Yup, that's why I posted in the first place :) Hoping for lots of replies.

That's fair. But truthfully, at the level that I am, I am not going to so positively/negatively impact someone that they'll be able to take over my nursing homes, or even put me out of business or vice versa, you know what I mean? I'm really looking more for a what did you pick and why, rather than can you send me your code so I don't have to spend 6 months coding this application and therefore be ahead of you. I think when you start talking about that type of thing, that can cause trouble. CIO's have conferences for specific industries to share information, why can't developers?

One of the things that I have noticed in the past three years of working where I do, is that I can find plenty of information on specific technologies. We use DotNetNuke for our portal, C# for our programming, and MSSQL for our backend. So if I had a question about those, I could go to many different forums and websites to find specific answers to technical questions. What I haven't found are forums/websites/groups that are industry specific. What I would like to be able to do is brainstorm with people who are in the same boat as I am. I work for a company that manages the operations of LTC - Long Term Care - facilities or Nursing Homes. I'd like to pick the brains of a Developer of a competitor or someone who has done consulting for a LTC company or something along those lines - what do you use for your portal? When you start putting together BI initiatives, what technologies do you utilize or what pitfalls have you faced? that type of thing. The more I look around, the more I feel like I should just start a forum on our website, but I wonder if it's just me? is it?

Nope, it's someone who is trying to figure out where we should be in several years and trying to set the ground work now. We have a bunch of C# apps, a bunch of SSRS reports, and a LOT of sql data that needs to be manhandled into some state to allow our users to analyze it. I figured since a lot of things can be translated somehow into XML so that would be a good medium. Honestly, I'm in way over my head, and I'm looking for some direction.

We are in the process of centralizing everything - data, apps, 3rd party imports, SSIS jobs, etc. Most of the home grown apps are going to need to be completely overhauled, and the 3rd party stuff and SSIS jobs can all use XML. If you were going to use a development platform going forward to get things off the ground and you were starting from scratch, what would you use? We currently write everything in C# and rely heavily on AD for application permissions and access. Any suggestions would be welcome. I was thinking that since we're moving to a bigger focus on BI and possibly moving to Sharepoint for a lot of our internal work, that Flex, Adobe Air, Laszlo Systems or some other XML RIS technology might be a good way to look. All of this is internal, don't have to worry about being public. Thanks! :-D

Cocoa and Carbon are if you're trying to make desktop apps. My roommate uses C++ for all of his stuff. Again, I think it's just a different platform to program for.

Depends on what you're coding for. If you're writing apps for mac in Cocoa or Carbon, it's pretty cool. A friend of mine turned me onto them in college and is part of the team that makes the equivalent to WinZip called StuffIt. I've never had a chance to do any programming on it until now, but I'm using it for mostly Ruby apps and I have to say it's pretty slick. It's definitely not windows, which I am used to, but I like it better. Mostly because the apps I use, TextMate for editing and Transmit for FTP are really smooth and think of a lot of the things I would need. Like Macs, its really just a question of choice. Do they cost more? Yep. Are they harder to find software for and do things in a different manner? Yeah. Am I a Mac Fanboy? No, I just like the interface, and I'm having a fairly easy time with programming on it. Are they worth the money? Mine is a work machine, so I can't say. Would I go out and buy one? If I had the cash, sure. Until then, probably not. :-D