Brian H. Prince

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 .

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/ .

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...

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...

THIS IS NOT AN ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT WHEN THE RC WILL BE AVAILABLE! Many people have been running the beta of Windows 7 for a while now, and we have gotten some great feedback. I have been running weekly internal builds since build 7000 went public, and it gets better every time. I, personally, have been loving my experience with Win7. At some point in the future, we will be releasing a Release Candidate (RC) for Windows 7. Many of you with Windows 7 Beta installed will be sorely tempted to just upgrade to the RC. I can understand why, as I do build-to-build upgrades on my machines every week. It saves all that setting up, installing, and what not that you have to do to take a machine from bare metal to something that is productive for you. PLEASE, use Windows Easy Transfer, save off your files, and then do a fresh install. We ask you do this mainly so we can test a real world scenario. You CAN do a build-to-build upgrade, but that is not a scenario we are trying to test, and the point ...

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 ...

While I am here at the great West Michigan .NET University event, I wanted to tell you about another Michigan event coming up. This one has a bit of a different flavor though. Instead of being all about hard skills, all of the talks will be about soft skills. I think this is a great change. While we have a very strong community in the area, our user groups spend too much of their time talking about hard skills, and not enough time about skills that make them better developers as a whole. The Kalamaxoo event team set out to change this. I will be speaking, as well as some other great people, so check it out.   From their site http://blindbackup.com/ ,   The Kalamazoo X Conference is a one-day software development conference hosted in beautiful Southwest Michigan. While there are many great technical conferences in the region, their focus tends toward new technologies and programming languages. The Kalamazoo X Conference intends to uniquely complement those conferen...

I could sit here and tell you about the great conference that devLink is, or how inexpensive (and cost effective it is), or say how awesome it was last year, or about the great speakers (and myself) that will be there. But I figured just pasting in their own well written announcement is enough. It’s call code reuse. I get to be a speaker again this year. While I doubt there will be a devLink bus this year (people still haven’t recovered from last year’s bus) but it would be cheap to get some buddies, and carpool down there. See you there!        The devLink Technical Conference is pleased to announce it's fourth annual event - devLink 2009.  This year devLink will take place August 13 - 15 in Nashville, TN.  We have worked hard to bring you the best content possible at a price you can afford.  This year promises to be the best devLink ever with nearly 100 sessions offered over three days.  That's right, we have expanded devLink to a t...

While I was on campus in Redmond during the MVP summit in March, Adam Carter asked me to swing by the TechNet Edge studio for a quick visit. We sat down, and talked about three things you can do to help you career. Check it out . There are some funny April Fool’s joke videos as well.

The Patterns & Practices group at Microsoft has released version 2.0 of the PRISM framework. PRISM is a framework you can use you easily build loosely coupled composed applications. This new version supports both WPF and Silverlight! That is totally awesome. I believe that we should focus on only writing the code that only we can write, and to leverage frameworks and components to provide the infrastructure and cross cutting concerns for our systems. This is a key way to provide more value to your business, and to reduce costs and time. There are plenty of other ways, like TDD, agile, pairing, etc. But this post is about PRISM, and there are far more smarter people than I to learn about those other practices from. PRISM helps you create modules in your application. For example, a screen might have a list of upcoming appointments, and a section highlighting some tasks the user has to accomplish before the selected appointment. Each of these pieces would be a component. But they ...

Looking for something to do this weekend? How about a series of small, low calorie, bite sized videos on how to work with Azure? Check these out. These are great training videos. Everyone is interested in Azure, and cloud computing, and everyone is looking for resources to get up to speed quickly. This is the next best thing to downloading the SDK and hacking out some code. Overall Page Visit here for the full summary of videos   Get Started Developing on Windows Azure? If you’re a developer and you’re new to Windows Azure, start here! You’ll see what you need to download and install, and how to create a simple “Hello World” Windows Azure application.   Deploy a Windows Azure Application You’ll see what it takes to move your application into the cloud – you’ll see how to request and re...

