I just saw an e-mail that says Microsoft is having a “fan drive” to get fans of the Microsoft Patterns & Practices summit on their Facebook group. You can go to the P&P Summit Page on Facebook and become a fan. On the page there is this description of the summit.

If you're a software architect or developer who is passionate about mastering your craft, you should register now to attend the next patterns & practices Summit, October 12-16th on Microsoft's main corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, USA.

According to the e-mail if the group reaches 250 fans by the end of the month a random (non-Microsoft) person will get a free pass to the summit. I just became a fan and there are 67 fans now.

I just saw that the call for speakers is open for the fall Utah Code Camp. The code camp will be on September 19. The website lists a bunch of speakers (I think they are the speakers from last year) and gives you an idea of the kind of speakers and topics that can be covered. I know that Pat is always looking for new speakers and new ideas. If you have experience in anything from a basic presentation up through the latest and greatest features of some product I am sure we would all love to hear about it.

Like a lot of other people I know this year I am not attending TechEd. Blame it on the economy or whatever you like, I am a little disappointed that I can’t be there to experience the sessions and networking.

So what are all of us who can’t be there in person supposed to do? Well there are several things we can do

1. Review the daily news from TechEd at your favorite technology news site. There are several magazines devoted to following Microsoft along with bloggers and others. One of my favorite blog sites for TechEd is the aptly named www.techedbloggers.com that redirects you back to the blogs on the TechEd online site.
2. View the videos of sessions at www.msteched.com. You can even watch the keynotes live.
3. Follow your favorite tech rock stars on twitter, facebook, or whatever social media they use.
4. Tell yourself that you are in a great position to ask to go to PDC this year.

OK, the last item may not happen but the others are ways that we can all be involved with TechEd and learn from the great information that is presented there.

Our local Microsoft Developer Evangelist Rob Bagby will be in town May 6 to present a “Best of MIX” session showing the most important announcements from MIX. Below is his description of the event.

Please join us as we present some of the highlights of MIX! 

Because of the overwhelming demand for this content, we’re offering two different sessions in Salt Lake City.

Please register for the one that works best for your schedule!

What’s New in Silverlight 3?

Are you interested in building business-focused Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)?  Would you like to take advantage of 3D in the browser, but assume it is too hard?  Have you wanted to take a Silverlight application offline?  Then this session is for you.  We will explore and illustrate the new features of Silverlight 3, including the following:

· Support for perspective 3D

· Offline Support

· .NET RIA Services which simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms

Building Web Applications with Windows Azure

This session will begin with a brief overview of Azure and discuss some of the announcements made at MIX.  We will then illustrate through demo how to build a Windows Azure application from the ground up.  We will illustrate how to consume Azure Table Storage, how to host services, web pages and Silverlight components, as well as how to deploy your solution to the cloud.

MVC 1.0 vs ASP.Net Webforms

Have you heard about the new ASP.NET MVC  framework from Microsoft and wondered what it was all about? Are you curious whether this replaces ASP.Net WebForms?  Well in this session you will learn how to use the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern to take advantage of your favorite .NET Framework language for writing business logic in a way that is de-coupled from the views of the data.  In addition, we will talk about the pros and cons of both MVC and Web Forms, how to determine the best choice for a specific project, various techniques and patterns used to build MVC applications vs. Web Forms applications, and the implications for using each approach.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Microsoft Salt Lake City Office
123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City Utah 84116

Time: 8:00 am –12:00 pm

Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032413164&Culture=en-US

OR

1-877-673-8368, reference Event ID 1032413164

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Microsoft Salt Lake City Office
123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City Utah 84116

Time: 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032413163&Culture=en-US

OR

1-877-673-8368, reference Event ID 1032413163

We will be holding our April UCNUG meeting tomorrow, April 15 at 6:00. We will be discussing ways to make the user group more relevant and useful to you and then talk about ADO.NET data services. Please check out the web site at http://www.ucnug.org for more information and to view the forum post on how to make the user group more relevant to you.

I have been looking at the Stonehenge incubator project on the Apache Software Foundation web site. I happened to look at their blog at http://blogs.apache.org/foundation/ and saw that today marks the 10 year anniversary of the founding of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). In the past I have been critical of open source software. I still don’t get the business model but I do also the sharing of code and ideas as being much the same as what I do as a Microsoft Regional Director. I can respect the passion of the individual contributors and the desire of individuals to create high quality software. So I will say to everyone who has contributed to the success of ASF, congratulations.

If you are like me and couldn’t attend the MIX conference this year you can still get all the goodness. Most of the sessions are posted online and you can get them for free at http://live.visitmix.com/ where I can scroll down to the bottom of the page and see in the tag cloud that they have 129 sessions available.

We will be having our February UCNUG meeting tomorrow at 6:00 at the NuSkin NOC at 1175 S 350 E Provo.

We will be discussing Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure. Azure is an OS, set of services, and programming model that allows applications to scale as needed. We will be looking at the basics of the Azure platform and see how to write and publish applications to the cloud.

I am rolling the announcement of a couple of events into one blog post.

Salt Lake Cloud Computing User Group

The Azure user group will be meeting Wednesday February 18 from 6-8 PM at

New Horizons Training Center
2355 Technology Dr. (2355 South and 3420 West)
West Valley, UT  84119

Utah County .NET User Group (UCNUG)

Also on Wednesday, February 18 at 6:00 is the regularly scheduled UCNUG meeting. I was going to speak but just found out I have a conflict. I am trying to move the conflict or find another speaker. With this little notice I don’t know that I will be able to do either so stay tuned for an update next week.

Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta

I will be speaking at the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta next Saturday, February 21. You can get more information and register at http://www.rmtechtrifecta.com.

MIX 09

The Mix09 conference is March 18-20 in Las Vegas. You can still get the $400 discount if you sign up today. Looking at the list of sessions I wish that I could go but right now it looks like I will be checking out the sessions online. You can get the full list of sessions at http://2009.visitmix.com/Agenda/Sessions.aspx.

Join us on Wednesday, January 21 for our meeting. As always we will be meeting at the NuSkin NOC at 1175 S 350 E Provo.

We will be hearing from TekSystems on how you can remain relevant in today's economy. We will be talking about the skills that will help you to keep your current job or to move onto a new job if you want to.

Please invite your friends and join us.

Salt Lake City January 2009 Windows Azure Cloud Computing User Group

Join the community...

Don't miss the opportunity to be at the first local meeting of the Windows Azure Cloud Computing User Group in Salt Lake City. Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform. At this meeting, you'll hear about Microsoft's vision of Software + Services and what it can mean for you. As part of this presentation, you’ll see a demo of how a cloud application is developed and deployed.

Who Should Attend?

Cloud computing has huge implications for both developers and business people. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor and be part of the community that helps pioneer this exciting new area.

When: Tuesday, 1/20/09, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Where: Microsoft, 123 Wright Brothers Drive, Ste. 100, Salt Lake City, Utah 84116
Registration link:

Please take a moment to register so we can plan properly. Registration is necessary for building access. Pizza will be served before the presentation starts.

Does cloud computing offer anything compelling for you, your business or your customers?

• Cloud computing with Windows Azure provides technologists with new options for where applications reside, how applications behave, and the business models that drive them.
• Cloud computing eliminates the need to predict traffic levels, purchase hardware or hosting capacity in advance, and keep os’s patched. Applications are given the capacity they need on demand. You only pay for computing and storage you use.
• Some of the most difficult and costly things to achieve in I.T. such as high availability and ensuring scalability are no longer headaches the enterprise has to deal with. Scalability, reliability, and high availability come with the platform automatically.

Developers no longer have to make a choice between the benefits of what can be delivered to users via the web versus traditional on-premises software. Microsoft offers the opportunity for developers to offer both with a software-plus-services approach. It is an industry shift that combines services on the Web with client and server software to deliver the best of both worlds.

Please contact Mike Erickson at mike.erickson@neudesic.com or phone at 303-248-8321 with any questions about this community user group event.

Microsoft is presenting 2 sessions to cover the highlights of PDC at the Microsoft offices in Salt Lake. Here are the details.

Please join us as we present some of the highlights of PDC! 

We will be reviewing some technologies first discussed at PDC -- such as Windows Azure and C# 4.0.

But we will not only be talking about the future.  We will also discuss some recent releases that you can take advantage of now, including the WCF REST Starter Kit and the Silverlight Toolkit. 

We’re offering this session twice in one day, so that you can chose the one that fits best into your schedule.

Please only register for the session that you will attend.

MORNING SESSION
Time:  8:00 am – 12:30 pm

Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399782&culture=en-US

   OR

1-877-673-8368, reference Event ID 1032399782

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Salt Lake City Microsoft Office
123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100
Salt Lake City, Utah 84116

AFTERNOON SESSION
Time: 1:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399784&culture=en-US

   OR

1-877-673-8368, reference Event ID 1032399784

The sessions will be broken down as follows:

AGENDA    

Every attendee will receive a free “.Net REST in WCF” T-Shirt.

Today’s e-mail had some different news about conferences. There was an announcement that Apple will not be giving the keynote or exhibit at Macworld.
I also had a call for speakers for MIX (actually it came yesterday but I was behind in e-mail).
I had another message asking if I want to present in a virtual conference.

