Brian H. Prince

We have been really busy lately getting the last details put together for the Azure Boot Camp event series. We will be visiting more than 15 cities. Some city dates have been announced. We are working hard on locking down the rest.You can get all of the details including cities, dates, and what to bring at www.AzureBootCamp.com.

What is an Azure Boot Camp?

Azure Boot Camp is a two day deep dive class to get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned. ABC is more than just a class, it is also an event in a box. If you don't see a class near you, then throw you own. We provide all of the materials and training you need to host your own class. This can be for your company, your customers, your friends, or even your family. Please let us know so we can give you all of the details.

Awesome. How much does it cost?

Thanks to all of our fantabulous sponsors, this two day training event is FREE! We will provide drinks and snacks, but you will be on your own for lunch on both days. This is a training class after all.

How do I attend one?

Just find a city and date on the schedule that works for you. Click through to see the details for that class, and then register. Keep in mind you will most likely need to bring your own laptop to do the labs.

What do I need to bring?

For most boot camps, you will need to bring your own laptop, and have it preloaded with the software listed here. An extension cord would help as well.

There isn't one near me? Now what?

Throw your own! We will help you put on your own boot camp. Contact us for more details.

Near the end of any year every magazine, newspaper, and website come outs with their own top ten list for something. Some even one-up each other by having top 100 lists. For example, the top 10 movies of the year, or the top 100 games of all time.

I admit that I might be a little late on releasing my own top ten list for the year. This post has been bouncing around my head for a while, but two things have happened that caused me to get off my duff and write it.

The first is that I have bought a few albums from MC Frontalot lately, and have been really enjoying them. He has a song titled "I hate your blog." You can listen to it for free here. I really hate those stupid Top N articles magazines, blogs, etc put out at the end of the year. This song inspired me to think up the idea of having my own top ten list.

The second motivator is that I was hanging around with Leon and told him of my idea. He thought it was funny, and encouraged me to finally post it.

My top ten list.

Top Ten Numbers

1. Zero : Zero is important to us. It is paired with 1 to make binary, and without binary you would be reading this on hand made paper tacked to the front door of the local church.

2. One : The first natural number. This number existed before zero. Also, 1 is the loneliest number.

3. Infinity : Not all infinities are the same size. There are whole branches of math that wouldn’t exist without the concept of infinity.

4. Two : Without two we couldn’t have powers of two, which is important for binary to work. I also seem to always see numbers that are the power of two all around me. It is kind of like that move 23 with Jim Carey. Another number I see a lot is 12:34. I see this on clocks all the time. I like it because the numbers are in sequence, and that makes it a calm number for me, instead of all of the chaotic random numbers the rest of the times during the are made of.

5. 3.1415 : Pi. The ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. Again, a lot of math wouldn’t work without this invention.

6. 42 : 'nuff said.

7. 1701 : As in NCC-1701. As in James T. Kirk, Spock, and Kahn.

8. 360 : Both degrees of a circle, and the name of my favorite gaming machine. Yay!

9. 1.6180339887498948482 : The golden ratio. This is seen all through nature, and leads to beautiful, graceful designs.

10. 9.86 : If you tack on m/sec^2 you get the local acceleration due to gravity on Earth. This one time in college we were finding g through experimentation, and no matter what we did the local value for g in this one corner of the lab was always lower than everywhere else. We would reproduce the experiment in another part of the lab and we would get the right result. Go back to the "weird" corner and get the result again. I am sure that will become a plot point in a Dan Brown novel. Gravity. Its not just a good idea, its the law.

Microsoft often holds events on how to use our latest tools and technologies. I love going to those events, and helping people get the most out of our tools and frameworks.

One thing that I am passionate about is how we can all be better developers. Jim Holmes put on an event in Columbus a few months ago called Software Engineering 101 that covers how to be a better developer. The morning is comprised of presentations on SOLID, etc. The afternoon is just one big pair programming session to work and learn hands on how to use the principles discussed in the morning. The afternoon will provide guidance and challenges to give you something to work towards.

The Columbus event was sold out and packed very quickly. It was such a huge success I begged Jim to bring is to Nashville. We will be holding the event in the Nashville office. The event will also be webcasted so people will be able to participate online. We will even be able to help people who are pairing at home.

While we will be using mostly .NET and Visual Studio, these practices work for any language or platform. Please spread the word. And bring your computer!

Event details:

Saturday, February 27, 2010
8:00am - 5:00pm
Microsoft Office
2555 Meridian Blvd., Ste. 300
Franklin, TN 37067

Seating for the live event is limited, so register today. If you can't join us for the in-person event, register for the online experience.

