atmosphere - the developer blog of Bernard Wong

Google launches a special treat just for developers

Very cool - this looks like it's going to come in very handy for me. Maybe you too?

It seems the Google folks have just launched a new Code Search service at www.google.com/codesearch. They have indexed publicly accessible source code from all across the Internet. The new service then helps you find sample code and function definitions. Developers will be able to optionally use regular expressions to narrow down searches as well as further specifying specifying restrictions upon language, license or filename. Links are provided back to the complete package of source code and the Web page associated with where it came from.

What are you waiting for, go check it out now!

<Listening to... This Nation's Saving Grace - The Fall>

Behind the scenes of selecting session topics for the SoCal .NET Technical Summit II conference

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about selecting presenters for the upcoming SoCal .NET Technical Summit II conference and enumerated a representative sample of the kind of impeccable credentials that these premier speakers bring with them. This time around, I’d like to call out some of the sessions that you can look forward to and tell you something about the person presenting it and how the topic came about.

Let’s start with Rocky Lhotka’s sessions since it was his impressively long list of qualifications that we singled out previously. One of the omissions from the prior list is Rocky’s frequent participation at the Strategic Design Reviews of Microsoft’s Developer Division. If you haven’t heard of these previously, it is because they are strictly invitation-only, non-disclosure briefings exclusively for the absolute top tier development experts of the world.

With this highly privileged insight into Microsoft’s future directions, his own years of practical experience, and his current leadership position at the forefront of emerging technologies, Rocky’s knowledge and counsel are truly treasured commodities that are highly sought after by major corporations. I cannot reiterate how fortunate we are to have an opportunity to tap into Rocky’s observations for the mere $99 cost of admission to the conference!

So what is he going to be talking about? I’ve arranged with Rocky to put together two presentations exclusively for our conference. He’s going to kick off the architecture track with an appraisal of how far the technologies behind distributed computing have come to date and where they are heading tomorrow. Then, in the afternoon, as the keystone of the .NET 3.0 track, he’s going to provide his own personal assessment of the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). With Rocky's reputation and renown and two topics like these, the sessions are sure to be packed - better reserve a seat now...

Let’s move onto Scott Stanfield’s session. I could quote to you a long list of credentials accumulated by Scott and Vertigo Software, the company that he co-founded. I could tell you that he is one of Microsoft’s Regional Directors in Northern California, that he is an ASP.NET MVP, he has spoken at TechEd, VBITS and other conferences, his company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and a whole lot more.

The most important information about Scott that you should know but doesn’t appear on his resume or string of accomplishments is that he and Vertigo are the people that Microsoft’s .NET teams call upon to build the showcases for their technologies. As such, Scott has been the key figure behind the .NET Pet Shop reference application, the ASP.NET Starter Kits, the TaskVision smart client application featured at DevDays 2003 events around the world and more.

Initially, when I first began discussions with Scott about possible topics for him to present, he was very focused upon presenting ASP.NET 2.0? I presumed that he wanted to leverage content that he already had “in the can” when Microsoft commissioned Vertigo to create the “How Do I?” series of videos for ASP.NET 2.0 that were recently published online. This was kind of timely but hey, anyone can just go ahead and download the videos now without waiting for (or even, gasp!, bothering to attend) the conference…

Since I had already lined up three interesting, in-depth ASP.NET 2.0 presentations, I countered with “Atlas”, a future ASP.NET technology. Well, it turns out that Microsoft already happens to have Vertigo putting together sample demonstrations for “Atlas”. Suddenly, the discussion that seemed at an impasse completely turns around to the serendipitous confluence where Microsoft’s premier new technology advocate will now debut a specially created session on his personal favorite selection of new ATLAS features, exclusively for your benefit. If only everything in life could turn out like this…

OK, last one for today and this blog entry. Let’s turn the spotlight on Russ Nemhauser now. Russ is an ASP.NET MVP and has worked on Web projects for major corporations including Microsoft. He has presented previously at conferences like VSLive! and Developer Connections and at user groups, locally in SoCal and out and about as a member of INETA’s speaker bureau. He is also one of the personalities behind the DotNetJunkies online community and has had articles published in several magazines.

