When I first started at Microsoft I had my own blog on my own site.  However, after a few months I started blogging here anyway and removed the blog from my own site.

Recently I've dusted off the old site and started afresh with a nice new blogging engine that I really like and with a nice design that I also like.

If you are interested in following my adventures, please subscribe to the main feed at http://burling.co.nz.  If you would just like to get the work related blog posts, subscribe to the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/darrylburling - this is my work specific blog.

If you are already subscribed to the work feed - you'll not have to do anything - nor will you be reading this through a feed reader.

Hopefully the main feed will be more interesting to you, but you have the choice.

We often get asked "how can I buy Visual Studio and MSDN?".

And since last time we posted on this was back in 2005 I thought we should update this guidance.

If you look at the bottom of the MSDN NZ Visual Studio page, you'll see a section called "How to Buy".

It lists there all the local LARs (Large Account Resellers) who are all well and good, but can seem a bit OTT if all I want is a copy of MSDN.

That is one reason why we have now got an agreement with Developers Inc - a specialist developer tools licensing company who also sell developer tools for many "other" companies :-)

You can contact Developers Inc by calling 0508 338 462 or email Richard Vowles.

You might be keen to know too that if all you want is a single license that if you purchase a single license of MSDN you qualify for Microsoft Open License - meaning nobody should be paying full retail for Visual Studio with MSDN.

If you are starting out building a product, you'll want to check out the Empower Program which provides an awesome starting point for companies looking to get their first products out in the next 12 -24 months.

I was going to open this editorial in celebration of the fact that registration for Tech Ed is now open and encourage you to register today.

And – I strongly encourage you to register today. Not tomorrow – TODAY! Here’s why:

As of this morning ALL the early bird tickets for Tech Ed 2008 will be sold – and well over half the total tickets are sold – in less than two weeks!

You might think that we rejoice greatly to see Tech Ed tickets selling well. And, well yes – two years ago we did. It was great to see the event sell out eight weeks ahead of schedule as it validates what we are doing and sends a clear message that we are hitting the right spot with customers.

However, last year we sold out even earlier, and the only advertising we did had a great big “sold out” on it – which was the first many people heard of Tech Ed registration. This leaves lots of people saying they missed out because they didn’t find out that registration was open until after it was sold out, and others grumbling that their management dithered about purchasing a ticket or whatever.

While it’s great that tickets are selling, it has become clear to us that this is actually becoming a huge problem. We continue to make changes to the way we sell tickets (like reducing the total ticket count one organization can buy, etc), but clearly this is not enough. So next year, we need to do a major rethink.

Having said all that, this year Tech Ed will be great (Scott Hanselman is coming!), and if you are at all interested in getting along (even if you are not sure) get in now and buy a ticket. If you decide you can’t use it later, you can always ask for a refund - if you have a ticket you have choices. If you have no ticket, you have no opportunity to go.

So – please – register today, and tell your friends to do the same! We’re selling out fast!

Happy coding!

Ummmm, yeah.if you were planning on heading to Tech Ed this year to hear the likes of Scott Hanselman speak, I would be considering signing up real soon.

The early bird tickets are already half sold, and when they are gone they are gone.

What is amazing is that registrations opened a week ago and while we expect standard tickets to sell slower than the early bird tickets, I wouldn't be surprised if we are sold out in six weeks.

So, what are you about to do? No the correct answer is not email me asking for a ticket - you know who you are!

Start lobbying your employer (or other boss) to make sure you get in before it is too late!

If you have been hanging out waiting for Tech Ed registration to open, well, the wait is over!

Yesterday we opened registration for Tech Ed 2008.  This year Tech Ed is September 1-3.

The other bit of good news that has "leaked" over the last week or two (which those of you on the .Net mailing lists will know) is that we have confirmed Scott Hanselman will be coming to Tech Ed Australia and New Zealand this year.

So if you aren't already on the facebook group - jump on, and let Scott know that you appreciate that he is coming.

I'll announce more as we have more news, but save to say, this years Tech Ed is already starting to look great!

This month I'll be out and about a little doing a talk in a few locations on mixing up the web:

Title: Mixing up the web using HTTP, REST, WCF, PHP and IIS7

Abstract:

HTTP programming is about more than just ASP.Net.  The latest releases of Visual Studio, .Net 3.5 and Windows Server 2008 enable high performance services and websites using common and standard HTTP techniques.  In this session we will explore what WCF offers in terms of connectivity – with a particular focus on REST (Representational State Transfer), and WCF oriented changes in IIS7 as well as the improvements for PHP developers under IIS7.

This talk builds on the talk I did at the launch events and adds information about IIS7, PHP and a few other things that weren't covered.

Registration links and the time registration opens below:
Wellington - May 2, 9am
Christchurch - April 29, 10am
Auckland - April 30, 9am

Hopefully I'll see you there!

*Update* We've changed the date of the Wellington and Christchurch events by a week.

Sometimes it feels like we just live from one event to the next. So while we’ve now got the launch events out of the way, there is more coming – and we need your help to make them the best events they can be

First up – we are getting underway with our Unplugged sessions again. The unplugged sessions are where we tour around various towns and cities throughout New Zealand to give presentations. Nigel and I are doing these over the next few weeks. I’m expanding on my launch topic by doing a session on mixing up the web using HTTP, REST, WCF, PHP and IIS7 and Nigel is doing a Mix08 wrap up session.

You can get full details of these sessions and register at microsoft.co.nz/unplugged. Hopefully we’ll see you there.

The other thing that I’m starting to turn my attention to at the moment is Tech Ed. Each year we try and make Tech Ed better. This year is no exception – as I have more confirmed details, I’ll put them out here and on my blog. To start with though, I want your help.

What do you want to see at Tech Ed this year?

We are just starting to lock down track topics now, and I’m keen to hear from you. What sessions do you think will make Tech Ed better? What speakers do you want to see? What sessions should we not do? What level do you want us to pitch at? Do we have enough business sessions or should we have more introductory material?

If you have ideas, please either email me through the contact form, reply or leave a comment at the end of this blog post.

This is your opportunity to let us know how we can improve Tech Ed. Please note that while we will take all your suggestions into account, we may not be able to meet every need and whim, so please allow us to take some license with regards to the final outcome :-)

Thanks for your help!

Happy Coding!

Chris has blogged the details of the newest user group in New Zealand - in Christchurch - focused on Embedded development.

The first meeting is next week - details here

I have recently became involved in starting up a new user group within the Christchurch area. Andrew Leckie, Andy Scrase, Bryn Lewis and myself are organising a user group to cover embedded development topics within the Microsoft environment.

If you work with or have an interest in embedded device solutions using technologies such as the .NET Micro Framework, Windows Embedded CE, Windows Mobile, the .NET Compact Framework, Embedded XP, or Microsoft Robotics Studio etc, then this is the user group for you!

At the moment we are organising our first user group event for the 16th of April. This first session will give an overview of the above technologies and give a synopsis of the future sessions and intended agenda for the user group. It will also be a chance for you to provide some early feedback on what else you may wish to have presented from local experts as future topics.

So please help spread the word, the more we get along to our first meeting the better!

Further details will be able to be found via the newly created Christchurch Embedded .NET User Group website available at http://www.embedded.net.nz (one of my current tasks is to help flesh out this website). If you have any questions about this user group please don’t hesitate to contact me.

As promised, I've uploaded the slides and code from my Connected Systems talk from the Launch events up to my skydrive, so if you are interested, you can grab them.

The sample code includes the code to extract data from Oulook, extend your ASP.Net Role and Membership provider to consume them in client applications along with a ReST based WCF project, and a slightly more fleshed out WCF project that includes sample code for implementing the RSS functionality of .Net 3.5 among other things.

Slides are here and the sample code is here.

Enjoy!

Each quarter we award those who work hardest in the technical community with an award we call the Most Valuable Professional.

These awards are given for the contributions made to the technical community over the last 12 months.  Contributions can take the form of blog posts, news group mailing, mailing list help and presentations to the community (generally user group events). 

Often we get asked how do I become a MVP?  The answer is get yourself involved in sharing your knowledge with the rest of the world.

So - Contratulations to the following new MVP's:

• JD Trask (ASP.Net)
• Ivan Towlson (Windows Client - WPF)
• Zachary Smith (Sharepoint)

These guys have done a great job contributing to the technical community both locally and globally.

Congratulations guys!

There is a bunch of photos on Port25 taken inside the OSS labs at Microsoft.  This is an interesting look at whats going on behind the scenes.  It is reasonably well known that we have a OSS lab, but this opens it up a little more.

If you are interested in a little more behind the scenes, you'll want to read Steve's introductory post which gives a little more information.

Interesting.  Link here.

Adrian just emailed me to let me know that Australian Peter Ward is presenting in Wellington on Thursday night:

Peter Ward is visiting us from Australia and will make 2 presentations, with refreshments in between.

Peter Ward is WARDY IT Solutions Chief Technical Architect. Peter is an active member in the Australian SQL Server community and President of the Queensland SQL Server User Group. Peter is a highly regarded speaker at SQL Server events throughout Australia and is a sought after SQL Server consultant and trainer, providing solutions for some of the largest SQL Server sites in Australia. Peter is a regular author for several SQL Server websites and has published numerous articles in the monthly SQL Server newsletter that he produces along with the highly acclaimed WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Blog. In 2007 Peter was selected as a speaker for Tech-Ed Australia, SQL Server Open World in Denmark and as a Spotlight speaker for the 2007 SQL Pass Community Summit, the largest SQL Server event in the world. Peter has also recently been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his technical excellence and commitment to the SQL Server Community.

The topics of the presentations are:-

"SQL Server 2008 - What's new, and the business value it brings"

If only they taught SQL Server in Kindergarten…
Bon Jovi had a hit song in the 90's with a chorus that I believe went something along the lines of 'The server is running slow, and your to blame, You give SQL Server a bad name'.  If you look at most Information Technology courses today this parody often rings true.  There are all sorts of exciting (and 'sexier') subjects such as Object Oriented Programming and Programming Abstraction but somehow the subject 'SQL Server 101' has been overlooked.  As a result there are set of common mistakes that are made time and time again by developers that cause an application to negatively affect the performance of SQL Server.  Peter Ward from WARDY IT Solutions (www.wardyit.com) will walk through some of the common Gotcha's when developing an application that accesses SQL Server and how to identify possible performance issues prior to deployment.

"Index, What Index? SQL Server Index Tuning"

Unfortunately SQL Server does not ship with the 'Make SQL Server Go Faster' configuration option. Despite what appears to be an obvious lack of functionality, SQL Server does ship with a feature that is often misunderstood called an index. When an index is used correctly it can be the answer to the missing 'Go Faster' configuration option. New hardware and configuration changes can improve the performance of SQL Server by small percentages; however a simple CREATE INDEX statement can improve performance by large orders of magnitude. In this session, Peter Ward from WARDY IT Solutions (www.wardyit.com) will explain the basics of indexing in SQL Server and the strategies that you can employ to improve query tuning by understating how to identify and create effective indexes.

Pizza and drinks are being provided with the kind courtesy of Microsoft.

If you want to come along, the details are:

13 March 2008 6pm
Intergen
L7 Plunket House
126 Lambton Quay

(Lifts lock at 17:30. If you're late and there's nobody around to swipe you up, contact Adrian on 027 435 4050)

On Wednesday we drew the prize draw for the 2008 summer road trip.

Jeremy took the data, imported it into SQL, did some code to match registrations and invitations to evaluation forms, then write a little function to draw someone from random from the list of entries.

The prize pool was:

• Two servers with Windows Vista Ultimate and Home Server
• One copy of Windows Vista Ultimate
• Two copies of 2007 Office Professional
• Five copies of Mindscape Lightspeed
• Three copies of Resharper

All winners have been notified via email - a few haven't yet responded, so check the email address you registered under to see if you have an email from Chris.   If you didn't win - thanks for coming, and hopefully your name will come up in the future.

The two servers went to Brent from Wellington (pictured) and Colin from Hamilton - congratulations everyone!

Many of you have asked about availability of the code and slides from the road trip, and the good news is that they are now up.

Jeremy has the scoop along with instructions to build a VM for yourself.

Enjoy!

Given that March is a big month here at Microsoft New Zealand due to the launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008, Mauricio decided to get a bunch of developers together to blog about some of the cool new features in Visual Studio 2008.

The Visual Studio Blog is hosted on Geekzone's blog engine and the plan is to have a new post every couple of days from developers who are using Visual Studio 2008 today.  These posts will be tips and tricks and things that the authors have learned along the way 

The developers are mostly people from the NZ developer community, although there are a couple of Aussies in there as well.

If you want to pick up some new tips and tricks, this blog will be useful.  Don't forget that we've still got tickets available for the Microsoft launch events on this month.