Peter Himschoot is organizing a geek dinner in Ghent on 7 March. So after your portion of deep technical geek presentations at Developer & IT Pro Days, you can enjoy a nice dinner with other technology adepts...

A few of my colleagues were lucky and went on a short ski last week. Michael Kögeler, our marketing director, put up some pictures on his blog:

• I'm not sure I would eat this...
• Bruno Segers, our general manager, also works during a short holiday ...
• ... but not the entire time.
• Microsoft employees like each other and some are not afraid to show it.

Looks to me that I missed some nice activities and relaxing moments in Garmisch Partenkirchen. But Developer & IT Pro Days is coming very close and I really couldn't afford to take a holiday break.

Brad Abrams reports that his book "Framework Design Guidelines" is the 19th best selling book in the category "Computing & Internet" at Proxis... So is Belgium really becoming a center for framework design excellence (or are we it already :) )?

Thanks Rudi for sending me the link to Brad's post...

I guess the word is finally out on Rédo joining the Regional Director community as representative for Belgium and Luxembourg. Together with his Flemish speaking peer in RD community, Peter Himschoot, he'll be working on several (community) initiatives. Both are independent from Microsoft and are working at their own company (Peter at U2U and Rédo at Wygwam). I look forward to see the first results of their work.

Oh, we have plans to announce some of this work at Developer & IT Pro Days...

Soma had quite some nice announcements the past few days. First of all, Team Foundation Server - the collaboration server of Visual Studio Team System - will be available in March.

As good developer, you already knew about the availability of the .NET Enterprise Library v2.0, didn't you? :)

It's also nice to have a look at the future, isn't it? So check out the new CTP's of the Expression tools, such as the Expression Interactive Designer (previously know as code name "Sparkle"). Or maybe you like Visual Basic 2005 (version 8.0), so why won't you check out the new Visual Basic 9.0 CTP?

Geez, when I read about all this new stuff

Warning: Marketing Content is following after this sentence! If you want to know more about Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server, book your ticket for the Developer & IT Pro Days now... There will be plenty of sessions on these subjects. And you'll be able to fire your questions at experts that have real life experience with these products.

Federal Developer blog reports that for a limited time we're offering MCAD's and MCSD's 3 beta exams for free.

Attendees of the Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 Event in Belgium also got a voucher to take one exam for free. Passing one exam is all that it takes to become a Microsoft Certified Professional. My advise is not to waste this opportunity. In my days a self-employed developer I benefited a few times of my MCSD status: both financially as well as with the work I got to do...

A few days ago we released a brand new, pure Java (type 4) JDBC 3.0 driver for SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. This JDBC driver also works with the free, easy-to-use, lightweight version of SQL Server 2005: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

But I'm not going to go into too much detail as I'm not a subject matter expert on this.

Was just checking out the availability in Belgium of "Naked Conversations", the book on "how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers" of Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. Two Belgian online bookstores announce that it will be available on Monday January 30: here for Proxis, and here for Azur.

I didn't read the book yet, so I can't tell you (yet) if I liked it. But don't hesitate to check out the opinion of several other bloggers on this book.

You might recall that a few weeks ago Scoble and his wife Maryam visited Belgium. You might have noticed this in the Belgian press: StuBru interviewed him and broadcasted the interview in prime time, and Vers L'Avenir and Data News wrote articles about his visit. Yesterday I received a copy of the February edition of Bizz Magazine that contains a 3 page interview of with Scoble. The interview is an excellent summary of what Scoble talked about with the journalists.

Well, at least mine didn't talk much about his Japanese experience with the Microsoft Belgium management team... But luckily it got captured and blogged. (Should someone start experimenting with DopplerMobile??) <grin />

Talking about our management team in Belgium, did you know that 4 out of the 12 management team members are women: Sylvie Irzi, Christine Leonard, Hilde Budts and Hilde Sibbick. So 25% of the management team at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg are women. That's not bad at all, is it?

One more statistic... Yes, there is even one MT member that blogs on a regular basis: Michael Kögeler, the business & marketing organisation manager.

On popular demand, we've opened the Developer & IT Pro Days Kennel. In the kennel you'll find graphics that you can use in e-mail signatures and on your website or blog. Wim - the MSDN Belux content master - will keep on adding more content every now and then.

