April, 2008

In less than a month, Energize IT will be rolling into Toronto on Saturday May 24, 2008! It's going to be an amazing event bringing together Developers, Students, Designers, IT Pros, and IT Managers (and anyone excited about IT for that matter) under one roof! The event will take place at the Toronto Congress Centre . The theme this year is Anything is Possible : we'll be celebrating everything that...

DevTeach Toronto is fast approaching, and features a number of world class speakers including Micorosft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Regional Directors: There are a number of reasons why you should attend the event. Here's a few to start: Keynote by Scott Hanselman, Microsoft Scott Hanselman is one of the most prolific, renowned and respected blogger ( http://www.hanselman.com ) and podcaster...

Having trouble manipulating Office documents or creating them on the fly? The Open XML Application Programming Interface (API) allows you to effectively work with Open XML packages. Using the API, you can generate and manipulate Word 2007 documents, Excel 2007 spreadsheets, and PowerPoint 2007 presentations using a few lines of code. Plus since it uses managed code, so it's safe for many server-side...

Post-Event resources: The videos and slides for the launch tour are now available at: http://www.microsoft.com/canada/heroeshappenhere2/register/default.mspx Here are some resources relating to the Developer Technical Readiness events. Fourth Coffee Store Locator Demo : Similar to the one shown at the event (but using MapPoint instead of Virtual Earth) http://demo.mappoint.net/fourthcoffee/MainForm...

During the Heroes Happen Here events, I received a fair amount of questions regarding the combine use of VS 2005 and VS 2008 in development teams. Since VS 2008 allow the targeting of 2.0 framework, what happens if you open and save the solution with 2008 to the 2005 users. I found this blog post from DJ Park, program manager on the VS team, that does a great job at explaining the differences and how...

This has been a busy week for many of us at Microsoft Canada. We are holding the Canadian Strategic Architecture Forum (CSAF) in Vancouver from Wednesday, April 9 through Friday April 11. This is a forum where we discuss the various disciplines of architecture and where the profession of architecture is going. One of the new things this forum is doing this year is democratizing the information presented...

Over the next several months Technical communities around the world are hosting Community Launch events focusing on technical dives of Microsoft Windows Server 2008™, Visual Studio 2008™, and SQL Server 2008™. Community leaders have been trained directly from Microsoft and empowered to host technical launch events locally. By attending a Community Launch event in your area, you’ll be one of the first...

Qixing on the Canadian User Experience Connection blog created a great post on the various resources available to developers looking to learn Silverlight 2.0. I highly recommend it to anyone that is looking to learn more about Silverlight 2 as the technology continues to draw more and more attention.

Wes MacDonald has fourteen years of EDP experience as a Software Architect, Systems Analyst, Designer, Developer, DBA and LAN administrator. As a Senior Developer/Architect Wes has been responsible for all aspects of software development including installations, configurations of database and application server software required during development. Wes has been involved with Visual Studio Team Foundation...