I'm responsible for the Developer Tools track at TechEd Australia and New Zealand. I've been beavering away whittling down the 116 US TechEd Sessions and combining them with the local submissions we got and here's the current state of play (in no particular order). Note that 2 of the 18 sessions will be cabana sessions (in the exhibition area) and for NZ, we have to cull the list further (down to 12)
We're also running one of the Dynamics CRM sessions.
What do you think?
Yesterday morning I presented at the Sydney sessions of the Software as a Service (SaaS) seminar series (the sessions also ran in New York, San Jose, Boston, Munich, Düsseldorf and Paris). My session about some of the architectural concepts associated with SaaS (slides here (691 kb)) and was derived from a white paper entitled Architecture Strategies for Catching the Long Tail.
One of the authors of the white paper, Gianpaolo Carraro, a Microsoft Application Architect working in this space, chatted with Diego Dagum about SaaS recently. The transcript of that chat is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/SaaSChat_MSDN.asp?_r=1
There are a couple of links to blogs in that chat that are worth calling out: Gianpaolo's blog and in particular his note on the SaaS Simple Maturity Model, and the other author of the White Paper, Fred Chong's blog. Subscribed.
BTW, I'll also be presenting this session next Wednesday at the South Coast Chapter of the ACS.
MVP Rick Strahl has posted about the first CTP of Expression Web Designer. Rick's a long-time MVP and a pretty demanding tools user (as well as the author of some commercial and some free tools). Rick raves about the new support for styles, the performance (even at this early stage in the cycle) and it's ability to deliver an accurate rendition of the page in the WYSIWYG editor. He also talks about some stability issues he's come across. All in all I think he's pretty impressed.
Check it out.
Via Frank, I downloaded and played with the public beta of Cavemen - a Lemmings clone for PocketPC using the .NET Compact Framework. The team writing it are a couple of guys up on the Gold Coast.
Have a read about the game and download it. Help our local software industry!!!!
Tech•Ed 2006 is coming to Sydney at the end of August and I've been tasked with making it a must-attend event for developers. Apart from world-class technical sessions, what would make you fork out the $1600 (or fight the battle with management for the budget) to come to Tech•Ed as a developer?
My current remit is "making the Dev’s feel loved and excited about being a Microsoft Developer". I'm open to suggestions. Leave them as comments here or use the contact me link.
Of course, if you've already made up your mind to come, you can register now!
Update -You'll need the coupon code, which is VistaTDANZ
As part of the Vista Readiness campaign, We're offering 3 days of developer training in Sydney, Melbourne or Auckland.
The cost is AUD200 (or NZD230 for Auckland). The information page is here. Although it says you have to be an MS partner to attend, Shuk assures me that we've got extra spaces available for non-partners.
This three day hands-on lab will take you through the process of building a Windows Vista application . The course will focus on the new features introduced in this product. The course is geared towards developers utilising Windows Vista. It is a combination of presentations and hands on labs that focus on growing services opportunities for ISV partners, and a series of new hands-on technical exercises that highlight some of the compelling new design enhancements in Windows Vista.
Adam Cogan is touring the country talking about integrating VSTS (and TFS) with your current practices. He started at the new Newcastle Coders Group last Wednesday and is visiting 10 User Groups in a month!
Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) is the new technology from Microsoft that integrates the whole development cycle from initial design, testing and development as well as bug tracking and project management tools. In this session you will be taken through everything you need to know to optimise your software development cycle using VSTS:
We will also compare VSTS with its alternatives.
See also http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/events/conference.aspx