PS. I know that I'm acting quite lame by copying this, but this was too funny to forget about it. You can get some idea's to convince your boss of letting you attend the Developer & IT Pro Days from this PDC05 whitepaper. Not everything in there applies to the Developer & IT Pro Days, but you'll definitely will get some good ideas.

Did you know you can already register for a new Beta Experience with Windows Vista and Office "12"? It's free and will deliver you quite some benefits such as "valuable resources, specialist knowledge and bonus material".

You'll also receive a 6-weekly newsletter. For Belgians, this newsletter will also contain quite a lot of information on local activities and communities. If you want to have us include your content (articles, code samples, ...) in the Belgian Beta Experience newsletter, don't hesitate to send the MSDN Belux team an e-mail at msdnbewm@microsoft.com. I promise you that I or someone from the MSDN Belux team will get back to you quite quickly.

Today we've announced that we moved TechEd Europe 2006 from July to November. Also the location was changed from Amsterdam to Barcelona. Why did we reschedule? For those that might think that it was because I didn't want to celebrate my 30th birthday on a geek conference, well, they are wrong.  :)  Actually, July was not longer the most optimal time frame for the event:

• Many developers indicated that they want to enjoy their well-deserved summer holidays and have a difficult time coming to a geek conference in July
• People from the product teams in the US wanted to spend their official national holiday - the 4th of July - at home
• The worldwide Microsoft Partner Conference is also held in the same timeframe

On top of the date change, the event is now fully split up between developers in the first week (7 - 10 November 2006) and IT professionals in the second week (14 - 17 November).

The TechEd Europe team created a nice Frequently Asked Questions section on the website that contains all the official statements about the change.

In short: yes, there will be a TechEd Europe in 2006 but it will be held in November in Barcelona, Spain.

I'm very happy that we've been able to get Rob Creemers, a trend watcher, delivering the closing keynote on day 1 of Developer & IT Pro Days in Belgium. Rob's presentations are very entertaining while also containing interesting observations about technology today and tomorrow. Yes, one might call it "infotainment".

Apparently I'm not the only one who likes his presentations. Many colleagues have already seen a keynote delivered by Rob. When I told them about the closing keynote, they were all very positive about it. On several past events in Belgium (for Microsoft and other companies), Rob always got very high ratings.

Be sure not to miss this closing keynote. Rob will help you to end a day full of in-depth, technical presentations in a relaxed way.

Wim Van Winghe is the business group manager for Windows Client (i.e. Windows XP and Windows Vista) at Microsoft Belgium. He will be spending a week at Microsoft Campus in Redmond visiting the Windows Vista product team. This is not very exceptional, wouldn't it be that Wim is blogging (in Dutch) about it for a full week.

I've been very quiet on the blogging front lately. For a big part this has to do with the preparation for the Developer & IT Pro Days 2006. After a lot of work, we've finally been able to open the registrations for this event. Have a look at the site (http://www.dev-itprodays.be); the agenda is almost completely finalized.

To give you a little insight, here are the people that are part of the event core team:

• Ritchie Houtmeyers and I are the project owners.
• David Boschmans and Arlindo Alves are responsible for the content and speakers
• Wim Verhaeghen is working on the website
• Lut Goedhuys is dealing with all marketing and communication activities

PS. The first 400 people that register will receive an MSPress book...

There are already quite some user groups in Belgium focussing on development on the Microsoft platform:

• Belgian Information Worker User Group
• .NET User Group Brugge
• Visual Basic Group

I already blogged about the user group for French speaking developers that Rédo and his friends want to start.

Two other guys, Steven Wilssens and Peter Himschoot, are starting the Belgian Visual Studio User Group. Their first meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday (25 January).

Rédo wants to start a new user group for developers in Belgium that work on the Microsoft platform. Therefore he put up a survey to know what potential members would be interested in. This will help him and the other user group leaders to compose a nice and compelling agenda for the next year.

For the French speaking people: Donc, si vous parlez le Français et vous souhaitez que votre avis soit pris en compte, complétez le questionnaire.

While they were in Belgium last Thursday, Studio Brussels (Belgium national radio's youth channel), interviewed Robert and Maryam. The people of StuBru have been so nice to put the interview online at http://outpost.vrt.be/privemp3/blog_20051211_154702.htm.

