Brian H. Prince

We were hanging out at the hotel bar on Saturday night (August 23rd), just hanging out. It was my birthday, and we were unwinding from devLink (which rocked!), and I was exhausted from working really long days. Carl and Richard from .NET Rocks was hanging out there as well. After the conversation got rolling, they whipped out a wireless microphone with onboard memory and started interviewing everyone at the table. There is a great discussion of devLink, OpenSpaces, CodeMash, and lots of other stuff. It was a lot of fun. Take some time and give a listen to show #372 .

Jeremy Sublett and Chad Campbell are organizing the second Kentucky Day of .NET.   It will be on Saturday, September 6. They have lined up a number of great speakers to cover lots of .NET topics for developers.  Please visit http://kydayof.net to see the sessions and to sign up. Jeff Blankenburg will be keynoting, and I will be presenting my Soft Skillz talk. If you need a ride from Columbus, maybe we can carpool.   Saturday, Sept. 6 Sullivan University 9:00 am to 4:00 pm

I'm pleased and excited to inform you that CodeMash 2009 planning is underway! We'll be returning to the Kalahari Resort to hold our third event this coming January 7-9, 2009, and do hope you'll consider participating. Submit your proposed session through the CodeMash website by navigating to http://codemash.org/BeASpeaker.aspx . As with prior events, speakers are provided with a free conference pass, including food, admission to all sessions, and all of the fame and glory attached to being a CodeMash participant. The deadline for submission is October 22, 2008 , however given the volume of proposals we'd appreciate it if you could strive to beat this deadline by at least a few weeks. January 7-9, you ask? You read it right, we're expanding the event to include a third day! Dubbed the CodeMash Precompiler, this day long event (held on January 7) will include a number of hands-on labs which give attendees the opportunity to explore a topic at great depth. We...

We are ready to announce our next ArcReady and MSDN Unleashed tour dates. ArcReady was detailed in the prior blog post. For those that are new, these are events given by your local evangelism team, in as many local cities as we can work out. These events happen every quarter. The ArcReadys are always in the morning, from 9am-11:30am. MSDN is from 1pm-4pm. They will usually be held in the same facility. ArcReady is geared for practicing and aspiring architects. You don’t have to be an architect to get value out of it. MSDN Unleashed events are geared for all types of developers. MSDN Unleashed Session 1 : Demystifying WPF Today’s applications need to do more than simply work. They need to draw in the user, and provide a differentiated experience. This means moving beyond battleship gray forms, boxy UIs, and providing a positive user experience. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides powerful capabilities to develop a compelling user interface, the kind that makes an ap...

We are ready to announce our next ArcReady and MSDN Unleashed tour dates. MSDN Unleashed info in next blog post. For those that are new, these are events given by your local evangelism team, in as many local cities as we can work out. These events happen every quarter. The ArcReadys are always in the morning, from 9am-11:30am. MSDN is from 1pm-4pm. They will usually be held in the same facility. ArcReady is geared for practicing and aspiring architects. You don’t have to be an architect to get value out of it. MSDN Unleashed events are geared for all types of developers. Microsoft ArcReady Architecting Modern Distributed Applications Nearly every application we build today has dependencies to other systems. How do we design them to work together to meet our goals? How do we decide what to build and what to buy? Do we host it ourselves or in the cloud? With a bewildering array of choices, the biggest challenge we face today is how to architect robust applications with the ri...

A few months ago I sat down with Jim Holmes and Philip Jordan at Quick Solutions to talk about an elegant way to handle a difficult scenario. ARCast.TV - Jim Holmes and Philip Jordan on Excel Services http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast.TV/ARCastTV-Jim-Homes-and-Philip-Jordan-on-Business-Models-that-leverage-Excel-Services/ They often have customers with complex business logic in Excel, and the customer often thinks they want a new application to replace this. But the users also want to be able to update not only the business data, but the business MODELS. Trying to do this can be difficult, so Jim and Philip turned to MOSS, and Excel Services. Excel Services allows the user to publish their spreadsheets to their consumers. The consumers use the sheet in the browser. They don’t need Excel on the desktop. The great thing is the Intellectual Property of the business model is safe, because the end consumer only ever gets to see the output of the models, not the math behind th...

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I was speaking a while ago at ITT in Nashville, TN. After my talk, several students came up to tell me about a site they were running called FlameGoat.net . The voice of the site is intended to be a little on the edge, with a ‘fight the power’ type tone. The site is interesting, with a lot of gaming news and trailers. They have started sections aimed at developers, with room to post videos and tutorials. These students were clearly self starters, taking their idea, and executing it, instead of just talking about it. The other great thing, is that 15%-25% of the ad revenue is donated to Saint Jude’s Children Hospital every month. Not only did they execute their idea, they are using it to help the community. That’s just awesome. As I look at my career, and the people I have known, I remember seeing some great idea, and thinking that I had the same idea, but never did it. I slowly learned that many times you can’t wait for someone else to let you do something, you just need to find ...

