February, 2007

Here is my interview with Chris Dufour ( ASP.NET MVP ), the leader of the East of Toronto .NET User Group . Chris has been really busy in the last year, including organizing the 2007 Toronto Code Camp , sharing his custom DotNetNuke Code Camp Event module on Codeplex , and creating a Virtual Earth mashup on the main page of the Code Camp website (you can view it here: http://www.torontocodecamp.net...

As you may or may not know, I'm a big fan of Team System (the proof is that I wrote two books on the topic found here and here !). Adam Gallant , one of my colleagues who specializes in VSTS is organizing a series of webcasts from March right through June. In case you are wondering, Team System is an Application Lifecycle Management suite of tools including different versions of Visual Studio based...

Before I joined Microsoft, I was a developer consultant. In that context, when you get hired on to do projects you try to find the easiest and most cost effective way to solve problems. At first, I used to build everything from scratch - if the client wanted a Point of Sale (POS) application, I'd write a custom application. It was a great learning experience building something from the ground up, but...

Video: Vancouver TechFest 2007 - Peter McFarlane and Mike Jensen While at Vancouver TechFest 2007 , I was able to catch Peter McFarlane and Mike Jensen from Habañero Consulting Group to discuss their presentation; Implementing State Machine using Windows Workflow Foundation . Very cool stuff.

Video: Vancouver TechFest 2007 - Dana Epp and Charlie Russel I love the folks in the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program. They are passionate people who love what they do and love to help the community at-large. Dana Epp and Charlie Russel represent why the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program is what it is. In this interview, I got a chance to get a preview of their...

Video: Vancouver TechFest 2007 - Medhat Elmasry While at Vancouver TechFest 2007 , I got a chance to chat with Medhat Elmasry about the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) . As you'll see in the video, there's a lot of opportunties for developers to advance their skills! Medhat also helps run the .NET User Group of British Columbia - one of my favourite .NET user groups in the world...

Video: Vancouver TechFest 2007 - Jeff Pennal and Lawrence Chan Shorly after my presentation on the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) , I bumped into Jeff Pennal and Lawrence Chan of OpenRoad Communications . (They run the local Java user group here in Vancouver; VanJUG .) These guys had just delivered a presentation entitled, "Java and Microsoft interop using Web Services" and I wanted to see how...

Video: Vancouver TechFest 2007 - Rob Chartier Vancouver TechFest 2007 is underway! Earlier this morning, I took a cab over to British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) and was able to catch part of the registration on my video camera. I was also able to interview Rob Chartier , one of the event's organizers. If you're in the Vancouver area and want to check out some amazing technology...

MP3: Rob Chartier on Vancouver TechFest 2007 Vancouver TechFest 2007 is this Saturday! If you're a developer, database administrator, or IT professional then make your to British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) (Burnaby Campus) this Saturday. Yesterday, I got a chance to chat with Rob Chartier ( Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) ) to hear more about this exciting event. Check...

The Team Foundation Server product team has been hard at work on the version 1.2 release of the Team Foundation Power Tools (if you recall, it used to be called the Power Toys). There is a Canadian connection in this release - Joel Semeniuk , one of our valued Team System MVPs and a Regional Director based in Winnipeg created the original version of the Process Template Editor - a tool that greatly...

Hands down, I believe one of the best ways of keeping up to date with technology and keeping connected with your peers is through community. In Toronto, we have a very vibrant community of talented individuals and developer "rock stars". I'm often asked by local companies where is the best place to find candidates for programming and consulting jobs - my answer is always the same: user group meetings...

Guy Barrette advised that the Montreal .NET User Group (GUVSM) is running a day long Team Foundation Server training session in French on Saturday, March 24th at the Marriott Château Champlain in Montreal. Guy (Regional Director / ASP.NET MVP) and Etienne Tremblay (Team System MVP) will be presenting - over 35 people have signed up so far (with a maximum capacity of 70). This is essentially a non-for...

.NET has strong support for collections. Even the built-in Array type implements ICollection. The ICollection interface derives from the IEnumerable interface to allow easy enumeration of all elements in a collection. In C#, the foreach statement uses the GetEnumerator member of IEnumerable (a class need not implement IEnumerable, it just needs a public GetEnumerator method that returns an IEnumerator...

News & Highlights Announcing the release of NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 Volume 1 - Beta 1 Capturing screenshots from Xbox XNA games - Shawn Hargreaves CSS Reference Chart for SharePoint 2007 (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services v3) - Via Steve Caravajal Create a Master Page in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 - The New Paperclip Gardens...

Here is a video of Mike, a 3D modeling artist attending the Ottawa Game Camp. In this video, Mike gives his views on some of the 3D frameworks and technologies out there and how XNA measures up. Video: Game Camp Ottawa 2007 - Mike The 3D Artist If you have designed an XNA game, or you are in the process of designing a game on XNA, let us know! We would love to do a podcast or videocast and feature...

My IT Pro counterpart Rod Buike recently posted a video of the Microsoft Digital Ice House . In case you weren't able to visit it, or you want to experience it again, I've added it here: Video: Microsoft Canada’s Digital Ice House Enjoy!