Wednesday evening, 19:00. Back home from a day with meetings from 8:00 till 18:00. While checking your e-mail (you always want to do that after being a day without it, don't you) and you see that Scoble and Maryam sent the phone number of the hotel they are staying at. You call them and say you'll pick them up at the hotel in 45 minutes.

So far so good. Until you arrive at the hotel but the police won't allow you to stop. Why? Because Dr. Condoleezza Rice is also staying at that hotel. Because of this I way too late to pick them up, of course.

After picking up Wim, we went to visit the city of Leuven. After having a big casserole of mussels (note for Robert: that was in Leuven and not in Brussels ;), Wim and I gave Robert and Maryam a quick tour around the city with of course a visit to the Oude Markt (freely translated as "Old Market Square"). This place also has the nickname of being the greatest bar of Western Europe. Not many people out there that night though... Luckily we had quite some stuff to talk about: culture, food, beers, Microsoft, Google, Apple, blogging... One thing's for sure, if you're out with the Scobles you're never out of conversation material. Robert is a great guy and knows a lot about so many different things. His wife, Maryam is such a spontaneous and lovely woman.

Before bringing them back to their hotel, we also gave Robert and Maryam the opportunity to see the Atomium at 1:00 in the morning. Luck was definitely not on our side, because normally this piece of art is completely lighted. But not now... Robert posted some photo's of places we visited.

Thursday morning Scoble gave a breakfast presentation to my colleagues at the Microsoft Belgium offices. Besides the "regular employees" also several members of the management team could free up time in their agenda to attend his presentation on blogging. Sweet!

In the evening, there was David's Geek Dinner at Serenata in Zaventem. On the previous geek dinners I attended almost everyone was part of the .NET developer community. (Yup, I definitely should go to more geek dinners.) This time, however, there were quite some people that I didn't met or even knew before. With the risk of forgetting someone, the people that I remember to have seen: Scoble & Maryam, David Boschmans, Wim Verhaeghen, Jelle Druyts, Joris Poelmans, Erwin van  Hunen, Luc Van Brakel, Smetty "I Kissed Scoble", Miel Van Opstal (Coolz0r), Maarten Schenk, Frédéric De Vries (Druppels), Will Moffat (Hamstersoup.com). Also Bart Goossens, author of the Dutch book "Webloggen" of Clickx Magazine, joined us. During the evening we had nice chats on several topics, such as Apache, Windows Media Server, PHP, having blog dinners when interesting people visit Microsoft, open source, and much more. Erwin showed us the coolest mobile application that I've seen since Imagine Cup's SmartRunner. DopplerMobile is an enhanced version of the desktop DopplerRadio with many nice features. This is one of those apps that would convince me to buy a new Smartphone, just to be able to run it. Knowing that it has been written by someone that lives in Belgium just adds that extra touch. Erwin didn't release a beta version to the public yet.

During dinner one of the Belgian national radio's, Studio Brussel, broadcasted the interview that Kaat Mendonck did with Robert and Maryam earlier that day.

Summarized: it was a fantastic experience. Thanks Robert and Maryam for taking the time to visit our nice country (view an informational video). It was nice to hear that you enjoyed your visit!

PS. Today, De Morgen also published a piece on blogging with quotes from Robert.

Update: Maarten Schenk has also published a lot of pics of the dinner.

Are you using C++ as your programming language? You might be interested to hear about Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 from the Group Program Manager of this product... Check out the MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg events page for more information and free registration.

MSDN Evening on January 5th, 2006: A Lap Around Visual C++ 2005
With Ronald Laeremans, Group Program Manager Visual C++ team at Microsoft Corporation

Come and see why Visual C++ 2005 is a must have upgrade. You'll be taken on a whirlwind tour through the 2005 release in this demo-heavy session. Get little know tips and tricks for the IDE and debugger. Learn how to improve the performance of your code using whole program and profile guided optimizations. And see how you can easily leverage the .NET libraries from your existing Win32 or MFC C++ application.

Timing: 18:00 - 20:30
Location: Microsoft offices in Diegem (near Brussels)
Registration: See http://www.msdn.be/events