The open source community is rich with alternatives for any need or framework you could possibly need. It is a veritable cacophony at times. While this richness is great, it can be a challenge to get your project adopted by developers. This also presents a challenge for those architects and developers who are shopping around for a framework to solve a particular problem. Most projects have a web site somewhere (CodePlex, SourceForge, etc.), with a list of bugs, releases, notes, etc. Most of these project pages have only a short description about the project. That description was likely written at the very beginning of the project when it was just a simple idea. The description is usually outdated, and never updated as the project moved forward. If I am an architect/developer browsing your project site, and I see something that is vague, and hard to understand, I won’t likely check out your project. After an hour of only seeing poorly marketed and documented projects, I am likely ...

About a month ago I was at CinArc . During the break Leon asked me what Microsoft was doing about open source, and when were we going to change our business model to adapt or compete. He wasn’t picking a fight, he honestly wanted to know if MS recognized this new aspect of the market (not really new at this point, but anyway), and were we going to engage at this level, if not embrace it. I didn’t have an answer at the time. Not because I missed the ‘Annual Evil Empire Planning Meeting’ (I am still waiting to get invited to that meeting), but because I was so new, and am really not part of that part of the organization. I recently attended a session where Sam Ramji explained Microsoft strategies for working with open source, and the open source community. I was very pleased with what I head. I shows that we are embracing this model, and the people who believe in it. There have been some amazing announcements about how we are supporting and engaging the open source community. ...

A local training partner, Babbage Simmel is putting on a summer conference in Columbus. All of the speakers are from Microsoft, including Mark Harris, Luis Gonzalez, and Bill Steele. Details below. August 21 st and 22 nd Free hands-on labs, Special presentations, Giveaways, Lunch provided! Babbage Simmel is inviting you to come and experience the latest in Microsoft technologies: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. One full day complete with hands-on labs, technical demos, and presentations by Microsoft and Babbage Simmel, August 21 st or 22 nd … You Choose! Come find out how you can leverage these products to solve your toughest challenges and reach some of your greatest opportunities. Event schedule includes: · Seminars on the upcoming training offerings and certifications for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 · The newest Hands-on labs and First Looks for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Ser...

We often think that Enterprise applications are boring WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointers) style apps and that there is little to no value to having a compelling UX. Sometimes we do this because we can’t sell a better UX to the business customer. Sometimes it’s because this seems easier for us as the developer. Sometimes it’s because someone thinks that it is such a small app, that it doesn’t matter. (If it is so small, and matters not, why invest the time and money to build and maintain it?) UX is as much of the architects job as anyone else’s. It needs to be part of your project plan and system architecture. Having good UX in the presentation layer is like having a well factored class structure in the business tier. There is just this lack of compelling UX in the business/enterprise application world. The problem is not the argument about why UX is important, but great samples of real enterprise applications that show how effective great UX can be. While there are many benefit...

I like to solve problems. It’s in my blood. I have a feeling if you are in this industry, it’s in your blood too. I think this is why I was drawn to Math and Physics growing up, and ended up studying them in college (along with CompSci of course). I think this is also why I like the type of games that I like to play. RPG’s, and RTS’s tend to be problem solving type games. Think of the missions you are assigned, or Civilization and SimCity. Those are problem simulators. Anyway… When a problem gets in my head, I can’t shake it. There are times when I will hit a roadblock for days. One of my strategies is to take a break from the problem, get my mind off it. When I come back to the problem I usually have some fresh ideas on how to approach it. The time off gives me the ability to come back with a different perspective on the problem. That's why, when meeting with customers, I like to give some initial feedback, and then spend a day or two digesting what we talked about. This time gi...

The patterns and practices team at Microsoft has been releasing beta’s of their new guide, ‘ Improving Web Services Security .’ If you are a lead developer, or architect, and are working with web services (of any platform, but especially WCF) this should be required reading. The guide does a great job first covering what you should care about, and look for with regards to security when designing web services. The first section covers the fundamentals really well. What the threats are, and the related countermeasures. Don’t think that because your service in ‘internal’, and only called by consumers you provision that security isn’t important. As each section delves into it’s topic, it relates back to a ‘Web Services Security Frame.’ This frame lists the different aspects you need to take into account as an architect for each component of what you are building. I will list them here, so you get a sense for what they are covering: Category Description Auditing and Loggi...

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 ...