Brian H. Prince

Wow! A year has come and gone and the second annual DogFood conference is done. We had 19 partners come together to put on a two day event for customers in Columbus, Ohio. We had attendees from four hours away! There were over 45 sessions. I was able to deliver a talk on using Azure. There were 400 attendees over the two days, and I think everyone had a lot of fun, and learned a lot. I want to thank everyone who came to my session, and please connect with me if you have more questions about Azure. The slides are here:

This is the second year for the dog food conference, brain child of Danilo Casino. It is a local event, put on by MS and our partners. This year we have two full days, with four tracks. We have both local MS employees, as well as some blue badges coming in from out of state. Many of the presenters are local rock stars that work for our partners. This event is free (unless you are in pubsec, then you have to pay for your food). It was a great event last year, and I hope to see you there. Since the event is two days, we have two registration links. Please bear with us, it’s just how the machine works. The reg links: Thursday Registration Link Friday Registration Link · **Attendees must register for each day separately** What : · Please join us for the 2 nd Annual Dog Food Conference.  We will have MS speakers, MS partners, ISVs, MS MVPs and community leads presenting 40 topics. The story behind “Eating one’s own Dog Food” When: · November 12-13, 2009; Attendees...

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=142763 Details on the event is below: When: December 7, 2009 Location Microsoft MTC - Aon Center 200 E. Randolph Suite 200 Chicago, IL 60601 United States Recommended Audiences: Solution Architects, Software Developers, Developers, Architects nPlus1.org is hosting its fifth Architecture Summit on December 7th at the Microsoft MTC in Chicago, IL. The topic of this summit will be Patterns and Principles. Morning Session (Optional): An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM Are you new to OOP? Do you want a refresher on the benefits of Interfaces and the differences between implements and extends? The morning session is a two hour introductory course of Object Oriented Programming. If you are new to OOP the lessons in this session will prepare you for the more advanced topics in the afternoon. If you are already well versed in OOP then feel free to come have a ref...

We have just wrapped up the first Windows 7 launch tour. We hit all of the major cities. Now that we have brushed the dust from our boots, we are heading back out and doubling back to hit more local cities. If you weren’t able to make it to one of the big launches you should sign up to make it to one of these local launches. There will be some cool prizes as well. I will be speaking at the Nashville event (Franklin, TN), and the Columbus event. I hope to see you there. From the official invite…   ------------------------- TechNet & MSDN Events Present: Highlights from “the New Efficiency” Launch Join us as we explore how Windows® 7, Windows Server® 2008 R2 and Exchange Server® 2010 deliver on the new efficiency where cost savings, productivity and innovations come together. At this free event we’ll cover the “best of” content and deliver highlights from “the New Efficiency” Launch events taking p...

Stephen Toub is on the Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft. Jennifer has convinced him to spend a week on the road in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, speaking to customers and visiting user groups. See her blog for more details on the tour. He will cover concurrency and tools for how to easily develop parallel solutions. This will be an important part of the framework going forward because of the many core problem. As the number of cores in CPUs increase, we will start to have issues with concurrency. We will also want to write code that leverages that hardware. BUT, writing multithreaded code is very difficult, and is insanely hard to debug. Microsoft’s challenge is to provide a framework as part of the platform to make it easy for developers to build parallel applications, with a great degree of quality and productivity. The official abstract and bio is below.  Date/time Location Registration Mon 10/26, 9-11am Microsoft office 2555 M...

We recently wrapped up a 17 city road show covering real work experiences with Azure. We had both an IT Pro session, and a developer session. While we were in Nashville we webcasted the event. If you weren’t able to get to one of the events, now is your chance to see the recordings. We cover the architecture, and development of solutions running on Azure, as well as how to manage and provisions the solutions. Just because the app is running in the cloud doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be managed. You just aren’t spending as much time managing the underlying infrastructure. You can replay the videos, or download them for offline viewing. The IT Pro one has also been published to TechNet here . TechNet Events Presents: Real World Azure https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032425946&role=attend&pw=WE45G3T7   MSDN Events Presents: Real World Azure - Live Meeting https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032425948&role=attend&pw=E45W7...

Just a quick post in case you are interested. CINNUG has been doing a series of special events. This one is a firestarter on ASP.NET MVC. Firestarters are great for getting up to speed on a technology you don’t know anything about. You can walk in the door knowing nothing about MVC, and walk out with a good grasp. From their announcement: CINNUG is hosting an ASP.NET MVC Firestarter event on Saturday, Oct. 17 th at the MS office in Mason, OH (near Cincinnati).  I was hoping that the people on this list that believe this could be a good event would please publicize the event on their blogs and/or tweet about it.  This will be the third firestarter event that CINNUG has put on and the previous two have been successful with some people coming in from TN and MI to attend these one day, focused events.  Registration Link: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=140750 Info: If you know nothing about ASP.NET MVC, then this event is for you.  ...

