TechEd Wrap Up - Better Late Than Never

OK, mea culpa. TechEd 2008 North America has been over for a few weeks now, and I have not yet posted my wrap up. I'll keep it short and sweet, but there are some cool resources I want to point out.

BillG's Keynote

As I previously mentioned, I built one of the keynote demo's for the TechEd 2008 Developers Conference. Brian Harry presented the demo during the keynote, while I ran a mirror setup back stage. The mirror setup is there in case of a hardware failure; the onstage demo'er can swap to the back up machine at any time. While we had the mirror machine, we never had to use it. Brian did an awesome job.

After the keynote I got a chance to meet BillG, who thanked all of us who built the demos for our hard work. We had a group photo, and for one brief second I thought, "hey, I could pick-pocket Bill Gates right now." Then I figured the risk-reward ratio was way off...does he even carry a wallet? Right after that BillG was quickly whisked away.

You can watch the entire keynote here. You can also see my version of the Visual Studio Team System demo here.

TechEd Online Panel Discussions

I arranged two panel discussions to be recorded for TechEd Online (although I didn't participate in either this year). You can now watch both panel discussions online.

Let's Talk Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

In this panel discussion you will hear from several Microsoft MVPs with a wide variety of experience in Application Lifecycle Management. With no fear of sharing their opinions and duking it out when necessary, this group of top-notch consultants and trainers will definitely prove to be informative and entertaining. This is a panel you don't want to miss. With Brian Randell, Jeff Levinson, Richard Hundhausen, Chris Menegay, Mike Azocar, Joel Semeniuk, and Steven Borg.

Watch it now: WMV Low | WMV High

Visual Studio Team System Panel - Meet the Team

In this panel discussion you will have the opportunity to hear directly from the team building Visual Studio Team System, including Brian Harry–Technical Fellow. Come and meet the team, and get all your questions answered. With Brian Harry, Peter Provost, Norman Guadagno, Gert Drapers, Habib Heydarian, Neelesh Kamkolkar.

Watch it now: WMV Low | WMV High

Sessions

I delivered one session twice at TechEd 2008 Developers and one session (only once) at TechEd 2008 IT Pros. If you attended either conference you will receive DVDs with all of the session recordings, including these. If you didn't attended, you can buy the DVDs once they are available (I'll post a link when I find out what it is).

My Dev week session:

Build Better Software: Tips and Tools to Improve Your Applications - Doug Seven

You want to build better software. You want the applications you build to be better, cheaper, and faster to release. One of the most costly stages of software development is finding and fixing bugs. What if you could find the bugs and fix them nearly immediately? In this session, learn tips and tools you can use with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 to determine code complexity, validate the capabilities of the application, and understand the overall quality of the software you are building. If you want to improve the code you write then don’t miss this session.

This session scored an 8.33 (out of 9) with over 200 people who attended it. This was one of the Top 5 sessions in the Developer Tools & Languages track, and one of the Top 20 session at TechEd 2008 Developers.

My IT Pro week session:

End-to-End Application Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System - Doug Seven

Visual Studio Team System is a fully integrated application lifecycle management toolset, enabling teams to work more collaboratively to deliver quality software with fewer obstacles. In this demo intensive session, see how Visual Studio Team System 2008 enables project managers, architects, developers, and testers throughout the application lifecycle. See how Team System enables managing team workflow, system and datacenter modeling, tools to ensure quality from the earliest stages of development, as well as tools to validate applications prior to release.

This session scored an 8.03 (out of 9) with over 80 people who attended it. This was the highest rated session in the Application Development for IT Pros track.

Channel 9

While at TechEd I had a chance to sit down with Dan Fernandez of Channel 9 and spend a few minutes talking about TechEd and Visual Studio Team System codename "Rosario." You can see the interview here.

Doug Seven: Visual Studio Team System 2008 and Rosario

That's it. See you at the next one.

I'm No Economist....

I'm a software developer turned software marketer. I am not an economist, nor have I ever taken an economics class. I am an average American citizen living in the suburbs. I have a wife, a child, two dogs, an SUV and a sedan. While I try to do my part to "live green," I love internal combustion, so both my vehicles have 6-cylinder engines. My wife and I car pool as well as work from home to reduce our gasoline consumption and carbon footprint.

