|
|
Carl Franklin
Carl Franklin was writing professional applications in QuickBASIC before VB, and
ever since VB 1.0 he has been writing books, developing, and teaching. He was hired
by Ethan Winer's company, Crescent Software,
in West Redding, CT before they released their first VB product, QuickPak
Pro for Windows. Crescent and MicroHelp were the first companies to offer
tools for VB programmers, and Carl was there, learning from the masters and writing
good code.
Carl started writing for BasicPro magazine, and speaking at
VBITS (now VSLIVE). Later on, BasicPro became
Visual Basic Programmer's Journal , for which he wrote several feature articles,
and was also the editor of their Q&A column for three years.
In 1994, Carl started dabbling with Internet Programming. In fact, Carl
was the first author to use the words "Visual Basic" and "Internet" in the
same sentence (are you noticing a trend of being first?). He went on to write a
best selling book, Visual Basic 4.0
Internet Programming with John Wiley and Sons,
and then updated it to Visual Basic 6.0 Internet
Programming in 1999. You can read some of his publications at
carl.franklins.net/pubs.asp .
Also in 1994, Carl and the president of
Apex Software, Gary Wisniewski started Carl & Gary's Visual Basic Home Page,
which became the first popular website for Visual Basic programmers on the
Internet. The site is ancient history now, but it ruled the Internet in its day.
Gary is currently developing software for Spider
Eye Studios in Melbourne, Australia.
After developing client/server systems for several companies Carl decided
to venture out on his own developing web sites that rely heavily on Visual Basic, ASP, and SQL Server. He
started a company in 1997 called WorldTRAIN, Inc. with
Dan Appleman , another noted VB guru. He developed software for hosting
live internet-based training seminars, ironically enough. WorldTRAIN was written
in VB, of course.
In July, 2000 Carl was asked by Microsoft to be the
MSDN Regional Director for Hartford, CT. The RDs are a liason between local development
communities and Microsoft. Responsibilities include hosting
Microsoft DevDays (an annual event that occurs simultaneously in over 120 major
cities around the world) and delivering the Keynote Presentation. He received the
highest score on the Devdays Keynote in 2002 of all the RDs in the world! Carl was
selected as Regional Director of the year in 2003!
In August, 2002, Carl started recording and publishing .NET Rocks!,
an Internet audio talk show for .NET Developers. In November, 2003
MSDN Online
started mirroring the show on their site to help out with bandwidth issues that
were causing a real problem. The show has had millions of downloads.
In February, 2005 Carl saw the need to provide audio and podcasting production services to the wider
business community, so he created Pwop Productions, taking the name
from "the sound of a forehead slap", one of those "ah-ha!" moments where the solution seems so simple.
Pwop produces podcasts for Nintendo,
Microsoft,
Eastern Mountain Sports, FileMaker and others.
In January, 2006 Carl started producing two new weekly shows, dnrTV,
a screencast video interview/demo show in which the .NET experts actually show you how to write the
code of which they speak, and Hanselminutes, a weekly
discussion with noted technologist and web developer Scott Hanselman.
Carl is now and will always be a developer, and never stops writing software
that interests him. He is currently the co-Chair of the Visual Studio track for
Visual Studio Connections, a major international developer conference. You can
download code that he contributes to the developer community on the Franklins.Net
.NET Code and Utilities Page.
As if a career in the high-tech industry isn't enough, Carl is also a talented
songwriter, singer, guitarist, composer, arranger, audio engineer, and producer.
He produced an as-yet-unrecognized first album for Ray Lamontagne which very few
people have ever heard.
He and his brother, Jay (an expert Java Developer and also a talented musician) produced their first CD, Strange Communication,
in 1999. Another CD is in the works, and he is always working as a producer for local artists.
You can read Carl's Blog,
Intellectual Hedonism, to keep
up with his latest musical goings-on.
Another claim to fame is that Carl authored 2 of the MIDI files that came in the
box with the Sound Blaster - JAZZ.MID and REGGAE.MID - while working for Voyetra Technologies
as a tech-support engineer in the late 80s and early 90s
Carl is married with 4 beautiful children, and lives in the New London, Connecticut area.
You can reach him by email at carl@franklins.net
|
|