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

Some of my colleagues have worked with IT Pros in the community to start a new user group focused on Exchange and Windows. If you need to manage these systems, and want to learn how to really leverage them, this is the group for you. CEWUG Registration Link What: http://cewug.spaces.live.com/blog/ · Please join us for the first meeting of the Columbus Exchange & Windows User Group (CEWUG).  The goal of CEWUG is to help businesses, public sector and home users to optimize their knowledge of Windows, Exchange, Office Collaboration Server, System Center, Dynamics and Virtualization. · The goal of the CEWUG is to build relationships with peers, share expertise and involvement with the central Ohio IT community. · We will meet the 4 th   Wednesday of the month at the MS Columbus Office: 8800 Lyra Dr , Suite 400, Columbus, OH  43240 Agenda: § 5:30 to 6:05: Welcome time; meet the MS steering committee, pizza and beverages § 6:05 to 7:05: Windows 7 Overview...

During the upcoming ArcReady tour, I will be sitting in on a KNOThead meeting. The meeting is at EdFinancial, and is from 5:30-8:00pm on 3/10/2008. We will talk about cloud computing, and how this shift is affecting our organizations, especially during this time of grapefruit. So come out for ArcReady, and hang around for the KNOThead meeting.   Location: EdFinancial Services, 150 N Seven Oaks Dr, Knoxville, TN

No matter how you slice it, the economy is definitely in a state of concern. Some call it a recession, some a depression, others it is a crash. Since all of those words are overloaded, I will choose to use the word Grapefruit to represent the current situation. How concerned you are with grapefruit depends on who you are, and your personal situation. It is these times of grapefruit when there is the most opportunity. Crazy, I know. But now is the time to start that crazy idea, to outmaneuver an opponent, or get desperate enough to take risks you normally wouldn’t take (personally, or as a company) during up times. All boats float in the high tide. Only great captains can navigate the low tide. There is no such thing as job security. Surprise. There just isn’t, it is a complete myth. ‘Job Security’ might have made sense two generations ago, but it just doesn’t work now. You make your own security, during good times, and during grapefruits. Through keeping your skills sharp, thro...

The third aspect of Azure storage is the table structure. BLOBs answer how to manage unstructured data in your cloud application, and tables answer how to manage your structured date. Tables, like the rest of Azure, are designed to be super scalable. You can easily store billions of rows, and terabytes of data, and still get great performance. Because the tables are part of Azure, the table data is always available, and triple replicated for reliability. Accessing tables is easy using ADO.NET Data Services, which should be familiar to most .NET developers. ADO.NET DS uses normal .NET classes and LINQ to access your data. If you don’t want to access sit with ADO.NET, you can easily use REST, so any platform can make queries and calls into the data. Each account can have many tables of data. Each table contains entities, which are like rows in a traditional database. Each entity is indentified with a composite key. The first half is the partition key , which identities which partit...

[TechNetUnleashed has two siblings, ArcReady , and MSDN Unleashed . For some reason we haven’t unleashed ArcReady yet.] Windows Server 2008 In this session we will look at Windows Server 2008 and the improvements that have been made to Microsoft’s premier server operating system.  Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is the most advanced Windows Server operating system yet, designed to power the next generation of networks, applications, and Web services. With Windows Server 2008 you can develop, deliver, and manage rich user experiences and applications, provide a highly secure network infrastructure, and increase technological efficiency and value within your organization. Windows Server 2008 introduces several new capabilities including 64bit virtualization, a robust web and development platform, improvements in networking, security, high availability and disaster recovery.  In addition, there is a new “Core” installation option that...

[MSDN Unleashed has two siblings, ArcReady , and TechNet Unleashed . For some reason we haven’t unleashed ArcReady yet.] Enhance your coding capabilities with new tools, tips, and inside secrets from MSDN Events. You’ll see how developing for a Windows Mobile phone leverages your current coding skills and can make it simple to build, deploy and debug cool new devices. Additionally, we’ll be showing you how to take full advantage of the Visual Studio debugger. We’ll offer some great tips and tricks to help you debug faster and more efficiently, while applying fresh techniques to ramp up your problem solving abilities.   Session 1: Tips & Tricks for the Visual Studio 2008 Debugger The Visual Studio debugger is a highly underutilized tool for many developers. In this session, you’ll learn how to use it like a pro, while picking up new techniques to fast-forward your problem solving and debugging a...