I can somewhat see Apple’s point that they are reaching consumers in their stores and on the web. I also suspect that with the economy, availability of high quality training on the web, and slow maturing of the industry they may see the need to be at conferences as somehow diminished. I would tend to disagree. Although the number of people attending in-person events might be shrinking they tend to be the people who have a passion and can really help to drive your solutions forward.

I like the idea of virtual conferences because it allows me to present topics that are important and that I am passionate about and gives people the time to attend at times convenient to them. It reduces the interruption in their day-to-day duties and doesn’t incur the costs for travel.

The biggest reason I like live conferences is the ability to talk to the other people there. I may be different but I like to ask people at lunch what they learned and what they think. Getting a totally different perspective and having the ability to respectfully exchange views is something that I don’t usually find in the on-line learning venues.

It will be interesting to see how many people agree with me that there is a great value in being at the conference in person and will continue to support conferences or if they will go the way of the punch card.

According to the article Microsoft Releases Open-source Content Management App from PC World Microsoft has released a new open source content management tool called Oxite. It is designed to show how to use ASP.NET MVC and is for developers but I found it interesting that they are "dogfooding"it on the MIX site. I know MIX is supposed to be about the latest and greatest in Web technologies but it seems very bold to go with something built on an alpha release of the code for such a public site. I guess that means that Microsoft is confident in their technologies.

I hope to be able to go to MIX this year to learn more about the web technologies that are coming out. I think the most important thing I get from conferences is the ability to talk to the speakers and other attendees to find out what their perspectives are. I tend to hang out and interact with people who have a similar view as I do so it is always refreshing to hear from someone else who has a totally different opinion on things and to try to find out why. I have learned a lot of new things this way.

I was looking at http://www.msteched.com/teched/default.aspx and noticed that registration for TechEd has opened already. It will be May 11-15 in Los Angeles. You can save $300 by registering by December 31. This might be a good time to ask your boss for a Christmas present or year end bonus and get registered for the conference.

With PDC completed Microsoft has started to look to MIX as its next major conference. I was e-mailed about this contest. The cool thing is that it is open to developers and designers both. If you have a passion for writing small tight code then this might be the contest for you.

Inspire the world with just 10K! 

What could you create for the Web if you only had 10 kilobytes of code? It’s time to exercise your minimalist creativity and get back to basics – back to optimizing every little byte like your life depended on it.

GET WITH THE PROTOCOL

- Non-compiled source files and embedded images for your web application cannot exceed a size of 10 kilobytes.

- Your web application must either use Microsoft® Silverlight™ or Windows Presentation Foundation, running as an XBAP.

- Your web application cannot include third party source code, libraries, or assemblies.  Data from third-party web services is permitted, provided that you have obtained all consents, approvals, or licenses required to use the data and submit it into this Contest as part of the web application that you create.

- Entries will be judged on originality, graphic design / user experience and functionality.

- Send your submissions to Adam Kinney including the following:

1. Entry Title

2. Entry Description

3. Gallery Image (size 194x142)

4. Source Code zip file

The grand prize winner will live large at MIX09 with a free pass to the MIX09 event, three nights at The Venetian Hotel, and a $1,500 Visa gift card. The community choice winner will receive a USD $1,500 Visa gift card. And, three runners-up will each receive a $500 Visa gift card. Winners will be notified after the close of community rating on February 13, 2009. All participants that have their entry accepted into the gallery will receive a limited edition MIX 10K t-shirt.

Don’t wait to create! Learn more, view the official rules page, and submit your entry at http://2009.visitmix.com/MIXtify/TenKGallery.aspx.

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. http://utahcodecamp.eventbrite.com

Lots of Sponsors and Lots of software and Tech Gadgets to giveaway!

You can check out www.msutahevents.com for a session schedule and speaker list for the Code Camp.

Join us for the Utah County .NET User Group on Wednesday, March 21. We will meet at our usual location in Provo. The topic this month is security in Windows Vista. We will specifically focus on UAC and CardSpace to show how they work and how they can help to protect your computer and applications.

We will be giving away prizes including a copy of Windows Vista and Office so please be sure to come.

Utah Spring Code Camp
Saturday April 14th 2007
Neumont University
Salt Lake City, Ut
Call for Speakers
Closes March 30th 2007

Code Camp is a one day free training for all developers of any technologies to attend and learn from there peers and local speakers.  We are looking for Speakers to present at this event.  All topics are open for discussion and all formats.  The sessions would be 1 hour long with a 10-15 minute QA time at the end of the session.  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 for an ask the experts panel at the end of the day. 

We are looking for 100-150 people to attend the code camp.  I hope to have enough speakers to break this into several tracks that run at the same time.  Right now a SQL track and a DEV track are planned. 

You must bring your own notebook for your presentation. You’ll have a chance to test the video connections during the speaker prep meeting. 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. 

We are not covering travel and expenses for speakers, but you will receive recognition and a great big THANK YOU from yours truly.  A Cool Polo Shirt also!

If you’re interested please submit a session title, abstract, and bio Email to Pat_wright@sqlpass.org Please put Code Camp Speaker In the subject. 

This is a great opportunity to give back to the community and present on a topic that you like. You don't need to worry about being the best presenter in the world, just get out there and tell people about what you know or what you have been thinking about. Also this is not just about Microsoft technologies. I talked with Pat and he said he has invited other user groups (I think he specifically mentioned Linux and Java) to present as well. I think it would be great to be able to sit in on a session on Ruby on Rails or Continuous Integration with CVS or something else that I would not normally hear at a Microsoft sponsored event.

This morning at the first session at the MVP summit Scott Guthrie is addressing us. I asked him if there would be additional content beyond what they are telling us here. He promised that there would be many new announcements at MIX and that it would be worth our time to go.

The early bird discount for MIX ends at midnight tonight so you need to sign up early. Or.... if you are a good designer (not the gray background and square buttons type of design that I do) you could enter the REMIX contest and design your way to MIX.

At the conference you can get information about Expressions, "WPF/E", and other design tools. If that is enough you can sign up to get into the MEDC (Mobile and Embedded DevCon) at the same time.

All attendees to MIX will get a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and the right to purchase two additional copies of Vista Home Premium through the Windows Vista Family Discount so not only do you get a lot of good information but you also get some cool software.

So don't delay. Go register at visitmix.com. I will be there and joining in the conversation. After what I am seeing here I am excited for the announcements that will come out at MIX.

This is just a reminder that we will be having our UCNUG meeting tonight at 6:00. You can get more details at http://www.ucnug.net. We will be talking about Vista and Office 2007. We will be giving away some prizes including a copy of Office 2007 professional.

We will be having our November/December meeting of the Utah County .NET User Group on Wednesday, November, 29 at 6:00 in Provo at the NuSkin network operations center. You can get the address from our web site at http://www.ucnug.org. Ani Babian will be speaking to us about Microsoft's AJAX product named Atlas as well as some of the other cool things coming down the road.

Haven’t had the time to look at LOVE lately? Our LOVE Guru’s are here to help guide you towards what’s new with Live, Office, Vista and Exchange…

Now is the time!  Gather your laptop and power cable and get your dose of LOVE!

Please join us for a half day workshop on Windows Vista Application Compatibility and Deployment Tools where LOVE Guru’s will help you install Vista and Office 2007.  This event, specifically created for IT professionals and Developers, will take place on November 17th from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm.  We have partnered with Fujitsu LOVE Guru’s to provide expert Vista  content using the new Windows Vista and Office 2007!  Fujitsu  is the experts with regard to Windows Vista and Application compatibility. Fujitsu has been working with Windows Vista with Microsoft product teams and customers since the early stages. This event is targeted for IT Professionals and there will be an overview of the Vista Operating System. 

Registration:   http://www.msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032313827&culture=en-US

Later the same afternoon on November 17th from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. we will hold a more Developer focused event to cover the Application Compatibility Toolkit, .Net Framework 3.0 and Office 2007 development.  We have partnered with Neudesic LOVE Guru’s to provide expert developer content using the new platform that Windows Vista and .NET 3.0 provide!  The developers at Neudesic are the experts with regard to .NET 3.0 and have been working on .NET 3.0 solutions with customers since the early stages.  Their staff is hands-on and ready to share their wealth of knowledge!

Registration: http://www.msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032313832&culture=en-US

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to get a jump start on the platform technologies from Microsoft coming out by end of this year!
 
Registration is required! If you would like to attend both events please register for both using the separate links above. Seats are limited!
  
Event Details:
 
When:
Friday, November 17, 2006
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
 
Where:
Microsoft Corporation 
123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100
Salt Lake City, UT 84116
801-257-6400

http://www.microsoft.com/about/companyinformation/usaoffices/Desertmtn/SaltLakeCity.mspx 
 
Vista Install Checklist:

• You must provide a qualified machine to Install Vista
• All important data has been backed up! 
• PC has Intel/AMD processor at 1GHz or higher
• PC has a minimum of 512MB of RAM
• PC’s video adapter is AGP4x/8x or PCIe with a minimum of 64MB of RAM
• PC’s hard disk has a minimum of 15GB of free space
• PC has a DVD-ROM drive

You can find more information about Vista compatibility here:  Windows Vista

Or if you chose to run Windows Vista as a Virtual PC please down load:  Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

Please ensure you have a DVD reader.