My buddy Jon Box will be presenting at the WinMoDevCamp in Memphis. The event is on 9/29 from 6p to 8p, which is next Tuesday. From the announcement: We're really excited to announce a barcamp style event, called WinMoDevCamp, for the upcoming Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 OS! The event inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, iPhoneDevCamp and préDevCamp to develop applications (local and web based) for mobile devices that run the Windows Mobile 6.5 Operating System. Attendees will include mobile developers, web developers, .NET Developers, UI designers, and testers, all working together. Development projects will include both solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event. Attendees will be able to: Learn about the upcoming platform, the roadma...

This event will feature the top 5 industry standard practices for creating and managing quality controlled custom solutions built on SharePoint.  If your organization has struggled with how to best implement a custom line of business applications in a predictable and structured process, this event is for you.  During this session you’ll learn how Application Lifecycle Management tools and techniques can be applied to the process of creating custom web parts and other SharePoint additions.  These techniques will vastly improve the quality and predictability of all your custom line of business applications being delivered through SharePoint.   Date Location Register Southfield, MI Tuesday, September 29, 2009 Microsoft Office 1000 Town Center Suite 1930 So...

Jim Holmes has announced that his latest brain child conference is open for registration. Of course, registration is free. So what is it? You don’t need to ask. If Jim is doing it, then it’s worth your time. Ok, if you don’t buy that, then how about a whole dedicated to learning how to better engineer software. All software, not just .NET stuff. The event will be at the Microsoft office, near Polaris, in Columbus, Ohio. Event Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Time: 8:00 AM - 5:30 PM Welcome Time: 07:30 AM Eastern Time Location: Microsoft Corporation 8800 Lyra Dr. Polaris Center, Suite 400 Columbus, OH 43240 Location Website   Agenda: Time Session Speaker 8:15 – 8:20 Intro   8:20 – 9:30 Principles of Object Oriented Programming   9:35 – 10:45 SOLID Jon Kruger 11:00 – 11:15 Understandin...

If you want to learn more about what is new in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you should attend this event. We will get you up to speed on the latest features, and how you can delight your users with some of these new features: DirectAccess, Group Policy and PowerShell, new Internet Explorer 8 features. New BitLocker, AppLocker and User Account Control Features Easy Windows 7 deployment Direct Access is great. It allows me to VPN into our corporate network without the VPN hoops. It sets up in the background, on demand, based on what resources I want to access. It also allows a remote IT Admin to manage my box (for example, to push a critical patch) at any time, not only when I finally VPN in. PowerShell is also pretty fantastic, for both IT Pros and developers. It is a very powerful shell that is object oriented, and has full access into the whole platform, so you automate a lot of your work. The list goes on and on. You can register here: htt...

If you are looking for a way to learn more about Silverlight, Expression, RIA Services, and the related toolkits, here is your chance. On September 17th, we will be hosting an online event, that will be keynoted by Scott Guthrie. But that’s not all. There will also be presentations by Tim Heuer, Brad Abrams, Karl Shifflett and others. You can register at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032423163&Culture=en-US .

You are invited to the Community Leadership Summit . Our goal is to gather together anyone who is rabid about the community: all of the community leaders, speakers, and contributors. We want to get together and share best practices, and learn from each other. This is OPEN. We aren’t just talking about .NET user groups. We are talking Ruby, PHP, Python, OSS, Linux, ALM, and anything else you can think of. It doesn’t have to be a big formal user group; your community might be the small group of folks that crack code at a coffee shop at 7am. Whatever it is, come on over. This summit is held twice a year, once in the summer, and once in the winter. The event will be held at Jack’s Bar-B-Que,  from noon until 4pm on August 12 th , 2009. The address is 416 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203. Their website is http://jacksbarbque.com . Register Here: http://tr.im/uKDt We are holding the summit the day before devLink because we know many leaders will already be in one place, making it ea...

Do you want to learn how to use Scrum and TFS together? Do you want to learn from someone who has ‘been there, and done that?’ Check out this event, which is being put on by the Chattanooga TN .NET user group.   Details: August 6th, 6:00 PM 4080 Jenkins Rd., Chattanooga, TN (West Building) Agile software development is quickly becoming the approach of choice for companies who want to deliver quality software quickly, and the Scrum process is by far the most popular of these methodologies. Many have found value in coupling their existing development environment with the principles and practices of Scrum and Agile. This free two hour seminar will cover the basics of the Scrum process and demonstrate how to implement them using Visual Team Suite Foundation Server to create collaborative, productive Agile development teams. Dinner will be provided  and we will have door prizes  to  give  away limited, so register today. ...