I have been out of town for 3-weeks, and today, being back in town, I filled up the SUV with gas. Somehow, while I was away, regular gas in my neighborhood jumped to $4.41 USD per gallon. Pardon my French, but Holy Crap!

For a long time I have shared my disdain with the oil/gas industry (along with the hotel and airline industries) with anyone who wanted to listen. I hope you are willing to listen.

The Pick Pocket of Our Collective Wallet

After spending $4.41/gallon, I decided to do a little research ^[1].

• Just 5-years ago:
  • The average price of gas in the USA was $1.43.
  • The average price of a barrel of crude oil was $24.00
• Just 1-year ago:
  • The average price of gas in the USA was $3.00 (more than double the price in 2003)
  • The average price of a barrel of crude oil was $67.00 (nearly triple the price in 2003)
• Today:
  • The average price of gas in the USA is $4.16 (more than a 30% increase in 1-year)
  • The average price of a barrel of crude oil was $138.43 (more than a 100% increase in 1-year)

What Does It Cost to Make Gasoline?

A barrel of crude oil is 42-gallons. When refined, this barrel produces approximately 19.5 gallons of gasoline (depending on source, mix, blend, etc.) as well as other usable byproducts. As near as I can tell, an average of 30% of the barrel is used to make gasoline, leaving the remaining 70% for producing other types of products (heating oil, etc.).

Simple math tells me that a barrel of crude oil that costs $24.00 produces 19.5 gallons of gasoline at a raw product cost of $.037. Selling that gallon of gasoline for $1.43 creates a gross profit of $1.06 - nearly 300% (of course I haven't accounted for refinery costs, transportation and storage costs, and taxes, fees, etc.).

Using the same math, a barrel of crude oil that costs $67.00 produces 19.5 gallons of gasoline at a raw product cost of $1.03. Selling that gallon of gasoline for $3.00 creates a gross profit of $1.97 - a profit of about 200%.

A barrel of crude oil that costs $138.00 produces 19.5 gallons of gasoline at a raw product cost of $2.13. Selling that gallon of gasoline for $4.16 creates a gross profit of $2.03 - a profit of about 100%.

Again, I haven't accounted for refinery costs, transportation and storage costs, and taxes, fees, etc.

Awww, Those Poor Oil Magnates

Given this, should we feel bad for the gasoline companies, after all, layman math tells us that they are cutting into their profits as much as 200% from 5-years ago? Probably not.

According to ExxonMobil, their 2007 year end oil and gas resource base stands at 72 billion oil equivalent barrels - enough to sustain current production rates for 14-years. ^[2]

What does that tell me? I am buying gas at today's prices made from oil secured at previous years' (or perhaps decade's)  lower cost; I paid $4.41/gallon for gas that was produced, likely, from crude oil that cost $20-$30 per barrel not the $138.43 per barrel cost of today.

This may explain the continued growth of ExxonMobil's profit. They are the largest company in the world by revenue standards, at around $400,000,000,000 - yes, that's 11 zero's...400 Billion ^[3]. ExxonMobil's profit over the past 5-years has risen slightly (by percentage) from around 9% in 2003 to 10.4% in 2007. The difference of the 1.4% increase in profit equates to around $5 Billion dollars profit.

The Continued Raping of America

It is amazing to me that a company (and an industry) can steadily increase the cost of its goods and even more so its profits while creating a potential recession in the USA economy (not to mention the global economy). I appreciate capitalism as much as anyone, but I also deeply appreciate community. As members of a community we need to ensure that we are not gaining additional profits at the cost of the overall community. I am not saying that ExxonMobil and others should suddenly become non-profits, or loose money for the good of the community, but I am suggesting that perhaps they should not continue to increase their profits at the cost of the community.

The increase in the consumer price of gasoline of nearly 300% in 5-years is driving up the cost of nearly everything. After filling up with gas today, I went to the grocery store and spent nearly $400 on what would have cost me around $200 a few years ago. Every night on the local news there are "human interest" stories about people who are struggling to pay for gas so that they can get to school or work. I know of people who have had to sell their house and move to less desirable neighborhoods simply to reduce their distance to work because they couldn't afford the commute.

