The Australian and New Zealand SharePoint Conferences are JUST around the corner. These events are organised by a dedicated group of NZ and AUS Community Leaders and MVP’s - Debbie Ireland, Mark Rhodes, Nick Hadlee, Mark Orange, James Milne and Kathy Hughes.  Once again, the team are organising...

The folks over at The Code Project have launched a cool contest so you can show off your LightSwitch skills and win prizes in the process. From their release: Do you have what it takes to be a LightSwitch Star? Show us your coolest, most productive, LightSwitch business application and you could win...

While I was at TechEd last month, I sat down (twice) with Richard Banks and recorded an episode of Talking Shop Down Under about LightSwitch . Richard's been hoarding his TechEd recordings and releasing them slowly. This one came out today. Check it out .

I thought I was 33% of the way into the SwitchedOn briefings for LightSwitch and Azure , but today I found out that I'm only 25% through. New cities, Wellington and Auckland have been added to the event, and I'm looking forward to seeing my Kiwi mates and having them commiserate with me about our Rugby...

I've just finished the first of the SwitchedOn briefings (Adelaide) - we built a LightSwitch application (u:Adelaide, p:Pass@word1) and deployed it on Azure. I've uploaded the slide decks: Session 1 - LightSwitch Morning (2.2Mb) Session 2 - both Azure decks (13.5Mb) Session 3 - LightSwitch Afternoon...

The Power of LightSwitch on Windows Azure Update 10/10 - Now with Adelaide Details Introducing Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch , a simple self-service tool that allows developers and business professionals to build business applications quickly and easily for the desktop and the cloud- without the...

I’ve been raving about our great Training Kits for a while now (including last week’s post on the updated LightSwitch Training Kit ). Last week we also released the March 2011 version of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit and Training Course . The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework...

Hi, my name’s Andrew and I’m an AlphaJax Addict. It’s been 15 minutes since I last played and that’s only because I’m waiting for my 15 opponents to get of their lazy backsides and have their turn. On the upside, AlphaJax has led to this comment from my anti-smartphone wife: Wow, this isn’t nearly as...

I’ve been excited by LightSwitch since I first saw it more than 18 months ago and the recent release of the Beta 2 version and the updated Training Kit has just got me more excited. The Training Kit includes the following content: LightSwitch Overview Demo: Introducing Visual Studio LightSwitch Hands...

The one and only Dave Lemphers is coming back to Australia for a week at the end of February for a whirlwind tour of the country to coincide with the launch in Australia of Windows Azure . He'll be doing public technical briefings hosted by the user groups in 5 capital cities. Date/Time ...

Craig Bailey ’s Sydney Business and Technology User Group has a great line up this week, especially given all the goodness that was revealed at the SharePoint Conference last week. SharePoint 2010 at SBTUG Where : Microsoft, North Ryde When : 6pm, this Wed 28 October What : 2+ hours of SharePoint 2010...

Got a note in may inbox over the weekend announcing some developer training happening in Darwin. I see Dave's beaten me to it , but I'll repeat here because I reckon it's worthwhile encouraging these kinds of things especially in our more … regional … locations. There are four courses being run, some...

We’ve got a few seats left for some more great free training in Sydney next week – 19-21 May, this time on VS2010 and .NET 4.0. If you're interested in attending please email Shuk Chan . Begin Length Session Title Day 1 Visual Studio Team System 2010 8:30 AM 30 Registration and Breakfast 9:00 AM 45 Visual...

Brian Madsen pinged me today, at almost the same time as my automatic notification arrived. This month the Linked .Net Users Group has two great Live Meetings as pare of their ongoing program (recordings of previous sessions are archived here ). Session 1 – register here April 8th 03:00 Sydney time ...

CodeCampOz is fast approaching - (4-5 April in Wagga Wagga). Mitch has announced the speakers and sessions , and talked about the important social aspects of CodeCamp , in addition to the obvious technical benefits. Looks like another great CodeCamp! What are you waiting for? Sign up NOW!

Update – Wow! that was quick! All the spots are gone. Sorry about that. Dave beat me to it , but anyway … Next week, 10-12 March, Chris Auld is running a three day dive into the Azure platform in the Sydney CBD. There is some great material, it’s free, and we feed you! If you’re interested in attending...

Brian Madsen ’s just pinged me to remind me about the next instalment of the Linked In .NET User Group . Following on from the last meeting , Stephen Fulcher will be talking about the ASP.Net Runtime: In this session, we will go through the key .NET application architectural scenarios and analyze (for...

I’m catching up with some blogging I’ve been meaning to do for ages and this is one of the first things I wanted to post. The team looking after getting the word out about Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 are doing a series of Video Podcasts they’ve called 10-4 (the code name for VS2010 was Dev 10, and...

I know, getting training budget is hard at the moment, but you really want to make yourself as employable as possible. Help is at hand (in fact, it’s only a mouse click away). There are, of course, a whole bunch of Virtual Labs you can do (for developers and for infrastructure people ). There’s also...

As if it wasn’t enough to organise physical User Groups in Perth, Brian Madsen has been helping to organise a .NET User Group on LinkedIn . This month the irrepressible Zain Naboulsi is presenting on Deepen your Debugging: Tips and Tricks for the Visual Studio 2008 Debugger . This session is on at an...

Update – Sorry folks. All these vouchers are gone. I’ll post again if I can get any more. First, Happy New Year to all! Community , Certification , News , Static News , Database Editorial , Smart Client Editorial , Web Development Editorial Anyone who's followed this blog for any length of time knows...

Got this note from Jordan Knight today. Looks like a great new group staring up with some smart people in Melbourne. The Silverlight Designer and Developer Network Starts Next Week! Launching next week, the SDDN, which is part of Victoria .NET,  is a new special interest group completely and absolutely...

Fin asked me to write this week’s MSDN Flash editorial, so I did. In case you missed it, here it is. By the way, if you don’t subscribe to the flash, you should :). Sign up today ! It's been a real time for me with events. First the PDC in Los Angeles with over 6,000 developers (in case you missed it...

Matt Nunn , Group Product Manager for Visual Studio Team System will present "The Road to Visual Studio 2010", a presentation (and live demo) aimed at technical decision makers. Matt will provide a first look at the next version of Microsoft’s development tool platform – Visual Studio 2010...

Developers, Developers, Developers! As part of a whirlwind visit to Sydney early next month, Steve Ballmer will be presenting Microsoft's future vision for developers in the world of software-plus-services. He'll discuss the next wave of technologies just launched at the Professional Developer Conference...