Last Monday (25 September) more than 600 developers attended the free MSDN Belux event on .NET Framework 3.0 development. According to the attendee feedback, Peter Himschoot and Ingo Rammer rocked the house! Apparently for some people the content was a little too advanced, but most of you appreciated every presentation. So many people were also nice for us in their comments; here are a few of them:

• "The MSDN events are always interesting."
• "Microsoft keeps innovating, and listens to the feedback of developers."
• ".NET is my weapon of choice for any project!"
• "Microsoft gives me all I want, plus a lot more..."
• "I'm a MS developer in heart and soul... wouldn't want to trade for other tools and languages anymore..."
• "It is very pleasant developing with Microsoft products"
• "Great tools. Great resources. Great community."
• "Microsoft is doing well for the developers community."

Thanks, guys. Also the people that didn't leave such positive comments. Constructive critism is always appreciated... and developers are a very critic audience.

Someone of the event crew tooks some pictures, which I uploaded to http://www.pixagogo.com/3877614242.

Cross posted at Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

DasBlog 1.9 was recently released by Omar Shahine and Scott Hanselman. Several features have been improved and a lot of new ones have been added. One of the new features ("multi-user/blogger support") was added by a Belgian developer: Christoph De Baene. You might also know Christoph as a board member of the Visual Studio User Group - VISUG - in Belgium.

Scott also points to a blog post of Kris van der Mast, another Belgian developer and VISUG member, on writing custom macros for DasBlog.

Congratulations to the entire DasBlog team for this getting this release out, and a special shout out to both Belgian developers for their contribution...

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.
Tags: MSDN Belux Community, DasBlog

Today we've launched the Ready for a New Day event website for the Business Innovation Event. I got following text from our marketing department:

A new world of work needs a new world-class architecture. That’s why Microsoft developed Windows Vista, Exchange Server 2007 and the 2007 Office system - yours to experience at the Microsoft Business Innovation Event on 9 November at Heyzel in Brussels. Mr. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s BeLux executives and Microsoft’s best partners will provide you with all the necessary information on how to tackle tomorrow’s challenges. Don’t forget to register today (seats are limited)!

It's pretty clear that you won't get to see a lot of code - if any - during this "Business Innovation" event. Does that mean that developers are not welcome? Well, on the contrary... If you're a software developer and interested to learn more on the business opportunities and strategies with Windows Vista and 2007 Office system, please join us on this event. Just don't expect a deep-technical dive into these products.

FYI: There won't be a lot of people from the MSDN team in Belgium at the event, because almost every MSDNer will be at TechEd: Developers of course. If you want deep-technical content, TechEd: Developers is the event that you should attend...

Cyra Richardson - lead program manager for layout and rendering in the Internet Explorer team - is touring across EMEA for making developer aware of the changes in IE7. Although initially she wasn't going to visit Belgium, David managed to get here coming over to Belgium for delivering a MSDN Evening session on 29 September. From the website:

Internet Explorer provides rich new experiences around three pillars: great user experience, secure/trustworthy browsing and powerful web developer platform. Learn how your sites shine up on Internet Explorer 7 by taking advantage of better HTML and CSS standards support, RSS, search integration, and new security features. We will also take a deep look at what you can do and how we can help to prepare your existing sites for IE7.

The capacity for the event is limited to 50 people as it will be hosted in the training rooms at Microsoft in Belgium. Please only register if you're absolutely sure that you'll attend.

More information and registration.

Incredible: 3 weeks after I first blogged about our "MSDN Event: .NET Framework 3.0 Development", we had to switch theaters to increase the event capacity with 50%. Now, one and half weeks later the event is almost  fully booked again. Only 25 seats available at this moment... No more seats available! This means Peter and Ingo will inform more than 600 developers on the .NET Framework 3.0.

Updated on 12 September 2006.

From the MSDN Windows Workflow Foundation website:

"Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications on Windows. It consists of a .NET Framework version 3.0 (formerly WinFX) namespace, an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Visual Studio 2005. ..."

Scott Guthrie lists a couple of good resources covering Windows Workflow Foundation. One of those resources was written by probably the most famous Belgian developer/student: Bart De Smet. Congratulations for this... Bart's three posts, that Scott refers to, are:

• Getting Started with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
• WF - How to make a workflow dynamic? (Part 1)
• WF - How to make a workflow dynamic? (Part 2)

 Tags: Windows Workflow Foundation workflow .NET WinFX

Get ready now for the future mobile market! With this special kit for MSDN Connection members you will receive all of the professional tools, technologies and technical resources you need to create innovative applications for Windows Mobile. Thinking about having your solution certified one day? If you're not yet familiar with MSDN Connection: Become a member and you too can benefit!

Order it here on MSDN Connection (Belgium only!).

Last week, Ritchie and I had a meeting with Gerd De Bruycker on TechEd Europe. During the meeting I remembered my plans to blog about the Speaker Idol initiative at TechEd: Developers, what I haven't done till now.

