We will be holding our November UCNUG meeting tomorrow (11/19) at the NuSkin NOC building at 1175 S 350 E in Provo. I will be talking about the WCF REST Starter Kit and how it can simplify creating REST based services.

The meeting will be sponsored by Statera.

You can see screencasts and get news from PDC from a variety of sources including microsoftpdc.com so I won't try to capture every detail but instead put down my thoughts on what I learned/saw.

Today has been an Azure day. In the morning keynote Microsoft announced Microsoft Azure, their new operating system for the cloud. I have spent most of the rest of the day in sessions learning more about the cloud and what all it can do now and what it will do in the future. I have some small ideas for the SQL Services storage and how to use it. I just registered for my Azure account so I can test out the CTP.

One of the useful and impressive demos I saw was of a workflow that started out as a local WF workflow and then sent messages into the cloud where the workflow continued and finally messages were sent back to the originating workflow. I can envision scenarios where certain things like payroll or invoicing could be made part of the workflow and companies could reduce costs for commodity items that are not really part of their core business.

In other news the WCF REST starter kit was released on CodePlex. You can access it at http://www.codeplex.com/aspnet/Wiki/View.aspx?title=WCF%20REST. There is also documentation and other information at the WCF Developer Center REST site.

Also LiveID will become an OpenID provider. It is in CTP now but if it works and gains wide spread adoption it will enable a lot more "single sign on" scenarios. This looks like the first concrete step to come out of Microsoft agreeing to support OpenID.

finally, while not PDC related, TJay Belt had an article on duties for on-call DBAs featured at SQLServerCentral.com.

Tomorrow I head off to PDC. The conference will start on Monday and I am sure it will be a great experience with a lot of new ideas and technologies.

Just one week from today is the Utah Code Camp. You can start signing up and viewing sessions at UTCodeCamp.com. I will be giving a session there and am looking forward to it.

After that there is the SSWUG.org vConference. This is a virtual conference so you can attend from your desk. This is really a good idea for those who can't afford to take a week off of work to attend a conference or who were not able to get the travel budget approved. You can see the first 10 minutes of the sessions I am delivering by going to http://www.vconferenceonline.com/speaker.asp?id=ScottG. While you are there you can sign up for the conference which is being held November 5, 6, and 7. At $100 for the conference I think it is a great deal.

I am sorry to report that we had to cancel the Utah County .NET User Group meeting for October. There was a perfect storm of bad news including a change in our speaker's schedule. We will hold our regularly scheduled meeting next month on November 19.

Rob Bagby will be in town on October 23 to host an MSDN event titled Demystifying the Code. You can find complete details including a registration link at http://blogs.msdn.com/bags/archive/2008/10/02/msdn-unleashed-event-in-salt-lake-city-on-october-23rd.aspx. The first 50 people to come to the event will be getting a copy of the book Applications = Code + Markup by Charles Petzold.

The session will cover some of the latest technologies from Microsoft including WPF, Silverlight 2, and Visual Studio 2008 SP1. The event is being held at the Microsoft offices in Salt Lake City.

If you need more incentive to sign up for PDC now Microsoft has announced that they will be distributing "the bits" on an external USB drive. There will be some software that will be available in a CTP or beta version but there is other exclusive content.

There will be many things that are only available at PDC including the ability to interact with the people who are developing Microsoft's cloud and Software + Services offerings. We are also hearing that we will be the first to get the pre-beta version of Windows 7.

This is a reminder that next Wednesday we will be holding out monthly meeting of the Utah County .NET User Group (UCNUG). It will be held at the NuSkin building at 1175 S 350 E in Provo. Aaron Zupancic will be speaking to us on the design time experience of WinForms controls.

I got an e-mail stating that the PDC 2008 early bird registration deadline had been extended to Monday, September 8. That means that you still have time to save on registration. Here is a snippet of the body of the e-mail with more details on the Professional Developers Conference.

Get Your Head above the Clouds at PDC2008

Have you ever attended a Microsoft Professional Developers Conference? It’s an event so packed with great information and new technology, attendees claim their brains start sending back “out of memory” error messages. That’s what happens when a torrent of peer-to-peer geekology throttles your cerebral cortex.

