Brian H. Prince

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...

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

A while ago I wrote a quick article titled “Three Scenarios: When the Cloud Makes Sense”. The article goes into three core scenarios where cloud computing make sense. Not everything should be run in the cloud, and I wanted highlight a few times when it is a clear win to do so. The role of the person making strategic decisions (lead dev, architect, or IT manager) is to look at their portfolio and decide what system benefits from moving some or all of it to the cloud. The benefit could be a cost savings, reduction in management overhead, or enabling a use of the software that wasn’t possible in the limited on-premises data centers we have. Please check out the article.

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...

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...

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...

While I was at devLink I presented a talk called "5 frameworks you can’t live without.” I wanted to talk to people about how to not be a plumber, and how to reduce the code you write to only what only someone like you can write. I also wanted to share some frameworks that I know a lot of people are using and having success with. This deck is very unsophisticated, and it has a very interesting origination story. I will be happy to share it with anyone who buys me a drink. Big thanks to Mike Wood for helping me with it. As a whole, devLink was a blast. It is always fun to attend it. If you didn’t get to go you should mark it on your calendar for next year.  

My good friend Wes Brock just let me know that Wintellect will be offering a 2 day training course on how to build applications for Azure for $499. The course will be delivered by Paul Mehner, online. This is great news, so you don’t have to travel to sit in on the class. The training will be on October 21-22, 2009. The course will cover: Section 1 - Introduction and Overview of the Azure Services Platform · Intro to the Azure Services Platform · Intro to Windows Azure Services · Intro to .NET Services · Intro to SQL Azure (future) · Service Registration and setup Section 2 - Windows Azure Services · Visual Studio “Cloud Service” Projects · Configuration of your Windows Azure application · Deployment of your Windows Azure application · Load Balancing Infrastructure · Use of Azure with non-Microsoft technologies (future) Lab 1a: Setup of your Windows Azure Account Lab 1b: Develop and deploy your first Windows Azure Application Section 3 - Microsoft .NET ...

I want to thank everyone that came out to the Community Leadership Summit in Nashville. If you missed it, don’t worry. There will be another one around CodeMash time. After the opening comments and lunch, we brain stormed a series of interesting conversations, and then scheduled them in a grid. Whomever came up with the session idea had to act as the proctor, and take notes. Each session lasted about 30 minutes. At the end of all of the sessions, each moderator presented the results of their session. Matt Hester recorded these summaries, and they should be available shortly. Until then, here are the notes. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to enter them into the local community wiki, so if someone wants to do handle that, that would be fabulous. Otherwise, I will try to get to in in October. At this point I am just transcribing the notes. They are not complete. Many times I don’t know what the intention of the note is. If you know, please leave a comment here, or update the wiki (...

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...

A little while back I wrote about a site called Thrive for IT Pros . We have launched a similar site for developers called Thrive for Developers . Microsoft has always been good about giving the information and tools developers need to build great software. Thrive is a way for  us to go beyond that. To help you learn the tools you need for your career, how to be a better developer, and do more with what you have already. I was really excited to be asked to be a part of this launch. Many of you have seen the Soft Skillz talk that I have done over the past year. They have also brought together a lot of content from the community, as well as tools to help you find that next job. That Soft Skillz talk originated out of a farewell talk I did as I left my team at Quick Solutions. It focused on retelling the lessons we had learned over my time there, so I could pass on some of our culture and tribal knowledge to the next generation of the team. The talk evolved, and became very popu...

Steve Guggenheimer announced the release dates of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 at Computex 2009 in Tapei. We will be RTM’ing Windows 7 in the second half of July, with general availability (that means it’s in stores, etc.) by October 22nd. Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available at the same time. This is awesome news! Warm up your download tools, it’s not far away. Everyone I know has been impressed with, and really likes Windows 7, even some of the most critical people I know. I think this is due to the changes in how the Windows team developed the OS, as well as how open they were to feedback, and their willingness to make changes. If you weren’t reading the Engineering Windows 7 blog, you should go there now, and read all of the posts. They are all quite fascinating. I got to be part of the IQ team, which is a very small part, but it was still fun. I would be given weekly builds to install on my machines, and to test out. While the Beta was of a very high quality, fo...