Archive for March, 2009

I’d like to invite you to participate in the launch of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest at the Silicon Valley Developer Force User Group at Santa Clara on March 18th, 2009. The User Group event will have a quiz as part of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest with exciting prizes and I will be the moderator.

The user group is committed to learning all we can from each other on building apps on Force.com with its rich tools and technologies.  This forum is for networking, questions and inquiries on the platform and technologies, and general interaction between members and interested parties. Please come and contribute to our/your success!

When

Wednesday: March 18, 2009?

Time: 10 – 12pm PST

Don’t worry if you miss the launch at the User Group event, though – you will still be able to participate in the contest by registering at http://www.navatargroup.com/slumdogcontest.html.

Look forward to seeing you in Santa Clara!

Ketan Khandkar.

Who

Developers, Power Admins, IT

Where

2700 Mission College Boulevard

Santa Clara CA 95054

408.988.1500

Speakers

Ron Hess & Mike Kreaden: Sr. Force.com Platform Evangelists

Ketan Khandkar (me), Principal, Navatar Group

Agenda (Subject to change)

10:00 am: Sign in, Reception & Networking

10:15 am: Force.com Apex code & Visualforce with Spring ‘09 platform updates & Demos

11:00 am: Short break/Networking

11:15 am: Slumdog developer contest launch (Navatar Group, sponsor of UG meeting)

11:45 am: Prize Giveaways

Welcome to the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest for Cloud Developers, happening now through April 30, 2009. Anybody can participate, starting today. We want to see how far you can take the Force.com platform, and the new Force.com Sites in particular. We’ll be handing out iPod nanos and iPod touches for interesting applications that show innovation or creativity.

Simply register to participate and learn more. There aren’t many rules to hinder your creativity. After the contest, we will give away iPod Nanos and iPod Touches to the five most exciting submissions. In addition, if your submission is one of the five selected, you will also have an opportunity to have your resume considered for joining the exciting and fast-growing Navatar team in the United States or in India. Sound interesting?

Why is it a slumdog contest? Because at Navatar we are doing some of the most exciting things happening today in the Cloud Computing world with Force.com, even though most of us came from humble beginnings. For instance, read the success story of Rexlo Joe who came from a remote village of Tamil Nadu, India a few years ago to become a top Cloud Computing Architect on Wall Street (read Rexlo Joe’s success story). With the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest, we want to recognize and highlight your talent and your work.

Launch of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest

We also invite you to participate in the launch at the Silicon Valley Developer Force User Group at Santa Clara on March 18th, 2009. The User Group event will have a quiz as part of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest with exciting prizes. Don’t worry if you miss the launch at the User Group events, though – you will still be able to participate in the contest by registering at http://www.navatargroup.com/slumdogcontest.html.

Have questions or suggestions? We’d love to hear from you.

The Navatar team.

If you’re building a serious industrial-strength app on Force.com, you’re probably beginning to think about the right design and architecture, after working through the basics. We’ve all been there – figuring out the optimal design to avoid rewrite later, make the app scalable, reduce development time & cost, ease of maintenance, etc.

Check out my paper, Ten Common Mistakes Architects Make When Building a Force.com Application, at the developer.force.com site. It provides several recommendations and best practices during critical stages of initial decision-making, designing and developing. These recommendations come from our own experience in building very complex products and apps on Force, including Navatar’s Financial Services products, and I’m very confident that you will find them useful.

You can also download a pdf copy at http://navatargroup.com/download1a.php?download=10MistakeWhitepaper.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts, as well as any additional advice you can offer from your own experience.