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, and 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 and his brother, Jay (an expert Java Developer) produced their first CD, Strange Communication, in 1999. Another CD is in the works. You can read Carl's Blog, Intellectual Hedonism, to keep up with his latest 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 lives with his wife and kids in the New London, Connecticut area. You can reach him by email at carl@franklins.net