everyone could pick your brain. 

**People from America, be warned, the people from the UK are smart.  Too smart.  I say we bomb them until we're superior.**

After my demo-free presentation (I think everyone was glad to hear there wouldn't be any demos) a large portion of us took off to the Geek Dinner being held at the El Azteca on Roswell Road.  Despite being the only Mexican restaurant on the road without a sign visible from the road (the road with no identifying markers according to Justin Dyer), it couldn't hide from us for long (we only passed it once or twice!).  We all sat there chatting about things like Visual Studio vs Eclipse, Microsoft's Pocket PC SmartPhone edition being too immature a product, the problems of working with hardware, and motorcycles that you can ride around corners, and cars that go through gas like it's going out of style.  Actually, all that is what I talked about.  I don't know what anyone else said.  I was busy drowning them out with my own incessant chatter.  Or maybe it was me putting my fingers in my ears and humming.  I don't recall.  Whatever, we had beer and Mexican food - which Microsoft did NOT pay for.  I thought that was the deal - free food.  Someone lied.

Before I let this blog entry go, I wanted to send you guys to www.sierracode.com.  Once of the guys at the meeting last night is sierracode.com, and he's been working for two years on a mobile version of Intuit's QuickBooks (not a direct copy, but it has similar modules and functionality).  He demo'd it for me on his Pocket PC and talked about his support for multiple barcode scanners and stuff.  Go check out the screen shots.  This is a seriously cool mobile application (called Mobile POS) with tons of potential.  I hope we see this guy at more of the meetings – looks like he’s going to have tons of great experience to share with us.

 -- Matt Ranlett