8:00 am – Introductions

8:15 am - Principles of Object Oriented Programming 

9:30 am - SOLID Software Development

11:00 am - Understanding Code Metrics

11:20 am – Hands On Demo

12:30 pm - Lunch (not provided)

1:30 pm - Hands on Test Driven Development 5:00 pm – Closing

Software Engineering 101

This is a one-day, FREE event focused on core skills that modern developers need to have to be successful today. This isn’t about learning the basics of Silverlight, WPF, or <insert_new_tech_of_day>, rather, this conference will help you understand how to build software that is better designed, more maintainable, and more testable.

We’ll spend the morning on fundamentals around object-oriented programming, the SOLID principles and a few other important skills. .NET is completely object-oriented, but many developers don’t fully grasp the underlying principles to get the most of it. We will then build on this with a tour of the SOLID principles. SOLID is an acronym for the five principles that developers should follow regardless of project type or platform. This session will rely on the object-oriented knowledge, and will teach the developers how to better write their code. The next section will focus on metrics in code (and will use our tools for the samples) to show that you need to understand and instrument your codebase as you extend it. The last session will build on all of this to show modern test driven development (showing MStest and other frameworks). Using all of these skills, and our tools/platform, developers will build better software with a higher level of quality, and better customer satisfaction.

The afternoon will focus on hands-on practice with the skills, since it isn’t enough to just watch someone talk about them. A programmers problem (think like an assignment in a CS class in college) will be given. Developers will need to bring their own laptops with Visual Studio, to work through the afternoon. People will pair up on their laptops to write the tests and code they need to solve the problems. Those that are attending the session from home will participate in the same way, writing the code on their laptop to solve the problems.

We will have ‘presenters’ in the live meeting that can answer Q&A, and even check on their code by using the live meeting. We will pick one speaker and one person that is new to these skills to pair together, and color comment on what they are doing over live meeting. So people attending from home can do the work on their own VS, and watch a new person learn and do at the side of the speaker over live meeting.

While I was at PDC this fall I sat down with Mehul Harry from DevExpress to talk about Azure, Cloud Computing, and of course soft skillz. The interview is only a few minutes long, I hope you like it.

Thanks to Mehul for having me on the show.

http://tv.devexpress.com/PDC09BrianPrince.movie

I have moved my blog to my own server. I have tried to redirect every way in to the new site, so if you are seeing this you are coming to the old address "brianhprince.blogspot.com".

You should change to www.brianhprince.com.

-bhp

What happened at PDC do you ask? Lots of stuff. We are shipping more bits now than we ever have. First, watch this slide deck we have put together that is a quick lap around the PDC and find out what makes you smile.

And then you can go to www.microsoftpdc.com/videos to watch all of the sessions, and drill deep into each topic. This will give you something to do on your Zune while travelling over the river and through the hills to grandmothers house this holiday.

I want to thank the Findlay .NET UG and the Knoxville .NET UG for hosting me, and for everyone coming out to the meetings.

I also want to thank Kevin Grossnicklaus. He was the first to put a deck together,and he shared it with us to save work. Mike Wood also helped by making sure we hit all the top points, and polished up my shoddy hack job on Kevin’s deck.

Wow! A year has come and gone and the second annual DogFood conference is done. We had 19 partners come together to put on a two day event for customers in Columbus, Ohio. We had attendees from four hours away! There were over 45 sessions. I was able to deliver a talk on using Azure.

There were 400 attendees over the two days, and I think everyone had a lot of fun, and learned a lot.

I want to thank everyone who came to my session, and please connect with me if you have more questions about Azure.

The slides are here:

This is the second year for the dog food conference, brain child of Danilo Casino. It is a local event, put on by MS and our partners. This year we have two full days, with four tracks. We have both local MS employees, as well as some blue badges coming in from out of state. Many of the presenters are local rock stars that work for our partners. This event is free (unless you are in pubsec, then you have to pay for your food).

It was a great event last year, and I hope to see you there.

Since the event is two days, we have two registration links. Please bear with us, it’s just how the machine works.

The reg links:

Thursday Registration Link

Friday Registration Link

· **Attendees must register for each day separately**

What:

· Please join us for the 2^nd Annual Dog Food Conference.  We will have MS speakers, MS partners, ISVs, MS MVPs and community leads presenting 40 topics. The story behind “Eating one’s own Dog Food”

When:

· November 12-13, 2009; Attendees must sign up for both days separately

Where:

· 8800 Lyra Dr. Columbus, OH 43240.  Sessions will be on Floor 3, 4 and 5

Why:

· See the overviews and roadmaps for MS applications, knowledge transfer with your peers and meet with MS Partners and User Group leads.

