David Gristwood's Blog

Microsoft were one of the sponsors of last weekend’s BarCampLondon5, so I spend an very enjoyable time talking to a whole host of technical folk about all sorts of things, not all of them technical, but all very interesting :-)

If you have never been to a BarCamp before, which I hadn’t, check out the Wikipedia for some background information. BarCamp is really characterised as “All attendees are encouraged to present or facilitate a session. Everyone is also asked to share information and experiences of the event, both live and after the fact, via public web channels including (but not limited to) blogging, photo sharing, social bookmarking, wiki-ing”

As you can see from the photos, the participation grows organically, and can be very ad-hoc, and the sessions range from quite slick presentation to very informal discussions.

If I had to pick a favourite session, which is hard, I think it would be the one on web design by Andy Budd, although I was impressed with moo and their new API.

I was devastated when I heard that one of my friends and colleagues, Patrick Tisseghem, had passed away recently.

Patrick Tisseghem, the beloved husband of Linda Godau and the loving father of their daughters Anahi and Laura, was born in Halle, Belgium on 17 October 1968 and passed away in Goteborg, Sweden on 3 September 2008.

I had worked with, and been taught by, Patrick on a number of projects and ventures over the years, one of the most recent being TechEd EMEA last year, where I  took this photo of Patrick.

You will be missed.

I spent the weekend at Mashed 2008, a "hack day".  Its sponsored by the BBC, Microsoft (through Multimap), the Guardian (sorry, Gruniad :-)). It's basically a 24 hour hack, with team competing to create the best mashup or web site or piece of code. Around 250 or so developers turned up for the event, which took place at Alexandra Palace, in north London, home of the world's first regular public ‘high definition’ television service, operated by the BBC.

There were a number of sessions from the BBC, Microsoft (including my colleague Paul Foster), etc, in the morning, but come 1pm the fun started, as the teams got down to 24 hours of coding, many sleeping there overnight, or working right through the night.

Everyone seemed to be using Twitter, in addition to the official Backnetwork, so there was quite a buzz going on. Our team had great fun with a blimp, which we attached a camera to, until someone let go of it and it ended up trapped in the roof - oops!

Come 2pm SUnday, the demos began, hosted by Sylvester McCoy (ex Dr Who). There were lots of interesting demos, great ideas, lots of hardware, and lots of crashes :-). There was lots of use of Twitter and Twitter bots for communication, and Fire Eagle for location based searches and services and mapping.

The biggest target for these tended to be the BBC, partially as they were event sponsors, partially because the BBC submitted several teams, but also because the BBC have a whole host of information on their site, and have opened it up for web access. New ways to play back redux video, search for programs and content, etc, were also demoed.

Lonely Planet are just releasing a web API as well, and opened it up early to developers at this event for them to experiment with. Great for location based services to get advice on where to go and what to see when travelling.

PDC2008 Professional Developers Conference October 27-30, 2008 - registration is now live. This event really is the premier event to "hear details about Microsoft’s services platform, the future of Windows, mobility and our next generation of developer tools", so if you are are involved with the design and development of your applications, then I would urge you try to attend. Our team plan to be there, so we look forward to seeing you out there.

The reason for the recent lack of blogs has been my work on our two new Microsoft partner blogs. I will be blogging here still, but check these two blogs out as well . . .

The first is our new general purpose ISV blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/ukisvdev/ - written by our team, with lots of ISV related material, so I hope if you are a Microsoft partner, you find it of use.

The second is our new Fasttraack ISV site - http://blogs.msdn.com/fasttrackreview/ - we are running free half day reviews for ISV to help them develop and grow their solutions on the Microsoft platform. More information and details to apply are on the site. You can see the first write up, which is the mechanism we use to share the experience for other partners, at http://blogs.msdn.com/fasttrackreview/archive/2008/05/19/zylog-fieldpower-fasttrack-review-write-up.aspx, where we try to share how our technology stack can help ISVs in their product development cycle and plans.

At the recent DevWeek and Microsoft Launch event, I did a VSTO session, and showed off a couple of demos, including a Buzzword Bingo sample, which got a lot of very positive reaction :-). This Word Add-In goes through a document, and adds some random management buzzwords to the end of sentences. Using Visual Studio 2008 its really easy to build Microsoft Office add-ins, and this sample took me just a few hours to code from scratch, and it's been one of the most fun projects I have done for a while.

The phrases it uses were all collected from one of my fellow team mates, who shall remain nameless, from his emails and phone calls. Examples include:

• is this a palatable ask
• lets make sure we get ahead of the curve
• some pre-thinking is required
• this is a big play for us
• ensure we have names in boxes

You get the idea. Anyway, several people have emailed me to get the source code, so I have uploaded it to our team skydrive. Enjoy!

If you are doing Microsoft Office development (which includes SharePoint, Open XML, VSTO, etc), or thinking about it, then you should be going to the Office Developers Conference (ODC) in San Jose next month (Feb 10th - 13th, to be exact). More details from the ODC 2008 web site

For me, here are a few of the highlights:

• Opening keynote by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates (one of the last in his full time role at Microsoft)
• A whole host of technical sessions (over 70) covering everything from Office add-ins to SharePoint, via Silverlight, software + services, unified comms, Open XML and a whole lot more
• A chance to meet, talk and network with other developers doing Office development
• The opportunity to understand the Microsoft roadmap around Office and think about the whole subject of building and designing Office Business Applications (OBAs)
• Enter the "Office Business Applications - 1st Annual OBA Solution of the Year Contest"

Book now - its only a few weeks away . . .

