the Arena Community DeveloperIf you were at the Fall 07 Arena Community Developer Rountable you heard me mention Dallon as the youngest Arena Community Developer, but now I'd like to introduce him via his new blog -- Developer in Beta.

Dallon is a remarkable developer who's been quite involved at our church (our IT team) for the past 3-4 years where both his Dad and Mom now work full and part time, respectively.   And he's only 13.

With fantastic teaching and support from his parents, Dallon typically drops by on Monday afternoon's to both code and learn.  It was fun introducing him to some basic OO concepts several years ago, but his skills and ability to learn has easily surpassed my abilities and time available to teach him everything he is capable of learning.  (This past year I was glad to see Dallon start taking formal, pre-college/college level courses online.)

Dallon has written several Arena ChMS modules of varying sizes including one for managing Central's food pantry (where his Mom leads/serves). With time on his side he has become quite familiar with, and begun using, many of the latest .NET technologies including ASP.NET AJAX, LINQ and Silverlight, and on more than one occasion Dallon's asked me 'when can we start using that in our Arena development environment.'  It's been fun trying to explain how sometimes we can't move as fast as we'd like...

If you want a fresh perspective on various developer related topics check out Dallon's blog, Developer in Beta.