The past 2 weeks I had very positive but unexpected experiences with two big international companies: Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and Hilton.

Scandinavian Airlines

Although I was in not impacted in any way by this, SAS sent me an e-mail about an accident that happened with one of their aircraft at Copenhagen airport the day before. I wouldn't even have known this, if they didn't send me this e-mail.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, the company reacted correctly to the incident by sending that e-mail to their customers. It makes me feel that they value me as customer:

• I'm important enough to them that they want to reassure me that they did everything possible to make sure a similar accident will not happen again. Hey, they don't want to loose me as a customer.
• SAS knows that I'm Belgian. So I got a message from the Belgian SAS office, signed by their Belgian general manager, informing me about changes in their schedule for flights between Brussels and Copenhagen. A Scandinavian "global" company that acts locally.
• Paul Kristensen, who appears to be the general manager for Belgium and Luxembourg, put his own e-mail address in the accompanying letter. So that "in case I have any questions and/or remarks, I would be able to send him an e-mail". They could easily have used an e-mail address like feedback@sas.dk in that letter; instead I can now send my comment to a real person. A personal approach.

Since my first flight with them a few years ago, I really liked the SAS approach. And they keep impressing me. Well, even when I'm not flying for business purposes (in other words I'm paying for the flight myself), I'm willing to spend some extra Euros to get their service!

Hilton

I have not stayed many times at Hilton hotels, and the last time was more than a year ago. This time, for TechEd Developers, I booked a room at Hilton Diagonal Mar that's located beside the conference venue. At check-in, I also signed up for their Hilton HHonors program since the reception desk clerk insisted about some of the "advantages". Personally, I expected to get just another card to would sit in my wallet for a long time without any purpose and get a lot of spam e-mail on Hilton offers. I can't judge about those two yet, since I just joined that program.

The first surprise was when I entered my room on the first evening I was in the hotel. A letter posted under my door. On a few past occasions, this hasn't always been good news. But it was something that I didn't expect at all: they sent me a confirmation letter for my Hilton HHonors membership, explaining the details of the program once more and asking about my preferences. Wow, that was fast.

The second surprise was when I checked out. They actually sent me an e-mail to thank me for their stay. Simple and clean. Nothing more, nothing less. No advertising included in that e-mail. Some might think that was a missed opportunity for them, but I liked that approach. And also here, Hilton Diagonal Mar's front office manager, mr. Cedric Nubul, included his personal e-mail address in the e-mail.

I prefer buying/using services from companies that give me a feeling that they care about me. Yes, I know that their is a big marketing engine behind those unexpected experiences of SAS and Hilton. But it would have been far easier for those companies to do nothing, and I wouldn't probably have noticed it. But the fact that these companies gave me that personal treatment, that surprised and impressed me.

For a limited time, the Windows Mobile site offers free downloads of Halloween wallpapers and ringtones. Get them at https://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/domore/halloween-ringtones.mspx.

[Cross-posted from http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/archive/2007/10/25/spooky-halloween-ringtones-and-wallpapers-for-windows-mobile-owners.aspx ]

... are so friendly. Not so long ago, I visited Dublin (and Ireland) for the first time. My first experience was with an extremely friendly taxi driver. He was the first one who would apologize for taking a wrong turn and offering me a discount on the fare for those 3 minutes I lost because of that.

But also after that first experience, all following ones went very well too. I probably shouldn't generalize, but Irish people are so friendly...

I'm in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for a summit. Yesterday we took our guests out for dinner at Dorrius, a restaurant where "you can taste the real Old Dutch culinary delights in a typical Old Dutch atmosphere". Knowing the Dutch culinary delights as "broodje kroket" and buttermilk, I was a bit skeptic in the beginning. But I was wrong.

We enjoyed the "Smulpapen"-menu so that we could taste a bit of several dishes . The food was delightful, surprising and extremely tasteful. Add to that a great service and good company, and you can imagine we had a good time. Really recommended if you want something different.

PS. If you want Microsoft or software development related posts, read my MSDN Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/.

This morning I received the shocking news that David Boschmans, a fantastic colleague and friend, has passed away last night. David and I got to know each other in the Belgian developer community about 5 years ago. Three years ago he joined Microsoft as the Developer Evangelist where we worked very closely together. During that time I got to know David as a smart and great person. The past weeks, he was recovering from health issues; everything seemed to go well (given the circumstances). Till last night.

My thoughts go out to his wife, his daughter and family.

David, we miss you and will never forget you. Rest in peace...

Update: You can write a message to David and his family at http://david.vsdotnet.be. If you have photo's with David, it would be nice if you could add them to the David Boschmans group at Flickr. This group will be a center location with several different memories.

