Thanks to all who have registered for REMIX, we're really pleased to see the interest in these great events. If you've missed out on tickets for the Sydney event, why not make a weekend of it and catch REMIX in Melbourne!
Below is a little "charade" myself and Mike Kordahi did with all the REMIX details (courtesy of Partner-TV!).
See you there hopefully! Fin
I'm a fan of Mark Pesce having seen him in a few episodes of ABC's
"The New Inventors" so, I am thrilled (nay humbled!) to announce that he has accepted our invitation to speak at
REMIX in Sydney and he even agreed to fly down to Melbourne too! (maybe he's a secret shopaholic like myself ;-)). Mark said his mission is "to further the knowlege of the tech savvy" so, knowing the REMIX audience, we think it's a perfect fit!
Thanks for your patience. The REMIX08 site is now live so, check out the sessions, subscribe to the REMIX blog or Register! It's $199 (inc. GST) for a full day of learning and you'll get a full copy of Expression Studio 2 compliments of us (retails for $1,040 inc. GST)!
I should have known better than to put a date to the REMIX08 site going live - mind you, I didn't really think anybody read my blog which is probably why I felt confident publishing the date but, I've had a few emails today asking me when the site will be live which, apart from the sadness I feel at missing the date (sorry :-(), pleases me as it shows you guys care and are excited about REMIX08!! So, sorry for the delay - I'll make up for it with some nice food and giveaways on the day so, hang in there - get some sleep because it'll be all so very exciting after you've seen the content and registered to attend! 41 Sleeps to go for REMIX 08 Sydney and 43 sleeps to go till we're back in Melbourne for REMIX 08 Melbourne! Woohoo!
We managed to twist the arms of Angus Logan and Arturo Toledo to join us for ReMIX Australia in both Sydney and Melbourne - ok, so it didn't take much to convince Angus, who left his role as Portals Technical Specialist in Microsoft Australia last year to join the team in Redmond as a Senior Product Manager for the Windows Live Platform. Arturo was equally keen to see if he can repeat his popularity at MIX in Vegas at ReMIX Australia (his session was reportedly the most popular in the Designer track..!). I think he's also keen to take in a few Ozzie sites and experiences so, feel free to make some suggestions on his blog!
So, what are they going to talk about at ReMIX Australia? Angus will talk about the Windows Live Platform and how to grow your audience through deeper engagement. He will show you how to get started and be successful in building rich services using compelling tools and easy to understand terms.
Arturo who is Designer Readiness Product Manager in Redmond will address the top questions Designers have when learning Silverlight and WPF. It's going to be a fun session which shows you how to get the best out of Expression Design and Blend to create XAML based experiences. Whether you are a Visual Studio Developer or a Flash Designer, you are bound to get a lot out of what Arturo has to share!
ShaneMo and Michael Kordahi will have the details of these and other sessions on the ReMIX Australia site when it goes live on 7th April and will be available to answer any questions you have about the session content and speakers from that date on.
So, I hope you have marked ReMIX Sydney (20 May) or Melbourne (22 May) in your calendars and organised a day away from the office - the registration site is still on track to go live on April 7th so, hang in there until then. Fin :-)
As always, feel free to drop me an email at finulac@microsoft.com if you have any questions
For those of you who are extra eager to get down and dirrrty with Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1, you'll find plenty of brand new hands-on labs here to keep you busy (and improve your skills!!). You'll need to install VS08 Tools as well as download the Silverlight 2 Beta. Happy Easter - finally a legitimate excuse to overdose on chocolate and wear my bunny ears!!! Fin
MIX Las Vegas brought us many exciting announcements including the unveiling of Silverlight 2 and Expression 2 Betas. Back here in Australia, we decided to bring you the great MIX experience in a one day event in Sydney and Melbourne on 20th and 22nd of May respectively, it's our second ReMIX down under. We haven't locked in our venues yet but, if you want to join the coversation around all that is The Next Web now, save the dates and give your boss a "heads up" that you'll need to plan for a day out of the office to learn from your peers and some of the most innovative local software companies in Australia! For just $199 (inc GST) you will get a full day of content and know-how that you can start applying right away - and you'll even get to take away a full copy of Expression Studio worth over $1,000. Watch this space for more news and, drop me a mail at finulac@microsoft.com if you need more info. Registration site will go live around April 7th.