Our country is led, for now, by people with (what seems to me to be at least a bit of) a conflict of interest. The Bush family has a long history in the business of energy and oil. Dick Cheney was, of course, CEO of Halliburton, an energy services company operating largely in oil and gas exploration and production, where he amassed most of his net worth(said to be between $30 and $100 million). When these two entered their current positions, gasoline prices were around $1.30/gallon. As they prepare to leave office, gasoline prices are over $4.00/gallon and show no sign of a plateau.

Where Am I Going?

I am fortunate. I can afford to weather the storm through our current gas prices (at least to some degree). I car pool. I can work from home if I'd like. I don't go on a lot of road trips. While I love my car, I don't need to drive it frequently (I bought it in late 2005 and it has only 24,000 miles on it - about 24 miles a day since I bought the car, or about 8,700 miles per year). Many others I know are not as fortunate. So where am I going with all this?

Perhaps I am going no where. Perhaps I just needed to vent. Perhaps, since I am not an economist, my math is all wrong, and the oil and gas companies are completely justified in raising gasoline prices more than 100% in the past year, and almost 300% in the past 5-years. Perhaps I owe them an apology for this post.

Perhaps a $400 Million retirement package for Lee Raymond, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, is totally acceptable, while others forego their little luxuries in order to pay for gas. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with ExxonMobil handing out $214 Million in bonuses ^[4] while the middle and lower classes struggle to pay for gas to get to school and work, and struggle to pay for the increasing cost of other every day goods. Perhaps it is completely normal that, as we potentially head into a recession in the USA, ExxonMobil reports a 17% increase in year-over-year first quarter profits. Perhaps $11 Billion in profit in the first quarter alone isn't enough for ExxonMobil ^[5]. That's about $36 per person for every man woman and child in the USA, or about $157 per running vehicle in the USA. That is the equivalent of over 100 gallons of gas per running vehicle based on 2003 prices. And that's just the first quarter profits.

 

[1] http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=60

[2] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2008_Feb_15/ai_n24264728

[3] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000119312508041781/d10k.htm#tx91974_07 

[4] http://www.advfn.com/nyse/StockNews.asp?stocknews=XOM&article=23609512&headline=exxon-mobil-gives-ceo-3-36m-cash-bonus

[5] http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/othercities/dallas/stories/2008/04/28/daily44.html

]inbetween[ - Microsoft Community Summit 2008

So what is it?  Basically, the Florida User Group Communities were asked what would they do with the Orlando Convention Center for a weekend?  What they came up with was a FREE weekend with loads with loads of great content.

One of our favorite Visual Studio Team System MVPs, Richard Hundhausen, is taking time to present on a variety of Visual Studio Team System topics during this (almost) full day event on Sunday, June 8th. He's got a five o'clock flight so expect this session to shut down around 2:30p. There's plenty of other stuff you can hop over to on the agenda.

Microsoft Community Summit 2008 ]inbetween[

Orlando Convention Center, June 7 and 8

More info :: http://www.devfish.net/articles/inbetween/default.aspx

New Team System White Papers Focus on Key Benefits

Seven (7) new white papers focused on the key benefits of Visual Studio Team System are now available in both Word and PDF format. The white papers expand on the seven key benefits outlined in the summary paper "Key Benefits of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System." These white papers are intended for Technical Decision Makers (TDM) and the Business Decision Makers (BDM), rather than the traditional developer audience.

The seven white papers are:

1. Communicate and Collaborate with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008
2. Drive Predictability with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008
3. Manage Team Workflow with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008
4. Use Familiar Tools with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008
5. Ensure Quality Early and Often with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008
6. Integrate Frequently with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008
7. Make Real-time Decisions with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008

 

These white papers have been published on MSDN and will be available to TechEd 2008 USA attendees on a USB key that will be given away on the show floor.

You can find the white papers in DOCX and PDF format here.

TechEd is Just Around the Corner (and I am working late)

TechEd 2008 Developers is less than two weeks away, and of course that means we are down to crunch time. I am a co-Track PM for three tracks - Developer Tools & Languages (TLA), Development Practices (DVP), and Windows & Frameworks (WIN). That makes up about 200 different pieces of content (sessions, chalk talks, pre-con's, hands-on-labs and instructor-led-labs).

We've done most of the dry-runs for the breakout sessions and this week and next we are doing dry runs of the pre-cons. The HOLs are on the servers and on a truck to Orlando, and I am wrapping up a couple extra tasks - the ALM & Development Practices booth, the sessions I will be the speaker for, and oh...a demo for the BillG keynote!

