Dave Bost

Ok… I failed. I’ve been sitting on this post for some time now. But you know how it goes. You get busy… the holidays… vacation with the mouse…yada-yada-yada. Anyhow… I promised the attendees of the recent MSDN Unleashed events along with the gracious group of developers at the St. Louis Code Camp a copy of my slides from my presentations at the aforementioned events.

First… let’s point you to the slides presented at the Fall ‘08 series of MSDN Unleashed events. MSDN Unleashed is a series of events that the Microsoft Evangelist present across the country to keep you – the developer audience – up to snuff on what’s going on in the world of development around the Microsoft Platform.

I presented an overview of Silverlight 2 at both MSDN Unleashed and the St. Louis Code Camp, therefore, I’ll only link to it once here…

St. Louis Code Camp

The St. Louis Code Camp was great! I’d like to thank Scott Spradlin and all of the organizers for inviting me to participate in a great event. I’d also like to think Brian Moore for letting me crash at Chateau Moore. I look forward to participating at future events in and around St. Louis.

At the St. Louis Code Camp, I presented an overview on Azure and the Azure Services Platform. I also filled in for a speaker who had to unfortunately back out at the last minute and presented an overview of Silverlight 2 (see slides above).

The St. Louis developer community came out strong and I thank them for their hospitality. On to the slides…

Once again… my apologies for the tardiness of posting these slides. But if you haven’t figured it out by now, you can find all of my presentations up on SlideShare. You may also understand my tardiness once you read some upcoming news I have for you (my poor attempt at a teaser). Stay tuned!

Illinois Events, MSDN, SQL Server, Silverlight, Talks, Wisconsin Events

I just received word today that attendees of the Chicago stop of the MSDN Developers Conference (MDC) will be some of the first people to get their hands on Windows 7 Beta 1 DVDs! All MDC attendees will receive a copy of Windows 7 Beta 1, but Chicago looks to be the first. For the MDC events taking place before Jan. 13th, you will receive your DVD in the mail after Jan. 13th. Bob Familiar has more details on this.

What is the MSDN Developers Conference you might ask? Well, apparently you don’t read my blog as I’ve discussed this already. Don’t worry, I’ll let it pass *THIS TIME*.

Anyhow… MSDN DevCon is a “Best of PDC” show for developers that the Microsoft Evangelist team is bringing to 11 cities across the country.

The Chicago MDC will be taking place on January 13th, 2009 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency. Ron Jacobs will be kicking things off with the morning keynote followed by a number of sessions covering Microsoft’s Cloud Computing initatives, the latest in Client and Presentation development, as well as what’s new in Tooling, Languages and Framework. We’ll also be running a “Community Courtyard” series of sessions throughout the day as well.

Register now for the Chicago MSDN Developers Conference, or check for other MDC’s events happening in your area.

There is a $99 charge but that is peanuts compared to what PDC registration cost. :)

Announcements, Community, Illinois Events, Indiana Events, Wisconsin Events

It’s unfortunate, but true. Not everyone can attend the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). That’s why the Microsoft Evangelist team across the U.S. is bringing the PDC to you. We’ve taken some of the best content from last week, packaged it up, wrapped it up in a pretty bow and will bring it to you through a series of events across the U.S. We’re calling it the MSDN Developers Conference (MDC).

In the grand tradition of DevDays events of the past, we will be conducting a 1-day conference covering some of the best sessions from PDC including announcements and developments around Visual Studio, the .NET Languages including F#, WPF, Silverlight, “Oslo”, Team System, ASP.NET, Parallel Programming and of course the Windows Azure Services Platform and Windows 7. We’ll also have a third track available for an Open Spaces area.

(As a side note, for those of you outside the U.S., poke your local Microsoft Evangelist team and ask them to bring MSDN DevCon to you!)

To register for the event in the city closest to you, simply click on the city link. This will take you to the landing page for that particular event where you will get more details about locations and the great speakers lined up for your city.

Locations
Date	City
12/09/2008	Houston, TX
12/11/2008	Orlando, FL
12/16/2008	Atlanta, GA
1/13/2009	Chicago, IL
1/13/2009	Minneapolis, MN
1/16/2009	Washington, DC
1/20/2009	New York, NY
1/22/2009	Boston, MA
1/22/2009	Detroit, MI
1/26/2009	Dallas, TX
2/19/2009	San Francisco, CA

If you missed the opportunity to attend PDC in-person, don’t miss your chance to hang with your developer community peeps at the MSDN Developers Conference.

You can also follow all the MSDN DevCon shenanigans on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Twemes and MSDN Social.

Announcements, Illinois Events, PDC08

After a short hiatus, the Bloomington .NET Users Group is back in action with their next meeting taking place on June 18th at the Microsoft offices in Bloomington (IL). Not only that, we have a brave soul who has volunteered to help get Bloomington.NET officially kicked off the ground. Tod Birdsall has volunteered his time and energy to help bring the .NET community together in Bloomington. Tod is off to a fast start by securing Bloomington.NET’s first sponsor for the upcoming June meeting, with Tek Systems taking care of the food and drinks for all of you hungry developers.

This month’s meeting will have your’s truly providing an overview discussion of the recently announced Microsoft Silverlight. We will also take some time to discuss the group and what you, the community, would like to do with it. Tod will be looking for additional volunteers to help with group activities and coordination.

It’s sure to be a greattime and we hope to see you there!

Also, if you are a business, academic or private institution that would be willing to host the Bloomington .NET Users Group, please let us know. The Microsoft offices in Bloomington just doesn’t have the capacity to support this growing community. Ideally we’re looking for space that can house 50-75 (maybe more) with comfortable seating, A/V capabilities and an environment that nurtures great networking and community connection.

What: Bloomington .NET Users Group
Topic: Microsoft Silverlight
When: Monday, June 18th, 2007, 6PM – 9PM
Where: Microsoft, 2203 E. Empire Street, Suite J, Bloomington, IL

To get an accurate count for the food, please be sure to register.

Technorati tags: bloomington, asp.net, aspnet, ajax, silverlight

Illinois Events

Angela Binkowski,Microsoft’s resident Developer Tools Technical Specialist, will be leading a discussion on Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (or affectionatly known as “Data Dude”) at the next gathering of the Chicago Visual Studio Team System Users Group.

If you’re interested in learningin how to create unit tests for your database schema or controlling your database schema changes with baseline versioning and change management control or how the database professional fits into the Team System Lifecycle Management process, you won’t want to miss this one.

Chicago Visual Studio Team System Users Group

Microsoft Corporation, 77 West Wacker Dr., Suite 2300, Chicago, IL. 60601
June 13th, 2007, 6PM – 9PM

Agenda:

6:00pm – 6:30pm Welcome, Introductions and Pizza
6:30pm – 8:30pm Angela Binkowski Presents Data Dude!
8:30pm – 9:00pm Q&A, Raffle and Wrap Up

Presenter Bio:

Angela Binkowski is the Developer Tools Technical Specialist for the Midwest District. She has been with Microsoft for just over 11 months now, and previously spent 8 years as an IT consultant. She has experience as an architect, developer, tester, business analyst, database engineer, and project manager in the software industry, specifically focused on Microsoft technologies. Angela is a co-founder of the VSTS User group in Chicago. You can read her blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/angelab/default.aspx. Angela is a graduate of Northern Illinois University.

Be sure to bring your Smart card badge from previous meetings to qualify for special prizes! We will be issuing smart cards to new members too, while supplies last.

Illinois Events