Though Russ and I both live in Los Angeles, it seems we usually only communicate with each other via IM rather than picking up the telephone. Naturally, this was how we collaborated on the selection of his presentation topic and we settled quickly upon the ASP.NET 2.0 providers in general. Then we just tossed around some ideas to be covered tactically to flesh out the session topic some more and we were done.

As you can see, the sessions rarely ever come about the same way. Each has their own behind-the-scenes story and there is always more to the story than what you can read in the session descriptions and speaker biographies. I hope you’ve found this look behind-the-scenes of the conference interesting and perhaps will be motivated to come see the resulting sessions. I know I’m looking forward to them.

<listening to… Anywhere – New Musik>

Behind the scenes of selecting speakers for the SoCal .NET Technical Summit II conference

In my last blog entry announcing the upcoming SoCal .NET Technical Summit II, I wrote that it pained me greatly to just list the names of some (not even all) of the brilliant presenters that are lined up for this star studded developer conference on Saturday, September 23^rd. Why all the drama and self-infliction of wounds, you may ask?

First, and most obviously, each of these speakers has accumulated such a long list of remarkable accomplishments and qualifications that it feels exceedingly miserly of me to just list their names out for brevity. I manage to only marginally re-dress this omission of speaker qualifications in my description of the conference in the Events section of my personal Web site, subliminal effect. Of course, the conference Web site also publishes the speakers’ personal biographies but these are brief and also fall short too.

To give each of this august selection of speakers their proper due would require covering a set of credentials resembling this enumeration (to pick on just one of them, Rockford Lhotka, as an example):

• Author of Expert VB 2005 Business Objects, Expert C# 2005 Business Objects, Expert One-on-One Visual Basic .NET Business Objects, Professional Visual Basic 6 Distributed Objects, Visual Basic 6.0 Business Objects, and Professional Visual Basic 5.0 Business Objects;
• Co-author of Professional VB 2005 (Programmer-to-Programmer), Professional VB.NET 2003, Professional VB.NET and VB.NET Programming with the Public Beta;
• Contributing author for Visual Studio Magazine;
• Creator of the CSLA and CSLA.NET (Component-based Scalable Logical Architecture) frameworks;
• Principal Technology Evangelist for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
• Initial inductee as Software Legend by Microsoft;
• Microsoft Regional Director;
• Microsoft MVP;
• INETA speaker bureau member.

I don’t even want to attempt to list all of the conferences (international and across the U.S.) that Rocky has presented sessions and workshops at. And then there are all of the major corporations for whom Rocky has provided consulting and mentoring services. And I’m sure I’m leaving out lots of other good stuff, too.

See, that is one serious lesson in hagiography to leave unwritten when I only list the speaker’s name – I told you. Remember also, this is for just one of the speakers – there are twelve more. It is still only part of the (untold) story. Given the ample (over) qualifications of the speakers, you may think that organizing together the speakers and sessions for a developer conference like this one would be a trivial, “no-brainer” of a process…

Well, that’s not the way that I organize speakers and sessions for a developer conference though. Unlike some other developer conference organizers (who shall remain nameless – you know who you are and hopefully, you are not reading this blog entry!), I don’t just send out speaker invitations by bulk e-mail like some cattle call. I don’t just accept whomever responds. I don’t just let respondents choose whatever topics they have “in the can”.

My belief is that developer conferences should and need to be organized. An effective, organized conference agenda doesn’t just fall from the sky, or come together naturally by happenstance or, get this, by a “process” of first-come, first-serve to whomever wants to sign up as a speaker on whatever they want to talk about, for as many sessions as they want!

My belief is that the process of speaker and session selection requires considerable planning, negotiation and coordination. Anything less than this happens because someone doesn’t know better and/or (even worse) doesn’t care to put in the effort – which really begs the questions, how and why do these people get themselves into such a critical role in the first place?

Anything less is disrespectful of the attendees - whether the conference is free or for fee (don’t forget to consider your time or opportunity cost). Anything less is also disrespectful of the speakers and disrespectful of everyone else involved in actually trying to put on a quality event. I’ve participated at conferences and observed when there are multiple sessions basically covering the same content, where the advanced session precedes the less advanced pre-requisite session, when the presenter presents exactly the same session identically as before, and worse.