BillG's Keynote

As we speak I am putting some extra polish on one of the demos. I can't tell you about it, but I can tell you that I am pretty excited by it. I can't wait to see your reaction. Its amazing how much work goes into the keynote, and, as Brian mentions, how much of it really happens right at the end of the prep time. I have, with the help of a couple people, created the demo in a VPC as a proof-of-concept for the exec communications team. I've acquired two killer machines (primary and back-up), built up the final demo on the primary machine, demo'ed it again for the exec comm team, and had the primary machine imaged onto the backup machine. Now I am sitting here making a backup of the backup machine to a VPC using Acronis True Image. This is my first time trying this (physical to VPC backup), but all my cool and smart and geeky friends recommended it.

ALM & Development Practices Booth

The ALM & Development Practices booth will be cool. This year we are really making a splash with our ALM presence. You will see Visual Studio Team System everywhere. In the booth are we will have six (6) demo stations - one for each of the Visual Studio Team System client products (Architecture Edition, Development Edition, Database Edition, and Test Edition) as well as two demo stations for Team Foundation Server - one for Process & Project Management and one for Build & Version Control. We will have a bunch of cool people from the product teams there, so stop by (yes, we have some stuff to give away).

TechEd Online Panel Discussions

Here's two things to get on your schedule. I have organized two different VSTS/ALM panel discussions. The first is an ALM panel with all non-Microsoft'ies. Granted, they are all Visual Studio Team System MVP's - but trust me, they tell it like it is, whether its what I want to hear or not. The panel is Richard Hundhausen, Chris Menegay, Joel Semeniuk, Brian Randell, and Jeff Levenson, moderated by Steven Borg.

The second is all people from the product teams - including Sam Guckenheimer, our product planner. The panel will be moderated by Norman Guadagno who is the Director of Enterprise Development Marketing (and my boss).

Here's the important details:

Let's Talk Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 3:00 on the TechEd Online Stage.

Visual Studio Team System Panel - Meet the Team
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 9:00 AM on the TechEd Online Stage.

Session(s)

I will be doing one session at each TechEd this year (although in the first week my session will be repeated, so I will be doing it twice).

Build Better Software: Tips and Tools to Improve Your Applications - Doug Seven

You want to build better software. You want the applications you build to be better, cheaper, and faster to release. One of the most costly stages of software development is finding and fixing bugs. What if you could find the bugs and fix them nearly immediately? In this session, learn tips and tools you can use with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 to determine code complexity, validate the capabilities of the application, and understand the overall quality of the software you are building. If you want to improve the code you write then don’t miss this session.

Times:

1. Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 2:45 PM (see session guide for room number)
2. Friday, June 6, 2008 at 10:15 AM (see session guide for room number)

 

We will also have a couple sessions on Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario" on Friday, June 6th. They are absolutely worth sticking around for.

Application Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario" - Sam Guckenheimer

Learn about the future of Visual Studio Team System code name “Rosario” and how Microsoft is designing it to help you “build the right thing” and “build it right.” Those are the two key pillars of “Rosario” and are the focus of this session. It is difficult for executives and software teams to understand all of the projects underway, and how they support the business needs. Learn how “Rosario” will enable software teams to prioritize the right work, plan effectively, adjust projects effectively when needs change, and finally track progress and trace all metrics (progress, quality, etc.) back to business goals and customer requirements/scenarios. Additionally, testing and application quality is about detecting quality issues early in the cycle and fixing them, reducing project risk and defects, and ensuring the end product really works for end customers. Learn how “Rosario” will automate catching bugs, facilitate testing, and address other quality problems early and often throughout the cycle.

1. Friday, June 6, 2008 at 2:45 PM (see session guide for room number)

 

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario" Architecture Edition -Peter Provost

How can you more quickly understand and evolve an application that you’ve never seen? How do you manipulate the existing architecture in light of new business requirements? How do you validate the logical architecture against existing patterns and design rules? Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario" Architecture Edition integrates logical modeling using UML-compliant diagrams and physical modeling using DSL diagrams with first-class support for .NET. Armed with the ability to see into the system’s code to quickly understand the context of necessary change, developers and architects can quickly identify the impact of a change. The ability to overlay metrics generated from other application lifecycle activities such as code analysis, profiling, testing etc. into these model diagrams will make these artifacts first-class citizens that are valued by both architects and developers.