At PDC2008, you can engage your senses and discover what’s new with Cloud Services, Live Mesh, Windows 7®, multi-core development, the Dynamic Language Runtime, and F#. There’s also much more, but we want to save a few surprises.

Oh, and here’s a little bonus for you: when you register before September 8^th, you’ll save $200 USD. Sweet!

Let’s break it down:

· PDC2008 is the place to hear about the future of Microsoft’s platform. You’ll hear from the actual engineers that architect and build our technologies, and they’ll blow your mind with everything they have to reveal.

· And what about the UnSessions, better known as Open Space? It’s our conference-within-a-conference for attendees…Microsoft folks need not apply. You can also spend time in our Hands-On Labs, which is like a big sandbox for geeks like us.

· Use your Jedi mind tricks to convince your boss to let you sign up for one of 10 super deep pre-con sessions, presented by industry experts and Microsoft technology leaders.

· Hear Ray Ozzie and other executives (don’t worry, they used to write code too) share their perspectives on the future of technology and computing. We call them keynotes, and you can expect some big news.

So, if you value your brain, we’d love to see you at PDC2008. Let us help you get your head above the clouds!

Register (http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Registration/) for PDC2008 by September 8th at (www.microsoftpdc.com) to save $200!

PDC2008 Dates and Location

WHEN:
October 27-30, 2008
Pre-cons October 26, 2008

WHERE:
Los Angeles Convention Center (http://www.lacclink.com/), Los Angeles, CA

REGISTER NOW( http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Registration/)

Join us on Wednesday, August 20 for our monthly meeting. The meeting will start at 6:00 at the NuSkin NOC located at 1175 S 350 E, Provo. Our topic will be continuous integration and the speaker will be Craig Berntson. Here are some more details on the meeting:

Continuous Integration with .Net
Continuous Integration is a development practice where code changes are continuously checked in to source control and then automatically checked out, built, and tested. Whether you are a one person shop or have many developers, by using Continuous Integration, you will improve the quality of your software and increase your productivity.

This session will show you how to use Continuous Integration in your daily development by integrating several free tools. Attendees will learn:
- How to implement Continuous Integration methodology into the development process
- How to automate code check out and the build
- How to automate unit testing, code standards checking, documenting, and other needs
- How to report the results of all the automation to the development team

Craig Berntson a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and has been a Microsoft MVP for over 10 years. He wrote the book “CrysDev: A Developer’s Guide to Integrating Crystal Reports”, available from Hentzenwerke Publishing. He has also written for FoxTalk and the Visual FoxPro User Group (VFUG) newsletter. He has spoken at various developer events in North America and Europe. Currently, Craig develops hospital software for a Fortune 100 company in Salt Lake City.

Microsoft has been busy planning for PDC. Some important things that you may need to know.

1. The early bird discount ended yesterday so if you were counting on that to persuade your boss you need to come up with some other justification. The registration link is http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Registration/

2. Microsoft has been posting additional sessions. You can check out the agenda at http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Agenda/

3. If you can't get your boss to pay for your trip and conference fee don't despair. You may still be able to get a chance to go to L.A. through one of the several contests running on the PDC site. Check out the different contests and the prizes at http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Social/Contests.aspx

Tonight we will be having our monthly meeting of the Utah County .NET User Group. As always our meeting will be held at the NuSkin Network Operations Center at 1175 S 350 E Provo at 6:00. Tonight we will have a short presentation on WCF and then have some time to answer coding questions you might have.

I meant to blog this earlier but the page at http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdnnetframework35.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=live lists the webcasts for the .NET Framework 3.5. There are several 100 level webcasts on ADO.NET Data Services and WCF to help you get started along with some 400 level webcasts for those who want to go deep into the technology.

This coming Wednesday, June 18 we will be holding our Utah County .NET User Group (UCNUG) meeting. It will be held at the NuSkin Network Operations Center at 1175 S 350 E Provo, UT. I will be the speaker and plan on speaking on what I learned at TechEd. I hope to see you there.

