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News from Microsoft Ireland's Developer & Platform Group
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 Phew! We are just over the IMTC, but there is no rest for the wicked (or at least the MS Tech Community in Ireland). Next up on the agenda is the Developer Developer Developer (or DDD) event happening down in Galway on the May bank holiday weekend.
So, why should you go along? Well, apart from the impressive agenda - 5 tracks with top notch speakers - there are promises of amazing swag giveaways, and great events (like podcasts from the pub on the Aran Islands - the most westerly point in Ireland, and one of the most spectacular spots to visit on the island) happening around the main event itself. There's even talk of a visit to Craggy Island's parochial house (apparantly there are some Fr. Ted fans among the speakers! ;) DDD events have been running over in the UK for quite some time and are incredibly popular over there. This is our first one in Ireland, but we're hoping it's the first of many!! Check out this video if you want a feel of what it's all about. Best of all, this event is totally free - you just have to get yourself there! Here is a list of the sessions you can choose from - but you should check out the agenda page for full details of each session, timings and even some into videos for the sessions.
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Well, IMTC is over for another year - and a big thanks to everyone who made it such a success - congratulations to Barry, Patricia (from Irishdev) and all the speakers in particular! It was fantastic to meet so many great people over the three days. Thanks aswell to Chuck, Simon, Craig, Dave and Martha who were kept very busy filming all the sessions. We are hoping to have some of those published online over the next few weeks - in case you were unlucky enough to miss out on the event itself... so keep your eyes peeled for them! :)
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Looking forward to heading along to the opening of the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference later on this evening - maybe I'll see you there. But if you haven't already registered - there is still time... just head along to http://imtc.firstport.ie! Here are a couple of more tasters from the folks presenting over the next few days... enjoy! :)
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The vast majority of the Community Launch 2008 kits were sent out in the last two weeks. We have about 10 or 12 left to send out (folks that confirmed postal address in the last week or so) - but most of you should have yours by now. Hope you are having fun with them! :) If you haven't got yours through some postal mishap - just mail your local user group lead and we'll get you sorted! We will be announcing some additional free training for developers shortly as part of the Launch Experience - so keep your eyes peeled for that!
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Check out http://maps.live.com to see the new bird's eye view of some of Ireland's cities and towns. Places currently covered are Galway, Cork, Limerick, Navan and Wexford. Check out Eyre Square below! 
I had to clear my cache to get it to work - but now, when you zoom in on cities like Cork, the 'bird's eye' button becomes active. Just click to get the images. Where's Dublin, I hear you ask? Well, it turns out that the imagery for capital cities is always a little more difficult to capture because of air traffic control restrictions etc. so we'll have a little longer to wait for that. Word is from the nice people over in the Live Development Group that Dublin is work in progress - we'll be keeping you updated!!
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Many of you know Martin Woodward, VSTS MVP and recent presenter at the Launch 2008 showcase in the Tripod here in Dublin. Well, Martin and the folks in Teamprise just released Teamprise 3.0 at EclipseCon 2008 earlier this week. Teamprise has a Team Foundation Server plugin for Eclipse so that if you can use Team Foundation Server for both .NET and Java projects. Well worth a look if you work in a mixed development environment!
Martin will also be speaking at the upcoming IMTC and DDD events - check out a snippet of his talk at TechEd 07 in Barcelona to get a feel for what's in store!
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Craig Murphy, Dave McMahon, Gary Short, Oliver Sturm and Martin Woodward are just some of the fabulous line-up of speakers coming over to visit Dublin and Galway for the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference and/or the Developer Developer Developer event in April and May.
If you want to have a look at some great little video snippets that some of the speakers have prepared for the Irish audience in advance of their visit - check out the latest posts on the Galway MTUG blog! No better way to get a taste of what's in store for us over the coming months!
As Dave McMahon so succintly puts it in his snippet below (in between telling us all about his planned XSLT talk) - "better than a slap in the teeth with a shillelagh!" :)
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One of the most popular new features to come out of the 2008 launch wave of products is LINQ. If you are interested in the topic - you'll definintely be interested in the day-long workshop coming up on 27th May. Well-known author Dino Esposito will be visiting Dublin to give a course entitled 'Managing Data in Web Enterprise Applications - a pattern-oriented look at LINQ and LINQ-to-SQL from within Web and Silverlight applications.'
There are some details below - but you should check out the new-look developers.ie site for the full course details.