This was in my e-mail yesterday.

Understanding The SQL Server 2005 Pillars - A Refresher
Thursday, November 30, 2006  9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Salt Lake City, Utah
Join us for a day as we take you on an educational journey through the key pillars of SQL Server 2005. The development, management, and business intelligence pillars of SQL Server 2005 provide a powerful one-stop-shop for enterprise customers' applications, data management, and analytics platforms.

From the registration page at http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032314370%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e

Summary

Did you miss the SQL Server 2005 Launch last November? Does your company wait to embrace products until after the first service pack? Perhaps you are an Oracle professional and want to get introduced to the SQL Server 2005 product suite. No matter your situation we invite you to join us for a day as we take you on an educational journey through the key pillars of SQL Server 2005. The development, management, and business intelligence pillars of SQL Server 2005 provide a powerful one-stop-shop for enterprise customers' applications, data management, and analytics platforms.

We'll provide breakfast and lunch - you just bring your questions.

Details

It looks like we have found a new home. NuSkin has offered to host our meetings. Along with the new meeting location we will also have a new meeting time. We will be meeting at the NuSkin Network Operations Center (NOC) located at

1175 South 350 East
Provo, UT 84606

Note that this is not the large building in downtown Provo but is rather in EastBay. You can get to it by going to the south most University Avenue exit in Provo. We will also be moving our meetings to the 3rd Wednesday of the month and start at 6:00. Since today is the 3rd Wednesday we will be holding the October meeting next Wednesday.

Our featured speaker will be Aaron Zupancic who will be talking to us about refactoring. Aaron is a very dynamic speaker and a Microsoft MVP. He will be helping us to understand refactoring and how it can help us develop better code.

NuSkin will be sponsoring our meeting with pizza and drinks.

Also don't forget the Utah Code Camp happening this Saturday at Neumont University. You can find more details and register at msutahevents.com.

This just showed up in my inbox this morning and the registration deadline is today but it looks like you have a chance to get some free training on VSTS next week.

I just finished speaking at a code camp in Colorado Springs last weekend. It as a lot of fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat. The best part is that I get the chance to interact with a bunch of other smart people.

Utah is holding a code camp on the 21st. I would encourage you to come out for at least part of the day if you can't be there the whole time. The details are below:

Join us on Saturday, October 21st for Utah Code Camp!

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 follows the Code Camp manifesto that it is for the community by the community and always free.  We are looking forward to excellent sessions on lots of different topics.

The event is scheduled from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The conference is free, however we request that you please register at www.msutahevents.com and enroll for the event so that we can get as accurate a head count as possible.

We will have sessions for both Developers and DBA's. We will also have a Sponsors area with lots of giveaways!

If you would like to speak or are interested in speaking, please email Pat Wright at pat_wright@sqlpass.org - visit www.msutahevents.com for more information.

The September meeting of the Utah County .NET User Group (UCNUG) scheduled for tomorrow is cancelled. We couldn't work out a room with UVSC so we had no place to meet. Our speaker has agreed to come back next month and we will hopefully have a meeting space worked out by then.

Check the UCNUG web site at http://www.ucnug.net for information on our October meeting.

I just got this message in my in-box. It looks like the bad weather has forced the postponement of the Geek Dinner tonight.

Well Everyone,

We’re going to cancel the dinner tonight on account of Rain both now and a good chance of it tonight in the forecast.

We’re currently putting together a plan to do it in 2 weeks – Oct 4th.  I’ll be sending out announcements for that today.

Thanks to all who were planning on coming, hopefully we’ll see even more of you in two weeks!

Phil Burns

Passing along some information on the Utah Code Camp. This is not just for "professional" speakers. If you have done  something interesting, or just well I am sure we would all love to hear about it.

The conference is free please register at www.msutahevents.com . We will have sessions for both Developers and DBA's.

If you would like to speak or are interested in speaking Please email me at pat_wright@sqlpass.org . Or visit www.msutahevents.com for more information. Thank you

I am passing on this information about the geek dinner later this month. I will be out of town and will not be able to attend but the ones I have gone to in the past have been good.

http://www.devutah.com/2006/08/08/august-2006-geek-dinner/

The following announcement about the Utah Geek Dinner came in my e-mail the other day. I have attended a couple of these meetings and they have been fun and a great way to meet other people who are working on similar stuff. The announcement doesn't say it but I am pretty sure that this is like other geek dinners where you get to pay for your own meal.

We had a great time at Superman (we had our own theatre) and Tucanos last month, thanks to everybody who came to it! 

This month the dinner will be on Wednesday, July 26^th at 6:30 pm at Brick Oven Pizza (http://brickovenprovo.net) in Provo.  Corporate Alliance will be there to help us network better and hopefully make sure that everybody meets everybody.  More details are available in the official announcement on our blog at: http://www.devutah.com.  If you’re planning on coming, please RSVP on our wiki at: http://www.phil801.com/devutah/index.php?title=RSVP_for_the_July_2006_Dinner.

The purpose of Geek Dinners is not only to help technical folks get to know each other better, it is also to help techies and business people get together, hopefully fostering new business relationships.  So, feel free to invite your colleagues, bosses and employees – especially if you’re a business person looking to meet up with some technical talent. 

As always, Geek Dinners are advertised via word of mouth, please blog about the dinner and help us get the word out!  If you are a user group leader/member, please help us spread the word by posting the announcement on your user groups calendar.   

We will be having our monthly meeting for the Utah County .NET User Group (UCNUG) this Thursday at 7:00 PM in room CS512 at Utah Valley State College.

The topic this month will be BizTalk Server 2006. Local BizTalk expert Kris Lundell will come talk to us about how BizTalk 2006 is being used at the University of Utah Hospital. He will talk about practical uses for the technology and show us how to create some interfaces.

It looks like there will be dinner and a movie (Superman) for the geek dinner tomorrow night. Here are the latest details from an e-mail I got last night.

This is to remind you about the Geek Dinner at Tucanos tomorrow and Superman afterwards. All the details are available on the DevUtah blog, http://www.devutah.com . To get tickets to the show for $5.50, you need to paypal Jordy by noon tomorrow at http://tinyurl.com/pbkvq. Hope to see you there tomorrow night! Don’t forget to RSVP on the wiki too so we have an idea of how many people are going to show up: http://www.phil801.com/devutah/index.php?title=RSVP_for_the_June_2006_Dinner

I am about to head out to the airport so this is the end of another TechEd. I have attended a few sessions over the last 2 days but I didn't take really good notes so rather than bore you with the scanty details :)

Today most of the buzz has been about the anouncement last night from Bill Gates that he will be transitioning out of his day to day work in the next two years. I think it is great that he will be able to spend more time working on his charities and trying to help humanity. I hope to find myself in a similar situation some day but to be realistic I will probably end up doing that around the time I retire. It also seems to make some more sense as to why Ray Ozzie was the keynote here.

One of the biggest pain points of this conference has been the transportation. I am not sure what the problem is but there is a labor dispute with the bus drivers and their company that has caused some problems. To be fair to the replacement drivers I think they have done a better job than the "regular" drivers. On Sunday night coming back from the keynote the bus driver asked if anyone was local so they could tell him where to go rather than reading the route sheet. Nobody volunteered so we headed out. After getting on the freeway and passing Fenway Park (which we hadn't come close to on the way over to the convention center) people started giving him directions. He eventually got us back to the hotel but I was wondering for a while. This morning I think I finally took the same route for a second time. I have see a lot more of Boston than I thought I would because it seems that each day we take a different route to the convention center.

I look forward to seeing all my friends at the next conference.

I spent all day on Tuesday in meetings with various Microsoft product groups. Of course that is all under NDA so I can't talk about it.

On Wednesday morning I did make it to 2 sessions. The first was on the new version of Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals. They went over how to generate data and run tests against that data. The interesting feature for me was that the data generator uses a seed value that will generate the same data for that seed. You don't have to save off the database and restore it before running a test. The other interesting feature was the ability to specify a distribution of the data. It isn't in the CTP now but eventually they will have the ability to look at the statistics for an existing table and generate data with the same distribution. That will really help out to make sure the data is representative for testing purposes.

The second session I attended was on SQL Server Service Broker enhancements. It ended up feeling more like a sales pitch for something that the presenters had done. They did say there was code on gotdotnet but of course they were selling a version as well. They had some connectors for BizTalk, SharePoint, and the ability to do multi-casting of messages. I wasn't really impressed with the demos but I think it has potential.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in more meetings that I can't talk about. I will say that I am excited to see if some of the ideas that we have talked about will really come to the market and if they do how much they will change the way I do my job from day to day.

This year the first day of TechEd was the keynote on Sunday evening. I have to say that I was pretty unimpressed with the keynote. To be fair I got there late but it didn't seem to have any really big announcements and the actress they had as the "tallent" is from a show that I don't watch.

My biggest complaint with the keynote was the lack of Bill or Steve. I understand that they may not want to spend their lives traveling but where is the love for us developers?