So the other parts of the untold story behind each name in that raw list of conference speakers (apart from their qualifications and expertise) are:

• how they came to be selected in particular;
• whom else I considered, invited, wasn’t available or pleaded with;
• whom has greater name recognition with potential attendees;
• how we came up with or agreed upon a topic;
• how that topic fits into one of the tracks or with other topics;
• what other sessions are going on at the same time and before and after;
• logistical details like when and how speaker are getting to SoCal or the conference hotel; and
• much, much more.

Unfortunately, this blog entry has gotten rather exceedingly long already and those stories behind-the-scenes of developer conferences will have to wait for another day…

<listening to… Possible Music from the Films (etc.) of Hal Hartley>

Learn from Rocky Lhotka, Bill Vaughn, Markus Egger and more, in person on September 23rd for only $79

If you haven't heard about it yet, let me briefly introduce you to the upcoming SoCal .NET Technical Summit II, the successor to last year’s highly successful single day .NET developer conference put on by the local .NET user groups down here in Southern California.

I didn’t get a chance to go through all of the conference evaluation forms from last year but the attendee response was overwhelmingly positive from the random sampling that I looked through. I think it is safe to say that the central theme behind the planning for this second edition of the Summit has been to go even bigger and better in outdoing the previous year.

If you attended last year, you likely remember how much we filled the facilities of the hotel. It was awesome to see so many attendees but this success did lead to somewhat cramped circumstances at times in the presentation rooms, in the lobby, in the hallway, out the main doors… As a result, this year, the conference is moving to the much more spacious and accomodating facilities of the Hilton Irvine, across from the John Wayne-Orange County airport in Santa Ana. This location is a little more centrally situated in Southern California too.

Of course, the absolute most critical elements of any conference are the speakers and the topics they will be presenting. Once again, my primary role in helping to put this show together has been to assemble the (ahem, absolutely) stellar roster of speakers and co-ordinate the agenda of sessions that will be presented at the conference. So whom have I lined up on your behalf? How about Rocky Lhotka, Bill Vaughn, Markus Egger, Kevin McNeish, Scott Stanfield, Mickey Williams, Mark Miller, Scott Mitchell, Russ Nemhauser and more.

First, let me say how terribly painful it is for me to have to list their names so plainly in a roll call like that when I have so much that I want to tell you about each of them. Collectively, they are the authors of bestselling books, numerous magazine articles and countless code samples, tutorials, Webcasts and other crucial developer resources. They are the colleagues that I have presented alongside at developer conferences in Las Vegas, Orlando, Montreal, Nice (France) and Holland, just in the past year.

I’ll definitely have to dedicate a few blog entries next week to call out some of them individually, detail what sessions they will be presenting and review some of their qualifications and accomplishments that led to their selection. In the meantime, you can have a look at brief write-ups of their biographies and session topics on the conference Web site.

So how much would you pay to attend a conference on Saturday, September 23rd, featuring such an internationally renowned crew of expert authorities? Before you answer, let me remind you that some of these presenters are the exact same industry luminaries that I have previously hand-picked to speak at conferences where just the price of admission alone was well over a thousand dollars! Now, how much would you pay?

Well, hang onto your hat because if you act now and register on or before Monday, Septermber 4^th (Labor Day), you won’t even have to pay the regular price of $99. Yup, that’s right, the discounted early-bird registration price for the SoCal .NET Technical Summit II is just $79…

At this price, you will not find a better value for a conference like this with the opportunity to learn from such a high caliber of professional speakers. So what are you waiting for? Register today!

<listening to... Sangam — Michael Nyman meets Indian Masters>

Naughty or Nice - Lump of coal for the Visual Basic 2005 team?

OK, i know my posts have been very intermittent and matter of fact to the point of desiccation recently (ever since i was asked by Windows Vista to expunge one of my posts - it was their IP, intellectual property, watchdogs too). So you know what this means right? Yup, i'm well overdue to stir things up again...

