Brian H. Prince

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...

For some time now I have been working on a book with Chris Hay titled “ Azure in Action ”. The book will be published by Manning, hopefully around March 2010. We only have a few more chapters to write, and then we start the long editorial process. But I know many of you can not wait until March to get the book. This is where the MEAP comes in. MEAP stands for Manning Early Access Program, and it allows readers to read the first chapter for free, or buy the book now. If you buy the book early you get access to the draft chapters as they are written, and get access to an authors forum to provide us feedback on the book, and get questions answered. I was in the middle of writing another book for Manning when I mentioned that I was surprised they didn’t have a dedicated book for each part of the Windows Azure Platform. Later I found out this simple little comment set off a flurry (well, maybe a passel) of activity in setting up the other books in the series, and finding the write aut...

I   caught up with Caleb Jenkins at the MVP summit. We commandeered a conference room, and talked about how all developers need to care about architecture. Developers should think of architecture at the code level and the benefits of Dependency Injection.   ARCast.TV - Caleb Jenkins On Dependency Injection

I have been really impressed with Windows 7 since the early internal builds I was allowed to use. I am still constantly amazed how a new version of a product (of any product from any company) can have more features, have a larger kernel, support more hardware, and be faster, lighter, and easier to use. I don’t think that has every happened before. I decided, just for fun, that I wanted to learn why this is the case. Did we remove some long forgotten sleep loop in the kernel? Or did we just delete all of the verbose comments and validation checks? It turns out it was none of those things. And so I set out to put together a talk on the subject. I just think the internals is very interesting, and insight into how things work can make troubleshooting easier. While I do put a lot of time into preparing a new talk (60-80 hours), I still like to beta test a talk with a smaller, intimate audience. David Giard provided me with such an audience with his internal user group at Sogeti in Mi...

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. ...

A while ago Martin and I sat down to discuss UML and how it is making a come back in VS2010 for architects. We had a great chat, and we learned how this isn’t your grandpa’s UML anymore. The way the VS team has implemented it is much more functional to everyone on the team besides the Big Up Front Planning Dinosaur. It will help you understand the lay of the land for that large system you inherited, allowing you to more easily see what is going on. http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast.TV/ARCastTV-Martin-Shoemaker-discusses-UML-in-VSTS2010/

nPlus1.org is on a hunt for a new look. The site has really taken off over the past six months, and they are ready for a facelift. Go design a new look, and submit it. First prize is $250 to Best Buy and a copy of Vista Ultimate. There are other prizes as well. Their site is built on Graffiti CMS, and you will need to either provide a template, or other materials to easily upgrade the site. Take a look at the official rules and requirements at http://nplus1.org/faceliftcontest/ .

LeanDog is an interesting company. They are located in Cleveland, on a barge. Yes, a barge, on the water. They run an agile shop, and deliver software solutions for their customers. The great thing is that they open up their space to a whole host of community events. I love it when companies ‘get’ why they should support and adopt the community. Jon, the founder, has an amazing amount of passion for agile practices, and experience helping teams adopt them. TDD is an amazing practice. It has had a huge impact on how software is developed today. It has shifted how tech teams look at writing software, and has dramatically increased the initial quality of the software, and reduced the long term maintenance costs as well. The trick with it is that it is very hard to learn, and takes at least six months if you are learning it by reading books and blogs. It is just one of those skills that you need to do with someone to fully get. You can reduce the learning time by doing this. If you a...

Dave was hanging around the awesome CodeMash event this January, when he asked to interview me for his blogged. So we snuck out to the entryway of the Kalahari, and chatted about my experience at being a new employee of Microsoft. He had good timing in publishing the video, since this past Wednesday was my one year anniversary as a blue badge. Go check it out. http://www.davidgiard.com/2009/02/23/BrianPrinceOnWorkingForMicrosoft.aspx

Where: QSI Training Center, 440 Polaris Parkway, Suite 500 When: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 @ 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. RSVP: Natalie Marsch @ nmarsch@quicksolutions.com *Food & beverages will be served at 5:30 p.m. Title: Cloud Computing with Windows Azure Speaker: James Bender Description: Cloud computing is poised to be the next big breakthrough in Enterprise computing. Companies like Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are making large investments in this new paradigm and positioning themselves to be leaders in this new space. But why is cloud computing so important? This session will answer that question and help you as a developer and/or architect get a handle on cloud computing. You will also see how easy cloud computing can be with Microsoft Azure in a variety of Enterprise scenarios. Bio: James is an Architect with Quick Solutions and has been involved in software development and architecture for 13 years. He has worked as a developer and archit...

Many architects and developers are integrating services into their strategies and projects. There are two main delivery mechanisms with services (from a mainstream, standards perspective). You can use SOAP, or you can use REST. There have been wars for a long time around which is better, easier to use, and has less impact on the global environment. This post isn’t about that. My answer as to which one you should use is ‘It Depends.’ SOAP has all of the enterprisey-goo that we typically need at the core of our systems. Transactions, Strong Typing, Routing, Security, Extensibility, etc. These are all planned out with WS-* standards for platform interoperability. REST, on the other hand, is simple, lightweight, easy to use, and very straightforward. I think most organizations will end up with a measure of both in their environments. I think SOAP will be more prevalent at the core of your enterprise, with REST at the edges that touch other enterprises and the public at large. When ...

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...

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.

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.

Ricardo is a friend of mine that I have know through a customer, and through the community for a few years. He just let me know that he has started blogging, so I thought I would let everyone else know. http://rixbits.blogspot.com/

Jeff Blankenburg, the Dev Evangelist for the Microsoft Heartland District has launched a new screencast series titled JUXtaposed . JUX stands for Jeff on User Experience. Or Jeff Unglues Xylophones. His first screencast is a quick 10 minute walk through of some simple animation in XAML using Expression. What I like about his 'cast is that it isn't perfect. Smooth demos are nice, but when there are small mistakes, the speaker gets to show you how to debug and fix things. That is a very handy skill when you are trying to learn something new. I hear he is going to do 25 of these.   The best part? He chose to pimp CodeMash by animating our logo! And it only took him 10 minutes. Thanks Jeff.

Part of my job is to build an awesome application development team. A team involves a lot of different skill sets of course. This includes the developer, but also the architect, PM, BA, QA, DBA, etc. There are certain qualities that we look for when we are trying to find a new person to add to the team. These qualities are in addition to the certain skills and attitudes a specific position might require. I think all of these are things that you learn as you are young, and may be complimented by a certain amount of inborn talent. The following three qualities are the baseline to get started. These are qualities that can be hard to see in a person in interviews. We usually go through 3-5 rounds of interviews, which culminate in an 'audition' in front of the team. More on this later. So, what are these wonderful, Zen like qualities? 0. Learn Quickly, and Unlearn Quicker I used to say 'Everything you know today will be worthless in two years.' I was corrected by a tea...

Alexei is a long time friend of mine. We also happen to be co-workers. He is an egineer's engineer. Around our office, when referring to the skill set of a candidate for an opening, we use the term 'Alexei level' as a measuring stick. He is also one of the smartest guys I know. He takes every challenge head on, and beats it soundly, or nags me to death until he does. So I threw down the gauntlet. Alexei, I said, share some of that there know how. Alexei , welcome to the blogosphere (gosh I hate that term.)

Told you I had a lot of free time today. Dave Donaldson just published his NHibernateRepository assembly. Go read about it. I normally don't like 'link to something else' posts, but this is really cool, and I know we will get some great use out of it, since we use NHibernate quite often on our projects. Since I am linking to other posts, check out Jeff's post on 'Please advise...' . He and I share the same derision for this 'line'. - bhp