Today I spent most of the day in the CardSpace booth. I didn't get to attend any sessions. I did get to talk to a lot of nice people about Windows CardSpace. There were a few others who saw the .NET Framework logo at the top of the booth and asked other framework related questions. I am sorry I couldn't answer them all. Hopefully everyone found an answer to the question.

I am afraid I will be in the booth the rest of the week so unless something big happens I probably won't post anything new on TechEd specifically.

Apologies for not posting this last night but when I got back to the hotel there was something wrong with the Internet connection to the outside world. I just blamed it on the lightning show going on outside and went to bed.

I enjoyed the first day of TechEd. The keynote was Bill Gates' last one (or so we have been told) and it was a fairly typical keynote. My biggest complaint is that I wish they would stop showing off database refactoring. In the real world when you rename a column in a database and are not using stored procedures as an abstraction layer (as this application was not) then a lot of other applications suddenly break.

I did a little bit of booth duty and then was privileged to have lunch along with 14 others with S. Somasegar and Bill Gates. We had a Q&A session where Bill answered a lot of questions about what he is going to be doing and how he feels that his foundation and technology can help make a difference in the world. It was clear that he had researched the issues and understood where he could make a difference and where corruption or bureaucracy would limit the effectiveness of his work. After the event some of us were talking about how inspiring the talk was.

In the afternoon I gave my talk on what is new in Windows CardSpace in the .NET Framework v3.5. If you missed it the streaming version should be available by tomorrow. I enjoyed the session and especially the questions that came at the end.

With TechEd 2008 Developer happening next week in Orlando it might be too late for you to set up your travel and arrange your work schedule to go but never fear, Microsoft has a different conference you might be interested in. The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is comming to Los Angeles in October 27-30th. You can register at http://www.microsoftpdc.com. I have been involved with some of the planning for the event (a small part to be sure) and I am really excitied about some of the things that will be talked about. PDC is where Microsoft talks about products that will be coming out in the next few years to help us understand their roadmap and what to expect.

I am sure that some of the sessions will cover the hot topics in the industry including:

• The Live developer platform
• "Cloud" computing
• "Oslo" and what it means to developers
• The next generation of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework

I also wouldn't be surprised to see things like Windows "7" and other future products/technologies talked about.

I plan on attending and hope to see you there as well.

I just wanted to post the files that I used when doing the demonstrations in my Office session for last week's launch event in Salt Lake City. These are the completed demonstrations that show the services that Rob wrote, using Word, Outlook, and ASP.NET to consume those services, and to update the data in the office applications.

I want to remind everyone about the Utah County .NET User Group meeting on Wednesday. Here is the text from the reminder e-mail I sent out:

Join us on Wednesday, May 21 at 6:00 for our monthly meeting. As always we will meet at the NuSkin NOC located at 1175 S 350 E, Provo.

Jonathan Turner will be speaking to us on Silverlight. The presentation will focus on Silverlight 2 and will cover the following topics (based on time and interest)
- The differences between the different Silverlight versions
- What you need to develop Silverlight applications
- What your users need to use your Silverlight applications
- Creating a simple Silverlight application that includes the following
   - Some of the built in controls
   - Custom handled user interaction (mouse/keyboard input)
   - Simple animation
   - Simple multimedia (sound/video)

Jonathan received a bachelor's and a master's degree in computer science from BYU. His thesis involved integrating machine learning into user interfaces for controlling robots. He has worked for Aradyme Corp. as a software engineer doing data conversion, for Neumont University as an instructor, and currently works for Caselle Inc. as a senior software developer.

Last Friday I flew to Colorado Springs and participated in the community launch event for SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and Windows Server 2008. It was a lot of fun and Julie Yack made sure it was fun. She took the "Heroes Happen Here" theme seriously and had the speakers and volunteers dressed up with t-shirts or red capes. I spoke on SOA. I decided to post my slide deck here so anyone who wanted it can view it. I have to admit I showed the first few slides and then dropped into demos before showing the resource slides at the end.

Come join the Utah County .NET Users Group this Wednesday, March 18 as we discuss the different data access technologies that Microsoft has. We will be looking at ADO.NET, LINQ, the Entity Framework, and others. Bring your questions and we will try to answer them.