1. Friday, June 6, 2008 at 10:15 AM (see session guide for room number)

 

During TechEd 2008 IT Professionals I will be giving the following talk:

End-to-End Application Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System - Doug Seven

Visual Studio Team System is a fully integrated application lifecycle management toolset, enabling teams to work more collaboratively to deliver quality software with fewer obstacles. In this demo intensive session, see how Visual Studio Team System 2008 enables project managers, architects, developers, and testers throughout the application lifecycle. See how Team System enables managing team workflow, system and datacenter modeling, tools to ensure quality from the earliest stages of development, as well as tools to validate applications prior to release.

1. Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 1:00 PM (see session guide for room number)

 

That's it for tonight. I look forward to meeting you at TechEd.

D7

GeekFest Party at TechEd 2008 Developer Conference

Let’s face it, going to technical conferences is good for your career, but it’s not a whole lot of fun. What you need is an outlet. You need to have fun. That’s where we step in.

Cheap beer and lousy pizza!

We are bringing back GeekFest! Join us at Howl at the Moon for a night of lousy pizza, cheap beer, dueling pianos, socializing and one wild rubber duck competition….yes, a rubber duck competition.

There is limited invitations available, so what are you waiting for. If you are attending the TechEd 2008 Developer Conference you can pre-register here.

Register and pick up your "duck" ticket in the TechEd Technical Learning Center (TLC) at the Developer Tools & Languages (TLA) information desk. You must have a "duck" ticket to get into the party. One "duck" admits up to two people.

When:
Tuesday, June 3, 2008 from 7:00 PM -10:00 PM ET

Where
Howl at the Moon, 8815 International Drive, Orlando, FL 32819

Ticketing
You must have a "duck" ticket to attend the party. One duck admits two.

A Little on LINQ

Recently I was involved (only a little) in preparing some of the Visual Studio Launch content for the February 27th launch event (and subsequent worldwide events). During the preparation we held "train-the-trainer" meetings where people who would be presenting launch sessions around the world could learn more about the sessions and ask questions. During one of these TTT events a question was raised about a LINQ demo that was written for a session named "Breakthrough Software Development Challenges with Visual Studio 2008".

The Question

Is there a performance impact to joining result sets in LINQ from two different data sources?

This question came up because this is exactly one of the scenarios we demo. Here is my rendition of the demo.

The Answer

I talked to the language teams and this is the truth of the situation.

For cross-domain joins you typically have the choice between really lousy performance or a runtime error – and generally you should prefer the latter!

The original source of the query gets to decide how the query gets executed. If the source is a LINQ to SQL table, for instance, it will simply look at anything it gets joined with, and throw an error if that is not another LINQ to SQL table, entity collection or query result.

If you go the other way, however, and join an in-memory collection (such as the descendents of an XElement, as in our demo) with a LINQ to SQL table or query result, then you are in trouble: It will enumerate the table into memory and do the join on your machine (Yikes!).

The general guidance is: don’t do cross domain joins!

Let me qualify a bit: I am talking specifically about a “Join” operation on large data sources in different domains. There are several things you can still do to work sensibly across domains, such as:

• Query the remote (e.g. LINQ to SQL) data first to yield a small enough result that it makes sense to pull it down and join locally
• Use the Contains() method on LINQ to SQL data, which will take small local collections and actually send them to the db as an IN expression in the generated query

The upshot is that one still has to be aware of the cross-domain joining and manage its impact as an application programmer.

D7

Upcoming Events I am Speaking At

In March and April I am actually a bit busy espousing prolifically about topics near and dear to me. I have a couple internal Microsoft events I am speaking at - one to what we call our Inner Circle Partners, and the other to System Integrators. In both events I am speaking on Visual Studio Team System and Application Lifecycle Management. The topics I am covering internally include topics I am speaking on in public venues as well.

VSLive! San Francisco

At VSLive! in San Francisco, Stephanie Saad and I will be presenting the ALM and Development Process track during the Microsoft Day (Monday, March 31, 2008).

