Log in to like this post! Florida Tour Follow-up Brent Schooley / Tuesday, March 26, 2013 I spent the last week of my Brent Goes South for the Winter Tour traveling around the state of Florida. Armed with nothing but my laptop bag and a black 2013 Camaro it was my mission to spread the word of Windows 8 design to the user groups of three Florida areas: Tampa, Naples, and Miami. Since I gave the same talk at each of these user groups I figured one post would suffice for wrapping up the tour. The Ride Hard to complain, so I won’t. Tampa Win Dev User Group When I was in Key West for the Southern Most User Group, I met Brian Kassay who tipped me off to the Tampa Win Dev User Group. This group, hosted at the AgileThought Tampa office, was a very engaging group that asked a lot of insightful questions. One of the things we discussed was the reel-to-reel tape deck replica in Apple’s Podcasts app when talking about skeuomorphism. I regret to inform you that Apple released an update to this application that removed the tape deck. I know you will all be thoroughly disappointed. When we weren’t talking about Apple, we were talking about designing for Windows 8. I would highly recommend this group to Windows developers living in the Tampa area. Congrats to Kelvin McDaniel for winning the book giveaway at this event. Southwest FL User Group I met John Dunagan last year when my boss asked me if I could go to the Southwest FL Code Camp. I had so much fun there with John and my family that I really couldn’t wait to head back to Naples to speak at his user group. Due to changing the schedule and a few personal conflicts, the group was smaller than usual. However, a small group is sometimes a great thing. I got the opportunity to try a few things different with my presentation that I wouldn’t have tried with a larger group. If nothing else, it was a great change of pace. Definitely check out the SW FL .NET Developers Group if you are in the Naples, FL area. dotNet Miami Picture this: a guy on a Mac presenting in a place called Planet Linux Caffe talking about Windows 8 design. Bizarre right? Well, that was exactly what went down for dotNet Miami’s March meeting. Richie Rump runs a great group down in Miami and we had a lot of fun with this presentation. I like the feel of having a user group meeting in a coffee shop. I think more coffee shops should have setups for this kind of thing. What was great about this particular venue is it was the perfect spot for a photo op for Brian Lagunas’ user group photo competition. Armed with upside-down Linux magazines, this group tried to look excited (with mixed results). Summary Spending almost a week and a half away from the northeast in March by escaping to Florida is something I’d recommend to anyone. But, while you’re there you should definitely check out the developer communities you will find there. No matter where you are in the state there are developers just like you that would be dying to discuss the latest trends and tech over a beer or coffee. Contact If you have any questions or comments, please comment below or find me on Twitter @brentschooley. You can also email me at bschooley@infragistics.com.