UCNUG meets at the NuSkin NOC at 1175 S 350 E, Provo, UT. We will start at 6:00 and the pizza and drinks will be sponsored by TEKsystems.

April 26th 2008
Neumont University
Salt Lake City, UT 
Code Camp is a one day free training for all developers of any technologies to attend and learn from their peers.  We are looking for Speakers to present at this event.  All topics are open for discussion and all formats.  The sessions would be 45 Minutes long with a 10-15 minute QA time at the end of the session ( total 1 hour).  This will be an all day event we plan to go from 9:00-5:00.  You don't need to be present the whole day but we would love to have you around for questions from users or to see the other great content of the code camp. 
We are looking for 100-150 people to attend the code camp.  We will have 3 tracks running all throughout the day (3 sessions going on at once).  There might be a chance to do your presentation twice depending on demand. 
You must bring your own notebook for your presentation. There will be a room on site for speaker prep during the day of the Code Camp.
Any code samples you show should be made available for download from Code Camp web site.  (http://www.utcodecamp.com/)
We are not covering travel or expenses for speakers, but you will receive a great big THANK YOU.  A Cool Polo Shirt also!
If you're interested please submit a session title, abstract, and bio Email to pwright@medicity.com
Please put Code Camp Speaker In the subject.

Tonight will be the Utah County .NET User Group Meeting. Sean Hokanson will be speaking about log4net. You can get more information at http://www.ucnug.org.

 

 

Hear ye, hear ye!  MIX08 to debut the first ever MIX UX Track which is 3 days of solid content dedicated to creatives / designers.  Lou Carbone, David Armano, Dan Roam, Kim Lenox and others will speak.  In conjunction with Adaptive Path, the User Experience track is just one of the many great reasons for all types of designers and creative professionals to attend MIX this year.  http://visitmix.com/2008/mixux.aspx

 

 

 The deadline for this year’s CSS contest, RESTYLE, has been extended.  Folks can still restyle the MIX08 Homepage and win a pass to MIX08, 3 nights at the Venetian, $$ and more, more, more! http://visitmix.com/2008/restyle/

 

 

Have you been listening to The Signal?  Each week a new episode debuts featuring a speaker or MIX crew member talking about some of the upcoming coolness happening at MIX08.  Listen to their interviews with Molly Holzschlag, Kip Kniskern, Jonathan Snook and others as we countdown to Vegas.  http://visitmix.com/blogs/TheSignal/

 

 

 

 Perhaps you remembered last year’s MIX, in which we featured Flotzam, a WPF screensaver mash-up that showed MIX07 feeds from Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and blogs. Well, we are doing it again this year with a twist: we are running a contest and will feature community created skins of the application on the big screen and on the screensavers of the computers available to attendees at the show.  The best skin will win an XBOX 360.  Entering the contest is easy: everything you need to know can be found here http://www.visitmix.com/blogs/News/403/ including links to screencasts and instructions that show how easy it is to do the restyle.  

 

The Utah County .NET User Group will be having thier January meeting on Wednesday, January 16. Ben Miller will be speaking about the new features of SQL Server 2008. For more information about the meeting and topic please see the UCNUG web site at www.ucnug.org.

I got this in my e-mail today for the meeting happening tomorrow. It sounds like the lucky few first people will be able to get a copy of Visual Studio 2008 and install it on their laptop right there.

VISUAL STUDIO INSTALLFEST!

For this month’s meeting we'll all get together and install Visual Studio. We have a very limited number of copies of Visual Studio 2008 Professional. Show up and get yours, first come first serve, then sit down and install! Bring your laptop and a powerstrip.

So come out and have some fun, we hope to see you there!

Many thanks to Richard Hunhausen for pointing me to http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/default.mspx where resistration for the Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 launch event in Los Angeles on February 27 is now open. This will be the big lauch event with Steve Balmer giving the keynote. I am sure it will be a good show and there will be some really cool demos that have been held in reserve for the lauch.

If you are unable to make Los Angeles you can also check the same site for registration for your local event. I was pleased to see that Salt Lake City is on the list for May 20 but registration is not yet open.