So late Monday afternoon, i was over at one of the Redmond campus buildings to check out some (not overly) impressive demonstrations for the Coding4Fun booth that i'm supposed to be running at the big Anaheim launch event next week (don't worry if you're planning on attending though, i'm now working with my new pal Mark Miller, chief architect of Developer Express' CodeRush and Refactor! products, to come up with some much cooler stuff to show). Afterward, i made a call on my cell phone to arrange some Webcasts in the new year and looking out the window, noticed a whole gaggle of friends from the Visual Basic (and VS Data/LINQ) team walk by on their way to the nearby cafeteria.

When i got there to say hello, it became evident the purpose of the gathering was to get their team photos taken and do the big product box signing ritual. Of course, i was immediately greeted with (libelous) accusations of crashing any party that goes on (patently false by the way - just those worth crashing). Unfortunately (or fortunately as it turns out), i already missed their ship-it (product release) party combined together with their holiday party.

FYI, ship-it parties, in recognition of all the effort and long hours that go into a product development cycle, are typically a BIG DEAL - the SQL Server 2005 team are going up to Whistler soon for theirs, even the red-headed step-child of Developer Division (er, that would be the FoxPro team) would get to jet off to Vegas for the weekend. Holiday parties though not nearly as lavish as past years, are still a biggish deal - e.g., the team that i'm on are jetting off to Vegas next week, yeah!

So what top-rated, favorite American vacation hotspot did the Visual Basic team get to go to for their COMBINED ship-it and holiday party? Yup, you guessed it - that's right, Seattle Center for an all expenses paid buffet dinner! Congratulations on a job well done!

It's not exactly a lump of coal in their stocking but from any angle it looks like the Visual Basic team got the weenies end of the shrimp stick (i'll save the shrimp and weenies story alluded to for another post). They did a darned good job with Visual Basic 2005 like getting that Edit and Continue feature from Visual Basic 6.0 back into the product finally. And when you think about it, they really had their work cut out for them just trying to keep up with all the language innovations that their counterparts got into C# 2.0...

All kidding aside, i think the Visual Basic team deserve more. Maybe we could take donations on their behalf and at least send them to the distant lands of... beautiful, exotic Alki Beach in West Seattle. At least it would really be a proper weenie roast then!

What do you think?

See all the really juicy tid-bits i miss out on (and don't get to report) now that i'm mostly away from Redmond? No, i'm not asking for a write-in campaign to send me back! I like living in SoCal just fine, thank you very much.

New Web site and meeting location for the .NET User Group in Santa Barbara

The still newish .NET user group in Santa Barbara is going strong. Their third meeting is coming up on Tuesday, December 13th, with Microsoft's other SoCal developer evangelist, Gerald Walsh, coming up to present on some of the new features in the .NET Framework 2.0 like type enhancements, generics and more. Note, that they will be moving to a new meeting location in the Santa Barbara Technology Group Building, courtesy of Truston Corp. 

Not sure where this is located? Check out the group's nascent Web site at http://www.sbdotnetug.org.

If you're a .NET developer in the Santa Barbara area, get involved in the group now or you'll miss out on some great presentations and other community opportunities coming in the new year.

Kick off meeting for new .NET user group in Santa Barbara, CA - October 12th!

Developers know that user groups are a great way to learn more about .NET, network with your local peers and even reach out to the broader community of developer notables from afar. Now it's time for Santa Barbara to join in the action along with all the other active .NET user groups in Southern California.

The provisional steering committee for the user group has secured an interim meeting place - the Planning Commission hearing room on the first floor of the County of Santa Barbara Administration Building (pictured below), 105 East Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara (at Anacapa).

Developer Connections conference in Las Vegas, November 7-10 - $100 discount off regular registration

As you have likely heard already, the grand launch for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will be on November 7th and I can't think of a better opportunity to immerse yourself in education on these two massive product sets than the Developer Connections conferences running that same week at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. This is actually four separate conferences in one (covering Visual Studio, ASP.NET, SQL Server and a special C++ commemorative edition) and a single registration gains you access to any breakout session in any of the individual conferences.

As a special bonus, all attendees will receive Visual Studio 2005 Professional and SQL Server Standard Edition (with one client access license) since this edition of the conference coincides with the launch. The speaker list is absolutely stellar this time around with notable personalities like Charles Petzold, Bjarne Stroustrup, Stan Lippman and more.