Although I'm not a gamer (probably because I'm bad at gaming), six months ago I bought an XBox 360. I love it as a Windows Media Center Extender, but I have not been playing that many games on it. Till past weekend...

Some time ago, I was in Redmond and visited Steven Wilssens and Thomas Delrue. (They are both Belgians working at Microsoft Corp, in case you wouldn't know that.) After some shopping and a BBQ at Steven's house, we all gathered around his big television screen. Steven started his XBox 360 and took out an electronic guitar-like device. The game for that night was Guitar Hero 2 (Guitar Hero 2 on xbox.com for Belgium - Dutch). Everyone seemed to playing quite well. Since I never played that game, I didn't want to compete with these guys.

But this weekend I bought my own Guitar Hero 2 game with guitar. And guess what... I really love the game and have never played that many hours on my XBox 360 before. It's really not hard to start, you can learn quite fast and make progress.

Tommy Gun of Cracked Rabbit Gaming recorded a video of him playing Guitar Hero 2 in Expert mode. And before people start telling me that I should get a life and buy a real guitar, I agree with Tommy Gun on why we're playing Guitar Hero instead of the real thing.

Patrick Viaene, a colleague at Microsoft Belgium, and some of his friends are organizing a motorbike trip to Auschwitz. They call their project "Daddy's On Tour" (link to a page in Dutch). The friends also wanted to leverage this trip as a fundraiser. Since there were a lot of children that didn't survive Auschwitz, they decided to support Unicef, as this organization is working on improving the life of the youngest amongst us.

A nice initiative. If you want to learn more, check out their page (in Dutch) and blog (in Dutch). They are still looking for companies to support their trip with a donation to Unicef.

The guys (I think Patrick is behind the camera):

Recently we had a little celebration with a few colleagues from the Enterprise group. During one discussion, following quote from Angela Merkel (prime minister of Germany) was mentioned: "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with your team." (The quote is slightly adapted from the original one, where she mentioned "together" instead of "with your team"). Nice one-liner...

(A quick search on the Internet reveals that Angela Merkel said this during the World Economic Forum 2007 in Davos.)

After a full day of meetings, you are happy to return to your desk and your so familiar chair... But then you find out that some of your colleagues have more time available than you to fool around. Introducing my MSDN chair:

Thanks for this piece of decoration, Miel, Walter and Wim Vanden Driessche...

Technorati tags: prank, msdn

Need a little energy boost? I found a music video on Soapbox that does the trick for me: it is a rock version of Johann Pachelbel's classical music piece "Canon in D", arranged by Jerry C and played by Funtwo. Put the volume on maximum and enjoy!

Video: Hot Guitar Solo

Wikipedia has a lot more information and links on Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D". On the Unofficial Jerry C video links website you can find a lot of other people that covered this piece of music, including the original "Canon Rock" by Jerry C himself.

Update: Jelle told me the link for the unofficial JerryC Video links website was incorrect. This has been fixed.

Together with a few other developer audience marketing managers, I had the opportunity to spend quality time last week with key stakeholders of Microsoft's audience strategy towards software developers at our headquarters in Redmond. We didn't discuss our products and features in those products, that's for other people. As it was an audience marketing summit we focused on how - in the short and long term - we can improve the experience developers have with Microsoft. We had great discussions on our relationship marketing strategy, our work with the community, market intelligence and customer insights, and a lot more...

For a part of the summit we worked in different smaller teams. I had the honor of being part of the team that also consisted of:

• Our team lead: Eileen Rumwell, Developer Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft Corp
• Wendy Rogers, Developer Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft Canada
• Frank Fischer, Developer Evangelism Manager at Microsoft Germany
• Maxine Cook, Marketing Manager at Microsoft UK
• Woody Pewitt, Developer Evangelist at Microsoft USA (Southern California area)
• George Kamarinos, Developer Audience & Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft Central & Eastern Europe HQ
• Dave Morehouse, Product Manager in the Community team at Microsoft Corp
• Korby Parnell, Product Manager in the Community team at Microsoft Corp

Out of the 9 people in our little team, it positively surprised me that 5 people have their own blog. And Frank writes a lot of technical content for the MSDN Germany site, so he has web presence too. Other people that were at the summit and have a blog include:

• Frank Arrigo, Developer Evangelism Manager at Microsoft Australia
• Amy Sorokas, Developer Community Marketing Manager at Microsoft Corp
• Clare Dillon, Developer Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft Ireland

At the end of the summit we had 4 hours to present the results of our work to several Microsoft executives, which was absolutely an inspiring experience. Although such summits take up quite a lot of regular working time, I always find them very inspiring as you have a chance to think about and discuss several topics with other people in a related job. Something that is not easy to do over conference calls. Also the fact that you really disconnect from the daily challenges allows one to think more "out of the box". That really energizes me again.

