.net and other interesting dev stuff in PA : ISV

Again, ISV Community Days in Arlington and Philly

sspotts — Sun, 24 Oct 2004 08:51:00 GMT

This quarter’s focus is on Windows 2003 Development topics. ISV’s can check out the agenda and sign up for the events as they come up. The current event, which comes to Philadelphia on October 27^th and to Arlington, VA on October 29^th is geared towards our Windows 2003 Server initiative, and the description from the event web site is:

Since I’ll be at both the Philadelphia and Arlington events, during lunch I’ll show how to use ADAM as a membership service in ASP.NET 2.0, building a custom membership provider.

Enhancing Your Applications with Windows Server 2003
Take advantage of what Microsoft provides in the OS and focus on making your applications better

Join us for this one day demo-driven technical Roadshow and find out how you can enhance your applications with Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft .NET is deeply integrated into the Windows Server 2003 family and enables an unprecedented level of software integration using XML Web Services.

You can write less code and still use the programming languages and tools you know by utilizing the application services (ASP.NET, transaction monitoring, message queuing, and data access) built into Windows Server 2003's process monitoring, recycling, and built-in instrumentation to provide reliability, availability, and scalability for your applications.

Windows Server 2003 and the .NET Framework provide you with the most scalable architecture available. Coupling these features and the standards they are built on, you can integrate applications and still achieve highly-scalable applications using them.

Plus, when you attend, you'll receive the following:

•        Microsoft Visual C# .NET Standard Edition (Not For Resale version)
•        Microsoft Connected Systems Technical Resource Kit DVD including tools, training, and testimonials.
•        Windows Marketplace Brochure
•        A cool Microsoft .NET t-shirt

ISV Community Days in Arlington, VA and Philadelphia, PA

sspotts — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 22:32:00 GMT

Over 130 small and medium partners attended the first of the quarterly ISV Community Days in Arlington and Philadelphia last week. Steve Borg gave great presentations in both cities, and there was so much discussion around so many questions that he could barely finish on time.

At this one-day demo-driven event, ISVs found out how easy it is to develop Connected Systems today with Microsoft .NET. After an "über-demo" on how the future will look with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), developers and technical decision-makers were treated to an alphabet soup-like assortment of demos on:

§ Microsoft Web Service Enhancements for .NET Framework Version 2 (WSE 2.0),

§ Web service-Messaging (WS-M),

§ Web services-Security (WS-S) , and

§ An "end-to-end" walk-through of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004.

The next quarters events are all around Windows 2003 development, with some great stuff for developers.

ISV Buddy's

sspotts — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:14:00 GMT

I just got pinged by the ISV Buddy of a local ISV that I never ran into, and they’re right in my back yard. The ISV is doing some interesting stuff, and wants to get more help at a local, technical level. Had they not had a buddy it would have taken them longer to have figured out how to connect.

The Microsoft ISV Buddy Program is all about connecting you, the Independent Software Vendor, with a Microsoft employee who will be your point person within Microsoft. It’s about putting a face to Microsoft and helping you get timely answers to your questions and requests. Through this 1-on-1 relationship, your Microsoft buddy will be able to guide you to resources and to help you succeed in building solutions on Microsoft platforms.

Basically, you just sign up by filling out a profile form, and the program matches you with a Microsoft employee who’s volunteered to work with an ISV. The buddy will work with you for a year, and help you get into other ISV programs that can get you even more help.

ISV Community Days

sspotts — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 22:59:00 GMT

More and more focus from corporate is being put on helping Microsoft ISV’s, which definitely makes my job more enjoyable! One of the new initiatives is ISV Community Days, a quarterly event focused on delivering technical and business content to ISV’s. This is a broad-reaching event, and a great value.

ISV’s can check out the agenda and sign up for the events as they come up. The first event, which comes to Philadelphia on September 17^th, is geared towards our Connected Systems initiative, and the description from the event web site is:

Join us for this one day demo-driven technical Roadshow and find out how easy it is to develop Connected Systems today with Microsoft .NET. We start the day with an "uberdemo" to show what your future looks like with Service Oriented Architecture. Followed with more demos on WSE v2, Moving Beyond HTTP Request/Response, and Securing Web Services. We'll end the day with an "end to end" walk through of how you can use Microsoft BizTalk Server to connect your code to other systems.

Plus, when you attend, you'll receive the following:

· Microsoft Visual C# .NET Standard Edition (Not For Resale version)

· Microsoft Connected Systems Technical Resource Kit DVD including tools, training, and testimonials

· Windows Marketplace Resource Kit

· A cool Microsoft .NET t-shirt

If you sign up with the RSVP code “ISVDE9”, you’ll get a discounted price of $99.

MSDN ISV Community site opens

sspotts — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 08:11:00 GMT

Now there's a special place on MSDN for ISV developers to go to find pertinent information for their own ISV focused development needs. The ISV Partner site still exists, and now focuses on business information for ISV's as well as additional technical support for Microsoft Certified and Gold partners.

ISV's and Microsoft - Longhorn, SmartClient, Windows, Empower, etc.

sspotts — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 01:01:00 GMT

Lots going on for ISV's with Microsoft support. If you're an ISV and want to get support, one easy way to get started is by browsing the ISV Partner web site.

http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv/

From here, you get to see links to webcasts, new programs, strategies, and other resources. Some cool links for technical help from this site are:

Longhorn Readiness Program for ISVs
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv/longhorn.aspx

Windows Server Developer Program
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv/windowsserver2003/default.aspx

Smart Client Readiness for ISVs
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv/smartclients/default.aspx

And the on-ramp program for new ISV's, called Empower
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv/empower/default.aspx