Twitter: @katriendg
The next Microsoft Webcafe is taking place at the M-Museum in Leuven, on November 23rd. Join us for another informal event with partner, Microsoft and Web community presentations.
Webcafes are informal, after the hours tech meetups for industry updates, cases, networking and exploring something different. We invite a few partner cases to present short cases or projects, sharing learning’s with attendees. The events are free, open to everyone with an open mind, and there is always lots of networking. Check out the pics from past events on our Facebook page to get an idea.
Topics on the agenda:
What’s in a café? This is Belgium after all, a café without beer does not exist… So chances are you’ll get to do some tasting in between the more serious stuff.
Date: Wednesday November 23rd 2011 Timing: 18:00 to 22:00 Registration: MS Webcafe page Location: M-Museum Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 28 3000 Leuven
On Thursday November 3rd you can attend the Web & Phone UX Tour event in Belgium (at Ter Elst in Edegem). It’s a full day full day encounter of web, phone, user experience and development content. Whether you come from the design and user experience angle or a more technical one, two tracks are there for you to choose. You can register for one of them and switch tracks as desired during the day itself.
I just heard we have a few seats left, so maybe you need a few reasons why not to miss it and register. First come-first serve. Here’s my top ten why you should not miss the event:
Register and see you there!
My colleague David Merzel, has been nominated as the Marketer of the Year 2011. This is a yearly award by Trends/Tendances. David and his team were responsible for the launch of Xbox Kinect controller in Belgium last year and developed a special marketing approach. I was listening to David yesterday as he explained the reasoning behind his marketing strategy, the Close Contact Marketing. He has a black belt in karate and the marketing approach is based on that sport, with six rules of close contact, going from yellow to black belt.
What’s also interesting is that this is the first time a software company is nominated for this award. It’s another sign of what many call the Consumerization of IT.
While I do hope you vote for him , it makes me reflect on how technology, more specifically Natural User Interfaces, is bringing the magic of technology into our everyday lives. That’s the job of technology companies in a sense: removing barriers to adopting technology. Also reminded me of a Twitter comment by @netlash I saw a few days ago:
“We only call it technology when we were born before it was invented.”
The term Magic in conjunction with Kinect is not new: Magical Team award in Silicon Valley was received by the team earlier this year. So yes, Kinect is a good example of how technology which behind the scenes is pretty complex, is now entering our everyday lives in a very user friendly way. Have you Kinected?
Recommended resources:
The Visual Studio team has just released the October Edition of the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. Now is a great time to start learning more.
The VS Developer Preview was released during BUILD conference last September. This training kit provides a set of hands-on labs to Visual Studio 11 and the .NET Framework 4.5, ASP.NET 4.5 (WebForms and general), ALM with Visual Studio 11 and Team Foundation Server 11 as well as Metro style apps.
Getting started
Learning more
Apart from the training kit itself there are a set of great sessions recordings from the BUILD conference. A few noteworthy picks:
Future directions for C# and Visual Basic
What's new in Visual Studio 11
What's new in Visual Studio 11 for Application Lifecycle Management
Advanced IntelliTrace in production with Visual Studio 11
TechDays Belgium returns on 14-15-16 February 2012! Since we’re celebrating our 10th anniversary it will be a special edition: we’re moving to a brand new location (to be disclosed soon) and will offer you new ways to experience the conference. For those who aren’t familiar with TechDays: it is the biggest IT event in Belgium, gathering thousands of professionals each year during 3 days. Fascinating technical sessions on both current and new technologies from Microsoft are complemented with many networking opportunities with your peers. And we welcome top notch speakers and local IT community leaders. Curious? Nostalgic? At www.techdays.be you can relive the atmosphere of TechDays 2011. Registrations will be open soon, so for now: save the date and don’t miss out!
You can also RSVP already on Facebook or LinkedIn and let your network know you will be attending. If you’re on Twitter, you can join the conversation via #techdaysbe.
Subscribe to our newsletters for developers and IT pros and stay up-to-date about TechDays 2012 (registration, speakers, session content, agenda, ...).
