I'll be speaking at the Portland Area .NET User Group next Wednesday. The topic is:

A Data Driven Approach to Localization with ASP.NET

This session provides an introduction to localization with ASP.NET as well as demonstrating how to extend ASP.NET with a custom data driven ResourceProvider. The session starts off with an introduction to localization features and options in ASP.NET to set the context. The focus is on localization from a developer perspective and getting an application set up and ready to be localized. I'll cover the basics of cultures, utilizing resource providers and setting up ResX resources and dealing with the complexities of locale mapping in your applications. With the core concepts addressed we'll dig deeper and explore how to extend ASP.NET with a custom ResourceProvider (as well as a ResourceManager) that can use a database to provide more dynamic access to resources for editing and more control of resource generation. The session demonstrates and provides a fully data-driven resource provider along with an online Web Resource Editor that can be used to edit resources in real time in your running ASP.NET applications.

Localization isn't exactly one of my specialties, but last year I was working with a customer who required some specific functionality in relation to localization. As a part of that project I ended up building this resource provider and a fun runtime resource editor that can be used to let you actually modify the resource content in a running application. This actually has uses outside of localization giving users - optionally - the ability to modify the applications prompts and text. It's a fun session and if you've never thought about localization and are curious the first half is a great quick what-you-need-to-know introduction to the topic.

So if you're in the Portland Area stop on by and check it out - it's free and there's even food and drinks <s>... Note that the group's meeting space has moved since last year when I was last there speaking and it's now at the Microsoft office in South Portland. Hopefully I'll have better luck with the projector this time around <g>...

BTW, if you haven't attended a user group meeting in some time or - gasp - never, it's a great place to get aquainted with a tech topic and meet other developers in your area. User groups IMHO are some of the more valuable 'events' because unlike conferences there's just one topic and so tends to be more focused. Speakers usually have more time to expand on the topic and there's much more room for Q &  A during the sessions, which is always more interesting for all involved.

It's also a great place to learn about something you may have put off for a rainy day. Last month's meeting had Stuart Celarier talking about CardSpaces. Not a topic high on my radar but after Stuart's excellent presentation I was interested enough and went home poking around with it and actually stuck it into a couple of applications.

So if you're around this area, hopefully I see you there.