Last week, Jonas an old friend of mine blogged about something he called Circle of Interest, and he encouraged a group of people to do the same. This blog meme was originally started by Paul Stovell.

“As individual developers, we face the same problem. Every day new technologies arrive and new information is published. How do we decide how to allocate our time?” – Paul Stovell

Great question! It really made me think about how I’m allocating my time, which technologies I care and don’t care about. I spent a few minutes to create my own Circle of Interest. Stovell group the interest in three areas and he defines them like this:

• Core
  “These are things I enjoy, care about, and follow as much as I can. When news breaks in these areas, I try to stay on top. I like to think I’m an expert in some of them, and have strong opinions on the rest.”
• Non-core
  “I find myself working with these things, or have a minor interest in them, but tend to follow announcements occasionally. I have opinions and will probably complain if I don’t like certain aspects of them, but I’m not about to start evangelizing them.”
• I don’t care
  “The only time I spend in these things is to decide whether I care or not. I created a Twitter account, for example, but I don’t really use it nor do I read anyone I subscribe to. I don’t pay much attention to the Live space, except by using Live Writer and MSN Messenger. I prefer not to work in any of these areas.”

I ended up with this

I will pass this blog meme on, and encourage all my readers and my fellow bloggers to do the same:

• Tore Vestues
  New friend, colleague from Capgemini, active blogger and a fellow .NET developer. Strong engagement in best practices within programming. In January Tore held a great presentation about how to write quality software at NNUG
• Pål Fossmo
  Friend, former colleague from Abeo and a fellow .NET developer. An active contributor to the .NET community in Trondheim, often speaking at NNUG
• Hans Olav
  Friend from the university, .NET geek, highly respected programmer and fellow Image Cup participant. He had two internships at Microsoft in Redmond. His main focus in on SQL server. I’m very curious about his Circle of Interest!
• Fredrik Kalseth
  One of the most active Norwegian .NET bloggers and delivers great content. He has posted god stuff about ASP.NET MVC and AOP. I’m enjoying myself when reading his blog
• Per-Ove Joakimsen
  Friend, former leader of NNUG in Stavanger, great .NET enthusiast and a fellow blogger. Currently travels the world with his girlfriend
• Jon Torresdal
  Got in touch with him at MSDN Live in Bergen. Jon is the leader of NNUG in Bergen, generally a great guy and an active .NET blogger
• Christian Schiffer
  Got in touch with him at MSDN Live in Oslo, LINQ enthusiast and a fellow blogger
• Morten Abrahamsen
  Active in the Norwegian .NET community, Regional Director and a WCF enthusiast
• Sondre Bjellås
  Old friend, colleague from Capgemini, Regional Director, love Robotics and the Norwegian geek of the year
• Håvard Sørbø
  Friend from university, detail centric, .NET dev and a highly respected geek. Lots of knowledge about open source, operating systems and other geeky stuff. I’m curious about his Circle of Interest!

Yes – that’s me and it’s awesome! I'm the September 2007 MSDN-guru!

Microsoft Norway and Rune Grothaug started in April 2007 with the MSDN-guru of the month award. The meaning with the award is to honoring talented Norwegian developers as a mark of respect to their work and abilities. The awardees get a self portrait article published on the Norwegian MSDN website. The articles usually contain background information about the MSDN-guru, achievements, and thoughts on the future.

This month I was picked out by Rune and Microsoft. I’m following in the footsteps of two of the Norwegian Microsoft Regional Directors Sondre Bjellås and Jonas Follesø that have won the award in April and Mai. Personally I’m very satisfied with this achievement. To quote Sondre, it feels much like “Look mom, I’m on TV”.

The idea behind the award is that the developer community nominates MSDN-gurus and Microsoft and Rune pick them. If you know any developers that are candidates for the MSDN-guru title or if you think of yourself as a hot candidate, you can send an e-mail to Rune.

Click here to read my MSDN-guru article (Norwegian version).