Brian H. Prince

I am in post production at the moment on a video I am hoping will be accepted as an Arcast episode. This is my first significant video editing experience, so I have had a lot of hurdles, and challenges to figure out. But this post isn’t about the horrible state of video editing software in the world right now (how anyone expects a normal consumer to do any of this is beyond me!). I had a spare clip that was shot while we were doing a sound test. Jim Holmes and Philip Jordan just started gabbing. I thought this would be a good excuse to try out Silverlight streaming (while waiting 5.5 hours for the real video to render). What is Silverlight Streaming? It is a new service off of live.com. You can go to http://silverlight.live.com to get all of the official details. Microsoft gives you up to 10GB of storage space, and up to 5TB of bandwidth! You simply login, and create an account. Once you have an account, you can upload videos or music for online storage. You will be given a...

Amanada Laucher (and others) are putting together a coach bus from Grand Rapids, Michigan, all the way down to Nashville and back for DevLink . There will be plenty of stops along the way to pick up more people. Check out the post to see the route they will take. Years ago, before I joined MS, we did a similar bus from Columbus to Detroit for the VS2005 launch. It was a blast, and that was with only 16 people. We had video games, video interviews, wifi with Internet, DVD players, and a Russian driver that wasn’t afraid of the speed limit. They are looking for sponsors to make the bus easy. Microsoft is sponsoring the bus, but they need more! If you want to go to DevLink, but thought it was too far, now is your chance. They will have more information up soon, along with registration.

CodeStock is a new local event in Knoxville, TN being put on by the community leaders in the area. Save the date on your calendar, and check out the site . CodeStock's mission is to bring the best and brightest code experts to East Tennessee for a one day conference open to all developers. This is not a trade show with slick salesman giving prepared demos - this is a gathering of real programmers learning about the latest in technology from each other.  If you would like to speak at CodeStock, go to http://www.codestock.org/Pages/Speakers.aspx and put in your submission.  We’re looking for talks in all areas of software development, including .NET, RIA, Web, AJAX, Databases, and other.  This will be a great opportunity for you to speak and to show your knowledge to the community. They plan on revealing major details next Tuesday on June 17th, so stay tuned. Microsoft will be a Platinum sponsor. I plan on being there and presenting my Soft Skillz talk. It wi...

I will be speaking to a whole bunch of students at ITT in Nashville, TN this Friday (June 13th) at 6:00pm. Contact me if you want to attend. I will be covering my Soft Skillz talk, focusing on the career management aspects of it.

Last night I delivered a talk to the Cleveland .NET User Group. I think  we had about 60 people there.   We had a great time. Despite the rumors, there is no “Screw Developers!” button on the Excel tab for TFS. Here are the slides.

I will be presenting this Tuesday (June 10th, 2008) at the Bennett Adelson .NET SIG in Cleveland. Summary: .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 are on track to be released this summer. In this presentation, Brian will cover a lap around the new frameworks, and features it includes. These servicing updates provide a roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since Microsoft released the products last November. They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better. This includes ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET Routing Engine, ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button Support, ADO.NET Entity Framework, and LINQ to Entities, and ADO.NET Data Services.   Reserve Your Seat: To confirm your attendance at this month's .NET SIG, please reserve your seat . Walk-ins are always welcome. Location: Microsoft Corporation 6050 Oak Tree Blvd. Independence, Ohio 44131   Here is some information on ...

Many of you in the community may know Martin Shoemaker, either personally or by name. He has done a great deal for the community in the West Michigan area, and has been an MVP for a while. He is a noted UML trainer, and is a big believer in UML as a discussion aid in designing systems (he, like I, draws the line at thinking UML can generate system code for you). He has FINALLY started blogging at http://TheUMLGuy.spaces.live.com . Subscribed! His first post, which will ship later today, will be a video on the new UML features in Rosario. Also, he has a UML class coming up : UML Applied: From Customers to Code. June 16, 8:30 - 4:00 at The Kalamazoo Air Zoo . It's a one day class, so it's easy in & out. If you sign up and say which user group you are a part of (regardless of type, so .NET, java, agile, etc.) then he will give you a 10% discount, and donate 5% to your user group. Now that is community support! I would love to see more vendors do that. I...

Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff have joined forces to start a podcast called 'Deep Fried Bytes' . The focus is going to be on pragmatic, hear-and-now technology, and related war stores. The first episode was an introductory cast. The second podcast was recorded at the MVP summit, in the lobby bar of the W. It was a lot of fun. We tried to discuss interviewing war stories, and related advice, but half of it turned into a treatise on the 'using' statement (which in and of itself is worth listening to). I normally don't listen to podcasts because I learn faster by reading, and I don't spend a lot of time in cars typically (unless on travel). Because my Zune makes it so easy to subscribe to podcasts, I have started subscribing with it. That way, when I am traveling, I have a ton load of content to listen to as I drive.