Drewby: .NET

Heartland Developer Evangelist: Jeff Blankenburg

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 01:45:57 GMT

The new Developer Evangelist for the Heartland District is Jeff Blankenburg. This is an exciting announcement for many reasons. The Developer Evangelist (DE) position is an important role for the professional developer community. The DE is a driver and/or supporter of the many developer events that occur in the district such as Code Camps, Day of .NETs, User Groups, Product Launches, etc.

The DE is also the primary connection to Microsoft for many developers in the community. This is where those developers bring their feedback, requests, ideas, etc. The DE will hunt down the right resources and get them the support they need. As you look around each district in the US, you can see the impact that having a great DE can have on the developer community.

It is exciting to have someone as capable as Jeff in this role. Jeff brings the right combination of technical capability, attitude and passion to the role. Not only does he know how to develop software, but he also comes with a design background - a combination that is really needed in this new Microsoft world of Silverlight and Expression. It says a lot that all of the candidates for this role were flagged as Microsoft hires (ie. we'll find another role for them), but Jeff stood out because of this unique combination and some phenomenal ideas on how to bring this community to the next level.

I'm looking forward to watching the Heartland community from a distance. Many of the community leaders, especially in Columbus, are my best friends in the world. I'm sure they'll be letting me know the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Jeff - its time to sell that other stock. You know what I'm talking about. :)

Debugging XSLT

Tue, 29 May 2007 15:26:11 GMT

I saw over on Julie Lerman's blog, this awesome video on XSLT debugging by Chris Lovett. This feature of Visual Studio "Orcas" really rocks! You can get previews of your XSLT output, step through the XSLT with a debugger, and step from code debugging right into XSLT debugging.

West Michigan Day of .NET 2007

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:53:58 GMT

Join the West Michigan .NET User Group for their first ever West Michigan Day of .NET. The day will focus on the future of .NET an cover all the world-class technology Microsoft has or will release this year. Serving as the day's Keynote Speaker is Brian Partin, a Principal Information Platform Architect for Microsoft's Heartland District. In addition, the day will consist of breakout sessions with breakfast and lunch included!

Source: West Michigan Day of .NET 2007 - Home

Get Registered for CodeMash

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:03:33 GMT

A few months ago a bought a ticket and flew to Omaha, NE to attend a regional conference called the Heartland Developers Conference. It was completely packed of people passionate about their work and the schedule was full of excellent speakers. It was a great investment of time and money.

Next month, on January 18 & 19, CodeMash will be held in Sandusky, Ohio. This event is going to be absolutely awesome! It's got content for .NET, Java, Ruby, PHP and Python developers. Their will be an OpenSpace conference running along side the scheduled content. So if your favorite technology is not on the official list, you can add it to an OpenSpace session and include it in the event.

The Early-Bird Registration deadline is tomorrow, Dec 18. Don't miss your chance to get a great deal on this conference and a great deal on an excellent resort hotel called Kalahari. Around $300, including registration fee and two nights in the hotel!

Scott Guthrie, Bruce Eckel and Neal Ford are all keynoting. Scott Ambler, Mary Poppendieck, Jay Pipes and the best speakers in our region will also be giving a session.

We've been talking this event up a lot because it is really going to be awesome. Don't miss out!

Where's Drewby?

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:10:04 GMT

I'll be on the road for a few days again this week. I'm headed to Dayton on Tuesday and then I'll be in Toledo at the Northwest Ohio .NET Users Group on Tuesday night. Greg Huber will be speaking on the Microsoft AJAX Library. I sure hope he wears this hat.

Afterwards, I plan on heading to Tony Packo's to get a world-famous hotdog and a fried green pickle. If you are in the area, make sure you join us at the NWNUG meeting and then join me for a hotdog immediately after the meeting!

I'll be headed up to Detroit afterwards for a couple meetings on Wednesday.

Then, it is back to Columbus for the Central Ohio .NET Developers Group on Thursday night. Josh Holmes is speaking on something about Smart Clients. I'd tell you what, but those guys never update their website until 24 hours before the meeting, just to keep us in suspense. We usually head to Hoggy's after the CONDG meetings - please join us!

Update: The title/abstract are posted on the CONDG site now! Josh Holmes will be speaking on "You Can Take It With You: Leveraging SQL Server Mobile and the Compact Framework".

Atlas Gets a Name

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 17:14:38 GMT

On Scott Guthrie's blog today:

"As part of releasing “Atlas”, we have also finally locked on an official set of product names that we will begin using moving forward. What was formerly called “Atlas” will now have a few names"

Scott also discusses the shipping of a final version of the technology and the availability of features in the final release.