Managing Data in Web Enterprise Applications
A pattern-oriented look at LINQ and LINQ-to-SQL
from within Web and Silverlight applications
1 day course - 27th May - Alexander Hotel - Dublin 2
 The workshop will be run by Dino Esposito. Dino is the author of Programming ASP.NET 3.5 Core Reference (Microsoft Press, 2008) and other best-selling books such as Introducing ASP.NET AJAX (Microsoft Press, 2007) and Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications-Advanced Topics (Microsoft Press, 2006).
He's also the author of the "Cutting Edge" column on MSDN Magazine and a frequent speaker at industry events worldwide, including Microsoft TechEd, DevConnections and in Europe, DevWeek and Basta.
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If you haven't yet had the opportunity to take a look at the Mix08 keynote yet, and you are around Dublin this evening, perhaps you'd like to join us for an informal Silverlight User Group meet-up to take a look? We'll be meeting from 7pm for drinks and snacks while we have a look at the keynote speech (it's always more fun with friends! :). For those of you who haven't seen it, it's well worth a look - lots of great examples of Silverlight 2 websites and some interesting news re. IE8.
If you are interested in joining us this evening, drop me a line at clare.dillon at microsoft.com and I will send you on the details of the meet-up... hopefully, see you later! :)
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Paschal from Developers.ie, who also happens to work on the very popular Irish portal for education - www.scoilnet.ie, just put me on to this story.
An Irish teacher Kate O'Connell, Scoil Mhuire Kilvemnon, Mullinahone Co Tipperary won First place at the Microsoft Innovative Teacher Forum held in Zagreb last week. There were 62 projects entered from about 28 countries and Kate won the Award in the Innovation in Community category. Her project was entitled, "Flying High- Exploring Aviation". You can see some more information regarding the project on the school's website http://www.kilvemnon.net/background.html.
Kate is an NCTE tutor in Kilkenny Education Centre and a SME for Scoilnet. Her school is an Empowering Minds school and a Digital school as well as being a FIS award recipient.
Congratulations, Kate! It's great to see technology being put to use in innovative ways in education.
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There are two great community events coming up in April and May - both have an amazing speaker line-ups and are well-worth attending! Click on the links below to get more details.
The Irish Microsoft Technology Conference 2008 (April 3rd,4th - Dublin) - Now in its third year, the two-day, multi-track IMTC 2008 is planning to have over 40 technolgy-packed sessions for developers and IT Pros. Come along to hear a host of technical experts including speakers from Microsoft developer groups, MVPs and certified partners.
Developer Developer Developer Ireland (May 3rd - Galway) - for the first time, the UK's popular day-long DDD event is coming to Ireland. DDD is focused on .NET development, with many TechEd and DevWeek regulars included in the speaker line-up. This is your chance to get hands-on with the technologies in Galway!
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If you haven’t had a look yet, you should check out the TED talk on Microsoft’s new Worldwide Telescope (WWT) due to be released this spring and made available as a free download. It combines feeds from telescopes on earth and in space and weaves them together to produce a view of the universe. The video showed in the talk looks amazing.
It made Robert Scoble cry, but in the best possible way! :) I love how he has described it: “It’s not often that I see software that really changes my world. It’s even rarer that I see software that I know will change the world my sons live in.”!
The presenter Roy Gould describes it as a “magic carpet to allow you to navigate throughout the universe”, something that allows you to travel to where you want to go to with astronomers as your guides. You’ll even be able to create your own tours of the universe to share with your friends.
The WWT is a collaboration between Microsoft's Next Media Research Team (Principal Researcher and group manager Curtis Wong, Principal Research Software Design Engineer Jonathan Fay and Jina Suh Research Intern), Alex Szalay at Johns Hopkins University, Alyssa Goodman at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics, and Frank Summers at Space Telescope Science Institute.
By the way, if you haven't yet visited the TED site - you should definitely check it out generally - it's a site dedicated to showcasing ideas worth spreading "from the world's greatest thinkers and doers". There are over 200 up there at the moment, and they publish a new one every week. Everything I have seen there ranges from incredibly interesting to truly inspirational and they are all great ideas to be shared!
Update: Robert commented with a link to his new Scobleizer TV site - he's got a fantastic interview with Curtis Wong the Principal Researcher in Microsoft Researcher responsible for the WWT. If you are impressed with the TED talk - this demo will just amaze you!!
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