2 days to go...
The ADNUG (Adelaide .NET User Group) is pleased to announce that Steve Riley is making a special guest appearance at the user group meeting this month. Steve is in Australia for the Heroes Happen 2008 launch and presenting the Locknote for the Adelaide event.
Where: Innovation Centre, Level 2, Westpac House, King William Street, Adelaide
When: Wednesday 12th March
5.45pm – 6.30pm
Agenda:
5.45 pm Finger food and Drinks. Have some nibbles and refreshments before we start
Have something to eat before the meeting.
6.15 pm questions and answers. Bring along your .Net problems for discussion from members.
6.25 pm Stephen Riley –Microsoft Senior Security Strategist - Redmond
Steve.Riley@microsoft.com
Steve Riley is a Senior Security Strategist in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group in Redmond, Washington, USA. Steve specializes in network and host security, communication protocols, network design, and information security policies and process. His customers include various ISPs and ASPs around the United States, as well as traditional enterprise IT customers, for whom he has conducted security assessments and risk analyses, deployed technologies for prevention and detection, and designed highly-available network architectures. Steve is a frequent and popular speaker at conferences worldwide, often appearing Asia one week and Europe the next. When not evangelizing the benefits of Microsoft security technology, he spends time with customers to better understand the security pain they face and show how some of that pain can be eliminated. Having been born with an Ethernet cable attached to his belly button, Steve grew up in networking and telecommunications; the simple telephone still provides endless hours of exploratory joy. Besides lurking in the Internet's dark alleys and secret passages, he enjoys mountain biking, clubbing and the occasional rave, freely sharing his opinions about the intersection of technology and culture, and hanging with his family and friends in the centre of the universe otherwise known as Seattle, Washington.
7.45 pm Meeting close
Please register if you are attending, so we can organize catering accordingly via the following link:
http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=event&area=9005&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10100337462872
If arriving after 6:30pm -- ring Peter Griffith 0408 832891 or 0403 432393 and we will come down to the After Hours exit in Currie St and let you in, however entry not possible after 7:15pm.
Reading up on the Delicate Genius’ blog, I watched a great keynote session from Guy Kawasaki + Steve Ballmer at MIX Las Vegas. Guy interviews Steve on the hard questions about Yahoo, Google, Apple, Facebook, Vista and of course, Silverlight 2.0. Very entertaining stuff :)
For more updates on what happened at MIX over the last few days – check out http://www.visitmix.com
Hot of the press news from MIX during Chris Pendleton’s Virtual Earth session today.
Now available Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper
Creating Microsoft Virtual Earth mashups and applications just got a whole lot easier thanks to Marc Schweigert (http://blogs.msdn.com/devkeydet). Marc organized a group of 11 developers in the Code Plex community who in just 4 days produced a JavaScript library that generates Intellisense for the Microsoft Virtual Earth 6.0 AJAX control. This new library is being made available through the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) out on CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting website and comes complete with a sample project to host it so you can give it a test drive yourself. Also be sure to stay tuned to the project site itself for updates to this project.
And definitely go download this yourselves and check it out. Very cool J
Real World WCF with David Shields
Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, March 6th to hear David Shields present on WCF. In this session, David will talk about a real life implementation of WCF and WS-Eventing. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is designed to offer a manageable approach to distributed computing, broad interoperability, and direct support for service orientation. More details here: Real World WCF with David Shields.
TOPIC: A real life of implementation WCF with David Shields
DATE: 6th March, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Level 2, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All are welcome.
I always feel pretty excited as we are about to hit the road with a launch"roadshow" (This has been my 4th major launch at Microsoft, including being the Visual Studio 05 "Ready Launch" lead a couple of years back.). Believe it or not, a lot of late nights, some squabbles and a few tears (no blood) are shed on the floors of Microsoft on the run-up to an event like this but, like childbirth the pain is soon forgotten (well, so I've been told).
The Heroes Launch kick off in Sydney was no exception. Whether you liked it or not, the heroes theme carried through from the website right to the event itself with various heroe movie songs playing in the background as a sold out crowd picked up their badges, complimentary copy of Windows Server, T-shirts and so on. (Honestly, by the end of the day "Eye of the Tiger" was deleted from my MP3 without delay, even if it has served as motivation to run the 5k's around the harbour on the occasional morning...)