One of the really exciting parts of the announcement is that the server components will be worked into the next version of ASP.NET! I think this is really exciting technology and its been a lot of fun to talk to not only .NET developers about it but also to other communities about how they can leverage and integrate with what is now the Microsoft AJAX Library.

Memphis Code Camp

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:49:21 GMT

I'm in Memphis today attending and speaking at the Memphis Code Camp. We had a great dinner last night at Smokey Bones with several of the speakers. I finally got to meet Wally McClure, Jerry Dixon, Colin Neller, Dan Petit and several of the other fine members of the Developer Community down in Tennessee.

There are about 60 people here attending sessions in two tracks. Lots of great content and lots of great questions. All-in-all its turned out to be a great event. Congratulations to Jerry and his team for pulling off a successful Code Camp!

Keith Elder delivered a most excellent session on ClickOnce and some of the enterprise application developer patterns he uses at Quicken Loans.

And I must say in summary: Wally, Wally, Wally, Wally, Oh yeah, Wally!

Lots of Windows Presentation Foundation

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 02:19:52 GMT

I'm deep in Windows Presentation Foundation right now, getting ready for a bunch of events that are coming up. Here's a run-down of where you can catch me and a little WPF over the next few weeks:

August 11 - Cincinnati Developer Care

Hosted by MAX Training

Topic: Using Data Binding in Windows Presentation Foundation

August 16 - Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group
Topic: Layouts, Styles and Templates in Windows Presentation Foundation
There will also be a tutorial session to introduce people to WPF.

August 17 - Greater Lansing User Group .NET

Topic: Intro to Windows Presentation Foundation

August 18 - Detroit Developer Care

Hosted by New Horizons, Michigan

Topic: Using Data Binding in Windows Presentation Foundation

August 26 - Memphis Code Camp

Topic: Windows Presentation Foundation

If you are at one of these events, please say hello!

Visual Studio Tools for Office “V3”

Tue, 23 May 2006 18:09:39 GMT

Ok, this is cool. If you have been playing with Microsoft Office 2007 Betas, you can now get the most recent CTP of the VSTO office tools to build applications leveraging Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.

Microsoft Pre-Release Software Visual Studio Tools For Office "V3" - June Community Technology Preview (CTP)
The June 2006 Community Technology Preview of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office "V3" is now available.The primary goal of this CTP is to showcases several new important investments in the area of Office programmability. New XML-based file formats, a revolutionized and highly extensible Office user interface, and support for managed add-ins in Office applications not previously covered by Visual Studio Tools for Office provide an unprecedented number of new opportunities and challenges for Office solution developers. Visual Studio Tools for Office provides an easy to use, reliable, and secure solution development environment and infrastructure to help developers exploit these opportunities and challenges and take their solutions to the next level.
Note: This CTP requires you to have the beta 2 release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Download it here!

(The coolest part? I’m using Word 2007 to publish this entry!)

Virtual Labs Express

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:02:23 GMT

Microsoft hosts Virtual Labs that allow you to use a virtual machine across the Internet to experiment with our products. They include a script to walk you through a Hands-on-Lab scenario. They are typically pretty long scripts.

However, there is now a new series of labs called Virtual Labs Express that are shorter experiences to give you a brief overview or understanding of a product. Here's a list of the Virtual Labs Express available:

What's new in ASP.NET 2.0
What's new in Visual Studio Team System
What's new in Visual Studio
What's new in BizTalk Server 2006
What's new in SQL Server 2005

Click on this link to go through the labs.

Microsoft Technology Summit

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:39:32 GMT

I'm at the Microsoft Technology Summit in Redmond this week. This is a conference where we invited developers of all different backgrounds to Redmond to discuss our technologies, what we're doing right and what we're wrong. The audience is primarily Java, PHP and Ruby developers.

So far the conversations I've had with people have been absolutely incredible. Neal Ford of ThoughtWorks and No Fluff, Just Stuff, blew me away with information around functional and dynamic languages, half of which I didn't understand.

I also was lost in a conversation with Barton Massey from Portland State University. He works on the X-Windows team and does some very interesting work around Game AI and avionics. Wow! Way over my head, but he was very generous in discussing his work with me even though I couldn't add much to the conversation.

Right now, we are listening to Jim Hugunin on how IronPython works on the .NET Framework and what it means for implementation and performance of dynamic languages on .NET. Very interesting. Apparently, IronPython has better benchmarks than the unmanaged version. It was interesting that Jim's original goal with the project was to find out what Microsoft screwed up in the .NET Framework that prevented it from supporting dynamic languages. He ended up discovering that dynamic languages were not only possible, but could perform very well.