On Monday I spoke in the learning center at a "Chalk Talk" on SQL Server Worst Practices. It was very well attended and I enjoyed the ability to have a little bit of interaction with the people in the audience. I also got some time to work in the SQL Server booth and talk with some of the attendees.

I spent most of the rest of the day in meetings with Microsoft people. They are all under NDA so I won't spill any secrets here but I will say that they were very productive.

I did attend Hoe Homnick's session on programming SQL Server 2005. I learned about linking a certificate from an assembly to a user login to allow unsafe access to a .NET assembly without setting trustworth on for the database. I have just been lazy and didn't bother to look it up but it was relatively simple.

With Microsoft TechEd less than a month away I am getting a lot more mail and e-mail (mostly e-mail) from various vendors asking me to visit them. I have come to expect this and I know it will only get worse until about 2 weeks after the event when they will have figured out that if I wanted to talk to them I would have. Intermingled in the marketing e-mails are some that I acutally enjoy reading. So here are 2 of my favorites (so far):

Abstract: Credit Suisse Group is a leading global financial services company, providing clients with investment banking, private banking and asset management services worldwide. Like in most enterprises, Credit Suisse provided their developers with physical machines for development. Issues such as combination of authorization, physical delivery times and compliance-related workflows led to slow development timeframes. Their R&D group built an extremely extensible self-service virtual-machine provisioning system that enables software developers in a fraction of the time to easily, securely and rapidly provision on-demand disposable workstations, servers, and multi-tier environments. Credit Suisse will exponentially increase software developer productivity, drastically lower IT costs and ensure compliancy with continuously stringent regulatory requirements. The solution uses Windows Workflow Foundation , Windows Communication Foundation , and Virtual Server .

Speaker: Leslie Muller (Architect - Credit Suisse Global R&D)

Location: Thursday 6/15/2006 from 10:15-11:30 in Theatre 2

This one caught my eye because I have spent countless hours creating Virtual PC images to be ready for one demo or another. If I can use this same technique to cut that time down it might actually leave more time for things like blogging.

The other e-mail that I like is more along the lines of trivia:

In case anyone would like to throw an event the size of TechEd 2006, here is an idea of the quantity of food and drink that would be consumed.

-          1,250,000 pieces of "Mikes & Ikes " will be consumed over the course of a week at Tech Ed 2006

-           18,750 pounds of salad will be prepared and offered at meals

-          83,700 ice cream novelty/ fruit and yogurt bars have been ordered for this function

-          60,000 eggs will be eaten by attendees at breakfast (this is equal to 4,800 dozen cartons of eggs)

-          It will take 4 semis to transport the 150,000 bottles of water consumed on this show

-          The total amount of fruit ordered will fill 3/4 of full size tractor-trailer

-          1.6 million ounces of coffee will be poured and consumed (conservative estimate)

-          More than 50,000 pounds of carbohydrates will be consumed at Tech*Ed (Atkins who?)

-          1,500 table cloths will be used and re-set on a daily basis:   (7,500 for the week)

-          A minimum of 2,000 antacid tablets are likely to be consumed at this event

The Salt Lake City and Utah County SQL Server User groups are official PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) chapters and are hosting a SQL Camp on May 31. You can come to hear a lot of short presentations on SQL Server. It will be held in the Salt Lake City Microsoft offices so the number of participants will be limited. Also if you want to speak I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities. You can get more information at the official web site at http://utpasscodecamp.mollyguard.com.

[23-May-2006 Update]

I got an e-mail saying that this event has been postponed until September due to low enrollment. I guess with the Memorial Day weekend and the start of summer it is difficult for a lot of people to get away from work. When I have more information I will post it here.

I just got this in my e-mail. If you are going to be at Tech Ed and have any really cool topics to discuss you can sign up.

If you’re going to Tech·Ed 2006, June 11–16, in Boston, you’ll be listening to Microsoft experts, partners and gurus on a range of topics. But what about the other topics you find important and interesting? Where, among thousands of your peers at the conference, do you find the folks who share your questions or passions on some particular technology or concern? Where do you go to take part in discussions after listening all day? That’s what Birds of a Feather sessions are for!

A Birds of a Feather session is a one-hour open discussion on any topic that concerns you. It is proposed and moderated by you, community members, not Microsoft employees. It is not a talk, it is not a presentation. There are no slides or projectors. It is not scary. It is just you and your fellow professionals seizing the opportunity to have a discussion and meet one another.

Leading a Birds of a Feather session is as easy as 1-2-3!

1. Propose a topic for discussion. Submit proposals here. Proposals are due by March 31, 2006.

2. Tell your friends and colleagues to vote for your session so we can see there’s interest. Vote for sessions here.

3. Show up at Tech·Ed 2006 and spend an engaging hour with people who share your interests.

Anyone can propose a Birds of a Feather session for Tech·Ed 2006 on any topic. You do not need be a rock star, expert, or legend to lead a Birds of a Feather session. You just need to be you. If you have some knowledge about the topic, some good questions to get things rolling, and can call on people to speak, then you’ve got what it takes!

Act today! Proposals need to be submitted no later than March 31, 2006, and you want people to have a chance to vote for your proposal as one of their favorites!

The Birds of a Feather sessions are of, by, and for the community. They are directed jointly by the premier user group community organizations — INETA for the developers and Culminis for the IT professionals.

Connect with your community, propose a Birds of a Feather session, and attend the Birds of a Feather sessions at Tech·Ed.

Birds of a feather really do flock together!

Stuart Celarier, INETA

Paul Gross, Culminis

Tech·Ed 2006 Birds of a Feather track co-chairs

From Username & Passsword to "InfoCard"

Richard Turner - InfoCard Product Manager and Garrett Serack - Program Manager

AntiPhishing.org has stats on how many phishing sites there are.

InfoCard lets me use differetn identities at different web sites based on what information I want to give out.

InfoCard is PC based. MS is working on a device based solution.

Self issued cards are stored locally and not corroborated anywhere.

Managed cards are used by a trusted 3rd party. It doesn't contain any actual data, just the list of fields and a place to go to get the details.

InfoCard runs under a separate, restricted desktop.

Web site receives encrypted token and needs to decrypt it to get the information. This helps to protect against man-in-the-middle attacks.

InfoCard has basically 1 method called GetToken that you can program against.

With a managed card you have to authenticate to the STS (Secure Token Service) using a token, X509, Kerberos, hash, or user name and password. That will then get the data to put into the card to return back to the relying party.

Identity Metasystem - Standards based infrastructure for exchanging identity information across federated providers over the Internet.

Integrating with InfoCard

1 Update the database to associate a user with a card

2 Create an association page - Accept the info card

3 Update the sign in page

4 Update the registration page

IdentityBlog.com has code in PhP to accept InfoCard running on Apache.

WinFX which includes InfoCard wil be on Vista. There will be a deployment mechanism for XP and Windows 2003 Server.

Beta 2 coming soon with a release 2H06 (he said Q406).

You can import and export cards in v1 to synchronize between PCs. They are working on ideas of devices.

There is a commitment from the AD team to support STS in Active Directory. Until they create it Microsoft will ship code to integrate.

InfoCard v2 will support one time password generators.

There is not revocation mandated with v1. It is up to the issuer and possibly the trusting party to handle the revocation.

IIS7 as a Developer Platform

Thomas Deml - Lead Project Manager IIS

IIS7 ships on Vista and Longhorn server

Error support is better in IIS7 with a stack trace on the local machine. The messages are tied to a database that will evolve to give you better trouble shooting.

<system.webServer> tag in web.config to configure IIS settings.

New configuration GUI supports both ASP.NET and IIS settings.

New UI is completely remotable over HTTPS.

Extend IIS with C, C++, C# and VB.NET.

Use features of ASP.NET for different file types ie. Forms auth for jpeg.

IIS7 Ectensibiltiy - Class based C++ API or managed code implementing IHttpModule or IHttpHandler and can take advantage of built in features.

IIS7 has an ISAPI mode that provides compatibility with IIS6 Integrated mode puts the work from aspnet_isapi.dll directly in the pipeline. Configured at the application pool level.

IIS7 will ship on Vista including the home SKU. On the lower end SKUs only 10 requests will be processed concurrently.

Metabase is gone. Configuration loaded in process.

Build Your Next Generation Internet Site Using SharePoint Technologies 2007

Jackie Bodine - Program Manager - Windows SharePoint Services

SharePoint is an ASP.NET 2.0 application with master pages and all of the controls. You can plug in other ASP.NET 2.0 controls into SharePoint 2007.

There will be functionality for governance. Integration with WF to do workflow.

Page layout can be customized based on content type using master pages. You can have many layouts for a particular content type.

Will integrate with ASP.NET 2.0 web parts.

Content Query Web parts that integrate with RSS feeds so you can click on the web part and get the results as a feed.

Web services for the content and admin functionality.

Submitting content for approval will start an approval workflow.

UI provides "Item Pickers" to allow you to choose what you want to put in the content pages without having to write a lot of HTML.

Support for RSS on everything, Blogs, Wikis, and Discussion Boards

SharePoint 2007 supports multiple farms. You can have an authoring farm and from there push content out to the production farm. The users from the Internet only hit the production farm so any mistakes won't be visible to them.