A Silverlight Christmas card - Season's Greetings from Microsoft UK

Over the last year I've hosted a number of events to Microsoft partners about Open XML, so it's great to see that, here in the UK, a number of Microsoft Gold and Certified Partners have already taken the opportunity to profile their great work on the Office System Solution Directory.

If, as a Microsoft Partner, you are currently building a solution that uses Open XML, then we want to make sure that everyone knows about it, and as an added incentive, we will be giving away ten Xbox 360™ to the most interesting and innovative use of Open XML.

Full details of the competition are on our "Microsoft UK Developer & Platform ISV Community Team" site at http://isvfasttrack.co.uk/openxml.aspx. In a nutshell, you have to register your solution at the Microsoft Office System Solution Directory, then email ukdev@microsoft.com to register for the competition, before the end of Jan 2008. Check the terms and conditions for full details.

Some of my Microsoft colleagues such as Chris Parkes and Darren Strange are also blogging about this competition, so good luck.

There are two books that I am currently recommending to developers who want to know more about SharePoint, and they are  "Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" by Ted Pattison and Daniel Larson, and "Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007" by Patrick Tisseghem.  I've read them both and have used some of the demos in my briefings and sessions.

This is my current "more information" slide I use at events:

I like the idea about putting a "face to the name" - this photo is one I took of Patrick and Ted (et al) one evening at a lovely tapas bar in Barcelona during TechEd, earlier this month.

TechEd Developer 2007 in Barcelona may be a distant memory, but we do have Virtual Teched, so if you were there, you can catch up on some of the bits and pieces you may have missed. And if you weren't there, you can get a taste of what went on. Check out the Fish Bowl Interviews for a whole host of interviews and chats, including my interview with Chris Mayo about Unified Communications.

Time flies. I have just realised that next week it's that most glamorous and glitzy European developer event of the year - TechEd. I'll be there - I am responsible for the Office and Unified Communications tracks, and I can promise you we have some great sessions and speakers lined up, so I hope to  see you there. The team caught me on camera giving my tracks a plug - check it out.

I am also helping deliver one of the sessions:

OFF403 Workflow in Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies 2007: Deep Dive for Developers

Ted Pattison , David Gristwood

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 leverage the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to provide users with the ability to administrate and run workflow programs on documents and list items. This session takes a deep dive into the architecture that WSS builds on top of WF to integrate workflow templates and workflow associations with sites, lists and document libraries. You will also see a complete demonstration of how to create a custom SharePoint Workflow Template from scratch using Visual Studio. Along the way you will also see how to integrate both .ASPX forms as well as InfoPath forms into a custom SharePoint Workflow solution. The session will conclude with a discussion of best practices for packaging and deploying a custom workflow solution in a staging or production environment.

Thu Nov 8 09:00 - 10:15 Auditorium

I hope the "Auditorium" is one of the small cozy rooms where we can get together and have a bit of chat  . . .

Every now and then I pen a few words for the most excellent fortnightly (=biweekly) UK MSDN Flash Newsletter. Given I have been spending a lot of time recently talking to developers and architects about building on Office as a platform, I thought the MSDN Flash Newsletter would be the way to spread the word. The only problem - to say it all in less than 500 word. Well, 3 revisions later, and some additional editing from The Moth, here it is - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/flash/20071017.htm 

And, if you don't get UK MSDN Flash Newsletter then sign up today - it's a great way to keep up with what's happening.

One evening, in a pub, having a well earned pint with Michael McClary after one of our Microsoft events, I had a brilliant idea - why not write a Microsoft Word add-in that randomly added management "buzzword bingo" phrases into a document or email. It would be kind of fun, especially in light of some of the emails that fly around our offices at time.

The big difference with this idea is that, rather than forget all about it (which is the norm, for "great pub ideas"), the next day I actually sat down with the beta 2 version of Visual Studio 2008 and wrote it.

Obviously there is so much management buzzword bingo stuff about I feel guilty about creating more, but then this is science . . .

Here is what it looks like:

You select the level of obfuscation you desire, and hit "Buzzword My Document". Here is the original text:

There are a number of DPE OBA and SharePoint events happening between now and the end of the year. It seemed to good idea to do a quick summary of what's happening, so everyone knows.

Everyone on this email is involved in at least one of the events or has expressed interested and may want to be involved or just be aware.

Once again, many thanks for your help in supporting these events. If you have any questions, or don’t have these events in your diaries, please let me know.

After applying my Buzzword Bingo on full House setting (with the new text underlined):

There are a number of DPE OBA and SharePoint events happening between now and the end of the year, and check if it is in the frame. It seemed to good idea to do a quick summary of what's happening, so everyone knows, if only to ensure we have names in boxes.

Everyone on this email is involved in at least one of the events or has expressed interested and may want to be involved or just be aware, which we need to bottom out.

Once again, many thanks for your help in supporting these events, and ensure we have ticks in all the boxes. If you have any questions, or don’t have these events in your diaries, please let me know, so just checking we are on the same page.

Most of the time it is uncannily accurate and will generally pass the Turing Test :-). I'll post the source code if anyone is interested.

Yesterday I presented a session at the Office Business Applications (OBA) Architects Council on OBA technologies. My session was all about making people aware of the ways in which they could surface information (typically back from back end line of business systems) inside Office and SharePoint, and what there is in the Microsoft technology stack to help them.

This is my slide that attempts to capture the major surface points:

Once you know where to surface information, the next step is to look at the scenarios and functionality that makes the most sense.

Darren Strange, the UK Product Manager for Microsoft Office, was also presenting, and as well as giving some great examples of partners building OBA solutions, took blogging to the next level, by photographing and and blogging about the event whilst "on stage" during the final Q&A panel. Check out the picture.