Of course, I'll have to start with a reminder of the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference this day next week (Jun 7th) - an amazing line-up and it looks like it will be a great turn-out on the day. There are 19 sessions now on the agenda to choose from - check out the agenda here. If you haven't already signed up - I'd get moving as it is filling up very quickly!
If you are coming along to the IMTC - the content may well inspire you to write an article to contribute to the developers.ie competition - you could be in with a chance to win a portable media player, ipod or other prizes. If you want to read up on some of the topics covered on the day, you should also take a look at some of the latest articles already submitted by the community, for example: - 'DataTable Enhancements in ADO.NET 2.0'; 'Caching in ASP.NET 2.0' and 'Drawing with WPF'.
On the events side, there are also a number of other Microsoft Technology User Group (MTUG) community events coming up in June in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Belfast. Cardspace is a very interesting technology that has been shown a lot of interest, so Barry's talk should be very useful to anyone working on making their web applications easier to use. Dave's Longhorn Masterclass will give you a great overview of the very important server release coming shortly and Mike's VSTO talks will be very interesting for anyone wanting to see what's in store for the future of Office Business Applications with the current and next releases of Visual Studio. More details on all the talks below.
Some of you may remember Mike Hernandez, in particular - he presented on the day Steve Ballmer visited last year. Welcome back Mike - thanks for fitting us in on your European visit! We are looking forward to hearing you again both talking on VSTO and at the after-talk reception - we'll have to source a guitar in advance! :)
Introducing Windows CardSpace
Speaker: Barry Dorrans
Where and when?
Summary
Windows CardSpace is a framework developed by Microsoft which securely stores digital identities of a person, and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a particular transaction, such as logging in to a website. This talk will cover how CardSpace works, how you can accept CardSpace logins in your own site and a discussion of trust and identity on the internet.
Longhorn Master Class
Speaker: Dave Northey, Microsoft Ireland
Where and When?
Summary
Microsoft Windows Server code name "Longhorn" is the next generation of the Windows Server operating system that helps information technology (IT) professionals maximize control over their infrastructure while providing unprecedented availability and management capabilities, leading to a significantly more secure, reliable, and robust server environment than ever before.
In this session, Dave will cover some of the scenarios which will make "Longhorn" server a must-have for IT organisations when it comes out later this year. Scenarios covered will include: Server Management, Security & Policy Enforcement, Branch Office, Centralised Application Access, Web & Application Platform, Server Virtualisation and High Availability.
VSTO: Roadmap to the Future
Speaker: Mike Hernandez, VSTO Product Manager, Microsoft
Where and when?
Overview
Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) empowers developers with the ability to create scalable, line-of-business solutions based on Microsoft Office from within Visual Studio. In this session, you'll learn about the advances made in Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition (VSTO 2005 SE) and what the future holds for VSTO "Orcas".