Document Library and task list synchs to Outlook.

Pictures can be put in-line. The markup is "sanitized" based on the tags that Microsoft knows about. Any un-recognized tags will be removed.

Joe Belfiore - Corporate Vice President - Microsoft Corporation

Off line capability and rich 3D graphics can help you to create applications that will be immersive for the end users and help you to have a deeper, richer relationship with them.

Darin Brown - President Avenue A Razor Fish

Smart client can enable rich advertising so even though we skip TV adds they can find us on the web.

Joe

Ultra Mobile PC

Windows Mobile Devices

Smart Phones?

Windows Vista Media Player will allow you to group your music by genre, artist, title, etc. as well as year.

Windows Media Center will allow your application to appear on millions of TVs world wide.

Windows Vista will have 2 SKUs for consumers that have the Media Center extensions in it and it will be available in 190 countries.

Lessons From the Trenches - Engineering Great AJAX Experiences

Scott Isaacs - Architect- windows Live Frameworks

Mashups (Remixing other people's context) is the real revolution in Web 2.0.

Mashup is a philosophy in design that allows you to integrate. It is reuse within a site and leveraging code already written.

In windows Live every UI element is a gadget.

Live Clipboard lets you copy, paste, and share content across the web. Bind behavior to classes in the CSS. Interoperable between IE and FireFox due to microformat embedded in the page.

You need to be aware you can ony have 2 connections to a web site so when you are doing AJAX you might hit that limit in getting lots of content. You need to prioritize connections. Usually user actions are higher priority. Put images, scripts, etc. in their own sub domains so they have their own 2 connections.

When a browser loads a script it is single threaded and serialized.

Never expire static content. Instead change the URL to break the cache.

LocalLive.com has a permalink button to get you to the start. The live site updates the hash (after the # sign) to make a new URL for the browser so the back button works correctly and you don't need to reload the entire page.

Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

Not dependent on WPF.

CTP in Q3 later this year.

Plugin expected to be < 2MB

Grid, Canvas (absolute positioning), and stack layouts.

Use JavaScript and built in WPF/E controls to scale, spin, and rotate vector graphics in the browser.

Support .NET Framework model that uses IL and a small managed runtime to provide standard coding model.

Support for WPF styles.

Artificial Artificial Intelligence - Using the Amazon TURK and Web Services

Amazon has a lot of web services. You can store data with them but they charge you for the access and the storage.

You load information into Mechanical TURK and your Amazon payment information and then some human will do the work.

The idea is to replace expensive R&D with relatively inexpensive human labor.

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides web services API for computers to integrate artificial artificial intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans.

www.mturk.com has a realtime listing of jobs available and how much the person offering the job is willing to pay.

You can set qualifications on what the people have to know before they can work on your HIT (Human Intelligence Task) and also you can reject work that someone has done if you don't feel that they did something useful. Of course the workers can rate the requester and if you reject too often then you get a bad reputation.

[These are my notes as I took them. I am not the best note taker in the world but this is what I wrote down]

Bill Gates Keynote

Tools changing rapidly broadband, devices, deyboard, remote control, cell phones

Browser experience and beyond the browser experience focus of the conference

IE7 provides: 1. Streamlined UI 2. Security - low rights mode, opt-in for active controls, block phishing, new certificates to show how long the site has been around. 3. Presentation - RSS feeds and doc store

Releases of IE will be more rapid

Web sites specialize in an area and then combine them into applications

Office 2007 - InfoPath and Excel viewable in a browser

Atlas has a go live license

WPF - declarative programming model

Live Software = Software that assumes connectivity to the web

Microsoft is focused on building a platform for Live Software

Aber Whitcomb - CTO - MySpace.com

Reduced CPU from 85% to 27% with ASP.NET 2.0

MySpace gadget in Vista sidebar to show slide show of pictures.

Profile 2.0 uses Atlas to drag and drop regions to update public profile. Looks like a web part manager.

Ashley Highfield - Director of New Media & Technology - BBC

Use broadcasting/multi casting and P2P to get TV programs down to the desktop.

DRM is an important model. Need to allow UK viewers rights for free for 1 week but external viewers must pay.

Gadget in Vista to view content.

Tim O'Riley - Q&A

Q: How do you explain innovation outside fo established frameworks?

A: Microsoft has always been about leading edge innovation and then making that better and  easier for the masses.

Q: Do you see the Internet taking over from the OS?

A: We will provide a comprehensive set of tools. There is still room for other innovation.

Q: Will your tools only support MS tools?

A: There will always be areas where Microsoft doesn't have expertise that will be available.

Q: Social computing where the more users you have the better software you have is important. Do you see that coming into Microsoft? i.e. Dr. Watson error reporting and live update

A: Help text is updated monthly based on the feedback

Q: OK that is explicit. What about implicit like anti-phishing in IE7?

A: Reputation is important in IE7. You can set it so you will be warned if millions of people have not used the site.

Q: It seems data rather than API could be the lock-in?

A: Eventually data should come from the community

Q: You are starting to face competition from people who have different business models. How do you compete?

A: Microsoft has pushed hith volume/low cost. There will always be smarter and better competitors.

Q: iTunes is "software that spans more than a single device". Is it something you will dow?

A: iTunes is different because they make money on the hardware. We should be making services that span devices and it is all about the user experience. You shouldn't have to configure devices. They should know what I like.

Q: How do you see competition on the phone?

A: It is different because there are intermediaries that provide content but competion will open it up. Competition between telcos and cable will make everything better for us.

Q: How do you see publishing and books changing in the future with the hand held devices?

A: We see leaps with music and video. We are working on getting the right devices so people will want to read on the screen.

Q: With the web and  periodic releases we can get changes quickly. Microsoft is much slower to release. Will you be more agile?

A: It depends on the product. SQL and OS wll be slow but IE, MSN messenger, and others will have quicker releases.

Audience Questions:

Q: Can you open up the APIs so we can share contact information?

A: Sure, it is standard in Vista. Presence, calendaring, addressing, etc.

Q: For an ISV using IE we have a problem with too many releases of the browser. How do you not break us?

A: The UI piece will rev more often than the core rendering piece. Also looking at administrative policy to make sure versions are consistent.

Q: … not sure what the question was …

A: WPF uses a templated approach to dynamically layout.

Q: What are you doing to be changing the licensing to make it easier to see what the upgrade path is?

A: For large companies the cost of the tools is small. We are working on getting prices down.

Dean Hachamovitch - Browsers and RSS

Next generation browser goals - Succeed through:

1 Great browser experience

2 Customer confidence

3 Rich site experience

IE7 Beta 2 build on the web

Open search is open standard on searching. You can us it to add ability to put your site in the UI of IE7.

Print improvements to make sure things are not cut off.

Zoom up and down on the size from presets at the bottom of the UI.

IE remembers if you have set your security settings to put you at risk and will block sites. You can continue or use 1 click to reset permissions.

Phishing filter, High Assurance Certificates, InfoCard

InfoCard is not a user name/password manager it is designed to eliminate the need for user name and password.

InfoCard uses standard web protocols so any web site can use it.

www.meyerweb.com - CSS demo that actually works in IE7

RSS moved to platform service to share feeds between applications.

Yahoo!, Amazon, and E-Bay are using RSS extensions to allow you to view, sort, and search data.

Scott Guthrie

Atlas provides client side JavaScript libraries. There is also work to integrate the client libraries into ASP.NET membership providers.

Atlas March CTP has a go live license

Developing a Better User Experience with Atlas

Atlas has a server side model that renders the initial UI and behavior. On the client side it will take user input and request updated UI and behavior.

Atlas server scripts let you create AJAX apps without having to learn JavaScript and communication protocol.

<Atlas:UpdatePanel> control lets you mark parts of the page that can be updated independently.

Setting an UpdatePanel to be conditional means it wll not update with the rest of the UpdatePanels. If you want to update it you can server side by calling the Update method on the UpdatePanel.

There is a timer control to have something happen at specified intervals.

Atlas ahs control extenders to let you provide responsive user input.

Client side controls and script library to provide data binding on the client among other functionality.

Client scripts can be pulled out of the Program Files directory but you will have to write your own server side code to do the integration.

http://atlas.asp.net - tutorials, samples, and forums and source doe from these sessions.

Developing a Windows Presentation Foundation Application

Expression Interactive Designer and VS 2005 can use XAML.

PropertyElement syntax lets you assign objects (XML) as properties.

Back by popular demand!

You are invited to attend a free SQL Server 2005 Overview: Development, Business Intelligence & Management training class.  Microsoft is pleased to offer this training at no charge.

REGISTRATION ENDS March 27, 2006 by 12 noon

Elements of this syllabus are subject to change.

This one-day course provides students with the knowledge and skills to understand the new features in SQL Server 2005 as well as take advantage of the significant improvements made to SQL Server in the areas of infrastructure, development, and business intelligence.

Audience

This course is intended for experienced rich client developers, web developers, database administrators. This lecture based class will cover key features of SQL Server 2005 as well as a look into how to convert existing SQL Server 2000 databases to SQL Server 2005.

