December, 2009

The Book I do believe I’ll be ordering an ebook edition of Apress’ Windows Azure Platform . Here’s Apress’ description of the book: Master Microsoft’s brand-new cloud-computing technology with Windows Azure Platform by Tejaswi Redkar . You’ll learn how to utilize Azure’s four core components— Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services—both separately and together to build flawless...

We folks in Microsoft Canada’s DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) team really, really, really love our jobs. We love technology, we love people, and we love combining the two. That’s why it’s sometimes hard for us to tear ourselves away from our computers… However, as much as we’re into our work, we’re taking some time to spend with our families and friends over the holidays (and perhaps fire...

How’d I miss this video? At TechDays Winnipeg, Dylan Smith of ANVIL Digital (and speaker in the “Fundamentals” track), showed me this it’s-funny-because-it’s-true video that’s been around since May that looks at the vexing expectations that clients have of vendors in IT and the creative industries: This article also appears in Global Nerdy .

It could be turning into a meme! Hot on the heels of my How Fanboys See Operating Systems post in my personal tech blog, Global Nerdy , which got a good deal of attention on Reddit and other link-sharing sites came Ruby Inside’s How Programming Language Fanboys See Each Other’s Languages , and now there’s How Microsoft Language Fanboys See Each Other’s Languages … This article also appears in Global...

As the decade draws to a close, you’re likely to see more and more articles and charts with a “decade in review” theme. Since technology is both my passion and the way I pay the rent, as well as an amorphous, unpredictable beast, I make note of those that look at changes in the field. One that caught my eye is this chart from the Wall Street Journal comparing the top companies in 1999 against the top...

I wanted to post this earlier, but a number of things, shopping included, conspired to keep me from blogging until just now. If you’re reading this and it’s still December 21st,   Manning Publications , publishers of fine books such as C# in Depth , Real-World Functional Programming , ASP.NET MVC in Action and The Art of Unit Testing and even a whole book on Dependency Injection , is having a...

It’s hard to believe, but the seven-city cross-Canada tour known as TechDays 2009 is over. We had the last one – TechDays Winnipeg – on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. Here are some photos I shot during the event. The Day Before TechDays Winnipeg Of all the TechDays venues, I would have to hand the “swankiest speaker prep room” award to the Winnipeg Convention Centre, with its wood panelling, private...

All work and no play makes Joey a dull developer, which is why even though we make sure that TechDays is chock-full of content that developers and IT pros can use in their day-to-day work and stay on top of their tech, we also like to have a little fun. For example, in the video above, I interview local developer and well-coiffed gentleman D’Arcy Lussier about the possibility that he might don the...

Microsoft Ottawa’s Kitchen. It has a decent view. Every Microsoft office has a “touchdown area”, a place filled with cubicles where visiting or mobile workers can work. I avoid these like the plague. Thanks to all the work I’ve done in cafes or coworking spaces, I prefer to set up in Microsoft’s “kitchen” spaces. The wifi is just as accessible there, but the lighting is natural, the tables are larger...

At long last, we come to the last city in TechDays’ seven-city conference tour: Winnipeg! The combination of venue availability and perhaps a little masochism puts me and my coworkers in a city notorious for brutal winters in mid-December. Take a look at the weather forecast for the days I will be there: (If you’re American, the high for Monday translates to –9 degrees F; the low is –26 degrees F....

The TechDays conferences that we’ve been holding across Canada span two days and have no evening events. This means that the venues are “lying fallow”, with plenty of A/V, presentation and demo equipment doing nothing on the evening of the first day. That seemed like a waste. “Why not,” we thought, “open up our venues to community events on the evenings of Day 1?” We were able to do this in four out...

Annoyances Beyond Our Control No matter how much planning you put into a conference, there will always be things that you just have to roll with. For starters, when you’ve got an event in December in Canada, there’s always a chance that the first major snowstorm of the year will happen on the very same day. Here’s what the parking lot of the Hampton Inn Conference Centre looked like at 7:00 a.m. on...

Ottawa was the sixth of the seven cities in the TechDays cross-Canada tour. We’ve settled into a pretty good groove and the setup process for the conference has become second nature; I’m sure that we can all do it in our sleep now. The Hampton Inn Conference Centre is a pretty nice venue, with lots of balconies for overhead shots like this one: Here’s one of the larger rooms, which met with Christian...