I was extremely fortunate again to be asked to organize together the entire Fundamentals track of the Visual Studio Connections conference - a five day agenda (including pre-conference and post-conference workshops) especially arranged for developers who are just getting started with the .NET environment now. A couple of my fellow MSDN Events presenters (namely Geoff Snowman and Joe Stagner) and myself will be delivering several of these sessions.

OK, this is the special exclusive sweetener for those of you who haven't yet registered, if you register using the discount code of B101, you will receive a $100 discount off the regular conference rate.

Download location for the sample code from my x64 programming Webcast

For those of you who attended my Webcast this morning on developing for the Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition from Visual Studio 2005, you can now download the sample code and compiled solution.

There were no slides, just a brief introduction to the x64 platform essentials at the beginning. The Webcast demonstrations were drawn in part from the Hands-on Lab at TechEd 2005 that I put together on x64 programming (which were drawn in turn from the Intel Route 64 roadshow). Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 and a computer running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition are also required.

Have fun with the samples - someone suggested running the x64 specific release on the regular 32-bit Windows XP to see if there would be a sensible exception message... Any bets on this one?

Help start up a .NET user group in Santa Barbara

OK, I've been soliciting for interested parties in the SoCal edition of the MSDN Flash newsletter since almost forever, it's finally time to get things started for Santa Barbara's very own .NET user group now that Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 launch are right around the corner.

We're going to hold a planning meeting for the new user group tomorrow night at Chad's restaurant (see address and map below) in downtown Santa Barbara following my MSDN Event free developer seminar (but attendance at my seminar in the afternoon isn't required).

We can all meet up at Chad's restaurant beginning at 6pm. There's no formal agenda; in fact, no formality at all. We'll just get everyone introduced and then see what we can organize together for the user group over appetizers and non-alcoholic beverages (on Microsoft's dime). The food there is pretty darn good judging from what I ate there last time. Of course, if there are other topics that you would like to discuss in public, as I wrote previously, there is no set agenda. See you there!

Free two-day Visual Studio 2005 workshops coming to Phoenix and Las Vegas!

OK, let's see if this blog posting can successfully avoid inciting the guardian watch-dogs of Windows Vista intellectual property... I really still don't know what was so objectionable in my last posting, especially in this new era of supposed transparency. Anyway, here goes!

How would you like to attend a free two-day, instructor-led workshop offering a focused environment within which to learn and experience the new features and capabilities of the forthcoming Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005?

This posting deleted at the request of Windows Vista (Longhorn) program management.

So much for transparency... I guess it only applies to whatever is OK for you to know.

PDC 2005 conference hotels - my personal opinions and experiences

The PDC 2005 conference is returning to the Los Angeles Convention Center between September 11th and 16th.

While I've only lived in Los Angeles (county) a short while, I have either stayed at or temporarily visited most of the downtown Los Angeles hotels that have rooms blocked off for conference attendees. I thought I'd jot down some of my impressions of these establishments for you to take into consideration before making your own final selection.

Standard Downton - this is the funky, designer 'party' hotel complete with rooftop bar/pool for the D&G crowd. i expect this will again be where the more reckless of the product teams will be staying/spending their late evenings into the wee hours. at the last PDC, this was also where the models at the coincidental fashion show stayed (or so i was told).
Sheraton Downtown - formerly the Hyatt regency, your typical upscale business hotel
Westin Bonaventure - your typical upscale business hotel - if there's an earthquake in the middle of the night, you may get a good shake in your room...
Wilshire Grand - your typical upscale business hotel but if you are parking a car here, you may find the valet service can take a very long time during peak hours
Figueroa Hotel - this is the ticket if you hate staying at chain hotels. very close to the convention center (the number of blocks listed on the PDC Web site can be misleading - they are very long blocks!), car parking in the back, adds a touch of local flavor and charm
Omni Los Angeles - nice lobby area but i didn't like staying at this hotel much, something about the rooms and their decor really put me off during my stay
Millennium Biltmore - the grand classic belle dame of downtown, very impressive lobby and facilities (for your basic socialite weddings) but the standard rooms are small and musty - you may find that you are sharing it with uninvited guests of the multi-legged kind too...
New Otani Hotel & Garden - it's kind of out of the way but for those on a budget... i've managed to avoid staying here previously. the hotel may be decent inside (i've heard it is) but i've passed by it several times in a conference shuttle bus (and been extremely grateful that the bus didn't break down nearby). if you do stay here, don't even think about taking a short stroll at night (unless you like tempting fate)... footnote for cineastes (and obsessive U2 minutiae devotees), on the bus ride over, you can catch a glimpse of the titular Million Dollar Hotel from the Wim Wenders film!