At Seminar Completion

Students will be able to effectively use:

·        SQL Server Developer Platform – SQLCLR, Client, XML, TSQL Enhancements

·        Business Intelligence Platform – Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Integration services

·        Infrastructure Platform – Migration, Management, Enterprise Availability

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

·        Experience using SQL Server 2000

·        Experience managing SQL Server 2000 databases

Lunch

In appreciation for your attendance to this seminar, Microsoft will be providing lunch.

Seminar Dates and Location:

March 29^th, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Microsoft Corporation

123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City, UT 84116

801-257-6400

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/rockymtn/saltlakecity.mspx

Register today at: http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites

Class/Invitation ID 304560 or click here

Next week there will be free training on SQL Server 2005 available in the Microsoft Offices. Details below:

You are invited to attend a SQL Server 2005 Overview: Development, Business Intelligence & Management training class.  Microsoft is pleased to offer this training at no charge

REGISTRATION ENDS March 10, 2006 by 12 noon

Elements of this syllabus are subject to change.

This one-day course provides students with the knowledge and skills to understand the new features in SQL Server 2005 as well as take advantage of the significant improvements made to SQL Server in the areas of infrastructure, development, and business intelligence.

Audience

This course is intended for experienced rich client developers, web developers, database administrators. This lecture based class will cover key features of SQL Server 2005 as well as a look into how to convert existing SQL Server 2000 databases to SQL Server 2005.

At Seminar Completion

Students will be able to effectively use:

·         SQL Server Developer Platform – SQLCLR, Client, XML, TSQL Enhancements

·         Business Intelligence Platform – Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Integration services

·         Infrastructure Platform – Migration, Management, Enterprise Availability

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

§         Experience using SQL Server 2000

§         Experience managing SQL Server 2000 databases

Lunch

In appreciation for your attendance to this seminar, Microsoft will be providing lunch.

Seminar Dates and Location:

March 15^th, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Microsoft Corporation

123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City, UT 84116

801-257-6400

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/rockymtn/saltlakecity.mspx

Register today at: http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites

Class/Invitation ID 304439 or click here

FRONT RANGE CODE CAMP

SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2006 / DENVER, CO

Front Range Code Camp is a one day Developer community building event being presented by everyone in the developer community on development focused topics. It is by pre-registration only and someone may register as a speaker or an attendee. Please visit http://www.frontrangecodecamp.com to register to attend and feel free to invite others.

We expect 100-150 to attend the Code Camp.

Microsoft is graciously hosting the Code Camp at their Denver Tech Center offices. They’ve opened six multi-media classrooms for our use.

Code Camp sessions are 1 hour long, to the point, and filled with code and actual hands-on demonstrations. Each session is kept to an hour so we can pack several sessions into the day. These sessions are about showing your favorite flavor or development tools. A successful session will go deep into a single topic. 

This is a GREAT opportunity to get noticed in the Denver developer community for all (both experienced and none experienced presenters).

Because these sessions are different than the standard conference sessions, there will be a mandatory speaker preparation meeting about a week before the code camp. For those of you flying in there will be a meeting the night before and you will have a chance to test your hardware.

You must bring your own laptop for your presentation. You’ll have a chance to test the video connections during the speaker prep meeting. There will be a room on site for speaker prep during the day of Code Camp.

Any code samples you show must be made available for download from Code Camp web site.  The code must be emailed no later than May 15^th.

We are not covering travel and expenses for speakers, but you will receive a way cool shirt and some swag.

If you’re interested please submit a session title, abstract, and bio at http://www.frontrangecodecamp.com/Presenters.aspx

or send email to Richard Lawrence at richardl@frontrangecodecamp.com

The February Geek Dinner is coming up next Wednesday night. It will be held at the Miller Business Innovation Center at 6 PM. Here is a description that came in my e-mail with a link at the bottom to sign up for the event.

**EVENT SUMMARY**
DevUtah's February Geek Dinner will be held at the Miller Business
Innovation Center on Wednesday February 22 at 6 PM.

David Spann and Alistair Cockburn will lead a discussion on “Introducing
Agile to the Organization”. If you’ve heard of Agile methodologies but
can’t get others in your organization interested; or if you’ve been a
member of a high performing Agile team but can’t find the right words to
convince upper management to spread the “gospel”, this discussion may be
helpful. David and Alistair will take your questions before they begin
and will respond to as many as possible. Being agile by nature, they
want to meet your (the customer’s) interest. If you’ve only heard about
Agile, feel free to do a little research and post beginner questions as
well.

**SPEAKERS**
David Spann is high-tech management consultant who focuses teams on
making a reasonable return on investment while exceeding customer
expectations. David has helped conduct each of the annual Agile Software
Conferences since the first one held at Westminster College in 2002 and
is currently involved with Alistair Cockburn in developing Utah's Agile
Project Leadership Network.

Alistair Cockburn is an internationally known project witchdoctor and
strategist. He co-authored the 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software
Development and the 2005 project management "Declaration of
Inter-Dependence" and has written several best-selling books.

**MENU**
A build-your-own taco buffet will be catered by Megan Faulkner Brown.

The meal cost is $12. You can prepay from the wiki or just bring cash to
pay at the door.

Please RSVP:
http://www.phil801.com/devutah/index.php?title=2006_February_Event

It looks like the folks in Boise are planning on having a code camp next month. It is on March 18. If you would like to attend or even better speak at this event you can get more information at http://www.boisecodecamp.org.

I have never attended a code camp but from everything that I hear they are a lot of fun. It is also a wonderful opportunity for people who are thinking that they might want to get into speaking to start to get some experience talking about something that is interesting to them.

On March 20-22 Microsoft will be holding the MIX conference at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. If you want to go but can't get your company to pay for it, or you work for yourself and can't convince the boss to let you go :) you still have a chance to attend. You can enter a contest to redesign the MIX homepage. 3 lucky winners will get a pass to the show. You can get the full details at http://blog.mix06.com/blog/archive/2006/02/05/154.aspx or register for the conference at http://www.mix06.com.

I just registered so I will plan on seeing you there.

I will be teaching a class on ASP .NET 2.0 in the Microsoft offices in Salt Lake on February 14 & 15. I promise that we will be done early enough on the 14th to let you get home to your sweetheart. Here are the details from Microsoft.

You are invited to attend a ASP 2.0 Web Applications training class.  Microsoft is pleased to offer this training at no charge

Developing Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Web Applications

REGISTRATION ENDS February 10, 2006 by 12 noon

Elements of this syllabus are subject to change.

This two-day course provides students with the knowledge and skills to create ASP.NET 2.0 applications. It will show the advancements from ASP.NET 1.x to

ASP.NET 2.0 in creating applications. The course focuses on the new features and functionality of ASP.NET. The course includes sample code in both Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET and Microsoft Visual C#®.

Audience

This course is intended for experienced, professional Web application developers, including those employed by software companies or working on corporate development teams.

At Seminar Completion

After completing this seminar, students will be able to:

§       Describe advancements from ASP.NET 1.x to ASP.NET 2.0 in creating applications.

§       Develop new Web solutions using ASP.NET 2.0 features and functionality.

§       Creating ASP 2.0 Applications

§       Using Master Pages

§       Working with Data and the new source model

§       Handling State Management

§       Working with Web Parts

§       Personalizing web pages using Profiles and Themes

§       Implementing ASP 2.0 Security

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

§         Experience developing .NET Web applications using ASP.NET 1.0/1.1

§         HTML

§         XML

§         ADO.NET (1.0/1.1)

Lunch

In appreciation for your attendance to this seminar, Microsoft will be providing lunch for the duration of the event.

Seminar Dates and Location:

February 14^th and 15^th, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Microsoft Corporation

123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City, UT 84116

801-257-6400

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/rockymtn/saltlakecity.mspx

Register today at: http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites

Class/Invitation ID 304420 or click here

Read below for details on this new conference:

Microsoft invites you to MIX, our 72 hour conversation live in Vegas, to discuss with industry leaders such as yourself high-fidelity commerce, media, services and security for the World Wide Web.  Join Bill Gates of Microsoft, Amazon, and web thought leaders such as Tim O’Reilly on March 20-22 at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas to learn about the web’s next generation of content and commerce, plus the customer experience that is beyond the browser.  Registration is open!  www.mix06.com

The MIX conference is a LIVE conversation between web developers, designers and business leaders who create consumer-oriented web sites. Why is it called MIX?  The event is not only a place where you can Meet, Interact, and eXplore with Microsoft and others about the web, but we are MIXing things up by having a conference for tech geeks as well as business professionals who help make decisions about technologies and strategies for your company’s customer facing web sites.  When you attend MIX you’ll hear about Microsoft’s roadmap for the web, and learn the latest about IE7, Windows Media, Windows Live!, as well as “Atlas”, Microsoft’s new AJAX framework.  Register today and take advantage of the low price of $995, as well as the discounted conference hotel rate.

At MIX: 

Developers can dive deep into the latest Microsoft web technologies, including Internet Explorer 7, Atlas/AJAX, ASP.NET, InfoCard, the Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Media and others. Want to learn how to code pages for IE7 that render properly in other popular browsers? Interested in building AJAX sites quickly and efficiently?