ICC worked with the WPF team to develop a framework for bringing MVC to WPF, called MVC4WPF. MVC4WPF is a combination of code automation, efficient software architecture, and a maintenance-centric design to writing software that reduces both development and long term costs.  It promotes methodologies that get the best value out of junior developers while gaining all the advantages of mentoring by senior developers.  It uses Microsoft’s latest and greatest development technologies, including the .NET 3.5 platform, Visual Studio 2008, and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), to give you greater transparency into the development process at a very low overhead. ICC has released it as open source, and will be publishing the code on CodePlex. The code will be available after the launch. Information Control Corporation and Microsoft would like to invite you to the MVC4WPF launch on July 23rd. The event will include breakfast starting at 8:30 a.m. at the Microsoft Bui...

So, you live in GR, and you want to go to ArcReady, but Detroit is just too far away? Then rest easy my friend. With some great help from Chris Woodruff , and the great folks at RCM Technologies, we are bringing ArcReady to Grand Rapids. The www.arcready.com site should be updated soon. The link to register is http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032413886&Culture=en-US . For information on what the sessions will be about, check out my post from last week .

Mike Wood and Jennifer Marsman put together this list of events in the area. I often get asked how people know about the events. It actually becomes sort of all over the place. There is the MSDN Events page, communitymegaphone.com, the web pages of your local user groups, word of mouth, word of social networking site, word of twitter, etc. There isn’t one place to rule them all. While that seems unfortunate, I don’t that is achievable, or worthwhile. The goal should be to announce the events in as many channels as possible. You don’t seen an ad for a movie just at the movie theatre, do you? Any way, on to the list: Event Event Date Website Cincinnati Silverlight Firestarter 3/28/2009 http://cinnug.org/ West Michigan .NET University 4/4/2009 http://dodn.org/WestMichiganDotNetU/ Central Ohio Day of .NET 4/18/2009 http://cinnug.org/cododn/ Lansing Give Camp 4/24/2009-4/26/2009 http://www.lansinggivecamp.org/ Kalamazoo X Conference 4/25/2009 http://www.kalamazoox.org/ Stir Trek 5/8/2009 ht...

Session 1 : Windows Server 2008 R2 – Optimize your Time Get a jump start on your peers with Windows Server 2008 R2 by joining us for this no nonsense technical session, where we will discuss the critical improvements in the next version of Windows Server. Some have argued that, given the impressive scope of new functionality in Windows Server 2008 R2, it should not be an “R2” release, but rather should be given a completely new name. They point to features such as Direct Access, Branch Caching, Live Migration, Powershell 2.0, and VDI that will help you cut down on the amount of time you spend doing mundane tasks, reduce end user frustration and support headaches, and give your mobile workforce a competitive edge through ubiquitous access to company data. There’s a good chance that by attending this session you’ll find a way to save time and money with Windows Server 2008 R2, and so you’ll get the time you spend with us back many times over. Session 2: Windows 7 – Maximize Your Pot...

Session 1: Internet Explorer 8 for Developers The Windows Internet Explorer 8 browser makes it easier to explore and interact with the web. Did you know that there will be a new standards mode by default? While it can easily be turned off, knowing the potential to impact this may have on many sites that have been crafted around various features in past versions is a good idea. Attend this session to learn which current practices you need to change and how the new standards mode affects your development techniques and your existing sites. We review tools that are built into Internet Explorer 8 to help developers debug and create Web pages. We also discuss Web Slices, Accelerators, and Search Suggestion – all of which are key new features in this latest release. In this session we’ll show you: · Developer Tools · Selectors API · Use and create accelerators · Use and create web slices · Use and create search suggestions · AJAX Navigation enhancements with Virtual Earth d...

Architecting for the Client Tier The client (or presentation) tier of our applications is taking on an increasingly important role. Users are expecting more compelling user interfaces, but they also want more functionality from their applications. In this ArcReady we examine how to design and deliver well architected client applications that will be easy to maintain and extend. Session 1: Trends and Patterns on the Client Tier In our first session we will take a vendor and platform neutral look at some of the trends and emerging technologies that can be used on the client tier. We will look at techniques like Mashups, technologies like Natural User Interfaces (NUI) and the increasing importance of the mobile platform. We will also look at some common patterns that can be used in the architecture of the client tier. Session 2: Applying Microsoft Technology on the Client Tier In our second session we will take some look at how we can use Microsoft technologies to create well ...