One Thing Leads to Another

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One of the things that I have learned over my career is that "one thing leads to another" and your life is a series of linked events in a chain.  If you are unwilling to follow your heart you often cannot see the next link in the chain.  My life has had this chain:

  1. Computer Geek
  2. Architecture Student
  3. Architecture/Computer Graduate Student
  4. CAD software developer
  5. CAD software architect
  6. Software development manager
  7. Business solutions architect
  8. Technical Evangelist

This was at a macro scale, but I like to change scale and see the micro scale of the chain of everyday activities that takes place for me in my role as a new Developer Evangelist at Microsoft:

  1. Start a Blog at https://blogs.msdn.com/Synergist.
  2. Get an email about the blog from Blake Handler, an MVP.
  3. Go to his website, The Road to Know Where and see that he works for CBS radio he has a list of radio stations on his site.
  4. I start thinking that an internet radio tuner would be a cool Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.
  5. Send him an email introducing myself and asking about what he does. 
  6. I start reading about developing sidebar gadgets and find that I can use my HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge (it's that easy) to develop something pretty cool.
  7. Independenly Blake sends me an email saying it would be great to have a sidebar gadget with the CBS radio stations on it - we are on the same page!
  8. I spend a few hours to create my first gadget which I will post shortly:
    Image of my new Sidebar Gadget
  9. What will be the next link in this chain?

The gadget is now on the Windows Live Gallery!