Designers can learn how Microsoft’s platform technologies will allow them to create rich experiences that incorporate video, advanced typography, vector graphics, and 3D graphics. Explore new ways to differentiate your sites from those of your competitors, learn how to streamline the designer-developer pipeline and discuss strategies for improving your site’s usability.

Business Decision Makers will get a solid overview of how Windows Vista and the Internet Explorer roadmap can boost site revenues and unlock new business opportunities. Get the latest Vista and IE7 forecasts from Microsoft, discuss the business implications of RSS and pick up insights on how to better monetize your offerings.

What kind of content will be offered at MIX?  Sessions at MIX will be focused on two main scenarios that will help you stay on the cutting edge of technology, while at the same time enable you to further monetize your web offerings! 

Next Generation Content & Commerce

A plain old HTML experience is no longer good enough for your most frequent (and most valuable) users—AJAX is setting new standards for responsiveness and usability, visitors are expecting increasingly-sophisticated customization and personalization options, and rich media integration is unlocking new revenue streams. But building these richer sites can be difficult and expensive.

Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch (General Manager, Internet Explorer team) hosts this exploration of how technologies like IE7, “Atlas” (Microsoft’s new AJAX framework), Windows Live!, the Windows Presentation Foundation and InfoCard can take your browser-based content and commerce experiences to another level and increase earnings, while minimizing development and maintenance costs.

User Experience Beyond the Browser

As web-based content and services become increasingly indispensable, users are expecting to interact with your offerings in new ways and in new locations.

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore (Vice President, eHome division) hosts this overview of your options for boosting revenues by building “sticky” experiences that follow the user outside the browser, into the living room and on the go. Some of the specific technologies that will be discussed include: RSS, the Windows Sidebar, Office 12, Windows Mobile and Windows Media Center/Xbox 360.

You can view the MIX agenda and top session list at www.mix06.com.  You can also subscribe to the MIX blog to get our regular updates and find out what is new and hot with MIX. 

The MIX conference is $995 and registration is open – be sure to sign up today to take advantage of the low hotel conference rate at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas.

See you in March in Vegas! 

www.mix06.com

Yesterday I spent all day at a MSDN and TechNet events showing the "best of launch" in the 2005 products. It was great to meet up with some people that I have not seen for a long time. There was an excellent turn out. Between the morning and afternoon sessions there were just under 1000 people attendees. A lot of them were there for both the morning and afternoon sessions.

The training I will be teaching on the 13th and 14th was also announced. I heard that the class already has 35 people signed up. It sounds like there is a lot of interest in the new development products. 

[Note: I must have missed the memo but the dates are different than I originally posted. The correct dates are Tuesday the 13th and Wednesday the 14th. I have also updated the information below with the correct dates. The registration web site has the correct dates.]

I will be teaching a 2 day class on Visual Studio 2005 in the Microsoft Offices on December 13th and 14th. It will be a lecture format with some demonstrations of each of the concepts. The class is intended for developers that have at least 1 year experience with Visual Studio 2005. I have included more information below.

What's New in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for existing Visual Studio .NET Developers

This two-day instructor-led lecture seminar will provide the student with a focused environment to experience the new features and functionality of the Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 product.

Audience

This workshop is intended for experienced, professional software developers who are already skilled in building software using Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET or Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, including those employed by independent software vendors or those who work on corporate enterprise development teams.

At Seminar Completion

After completing this seminar, students will be able to:

§       Apply knowledge of new productivity features and functionality in Visual Studio 2005 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to develop software more efficiently

§       Write applications that use the Microsoft Visual Basic® and Microsoft Visual C#® programming language enhancements

§       Build managed code to run inside SQL Server 2005 (codename "Yukon")

§       Write data access code using the improved functionality in ADO.NET

§       Build Microsoft Windows® Forms applications using new controls and new functionality in the Visual Studio 2005 IDE designers

§       Deploy rich client applications using the new ClickOnce application deployment functionality

§       Build ASP.NET Web applications using new controls and new functionality in the Visual Studio 2005 IDE designers

§       Use the improved enterprise development tools to aid in the design, build and deployment of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications

Prerequisites

Before attending this seminar, students must have:

§       Experience (at least 1 year) as a full-time developer using Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio .NET 2003

§       Experience in developing applications in one or more of the following fields:

Web Application (ASP 2.0), Windows Forms Application (Smart Clients with ClickOnce deployment), Server Component , XML Web Services

Student Materials

The student kit includes a comprehensive workbook. This event is a lecture only presentation with demos.  The student materials used are from a 3 day training course; the instructor will be making adjustments to the course to cover all materials in a 2 day class format.

Lunch

In appreciation for your attendance to this seminar, Microsoft will be providing lunch for the duration of the event.

Seminar Dates and Location:

December 13^th and 14^h, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Microsoft Corporation

123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City, UT 84116

801-257-6400

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/rockymtn/saltlakecity.mspx

Register today at: http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites

Class/Invitation ID 304327 

The PDC ended yesterday but true to form I didn't blog the sessions last night but insead am doing it a day late. I heard that an article I wrote on the "language wars" was posted on Comnet at http://commnet.microsoftpdc.com/pdcreflections.aspx. I am not sure if you had to register to see this article or not. I will check that out and post it here later if there is a problem getting to it. I only took notes on 1 session that I attended so here they are:

DAT408-ADO.NET: Advanced Data Access Patterns
Getting data wiht a DataReader is fast, going back to the server is slower but UpdateBatchSize helps. If the provider supports it parameters will be sent in an array.
Going from the client to the server - Bulk insert to a temporary table then use DML to move the rose (one statement/type) and do it all in a single transaction.
Grouping lots of data operations in a transaction can be faster because there will be less writing of the transaction log to the disk.
Must load data into a DataTable to do batch updating.
For BulkCopy to go fast the database needs to be in simple or bulk-logged recovery mode. Tempdb is already in simple mode.
To speed it up further you can implement a custom data reader to read the data and stream it rather than reading into a DataTable (DataTable puts all rows in memory at once).
Use SqlDependency to notify of changes to the data and invalidate the cache. Use a DataSet to store the data in cache and invalidate the DataTables as needed.
SqlDependency doesn't have any granualarity control so to make it more efficient load data in chunks, when a cache miss occurs. On a notification, just delete the chunk so the rest of the chunks in the cache aren't invalidated. In the callback for the notification delete the rows from the DataTable.
If you use a DataSet for a cache you wll need to query the data in it. Joins are missing. You get the ability to filter rows now.
To create an "index" on a datatable call select for a temporary one or create a DataView for a permanent "index".
Pablo will post the code to do joins in a DataSet to the blog at blogs.msdn.com/dataaccess.

It was a fun week at PDC. I really enjoyed being there to hear about all the new technologies. I got enough DVDs to keep me busy for a long time looking at new stuff. The only real bummer was that sometime Friday afternoon I lost my cell phone. The security guys at the convention center found it and are supposed to be sending it to me but for a few days I will be without it.
 

Here are my notes from the 3rd day of PDC. I have to admit that after 3 days and nights of going non-stop I had a hard time tracking in some of the sessions so these notes are a little more sparse and flaky than usual.

Keynote - Bob Muglia
There will be releases about every 6 months.
WS-Management submitted to DMTF for standardization.
SDM and MOM Management packs let you see the error, call stack, and source coce where the error occured.
Windows Server compute cluster Beta 1 at microsoft.com/hpc. This appears to not do anything in parallel but rather just gives you some place to run stuff when you don't care what machine it runs on just that it gets done.
MONAD - Object based command line language. Integrates command line, COM and .NET. Microsoft will build commmandlets for their servers. We should do the same.
Security Token Servic ewill provide back end for InfoCards and will shp post Longhorn server.
CTP of IIS7 and update of Longhorn server available.
TxF is an update to NTFS with full transactional support. Single digit overhead for using it.
More info in the event log in Longhorn allows metadata wo be logged as well.
Longhorn is modular. IIS 7 is modular as well. Turn on and off features in the web.config file. Metabase is dead.
New API for IIS 7 is a superset of ISAPI.
ASP.NET extensibility API leveraged so you can do things like forms auth for all pages not just ASP.NET.
Longhorn server to include some virtualization.
I had to leave early to go man a booth so I missed the end of this talk.

Visual Studio Tools for Office
Office 12 Foundation Investments:
1. Managed Add-Ins
2. Custom Task Panes
3. Ribbon Extensibility
4. Office Open XML Formats
Add-In Loader and IDTExtensibility2 proxy starts add in loading
Add-ins will implement IStartup interface and inherit from a base class specific to the office product to give you strong type support.
Appliction level custom task panes. Not just at the document level.

COM325 Workflow + Messaging + Services - Developing Distributed Applications with Workflows
This one was by Don Box. I was listening and laughing a lot but got caught up and didn't take a lot of notes. If you have a chance to see this one on the DVD or via the web I would highly suggest it. It really clarified the relationship between WCF, WWF, and where Microsoft sees the platform evolving.
Contracts and protocol based integraton that is message based and opaque to implementaton runtime, IT Pro, etc. is the desired end game.
WWF - Activities (opaque code) stitched together into workflows (transparent view of state) where you send and recieve messages. Worlflow modeld in XAML. Information pushed into config files at build time.
Workflow transactions handled by System.transaction.