And now it's time to catch up with e-mails and get some rest. Next trip is to the Luxembourg subsidiary for the MSDN Event next Tuesday.

Developer & IT Pro Days is the main conference in Belgium for developers and IT pro's that are interested in learning about current and near future products and technologies. Some of this year's highlights:

• Pre-conference on 27 March with Wintellect's Jeff Prosise on ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX and WPF/E
• More than 60 sessions during the 2 day main conference
• Opening keynote by David Chappell
• Several industry experts already confirmed: Thinktecture's Ingo Rammer and Christian Weyer, Jeff Prosise, Roy Osherhove. There are a few other amazing speakers in the pipeline currently; I hope David can confirm them really soon...
• Ron Jacobs, the man behind the ARCasts, will host an architecture track
• If you register on or before 28 February, you get 15% off the normal registration price.

After the good feedback we received on last year's venue, we decided to host the event again in Ghent. I hope to meet you there...

Live blogging from Brussels... Ine Dehandschutter posted the first backstage pictures from the 'Experience the "Wow"' event that will happen tonight.

I've met quite some bloggers here in Brussels; some of them have already posted something:

• Kevin De Mulder (in Dutch) - Wow
• Maarten Schenk - Experience the Wow
• Maarten Schenk - Vista: Wow
• Ine Dehandschutter - What to expect tonight in the Atomium

I just came by a recently released Digital Photography Powertoy named "Microsoft Photo Info". From the product's website:

Microsoft Photo Info is a new software add-in for Microsoft Windows that allows photographers to add, change and delete common "metadata" properties for digital photographs from inside Windows Explorer. It also provides enhanced "hover tips" and additional sort properties for digital photographs in Explorer (in Details view).

Here's a screenshot from the software running on a Windows Vista machine:

Read all about it at my MSDN blog: Scott Guthrie in Belgium on February 1st; join the free community event.

Quite exciting times again at Microsoft Belgium. Tomorrow we'll officially launch Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Windows Live OneCare to the broad public. After the big Business Innovation Launch event in November for enterpise customers, tomorrow is the day that we'll celebrate the (general) availability of Windows Vista and Office 2007 in stores and shops. As part of this general availability launch, there will be a launch event in the Atomium with a very limited number of attendees. To win an entry ticket, you should have participated in a contest organised by one of the media partners. At this moment all tickets are already distributed, so the few lucky ones that will be able to participate are already known and have been notified.

If you didn't get an entrance ticket, there is one last opportunity for you. You'll be able to watch the gig of Praga Khan for the launch event, live from the Atomium, through three different media: via MSN/Telenet, via Proximus 3G Vodaphone Live! or - probably the coolest - in Second Life. The details for the event in Second Life were mainly worked out by one of the newest Developer & Platform Evangelism members, Miel Van Opstal, who also gives more detailed information on his blog. The technical aspects (such as the streaming) are being taken care of by a marketing agency. (Technical aspects and a marketing agency... Let's hope that works out well...  ;-)  )

The gig will be broadcasted on 10 different locations in Second Life:

• Strawberry Estate, Miel's own chunk of land with a miniature Atomium in the garden. In every sphere of the Atomium there are screens where people can watch the concert. There will also be 2 giant screens in the Strawberry Estate Club.
• Parioli Club in the Italian Virtual Parks region. They have created a great looking themed location, especially for this launch.
• Club Elements
• Crayonville Island
• Isle of Lesbos
• Mermaids Gentlemens Club
• ShowGirls
• Liquid Dreams
• The Sanctuary Rock
• Irie Vibes Club

And because a picture says more than a thousand words, I'm very happy that Miel allowed me to use his images on this blog:

Slightly adapted from http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/archive/2007/01/29/second-life-streaming-of-concert-at-belgian-windows-vista-office-2007-launch.aspx.

In September, Microsoft Belgium - with the support from Child Focus and the Belgian Federal Computer Crime Unit (FCCU), distributed booklets that explains children how they can safely surf the internet. (Read Luc Van Braekel's Dutch blog post "Safe Internet for Children" about this booklet.)

As a follow-up for this campaign we're currently looking for volunteers who want to deliver a presentation on the same subject in schools to pupils aged 8 to 14. Quite some people from Microsoft and from our MSDN and TechNet communities have already delivered these presentations at difference schools with great success. You can now help increase the reach of this information to even more pupils.

