The Chicagonerd dinners are picking back up. Come join us at the Rock Bottom Brewery (Downtown) on August 30th for some cool suds and great geek talk. Just let Ryan (ryan at ryanrinaldi.com) know you’re coming so he can get a headcount.

When: Tuesday, August 30th, 2005, 6PM
Where: Rock Bottom Brewery @ State & Grand(Downtown Chicago)

This just in… Microsoft is planning on providing MSDN subscribers access to Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 a few weeks before the official release date (“week of” Nov. 7).

Just another reason why you should be an MSDN subscriber.

A couple of questions came up from my CNUG talk the other day that I attempt to address here…

1.) What is Code Churn? In it’s simplest terms, it’s the amount of changes (lines added, modified or deleted) to your code from one version to the next. Team System measures it by User, Date/Time, Changeset, Portfolio Project, and Path. If you want some indepth reading on the subject, check out the paper, Use of Relative Code Churn Measures to Predict System Defect Densityby Nachiappan Nagappan and Thomas Ball.

2.) How do you implement Continuous Integration with Team Build? Although this isn’t built into Team Build directly, you can create your own implementation through the richness of Team System extensibility, just like Dion Olsthoorn did.

Any questions I missed? If so, add a comment.

According to Scoble and the PDC site, PDC is hours away from selling out. I didn’t have the heart to beg my company to send me to PDC after I went to TechEd back in June. As part of my compensation, I’m afforded one conference trip per year as part of my training. True, Microsoft did invite me down to TechEd but they only covered the registration (much appreciated!) but not travel. So, there was still some expenditures.

I was hoping to receive another invite to PDC from Microsoft but my chances are slim to none seeing as how they just invited me to TechEd. I’m not even sure if they have any invites to give. I might even be too late to try for the “Blog my way to the PDC” contest sponsored by the Channel9 folk.

Well… let’s try anyhow:

PDC is by far my most favorite conference to attend – above all the rest – Microsoft or non-Microsoft sponsored. The depth of technical content is unbelievable. Attending PDC always rejuventates my batteries and pumps me up for what’s coming out of Redmond in the months to come.

Who knows… maybe I’ll be able to attend some how. We’ll have to wait and see. ;)

I’ll be continuing my Team System talks at the next Chicago .NET Users Group meeting to be held on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005. Here are the details:

Date: August 17^th, 2005

Agenda

• 6:30PM – Pizza and Beverages
• 7:00PM – Orchestration in BizTalk 2004 (aka Fun with Shapes), Jacob Cynamon, Microsoft
• 8:00PM – Understanding Team Foundation Build, Dave Bost, Solution Partners, Inc.

Orchestration in BizTalk 2004 (aka Fun with Shapes),Jacob Cynamon

Get the details you need on how to use BizTalk Orchestration Services in Microsoft BizTalk Server. Learn how to create meaningful, flexible business processes. In this webcast, we review the key shapes and behaviors of the BizTalk Orchestration Designer. Then we show you how to debug running orchestrations, monitor them, and enable transaction support.

Understanding Team Foundation Build, Dave Bost

Dave continues his Team System talks with a more in-depth discussion of the new build system built into Team Foundation.

Location
Microsoft Downers Grove
3025 Highland Pkwy., Suite 300
Downers Grove, IL 60515
(630) 725-4000
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/midwest/downersgrove.mspx

Please RSVP on the RSVP for Meetings choice under the Meetings tab.
http://cnug.org/Default.aspx?tabid=31