Here are my notes from the second day of PDC.

Keynote - Eric Rudder
Eric made the following product announcements
   Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) for system and human workflow. I can just see it now, everytime I start a workflow there will have to be a bunch of guys dressed up in makeup yelling at each other about how they are going to beat each other up in the ring. Who thought up the acronym anyway?
   Microsoft Expression for Designers with 3 separate products: Acrylic designer, Sparkle interactive designer, and Quartz web designer.
   VSTA - Visual Studio Tools for Applications - Next version of VBA
After the announcements there were a lot of product demos. Here are the things I thought were cool.
In WWF you can set a breakpoint on an activity in the workflow and have it break into the debugger. You can then step down into other steps in the workflow and eventually down to the code that is running.
You can create custom activities to extend the workflow.
You can get WWF information at www.windowsworkflow.net
Acrylic has tools and built in styles that make it possible for even people like me to make good graphics but it will help the artistic types to do a really good job.
Quartz supports drag and drop data binding.
Quartz updates linked style sheets when you make a change to a style. I am not sure if I like this feature. If I am using the linked stylesheet in other places it might have unintended consequences. I guess I will have to get the tool and play with it.
Visual Studio and the Expression products share XAML so you can have full graphic fidelity.

Keynote - Steven Sinofsky
Enterprise Content Management - ECM - livecycle menagement for documents - More of this functionality will be built into SharePoint 12
CMS will be new for Office 12.
WWF will be integrated into Office 12.
Web parts will be built in ASP.NET 2.0 web parts.
Content types provide OO definition of documents that associate metadata and workflow.
New version of Frontpage that you can think of as a "SharePoint Designer" along with ASP.NET, Expressions, etc.
Forms server will let you create InfoPath forms that are able to be run in the browser.
There will be pre-defined form parts in InfoPath 12 so you can reuse some design.

Enterprise search has a "did you mean" functionality for when you mistype a search term.
You can define "best bets" for easily finding search items.
Search on people using Active Directory - presence information and links to the person's "My Site".
Search on customers using code and integration to a CRM system.
The list is the fundamental item in SPS that has an API. You can join lists in a master/detail relation.
RSS feed for lists and email notifications for a list. You can open lists in Access or other database tools.
Outlook 12 has the ability to host an InfoPath form as a mail message. submitting the form sends it back to the sender and you can set it up to automatically process the form and store the data in SharePoint.

I spent most of the morning in a Software Design Review. A SDR is where Microsoft shows you a bunch of PowerPoint slides and says something like "if we built this would you come?". Really they are looking to see if the scenarios and problems that they are trying to solve are real world and if the propsosed solution will work. They are really great but there is no guarantee that the ideas will even make it to an alpha product let alone a final one.

DAT312: WinFS Programming with LINQ
There are 4 layers to the object model:
1. Tables - Rows and columns
2. Reshaped Data - Custom mapping
3. Entities - Collections and inheritance
4. Objects - hydration and projection
Queries get stored in a Cannonical Command Tree that for now is parsed back into optimized SQL but in the future could be sent directly to the database.
WinFS is an extended model that uses spcializations on the core object model.
There is a WinFS blog at blogs.msdn.com/winfs

Tuesday, September 13 was the official first day of PDC. I had been in meetings all day Monday but since they are covered by NDA I decided not to blog them :)

Here are my notes from the sessions that I attended. They are pretty much how I wrote them down. I hope that they will help you out.

Keynote - Bill Gates
The 3 pillars of Vista are confident, clear, connected.
Office 12 will release in the same timeframe as Windows Vista.
Virtual folders in Vista give you a flat view of all the data accross your machine.
The Windows sidebar is for realtime data. You can add gadgets to the sidebar. The sideshow is for auxilliary displays on laptops. You can get more information at microsoftsideshow.com.
Parental controls in Vista. Nice.
Dynamic Protection Service - Opt-in service - block known and suspected phishing sites.
Quicktabs - slide view of open tabs in IE 7.
Print preview in IE 7 lets you shrink to a single page and turn on and off headers and footers.
IE 7 will discover RSS feeds and let you search on them.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrates RSS and publishes info to clients/customers.

Office 12 gets a new UI with tabs and no dropdowns menus.
Office 12 has buttons for predefined formatting with live previews.

SharePoint Portal Server 12 will have a new library for PowerPoint slides.

In Outlook 12 the ToDo bar will have date and time on tasks.
Preview attachments in the preview pane.
RSS in Outlook integrated with IE 7 subscriptions. Read in Outlook what you subscribe to in IE 7.
Outlook subscribe to document library and pull down documents for offline viewing.

Server will be a rich point of integration. WSS will replace many department level file servers.

Keynote - Jim Alchin
Vista Beta 2 will be a broad reach beta.
Network Access Protection - machines go into quarantine until they can be verified.
Hardware monitoring built in.
Goal of 50% fewer reboots.
File system is transacted.
Running as a standard user is the default.
Superfetch - enhances memory manager to look over time to optimize the system.
USB memory sticks can become part of the virtual memory. With writethrough you don't have to worry about loosing data. With 2x encryption the page file is safe.
Low integrity mode = apps are sandboxed.

Lap around technologies
ATLAS will support AJAX programming.
WPF runtime can run in browser, windows, etc.
WPF/E = Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere. Strict subset of WPF that uses Javascript.
LINQ = Language Integrated Query
InfoCards - Federated identity providers, common UX dialog. Can integrate using WS-*

If you can foreach something you can use LINQ to query it.
DLINQ - map relational data to classes
XLINQ - modernized DOM

beta.asp.net - download ATLAS.
You can build sidebar components as ATLAS components.

Download Microsoft Max (photo sharing application that showcases WPF and WCF) from http://www.microsoft.com/max

The Northface showed off an application. There will be a whitepaper on MSDN on how they did it.
Windows Vista Partner Showcase - $100 Million program for Vista apps.

Preview of "Digital Locker" for buying software at windowsmarketplacelabs.com

OFF201 - Office "12": Introduction to the Programmable Customization Model for the Office 12 User Experience (Part 1)
New UI prompted by number of menu items, toolbars, and task panes getting out of hand.
"Sense of Mastery" - finite space to search for functionality. Very predictable. Simplify through contextualization.
"Consistency is good but homgeneity is not" so standardize where it makes sens but don't force it. Make everything make sense.
The first tab in Word 12 accounts for 90% of the clicks.
UI replaces menus and toolbars. If it is not in the ribbon it is not in the product.
Show the result of command and not the command itself.
The main means of customization is the quick access tool bar (or quick launch tool bar). It sits between the file menu and the first tab.
Dialog boxes remain in the UI. You use them to set advanced functionality. "Dialog Launchers" from a chunk or dialog let you get to the dialog box.
"Floatie" is an on-object floating toolbar with most commonly used commands so you don't have to move the moue to the top of the screen.
"Super Tooltips" show pictures or other information. Pressing F1 will bring up context help.
Ctrl key shortcuts will stay the same.
"Key Tips" make every tab and command keyboard available. Use Alt + a letter to get to something. It will take about the same number of keyboard strokes as Word 2003.
There is no "classic mode". Toolbars and menus have been removed from the product.
UI extensibility through XML files.
Speaker blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh

OFF302 - Office "12": Introduction to the Programmable Customization Model for the Office 12 User Experience (Part 2)
Developers can change the ribbon but not the quick launch toolbar.
New codeing model code named RibbonX. You can add your own meny or hook into existing menus including context menus.
RibbonX works the same in all office applications!
Things you can't customize with RibbonX - status bar, floatie, inside built-in chunks, right click menus (existing Word 2003 customization continues to work). Global repurposing works regardless of where the command is executed from.
Implement IMsoRibbonExtensibiility - Return markup using GetCustomUI so you can change the UI returned based on who the person is or other factors.
Documentation will be available with Beta 1.

Patrick Wright has been working hard to line up more events based on the topics presented at the 2005 Betas Unleashed conference in May. I just got the following schedule in my e-mail today. Please make sure you sign up for the ones that you can attend. All the events will be held in the Microsoft offices in Salt Lake.

Aug 3rd 9:30-12:00
Data warehousing using SQL 2005
Jim Hill
Event ID: 1032279359
Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?culture=en-US&eventid=1032279359

Aug 10th 09:30-12:00
Aaron Zupancic
.Net 2.0
Event ID: 1032279360
Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?culture=en-US&eventid=1032279360

Aug 17th 09:30-12:00
Tjay Belt
Profiler and 2005 Tools
Event ID: 1032279405
Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?culture=en-US&eventid=1032279405

Aug 24th 09:30-12:00
Pat Wright
DB Mirroring with 2005
Event ID: 1032279361
Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?culture=en-US&eventid=1032279361

Aug 31st 09:30-12:00
Scott Golightly
SQL CLR
Event ID: 1032279362
Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?culture=en-US&eventid=1032279362

Sept 7th 09:30-12:00
Jason Walker
Team System
Event ID: 1032279363
Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?culture=en-US&eventid=1032279363