From time to time we get questions from people that want to present at one of Microsoft events. The expectations of our speakers are very high, since they have to be able to keep the audience's attention for more than one hour and deliver the right message in the same time. People with presentation experience know that it takes a lot of preparation to do a good presentation.

On the other hand, I'm sure that there are more good presenters than we currently know. If you are one of them, you should definitely consider to participate in the Speaker Idol at TechEd: Developers.

Short overview of Speaker Idol (refer to the website for all details and official statements):

• Prerequisite: you should attend TechEd: Developers (7-10 November 2006) in Spain.
• Record a 3 minutes presentation. While filming, focus on the person conducting the presentation. Convert the film to Windows Media Video (WMV) and keep the file under 5 MB.
• Submit your presentation. Don't wait to long to submit, as the organization will only accept the first 40 submissions. (Only one submission per person!) The deadline for submitting is Friday 13 October 2006.
• 12 finalists will be chosen by a jury. The finalists will be informed before the conference starts.
• During the conference, finalists give their presentation again on-site for a live audience. This will be done in 3 waves, where the best 3 finalists will be chosen.
• Final round for best 3 finalists during a break-out session. After this we'll know the winner.
• Winner and 2 runners-up are announced. The winner will get the opportunity to give a presentation on TechEd: Developers in 2007, the two runners-up will get a free entrance ticket for TechEd: Developers in 2007. There are also several other smaller activities planned for the winner and the 2 runners-up.

This is my personal interpretation and definitely a shortened and incomplete version of the rules. But it gives you a good idea of what the contest is. Don't be scared of the numerous rules and regulations on the official website. Just participate...

PS. If you're a Belgian or Luxembourger (or working in Belgium or Luxembourg) and want to participate, don't hesitate to let me know at tom.mertens@microsoft.com. I'd be more than happy to assist you through the process.

PPS. The same Speaker Idol initiative is organized during TechEd: IT Forum. Arlindo Alves also blogged about this.

Tags: Microsoft, Tech Ed, Tech Ed: Developers

On Friday, we published a new article by Jan TIelens (Belgian MVP for Sharepoint) on the MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg web site. In this article Jan shows the different web part platforms and developments techniques a developer can choose from for building Sharepoint web parts.

Here is the article summary:

Web Parts are a great opportunity for developers to customize SharePoint, both to extend the existing functionality and to bring functionality or data coming from external applications in SharePoint sites. You can say that web parts are the building blocks for a SharePoint site. Since web parts are around for quite some time now, and you can develop web parts by using more than one technique, it can be hard for developers to decide how to build their web parts. This article is discussing the different development techniques and web parts platforms available today and in the near future.

Tags: sharepoint, development, asp.net, microsoft, msdn

The Microsoft patterns & practices team is already active for quite some time. In that time, they've released a lot of valuable information, libraries and "software factories", such as the Enterprise Library, Composite UI Application Block, Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 applications to VB.NET and VB 2005 guide, and much more...

Another of their projects is the "Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit". This toolkit falls under the software factories initiave workbench category at MSDN. From the web site: "The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) is an extension to Visual Studio 2005 that allows architects to author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including frameworks, components and patterns. The resulting 'Guidance Packages' are composed of templates, wizards and recipes, which help developers build solutions in a way consistent with the architecture guidance."

Jelle Druyts has been diving deep into the toolkit and wrote a series of blog posts on this topic:

• Part 1:Introduction to the Guidance Automation June 2006 CTP
• Part 2: Creating a Guidance Package
• Part 3: Creating a C# project
• Part 4: Adding project references
• Part 5: Tuning the C# projects
• Part 6: Generating classes

Early in August, Jelle also gave a talk on this topic for Belgian Visual Studio User Group members. He also shares his Powerpoint presentation of this meeting.

Some extra personal thoughts on this: I must say that I'm very impressed with such community engagement. It must have taken Jelle quite a lot of time to learn and write that much about this topic. It also shows the benefit of joining a user group, as such topics are not typically covered during our MSDN events in Belgium (you know: "so much to tell, so little time").

Extra resources on the Guidance Automation Toolkit:

• Tom Hollander's blog (Microsoft employee)
• Wojtek Kozaczynski's blog (Microsoft employee)
• Daniel Cazzulino's blog
• Oscar Calvo's blog
• Community web site GuidanceAutomation.net

Tags: Microsoft development software factories community

Are developers eager to know more about the Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, CardSpaces and the Windows Presentation Foundation? It must be so. With the exception of a few mentions (like in the MSDN Belux Flash and on the MSDN Belux website), we didn't make lot of promotion for our next MSDN Event on .NET Framework 3.0 (on September 25, 2006 in Kinepolis Brussels). Therefore I'm a bit surprised that just a few minutes ago already the 430th person registered for this event.

In the 4 years that I work on/for the Belgian developer audience, I've never seen registrations come in that fast with so little effort. I'd better ask a bigger theater for this event, shouldn't I...

Now, I wouldn't mind hearing from you why you think this event is so popular...