If you feel that you want to be part of this project and teach children how they can safely surf the internet, please have a look at the information on this project and register (French speaking people, click here).

PS. Note that you don't have to be a developer and IT professional to deliver these presentations. Registration is open to everyone with a good knowledge on the Internet and with the necessary capabilities to bring over a message to children.

This Friday, Tom Raftery will be in Belgium. Tom is a known blogger, focussing on Web 2.0 and business blogging. His current Technorati rank is 2.985, which is obviously higher than my current rank at 20.591. ;)

Simon McDermott took the opportunity to organize a blogger community dinner in the evening together with Tom Raftery. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend this dinner, but it looks like it's going to be fun. Simon just wrote me that already 6 people confirmed their attendance but that there is a lot more space available. Leave a comment on Simon's blog post if you want to attend the dinner as well.

No blog silence at all. Although I must admit that I've neglected this blog for quite a while. For several reasons, I decided to blog on 2 different sites. Each site will have its specific content.

All things related to software development stuff, Visual Studio and MSDN in Belgium and Luxembourg will now be posted on my MSDN Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/. This blog at http://www.vsdotnet.be/blogs/tommer/ will remain active but will change focus to other topics that interest me and that I come across in my role of audience marketing manager at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg.

In short, developers reading my blog will now get the same kind of information from me on http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/. People interested in audience marketing, web 2.0-stuff, etc, can continue reading this blog.

Now I need to find some time to update the layout of both websites... Urgently...

Following MSDN Evenings are currently scheduled at the Microsoft offices in Brussels:

• October 18: MSDN Evening: Developing solutions with Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Office SharePoint Servers 2007, presented by Joris Poelmans
• November 15: MSDN Evening: Introducing Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, presented by Gunther Beersaerts

The event starts at 18:00 till 20:00 and always covers 1 topic.

Cross posted at Tom's MSDN Belux Corner .

These are the currently scheduled Belgian user group events:

VISUG - Security Development Lifecycle
Wednesday 25 October 2006
The software industry has been struggling with how to create and release software that is more security-enhanced and reliable. The Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) provides a methodology that works; it is a critical way to help reduce the number of security defects in code at every stage of the development process, from design to release. When compared to software that has not been subject to the SDL, software that has undergone the SDL has experienced a significantly reduced rate of external discovery of security vulnerabilities.

During this presentation Wim Verhaeghen, content master for MSDN Belux, will introduce you in the process of developing software that needs to withstand malicious attack.

ACCB.NET User Group Brugge - Strict On Programming
Wednesday 18 October 2006

SQL Server User Group Belgium - SQL Server Integration Services
Thursday 23 November 2006
Nico Verheire, BI-consultant at Dolmen, will talk about Integration Services for about 1 to 1,5 hours. After the break, you are free to share and show your experiences / troubles on some desktops available in the room. Of course, you can also bring a portable with your "case". It is not a consulting evening, so no guarantee about the outcome, but the ideal place to share ideas and experiences with others.

All events can be attended free of charge. The .NET User Group Brugge requires membership of the user group.

Cross posted at Tom's MSDN Belux Corner .

Steven Van de Craen's latest article was published on MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg.

Customizing the Content Query Web Part XSL
The Content Query Web Part can be used to display a dynamic view of content from your site on a web page. This article discusses how you can extend this Web Part to show additional information about your SharePoint items (news articles, announcements, events, documents, etc.)

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner .

Tags: SharepointMSDN Belux CAML

We recently published a new article from Kurt Claeys on the MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg website:

State Machine Workflows in Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation allows us to implement workflows as state machines. This article uses a simple case and demonstrates how to develop a state machine workflow and solve the requirements of a case.

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

You are invited on October 11 for an event at Microsoft in Luxembourg, where David Boschmans, development platform advisor at Microsoft, will show you how to manage the Software Development Lifecyclewith Visual Studio 2005 Team System.

Visual Studio 2005 Team System is a productive, integrated, and extensible suite of lifecycle tools that expands the Visual Studio product line to enable greater communication and collaboration among software development teams. With Visual Studio 2005 Team System, organizations can ensure greater predictability and quality early and often throughout the development process.

There are 2 sessions scheduled:

• October 11 from 9:00 till 12:00
• October 11 from 13:30 till 16:30

Location:

Microsoft Luxembourg
Zoning industriel "Cloche d'Or"
NCI Office - Laccolith
rue Eugène Ruppert 20
Luxembourg

By attending this event, you’ll gain knowledge on the features and capabilities of Visual Studio Team System.

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner .