Darryl Burling @ Work : Community

Tech Ed and MSDN Unplugged update

dburling — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:12:45 GMT

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!

Introducing the Christchurch Embedded .NET User Group (EDNUG)

dburling — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:06:19 GMT

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.

Congratulations new MVP's

dburling — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:36:38 GMT

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!

SQL Server User Group - Thursday

dburling — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:53:13 GMT

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)

2008 Summer Road Trip Prize Draw Results

dburling — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:55:51 GMT

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!

Road Trip Code and slides now available

dburling — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:43:46 GMT

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!

VS2008 blog on Geekzone

dburling — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:36:40 GMT

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.

Changes in DPE (and a new blog to follow)

dburling — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:33:44 GMT

As you may know Sean has moved on to Redmond which means we have a new manager here in DPE New Zealand.

Scott Wylie is now the Director of the Developer and Platform Strategy team here in New Zealand. Scott has been in Microsoft New Zealand for longer than almost anyone else in Microsoft New Zealand. This is good news. He understands how Microsoft works and has a long career of great success both in management and on the ground having started in a technical role.

One of the things Scott is famous for (at least in the NZ sub) is his musical abilities. He is in a band that plays frequently - President Gas. Check out their website here. Scott is well loved at our kick off event that we have each year, where he normally picks up the guitar and belts out a few good numbers...

Anyway, Scott is pretty excited to be in DPE New Zealand, and has started blogging. So subscribe to his feed, read his first post and make him feel welcome! If you are coming to the launch events, make sure you bump into him and say Hi.

Sharepoint User Group

dburling — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:43:06 GMT

I just got an email from Chan regarding the Sharepoint User group in Wellington this week. There are some nice add-ins to Sharepoint around, and one of them is the Community Kit for Sharepoint - which Zac has been involved in building. Details below:

This Wednesday 27^th at Intergen at 6PM

Topic: Getting the most out of your SharePoint Community

Speaker: Zac Smith

There is more to the SharePoint community than just turning up to user group meetings for free pizza and beer. Over the last year SharePoint developers around the world have been creating all kinds of enhancements, utilities, tools and extensions for SharePoint. This session aims to demonstrate how some of these can be incorporated into your SharePoint environment. Zac will showcase SharePoint community initiatives such as the Community Kit for SharePoint and some of the many CodePlex SharePoint projects (http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?TagName=Sharepoint ).

This will be a great opportunity to catch up on some of the exciting things happening in the SharePoint community space.

The session is suitable for all SharePoint enthusiasts.

We will also have a question and answer session after for any other SharePoint related questions you may have.

Please RSVP to: wlgspug@sharepointservices.net.nz

Date: Wednesday 27th February 2008.

Venue: Intergen Limited, Level 7, Plunket House, 126 Lambton Quay.

Presentation Starts at 6PM.

You can subscribe to SharePoint User Group events via RSS

http://feeds.feedburner.com/NZSPUG

User Group web site

http://www.sharepointusergroup.net.nz

If you've considered whether Sharepoint/WSS is something you could use for blogging or how to get started developing for it, this would be a good session to get along to.

A more open Microsoft

dburling — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:20:09 GMT

One of the big changes over the last few years at Microsoft has been openness. That is openness about interconnecting with other systems (i.e. non-MS systems), openness with regards to file formats and openness with regards to working with other technology companies.

Others in the industry have noticed this too. We did the deal with Novell to further improve the interoperability between our products and Novell products. We also changed the office file formats to make it easy to work with them and submitted them to the various standards bodies for standardization. More recently we announced that we'd be opening up the source code for parts of the .Net Framework.

All this is part of a fundamental change at Microsoft which is driving us to be more open and transparent with our technologies. So it came as no surprise to see in my inbox this morning an email from Steve Ballmer (a company wide email that is) explaining the announcement that was made this morning on this subject (see the press page for full details).

I don't know the details of how this will play out inside Microsoft, but I think it is a very good step on a path that we were already on.

There are four areas that were specifically mentioned in the press release.

(1) ensuring open connections to its high-volume products;

(2) promoting data portability;

(3) enhancing support for industry standards; and

(4) fostering more open engagement with the industry, including the open source community, to address interoperability and standards issues.

This is a far reaching announcement, which is in line with the desire of OSS advocates in general who have been asking for years for a more open Microsoft, as well as with many Microsoft customers, partners and employees. However, as always, the media picks and chooses who to get to comment on it and some people are never happy, and give it a bad spin and continue to try and build the "big bad Microsoft" image.

Regardless, I'm hoping to spend some time with PHP and Linux user groups in April/May, to talk about the improvements in running PHP applications on Windows Server 2008, but I'm also looking forward to seeing how this is received at a grass roots level in these camps.

If you have a PHP or Linux user group that you are involved in around New Zealand and are interested in having some Microsofties come along to discuss this, please drop me a line and I'll try and fit it in to my schedule. I already have an invitation to the Wellington PHP user group (thanks Brenda!), so I look forward to that one.

End of the road (trip) - Invercargill

dburling — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:06:27 GMT

Today we are in Invercargill. Today is the last day of our Road Trip. Today is kind of a sad day.

We've had a great time driving around the country presenting on Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. I think those who have come along have enjoyed the road trip too - certainly the feedback we've had has been good. We've had a number of people tell us that this is the best presentation they've ever been to, and the feedback on the evaluation forms has been extremely positive, which is all pretty good in our mind.

Today we went right on through Invercargill to Bluff and had a final meal together as a team. This was a nice (if a little rushed) lunch, in a great location on a great day.

The Invercargill User Group crew did a great job of getting word out about the Road Trip and we had a very respectable number of people come along, which was satisfying for the last event on the trip.

For the last time on our road trip, we sat through the usual banter, although of all the audiences Invercargill seemed the most muted. If audience indication is anything to go by, two people here do .Net development and one person works with Windows Server, however the feedback indicated that they were very happy with the content, so obviously they are just a quiet bunch down here.

We managed to get rid of all our prizes except a few copies of Vista (which will go to the winners of the Servers when they are drawn on March 5). We've got rid of several hundreds of bottles of water, driven over 3,000km's in the Windows Mobile truck, spoken to over 1000 people, endured temperatures between 8 and 32 degrees, hit just one (living) animal (oops), drunk about 30 bottles of coke, sampled coffee in around 15 towns and cities in NZ, taken thousands of photos (I have nearly 900 on my own), recorded about 15 hours of video, heard Chris say "well done, sir" about 45 times and heard JB say "thats not our website, man" eleven times.

I (and I'm sure JB and Chris too) want to say a big thanks to all the user group leaders around the country who put in many hours of their own to make the event happen, and really put in the extra effort to get the word out there and get so many people along. I also want to say a huge thanks to Intergen and Mindscape - without whom this wouldn't have been possible.

Like I said at the beginning - the New Zealand community ROCKS!

Day 11 - Dunedin

dburling — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:09:18 GMT

Last night JB and I flew down to meet Chris in Dunedin. In retrospect, we could have gone down this morning, but it translated into a good sleep in this morning, and we are safely in the town we need to be in and not at the mercy of the airlines to get us there under time pressure, so all good. We were also pleased to find that the newer part of the Southern Cross Hotel in Dunedin is much nicer than the old side (so JD - you'll want to remember that).

Jeremy and I scoped out the cafe's around the Octagon this morning, and were very happy to find local cafe served up the best coffee we have encountered yet (outside of Wellington of course). Their Potato Cakes and Pancakes are also pretty good, so if you are in Dunedin, you should check it out - we will be back in the morning.

Dunedin turned on a great day, and a great audience (another record for Dunedin). Our local speaker, Beric Holt was pumped and ready to go (actually, he was extremely relaxed), Chris was also pumped, and particularly so after being called a "Marc Ellis wannabe" in Christchurch.

Tomorrow is the last day of our Road Trip - in Invercargill.

Day 10 - Christchurch

dburling — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:56:50 GMT

This morning we woke up in the middle of nowhere, with no mobile coverage, no telephone and lots of distance between us and civilization - a geek's worst nightmare. We were of course in Maruia Springs Thermal Resort in Lewis Pass. Chris is still not feeling very good, but he managed to find a pharmacy, get some drugs and get back into presenting mode in time to present.

Before we got to the convention centre (or town hall) we stopped at Yeeros for a Souvlaki - if you are in Christchurch - it is worth a stop and its only a hundred metres from Cathedral Square.

Did I mention that it is cold and wet down here? The farmers were dancing on the roads on the way to Christchurch because of the rain (or was it because I ran over one of his sheep?). Actually it is so wet that the Avon river is quite high - almost flooding in places. And it is cold - It was 8 degrees on the Canterbury side of Lewis Pass this morning too - chilly.

In spite of the weather, Christchurch turned out a great audience. Over 150 people turned up to catch the Christchurch leg of the 2008 Summer Road Trip. This is better than the Auckland turn out and the second highest turn out of the tour so far - so THANK YOU CHRISTCHURCH!

Tonight we are off home for the weekend - except for Chris who is going Heli-biking (health permitting) - and then we meet up with Chris back in Dunedin on Monday.

If you are in the deep south (Dunedin or Invercargill), you can still register and come along and catch the last leg of the road trip! Actually even if you are in the North Island - maybe the Dunedin or Invercargill leg of the road trip is all the excuse you need to take a holiday down there :-)

Nelson to Christchurch

dburling — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 03:38:35 GMT

Last night we took the ferry to the South Island at 6:15 (give or take 30 minutes for a delay). We it was dark when we got to Picton, which meant we got to take some photos during sunset in the sounds which was pretty cool. When we got to Picton we headed to a motel where we stayed for the night.

This morning we went for breakfast at one of the local cafe's and then headed to sunny Nelson - where it was sunny when we arrived but began raining by the time we left.

The guys have the pack in pretty much sorted now, and for a change the venue was set up properly, so I left them to it and caught up with a friend for lunch.

We had a good turn out in Nelson which was great, and the audience seemed to lap up the session - particularly the spatial querying in SQL Server 2008 - which is not surprising given that SQL Services are based there.

We headed off after the session - Chris wasn't feeling well, so I got behind the wheel. When you head out down the west coast, you'll find that if you are used to driving in the North Island that there are very few vehicles on the road. You may also find that there is lots of road works. We are convinced that there is a link there somewhere. On this one day we encountered more road works than on the entire North Island leg of the tour combined.

On the way to Maruia springs we stopped at the Maruia Falls and took some photos and video. The falls are well known to Chris who took the opportunity to talk about "big waterfalls" again, and also how he has kayaked down them (Chris is the outdoor adventurer among us).

If you've never been to Maruia Springs, its worth an overnight stop. They have no cellular coverage on either network, no phones in the units and a thermal hot spring in the mountains. Its kind of nice and unnerving (for us geeks) all at the same time. No resort area network for us here.

Tomorrow its off to Christchurch as quick as we can to post our blog posts and get back to civilization. We are looking forward to a good turnout in Christchurch, and we know Chris Fairbarn is looking forward to presenting too. See you there!

Wellington done - South Island - Here we come!

dburling — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:42:06 GMT

Today the boys did their presentation to our home town of Wellington. It went well and was generally enjoyed by everyone. The Paramount was a fantastic venue and we had heaps of capacity so even though we had hundreds of registrations we didn't need to close it off.

It was great to be home and catch up with lots of the local community again. And of course we had a fantastic Wellington turn out.

One of the very cool things about being complete geeks as we travel around the country is the abundance of technology at our disposal. One of the coolest pieces of technology in our kit is our WWAN Access point provided by the nice folk at Advanced Portable Technology. This little device looks like a chrome plated WiFi access point, but it boasts some very cool features.

It allows us to plug in a PC Card from either Telecom or Vodafone and then provide access to the Internet via WiFi. It also supports failing over from cabled WAN to a 3G card. We've used this in every hotel and motel and presentation so far, and its worked great - where ever we are we have WiFi and Internet access (although it is dependant on the GPRS/3G signal for bandwidth - which isn't always that great).

So here is JB on the Inter-Islander ferry with our Ferry Area Network, and I'm blogging through it right now.

We are looking forward to Nelson tomorrow and Christchurch on Friday (you can still register). If you run your own consulting/contracting and want to be included in our Launch marketing, let me know as we are giving independent IT people an opportunity to be quoted around the three products we are presenting on.