Here is the track detail:

VM1 A Lap Around Visual Studio Team System 2008
Stephanie Saad
10:15 a.m.
In this demo-intensive session you will be exposed to many of the new features in Visual Studio Team System 2008. This session cover everything from Team Foundation Server for project management, work item tracking, version control and build support, to integration with Microsoft Project and Excel, unit testing, code coverage and code metrics, database projects, to Web testing with AJAX support and the new user-pace load testing. You will leave with an understanding of how Visual Studio Team System 2008 can be your organization’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution, and enable you and your team to collaborate and communicate to ensure software quality and provide visibility into the development process.

VM4 Improving Team Development
Doug Seven
11:45 a.m.
Do you build software alone? In today's world, software development is done by increasingly larger teams made of people with different skill sets, including project planning, functional definition, development and testing. As teams grow larger there is a greater need for tools to enable the communication and collaboration that is necessary to deliver high quality software effectively. In this session you will learn how to function as a collaborative team using Visual Studio Team System 2008, including process templates, work item tracking, version control, and reporting. Whether you are team that values Agile process, one that prefers CMMI, or any other process, this session will apply to you.

VM7 Create Better Software
Doug Seven
3:00 p.m.
You want to ship better software. Ultimately you measure your success by determining the quality bar that is acceptable, and the risk mitigation that is appropriate for your project or organization. While some projects require high, stringent quality levels, others can be more forgiving. In either case, you want to ensure your software meets and exceeds its quality bar, and all risks are addressed as needed. In this session you will learn about the quality assurance benefits of Visual Studio Team System 2008, including unit testing, code coverage & metrics, performance profiling, Web testing and load testing (including AJAX support).

VM10 The Future of Application Lifecycle Management from Microsoft
Stephanie Saad
4:30 p.m.
We are well underway developing the next release of Visual Studio Team System, code name "Rosario." In the next release, you and your team will benefit from enhanced communication and collaboration that enables you to match your development efforts with the needs of your business. Your team will benefit from improvements in work item tracking, dependency identification, historical debugging, test impact analysis, stand-alone debugging, and the addition of a stand-alone manual test runner enabling you to extend out your testing efforts easily. This session will include demos of some of the key improvements in Visual Studio Team System that are planned for the Rosario release.

I would love to see you there and get a chance to chat.

Irish Microsoft Technology Conference, Dublin, Ireland

The day after I hop a plane and fly to Dublin, Ireland for the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference (IMTC), a 2-day conference run by the developer community in Ireland that is supported/sponsored by Microsoft DPE Ireland. I am very excited about this event. This is a combination technical event and one of our worldwide launch events (Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008).

Here are my sessions:

15:15 - 16:30 Reach End Users With Next Generation Web Applications (Doug Seven)
Reach End-Users With Next Generation Web Applications is presented by Doug Seven

10:00 - 11:15 A Lap Around Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 (Doug Seven)
In this demo-intensive session you will be exposed to many of the new features in Visual Studio Team System 2008.

15:15 - 16:30 Improving Team Development with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 (Doug Seven)
Do you build software alone?

11:30 - 12:45 Breakthrough Software Development Challenges with Visual Studio 2008 (Doug Seven)
Explore all the new Visual Studio 2008 features!

If you can make it to this one...you can buy me a pint :)

I think I get to lay low for the rest of April and May (unless I go to Visual Studio Connections in late April).

TechEd 2008 Developers Conference

From June 3rd - 6th I will be at the TechEd 2008 Developers Conference (OK, I will be in Orlando from May 31st - June 14th, for both the Developers and the IT Professionals Conferences...but I digress). I am only presenting one session because I am also the Co-Track PM for three tracks (along with Erika, who also has a fourth track). That should keep me pretty busy...if you see me and I look like a zombie...buy me a triple grande nonfat latte...it will make my day!

Here is my one session:

Build Better Software: Tips and Tools to Improve Your Applications
You want to build better software. You want the applications you build to be better, cheaper, and faster to release. One of the most costly stages of software development is finding and fixing bugs. What if you could find the bugs and fix them nearly immediately? In this session, learn tips and tools you can use with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 to determine code complexity, validate the capabilities of the application, and understand the overall quality of the software you are building. If you want to improve the code you write then don’t miss this session.

The date and time are TBD.

OK...that's enough to keep me busy for a while. I hope to see you at one or more of these events.

D7

SnapShots Added

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Testing Live Writer

This is nothing more than a test to ensure I can use Windows Live Writer with my new blog.

d7