Of course, the real party hardy crowd will be those spending their after hours over in West Hollywood and staying at the most (in)famous hotels - the Chateau Marmont, Sunset Marquis, Mondrian, Standard, Argyle, (Riot) Hyatt (aka the Rock 'n' Roll Hotel), etc.!

I hope you find these personal observations useful - of course, your mileage (and experiences) may vary...

Download location for the sample code from my Webcasts

For those of you who attended my Webcast yesterday and wanted to download the sample application from it, you can now find this via http://www.msdn.tv/BernardWong. Many thanks to MaximumASP.NET for hosting this site (it's only been a few hours now but everything has been smooth sailing) and the Digital Black Belt guy, Joe Stagner, for arranging this.

In the future, I'll be using this site to distribute the downloads of slides, code samples, etc., from my conference, user group, Webcast and other presentations, unless there already is an established publication vehicle.

If you're wondering why I publish and maintain listings of developer resources for Southern California and the Southwest on www.microsoft.com (what we call MSCOM) but I'm not putting these downloads into the Microsoft Download Center, it's because the publishing application (the thoroughly bewildering Download Management Tool) and the process to do so are altogether too arduous and complex for me and my mythical co-signatories to cope with.

I'm a big believer in utilizing established systems and not re-inventing the wheel. Yes, the Download Center is supposedly searchable, has plenty of bandwidth, uptime in spades and you reliably know where your download is coming from. All of these are admirable qualities but they don't count for much if the downloads don't ever make it there in the first place.

Theoretically, at some point down the line, the sheer number of downloads available on the new site will need to be properly indexed and searchable, the ISP will balk at all the bandwidth we're consuming around the clock, and myriad other scalability issues will arise that need to be dealt with but let's burn those bridges when we reach them. This simple, new site for you to get your downloads will work just fine until then. Happy downloading!

The official manufactured Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 disk sets

I received my custom advance order of six hundred of these - one for each attendee of the SoCal .NET Technical Summit coming up this Saturday in Long Beach, CA. If you're like me and lack the patience (and phat pipes) to download several Gigabytes of installation files, you can pick up your very own official Beta 2 disk set this Saturday and also catch great .NET sessions presented by some of the industry's finest speakers for just $99! I blogged about this prestigious event previously but didn't mention the Beta 2 disk sets then (I wasn't sure at the time that I would actually be able to get them in time).

So what do you get in the officially manufactured Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 disk sets?

Everything comes inside of a black colored hard plastic case similar to what DVDs and Playstation 2 games ship in. The printed slip cover is primarily dark blue. On the front are the typical Visual Studio branding imagery, the MS logo and the title "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2". On the back are the minimum system requirements (600MHz processor, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 or Windows Server 2003 operating system, 256MB RAM, 2 GB available hard-disk space, DVD-ROM, etc.), handy URLs, fine print and the Part No. X11-22003.

Inside, there is a printed insert with a Greetings! notice from Soma and three disks held in place by a dual-clasp plastic mechanism of a kind that I haven't seen previously. The three disks are a DVD-ROM (though it isn't labelled as such) of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Beta 2 (3.75 GB, includes Visual Studio 2005), a DVD-ROM (labelled with the DVD-ROM logo) of SQL Server 2005 Developer Editon Community Technology Preview (847MB, labelled 32-bit version only and 03/05 though it's reputedly and dated the April edition) and lastly, a CD-ROM of Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 2 (273 MB, includes Team Foundation Client).

Now that I've whetted your appetite, don't forget you can walk away with your very own Beta 2 disk set in hand on Saturday. It's not too late to register for just $99! We'll see you there...