Register now for the following MSDN Webcasts scheduled in October and November 2011 for Belgium, delivered by the local MVPs and community experts. All sessions are delivered online, great opportunity to learn new technology while not having to leave the office. From now on, plan your biweekly Tuesday afternoon online training by registering today:
11 OCT 2011
25 OCT 2011
Abstract In this session you will learn how MyGet leverages the Windows Azure Access Control Service to outsource its authentication and authorization work, resulting in a flexible yet elegant solution to accommodate one of its basic needs: allowing users to login and consult their data. MyGet consists of (at least) three applications and supports logging in via Windows Live ID, Google, Facebook, OpenID and Active Directory. Not to mention additional applications will be plugged in to this architecture in the future… That basic need gets complicated quickly! Are you willing to know how we keep control of this authentication spaghetti? Do you want to know about the endless possibilities of the Access Control Service? Want to see the ACS service is basically a service bus for authentication and authorization needs? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, this session is tailor made for you.
Speaker Maarten Balliauw
08 NOV 2011
Abstract Get to know Orchard, a nice free ASP.NET MVC based CMS from the Microsoft stables unleashed to the community. It's Windows Azure ready out of the box, theme-able and has a gallery with add-ons you can also construct yourself, this puppy is growing up fast.
Speaker Kris Van der Mast
22 NOV 2011
Abstract As developers work on the code, the application has to remain under constant scrutiny to ensure it still does what it is supposed to do. That is where testing comes into play. Developers run their unit tests to make sure their code still functions as it is intended, while the QA group tests the application to verify the accuracy, reliability and performance of the application. But, it is hard to know which tests are actually needed to be re-verified as a result of a code change, so it is common to test the entire area where the code change occurred. Until now. Test Impact Analysis helps the developer run only the impacted automated tests and enables QA to skip the tests that were not impacted. IntelliTrace has also become a key feature for development teams in troubleshooting automated/manual test failures. Team Build will make sure that you can enable these powerful features in your automated build process.
Speaker Pieter Gheysens
The Microsoft Community in Belgium is also organizing a number of interesting events in the next few months: feel free to have a look at our events page (Dutch | French) to see which events the user groups and other influencers have planned.
Don’t miss our next event: Web & Phone UX Developer Tour Belgium, taking place on November 3rd 2011 in Ter Elst (Edegem, Antwerp).
An inspiring day event addressing User Experience and Development for the Web and Phone, with sessions delivered by top international speakers paired with local experts. We’re starting off with a general session on Microsoft Design: Multiscreen experiences and the Future. After that we split into two rooms with a UX track and a Developer track.
UX Track: focus on Windows Phone Design and Responsive Web Design. Developer Track: focus on JavaScript Patterns, HTML5, CSS3 and Windows Phone Development.
You don’t want to miss Arturo Toledo and Corrina Black from the Windows Phone Design team, or Elijah Manor’s first visit to Belgium! They are joined by Christophe Peerens, Gill Cleeren and Thomas, Bram and Simon from Netlash-b-Seen. An international mix promising to give you an immersion in User Experience and Development of websites and phone apps.
User Experience Track
Developer Track
Good JavaScript Habits
How to Develop your first Mango app?
What is HTML5 and CSS3 and how can I use it today?
You can find the full agenda, speaker and session details on the event site.
This is a free event but registration is mandatory. Please register soon as we expect the event to be fully booked soon. You can choose to register for the UX or the Developer track. And yes: you are welcome to switch tracks during the day, this is just to help us better split up the rooms according to registrations.
We looking forward to spending an inspiring day with all of you!
Full agenda and registration details on the site.
WebMatrix is a free web tool from Microsoft. In one sentence: it’s an all-in-one tool you can use to download, install and tweak and publish a website based on an open source app like WordPress, Umbraco, Drupal, … OR program your own site with an easy-to-use Razor syntax and ASP.NET Web Pages. Now that’s a mouthful!
The beta version brings us a load of new, useful features to build sites even faster. I highly recommend watching the recording of the BUILD conference session: “WebMatrix: uber geek in designer clothes”. A pick out of the new features:
This is Beta, in that context there is no automated installation procedure foreseen so make sure you read the installation notes. It also means that you might have to manually uninstall previous versions. Other than that you should not be having issues with other programs. Note: if you prefer to continue using the released version 1.0, you can download it here.
Download and try it out for yourself:
Recommended article: check out how Scott Hanselman is using WebMatrix and ASP.NET Web Pages with Razor syntax to upgrade an old site: Hanselminutes.com: Rewriting a 5 year old VB.NET WebForms application as an ASP.NET Web Pages application with Razor
Uservoice
Talk to us! Let the WebMatrix team know what you think should be added to the product at https://webmatrix.uservoice.com/forums/128313-webmatrix-suggestions