That aside, the Keynote auditorium was full of expectation (or was that the instant coffee??) as the audience were introduced to Bob Kelly, visiting Corporate VP by our own MD, Tracey Fellows. With promises to Developers of Increased Productivity (getting out of the office earlier?), Better Web Development (more pay??), improved Security features (keeping your job???), developers dreamed of spending more time creating and less time, well, fixing stuff :-)
Following Bob, some of our very brave customers filed onto the stage to share their experiences having been the first in the country to develop and deploy with the new 2008 solutions on offer. Richard White, CEO of CargoWise, Australia's biggest logistics software company, made it all appear very simple when he said his eager (and unmistakingly skilled) Developers had deployed Visual Studio 2008 a day after it RTM-ed last November without his knowledge... lucky for them the upgrade all went off without a hitch :-)
I spent the rest of the day on the Microsoft stand looking eager to be approached with interesting observations of the sessions, requests for help, and offers of chocolate cake (which was served following a sumptious lunch ;-)) and I wasn't disappointed. The most common query was about getting a physical copy of VS08 evaluation as the download was quite large. Those who attended were given one in their delegate bags however, please email me your address at finulac@microsoft.com if you weren't there and want me to send one out to you - I've got a bunch at my desk.
The day ended with a rather amusing (I think we were delirious after the long day...) car journey through the Sydney traffic during a wet rush hour to the Sydney.NET UG where I dropped off MVP's Nick Randolph and Dan Green who were hosting a speaker from Amazon.com. I continued on my merry way to dine with my new GM for DPE APAC, Mark Glickson who, I am really pleased to say, really cares about Developers :-)
Check out the Heroes pages on Twitter and Flickr to get a sense of the day.
February 19th 9.01pm:
Microsoft launch DreamSpark – a program to give students all over the world access to Microsoft developer and designer tools at no charge. It’s available through channel 8, our student community and can be found at http://channel8.msdn.com. The idea behind this is really straight forward – provide professional tools to students and empower them to make incredible breakthroughs and get a head start on a cool career in technology.
This program is currently being rolled out to 10 countries around the world including United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium.
Students will be able to download any of the following software products via Channel 8 (channel8.msdn.com) and will have to go through a quick online third party-driven authentication process to validate their student status. Once this is done, they will be able to download the software of their choice– one title or all.
Microsoft developer tools.
· Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
· Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
· XNA Game Studio 2.0
· 12- month free membership in the XNA Creators Club
Microsoft designer tools.
Expression Studio, including:
· Expression Web
· Expression Blend
· Expression Design
· Expression Media
Microsoft platform resources.
· SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
· Windows Server, Standard Edition
DreamSpark is not available in Australia just yet. So watch this space... over the next 6 months.
Don't forget to check out Bill Gates on Channel 8.
Bill Gates talks about Free Software, Students, and Technology
Cheers
~Jen
I had one of my regular catch ups with local MVP, Nick Randolph yesterday. He brought a great community site for Visual Studio developers to my attention. It's well worth checking out if you are falling into the occasional "pot hole" or two with your favourite IDE..., particularly if you've been lucky enough to get access to VS08! It's also a great place to share your own tips and help out a fellow developer in need. Thanks to all who have contributed to this site, it's a great cause so check out the link and get out of the office a little earlier today! Fin
Hi guys,
Firstly, thanks to everyone who entered the competition. We are pleased to announce that the best entry is Derek Miller.
In his words...
“Heroes Happen Here 2008 will be looked back at as the Woodstock of technical launches in 5+years time.
I want to attend this launch as I don’t want to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and who doesn’t wish they had an original Woodstock shirt?”
Derek will receive a free ticket to Heroes Happen 2008 launch, in his closest city and a Heroes T-Shirt.
We also have 7 lucky winners of a Limited Edition Heroes T-Shirt or Visual Studio 2008 Beach towel depending on their choice.
· Daniel Brown
· Terence Mak
· Jeremy Cook
· David Crouch
· Devanand Bhowan
· Eric Lam
· Stephen Bott
We will shortly be contacting our winners via email so we can send out your prizes.
If you haven’t yet registered for the launch, visit www.heroeshappen2008.com.au and we’ll see you there!
~Jen