I will be speaking at the Utah .NET User Group tomorrow on Windows CardSpace. Here is the information from the e-mail that went out.

Windows Cardspace
CardSpace is one of the components of the .NET Framework v3.0. CardSpace allows people to authenticate to web sites and services in a more secure manner than the user name and password that are common today. CardSpace allows the user to be in control of their data and to see what data is being shared with the web site or service. One of the great benefits of CardSpace is that it will almost eliminate phishing. We will look at the basic pieces of Windows CardSpace and how they are used to secure a web site. We will also talk about some of the enhancements in the .NET Framework 3.5.

Scott’s Bio
Scott Golightly is a Enterprise Solution Strategist with Advaiya, Inc. He works with Microsoft on strategic initiatives like Application Platform Optimization (APO) and Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization (BPIO). Prior to joining Advaiya Scott worked for 15 years as a consultant helping customers solve problems through the correct use of technology. Scott is also a Microsoft Regional Director for Utah. He is passionate about helping people understand technology and how it can make their lives better.

It should be a good meeting and we hope to see you there!

After a couple of trips to Europe to teach Application Platform Optimization classes I think I might have a few readers in Europe who might be directly interested in this contest. Even if you aren't elegible to participate in the contest you might want to check out the results because I am sure they will be spectacular.

1^st European Silverlight Challenge

This competition is taking place in different European countries (e.g. Italy, United Kingdom , Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, France, Spain , Belgium, Croatia, Ukraine, Bulgaria) at the same time starting right now. As an example - the German and Spanish version can be found here:

http://silverlightchallenge.ineta-germany.org/
http://desafiosilverlight.bcndev.net/

The winners of all national competitions (there are great local prizes as well) will get the chance to compete against each other on a European level and win one of our 3 master prizes – paid trip to MIX 08 in Las Vegas including conference passes and some more goodies!

http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu/Premios.aspx

http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu/

PDC08 is scheduled for October 27-30, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There will be a pre-conference day on the 26th. From the announcement I got...

PDC is the definitive Microsoft event for software developers and architects focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. Mark your calendars and save the date. More information coming soon.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc2008

I got back from Malaysia over the weekend. I intended to post after each talk at TechEd but for some reason I couldn't connect to my web server. I had a good time speaking at the event. I met a lot of smart people who asked good questions. The only thing that I would have liked to do better is to have my demos work better. I was really disappointed at the one that worked in the hotel room and the speakers room but when I got on stage it broke :(

I think the best part of the speaking was when I went off on a tangent on Tuesday and successfully associated an information card with my Windows Live account on stage. It was the first time I had tried it and I was hoping that the beta wasn't closed or that I wouldn't hit an error with the process in front of 200+ people. It worked and I have been using CardSpace to log into my HotMail account ever since then. I will post the steps I followed in a subsequent entry.

I am really excited about the direction that CardSpace is taking and the different scenarios that it will enable.

I also got to do a little sight seeing before I came home. I  had the chance to visit an elephant sanctuary at Kuala Gundar. I saw an add for a credit card in the airport today. It had a family with some of the children touching an elephant. The tag line was something like "reminding your children what awesome really means". I felt that touching and feeding the elephants was truly an awesome experience. The saddest part was seeing this little elephant.

She is about 8 years old and she lost her left front foot in a poachers trap. It was a very sobering sight and makes you think about the impact you have in the world

After the conference was over I went on another tour where I got to feed some silver leaf monkeys. They really loved the green beans that we were feeding them. I was surprised when they started to climb up me. I was really surprised the first time one of the monkeys jumped on my shoulder but I found that they didn't really care about me. They just wanted their food.

I hope to be able to go to Tech Ed South East Asia again next year.

As I prepare to head off to Kuala Lumpur I realized that I hadn't published my schedule. Just in case you are in the area this is what I will be speaking on and when

Sorry for the short notice but we had to cancel the Utah County .NET User Group meeting this month. We will meet again next month on the 19th. Please see our web site at http://www.ucnug.org for more information.

It has been a while since I have posted here, but it isn't because I haven't wanted to. I have just been very busy. First there was Microsoft Mix where I got to learn more about Silverlight, Blend, and the future of web development on the Microsoft platform.