When we got to Napanee , it was time to fuel up both the car and ourselves, and we did both at the Flying J Truck Stop. We thought that it would be a nice change from the usual fast food joints: a real-life honest-to-goodness place that catered to truckers, without whom our stores, from the most indie retailer in Kensington Market to the biggest of the “big boxes”, would go unstocked. Here’s a photo...

Once again, Damir and I are road-tripping to a TechDays conference. This week, the destination city is our nation’s capital, Ottawa. With the wet snow and being boxed in by trucks (see the photo below), the going’s a little slow: Here’s a trucker who’s a big fan of just-in-time compilers . Or is it just-in-time manufacturing ? [ This article also appears in Global Nerdy . ]

If you’re a techie in the Ottawa area and want to meet fellow techies and see what projects they’re working on and what tech they’re using, you’ll want to check out Demo Night in Canada , which takes place this Wednesday night at 7:00 at the Hampton Inn Conference Centre (200 Coventry Road). It’ll be an evening of demos and presentations by Ottawa-area developers, organized by Ottawa IT Community and...

Here’s a little hint: if you ever get an invitation to a Microsoft party from High Road Communications – they’re Microsoft Canada’s PR firm – accept it. They’re always in great places, have great tapas and drinks and they always invite interesting people. You’re guaranteed to have fun, and that guarantee is doubled if I’m there. The W’s “Extreme Wow” Suite On Thursday, right after the end of Day 2...

Last week, I was in Montreal, this week I’m in Ottawa. Once again, I’ll be road-tripping with my coworker, Damir Bersinic , IT Pro Evangelist and supreme field commander for the TechDays Canada cross-country conference . Watch this space for reports from both Ottawa and the road! If you’re on the Toronto-Ottawa route and would like to join us for a coffee, let us know, either via email or in the comments...

Day 2 of Techdays Montreal began with the A/V techs (and yes, me) ooh-ing and ahh-ing at presenter Maxime Rouiller’s Alienware laptop, He showed us the utility for controlling its backlighting colours: Once set up, the Building for the Microsoft-Based Platorm track’s acting host Laurent Duveau introduced Maxime, who then presented Introducing ASP.NET MVC . Maxime will present the same session in Ottawa...

On Wednesday, a mere hour or so after the end of Day 1 of TechDays Montreal, came Career Demo Camp Montreal , a community event that combined presentations on job-hunting and career-building with demos of projects by Montreal-area developers. What’s With All These “Demo” and “Camp” Events and Techdays? For this year’s edition of TechDays, we decided to try something new. TechDays is a two-day cross...

With the setup complete, TechDays Montreal was ready to begin, which it did on Wednesday. Like TechDays Halifax, Techdays Montreal sold out weeks before its date. Here’s what the registration line looked like at 7:45 a.m.: We members of the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) team arrived at 7:00 a.m., but the TelAV A/V guys (I keep saying that their motto should be “To Serve and Project”) had...

Every roadside stop on the 401 westbound east of Kingston is closed for renovations, so we’ve just been driving straight through without stopping. We’re just 30 kilometres east of Kingston, where we’d planned to fill up, but the dashboard display says we’re 11 kilometres away from an empty tank at the current rate of consumption. Shall we chance it? [ This article also appears in Global Nerdy . ]

With TechDays Montreal wrapped up – and yes, I’ll post photos from the actual conference soon – it’s time for me and Damir to pack up our stuff, board the Ford Flex and head on home. As I write this, we’re on Highway 401, just about 100 kilometres east of Kingston. Damir’s at the wheel, we’ve got Raw Dog Comedy on the satellite radio and I’m working away on my laptop (as you can see from the photo...

TechDays is no small undertaking: it’s a seven-city two-day conference tour with over 40 sessions featuring content from the TechEd North America 2009 conference and delivered by local and “imported” speakers (we try to get local speakers) to hundreds of developers and IT pros in each city. Montreal was the fifth stop on the tour, and I thought I’d show you some behind-the-scenes stuff that took place...

As a Developer Evangelist, it’s my job to make sure that programmers are inspired to build software. In the pursuit of that goal, I’ve the picture below as the last slide in my presentations at TechDays and Career Demo Camp . I’ve had a number of requests for the image, so I’m sharing it below: Click the image to see it at full size. The poster is Matt Jones’ reworking of this poster issued by the...