• Is it because of the speakers: Peter and Ingo? (They are great, aren't they?)
• Maybe you'd like to ask David in person if he can get you a free ticket for TechEd: Developers? (Good luck, but don't count that you'll succeed: he's responsible for the web development track at TechEd: Developers, not for the registration.)
• Has it been too long ago that you've seen a good looking registration desk hostess? (With that many people we'll need a lot of registration desk hostesses again.)
• Do you hope that we'll distribute a voucher for 10 free Windows Vista Ultimate boxes? (I can already tell you: we won't.)

Feel free to drop me an e-mail or a comment on this post with what you think is the reason. There are at least 5 MSPress books on the MSDN shelves waiting for a new owner. The "best" answers will get a copy.

Update 26 August: 460 people registered...

Tags: Microsoft, WinFX, .NET, development, Windows Vista

Yesterday our local big boss (the general manager of Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg) briefly mentioned 2 guys named "Tom" that recently left Microsoft to start their own company. Just to avoid some confusion: I'm not one of those two. No need to call me for this.

Early Telenet customers (like me) may have a Telenet Internet Mono subscription. A while ago, Telenet decided to change their subscription types and didn't allow new subscriptions under the Telenet Internet Mono product. Instead, customers would have to choose Telenet Internet ExpressNet for an almost similar experience. Almost... With a few exceptions, such as 10 Mbps downstream (instead of 4 Mbps) and 256 Kbps upstream (instead of 192 Kbps), 2 IP addresses (instead of 1) and 4 mailboxes (instead of 2). The price of both products is equal.

The good news is that Telenet Internet Mono customers can modify their subscription at no charge. Oh, and if you're using an old cable modem (they'll show you the old and new modem types) that cannot deal with these "high speeds", Telenet will replace your modem... also for free.

Here's a screen shot of the Dutch web page where you can change your subscription:

I'm pretty sure Telenet had some good reasons not to change the Internet Mono product automatically into the Internet ExpressNet product for their customers. But that means that you'll have to do the switch yourself.

Credits for this tip go to Michel Vuijlsteke (link in Dutch) who published this info a few weeks ago.

Tags: Telenet

The Belgian Visual Studio User Group has just announced a redelivery of their Visual Studio Team System event of 1 July. The event will take place on Friday 8 September 2006 in Zaventem and the speaker will be Steven Wilssens, one of the few Team System MVP's worldwide (here's the entire list of VIsual Developer - Team System MVP's).

From the VISUG website:

This community event provides VISUG members with deep dive information on Visual Studio Team System 2005. During this event we will demonstrate the capabilities Visual Studio Team System 2005 in a way only user group can: not in theory but by live examples.

For other user group events in Belgium, please check my post of 2 weeks ago.

Tags: VISUG

Kris Hoet just notified me that the Windows Live Writer beta has gone public. I've been dogfooding a few internal versions for a few weeks already and must say that I'm still amazed by some of Windows Live Writer's functionalities. And yes, some of the past blog posts on my blog were posted with Windows Live Writer (not all, since I only had Writer installed on my notebook and not my home PC).

From the website:

Virtual Lab Express is the fastest and easiest way to test drive Microsoft products and the Virtual Lab environment. These are 20-minute hands-on overviews of some of your favorite Microsoft products and developer tools. Try them out online now - no need to download full trial versions or dedicate test machines.

Express: What’s New in ASP.NET 2.0

In this lab you will learn to:

• Create, prepare and utilize master pages
• Add TreeView and Menu navigation controls
• Use the new Login control

Express: What’s New in Visual Studio Team System

In this lab you will learn to:

• Create an application
• Create unit tests
• Determine and enable code coverage testing

Express: What’s New in Visual Studio 2005

In this lab you will learn to:

• Utilize improvements to the IDE
• Utilize the refactoring capabilities in C#
• Utilize new debugging features

Express: What’s New in BizTalk 2006

In this lab you will learn to:

• Quick Setup Review
• Import a BizTalk 2006 Application
• Examine Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
• Deploy a Package as an msi file

Express: What’s New in SQL Server 2005

In this lab you will learn to:

• Use the SQL Server Management Studio
• Use the Try/Catch blocks in SQL
• PIVOT and UNPIVOT data

I'm currently on holidays, but it's nice to see that the rest of the MSDN Belux team is still active. We've just announced our next MSDN Event. On Monday September 25, we'll give you a full day event of .NET Framework 3.0 development in Kinepolis, Brussels. A more detailed agenda will be published on the site by the end of the month.

PS. Wim, the guy that works on the MSDN Belux website, assembled this graphic using Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer. He's using this tool for some time already and seems to be happy about it...

Update: the agenda is now also published. For the first time on such an event in Belgium, you can choose the sessions that you find the most interesting ones. And if that isn't enough, the event will be hosted by two Microsoft Regional Directors: Peter Himschoot (RD for Dutch speaking part of Belgium) and Ingo Rammer (RD for Austria). Both have a solid reputation when it comes to speaking engagements, technical skills and .NET Framework 3.0 knowledge.

Tags: Microsoft, WinFX, .NET, development, WIndows Vista