Last week I was at TechEd Orlando where I spent a good deal of time in the TLC area talking about Windows CardSpace. It was a lot of fun and I also got to give a chalk talk on Friday about identity in the real world. While there I also was asked to sit in on a panel discussion on identity and CardSpace that was recorded for Dot Net Rocks! I don't know when the episode will air but when it does I will be sure to post information about it here.

Finally I have been busy creating a series of screen casts for Microsoft about ASP.NET and VSTS. The first of the videos is available at http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/view.aspx?tabid=63&id=147 and covers creating an HttpModule. Look for more videos at http://www.asp.net in the future. The first VSTS video should be posted soon and I will be sure to let you know where that is available.

I also have been busy preparing for Tech Ed South East Asia in September.

Add to that all of the issues that come up with having a family, job, and life and I hope you will forgive the lack of information.

I really enjoyed today's Code Camp and the opportunity to speak about SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition (Sql Server 2005 CE). The slides I used (yes, there were only 3 and 1 was an intro slide and the other was the sponsor slide) and the code for the demo I created from scratch can be downloaded by clicking the link below.

CodeCamp2007SQLCE.zip (501.99 KB)

I hope everyone had as much fun as I did and also had a chance to learn a lot. I would like to thank Pat Wright for arranging the Code Camp and Ben Miller for taking time out of his vacation to give us the keynote.

I just found this announcement in my e-mail. I have not heard Mr. Godin speak nor have I read his blog but it sounds like he might be a very famous person. In any case I thought I would pass this along to help Phil and just in case you know who he is and want to attend. Be sure you are aware of the catch at the bottom that the pledges for attending the dinner should be submitted by Monday (yes, 3 days from now).

He started one of the first internet companies, yoyodyne, which was acquired by Yahoo, he then became a VP at Yahoo.  He more recently started a Web2.0 company, squidoo.  He is always talking about internet marketing – he’s one of the experts on it, and he has one of the most popular blogs on the internet.

If he’s geeky enough for you, we really need to rally our Geek Community and make some small personal efforts because …. We have a HUGE opportunity to get Seth to come speak to us here in Utah!  People have tried to get him to come speak here in the past but to no avail.  Now, it will take the efforts of us all in order to bring him here on May 24^th of this year!

To get him here, we need to get 500 people willing to pay $50.00 to hear him.  Not only will you have an opportunity to hear him speak, you’ll get 5 copies of his new book, The Dip.  We are gathering pledges to pay to hear him to see if we can get 500 people to pledge (instead of gathering money up front).

If you’re interested in hearing Seth speak, there are a few things you need to do. 

·         First, pledge to pay $50.00 at http://www.pledgebank.com/SethGodinUtah

·         Next, blog about it!  We’re trying to create a blog storm about this, even a quick simple post advertising this will help a lot

·         Third, tell everyone at work or who you think will be interested about it!

·         Finally, all the details and updates are being managed at a new site, http://www.wordmob.com keep an eye on the site for details

Here’s Seth’s blog post announcing this opportunity: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/2007/03/the_dip_tour.html

There’s a big catch here, we have to have evidence of a large motivation to do this my Monday (like, in 3 days)!  We have a tentative date from Seth that he’s been kind enough to hold for us, but we have to show we’re going to be able to make it so, please, if you’re interested, stop what you’re doing and go sign up here: http://www.pledgebank.com/SethGodinUtah RIGHT NOW!  Then blog about it asap, encourage other to blog about it and talk about it all day!

This is a pure grass roots effort, it will only work if those who are interested (YOU?) take 5 minutes and actually do something about it – so please help out!

What: Utah Spring Code Camp

When: April 14^th 2007 9:00-5:00

Where: Neumont University

Registration: http://utahcodecamp.eventbrite.com

The local .NET Users Group and SQL Server Users Group is conducting a “Code Camp” for local software programmers next month at Neumont University. The code camp is by the community for the community. Always free and Always for the community.

We will have Sessions on .NET, SQL Server, and Oracle. Presented by experts around the valley!

The Saturday, April 14^th event is scheduled from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The conference is free please register at.