Thursday, November 12, 2009: Topic List View

Collaboration:

· BPOS

· SharePoint Road Map

· SharePoint Governance

· KnowledgeLake: Document Imaging and Capture for SharePoint

· Exchange 2010 Overview

· Dynamics XRM

Core Infrastructure Optimization:

· MS Support Lifecycle

· Windows Mobile

· Windows 7

Development, Application Lifecycle Management:

· TFS: Process template

· Test Driven Development

· LINQ

· F#

Data Platform:

· SQL 2008 R2 Overview

Project Management & Business Intelligence:

· Performance Point Services

· Project Server Overview

· Project Portfolio Server

· Sketch Flow

 

Friday: November 13, 2009: Topic List View

Collaboration:

· Office Communication Server

Infrastructure Optimization:

· SCCM R3: Desktop Power Management

· Server 2008 R2, Hyper V

· Application and Desktop Virtualization

· SMSE Suite: DPM, SCOM, SCCM & VMM

· Windows 7 Lunch & Learn

· MS Support Lifecycle

Application Platform, Cloud Services:

· SilverLight Overview

· F# Overview

· BizTalk 2009 & SOA

· COBOL & mainframe apps on the Windows Platform

· Silverlight, Rich Internet Applications

· Bing Maps

· Windows Azure

Security:

· RSA Data Loss Prevention Suite

· Writing Secure Code

· Forefront Identity Manager

· Forefront Unified Access Gateway

· Forefront Threat Management Gateway

· Forefront Client Security

Application Lifecycle Management

· TFS 2010

· Implementing Scrum with TFS

 

 

Thanks to all the sponsors; Dog Food II would not happen without your support
Cardinal Solutions	Sophic Group	ICC	Quick Solutions	ProSymmetry
KnowledgeLake	HMB	Kizan	Avanade	Dell
Mimosa Systems	Strategic Data Systems, INC.	Sogeti	AgileTech	T3 Technologies
ProSource	SIS	Neudesic	RSA	DeVry University

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=142763
Details on the event is below:
When: December 7, 2009
Location
Microsoft MTC - Aon Center
200 E. Randolph
Suite 200
Chicago, IL 60601
United States

Recommended Audiences: Solution Architects, Software Developers, Developers, Architects
nPlus1.org is hosting its fifth Architecture Summit on December 7th at the Microsoft MTC in Chicago, IL. The topic of this summit will be Patterns and Principles.

Morning Session (Optional): An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Are you new to OOP? Do you want a refresher on the benefits of Interfaces and the differences between implements and extends? The morning session is a two hour introductory course of Object Oriented Programming. If you are new to OOP the lessons in this session will prepare you for the more advanced topics in the afternoon.
If you are already well versed in OOP then feel free to come have a refresher, or simply join us for lunch and the advanced sessions in the afternoon. The morning session is completely optional.

Afternoon sessions:
Session One: Software Patterns
Patterns are an important tool to use as architects and developers. They provide a common vocabulary for us to design with, as well as a common approach to a common problem. Come learn about useful patterns, and how to use them in your everyday code.

Session Two: How I Learned To Love Dependency Injection
Dependency Injection is one of those scary topics that most developers avoid. It sounds all ‘high-falootin’ and complex. It’s not. Really. We wouldn’t lie. It’s a great way to manage complexity in your system, and a great way to make your system so much more testable. And isn’t that what we all want?
Each session will be followed by open discussions periods.
A catered lunch will be provided starting at noon. This will divide the morning introductory sessions from the advanced sessions. Register once for all session and choose to attend the morning, the afternoon or both! Lunch is provided for attendees for any of the sessions.

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About nPlus1.org (http://www.nplus1.org)

nPlus1.org is a site dedicated to helping Architects, aspiring Architects and Lead Developers learn, connect and contribute. At nplu1.org you have access to great first party content written by some of the most skilled and experienced Architects working today. You also have access to a nexus of content from around the Internet aimed at keeping Architects up to date on all the new developments in their fields of interest.

PSR stands for Problem Step Recorder, and is a tool that ships in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It was designed to help support professionals have users record the steps of their problem so they can see what is going on. It fixes the ‘See the big blue ball in the lower left-hand corner?’ problem. While we have remote connection capabilities, and screen recorders, those can be hard to setup for a typical user, and takes too long to show something simple. PSR is really lightweight and helps with the initial triaging of the problem.

And let’s face it, if you are reading this you are probably the IT Support team for your family. You are probably feeling a lot of angst about the upcoming holidays, especially Thanksgiving, which is the one holiday you are forced to hang around with people you actively avoid on Twitter and Facebook. You are not alone, we all feel like this. In the 50’s it was everyone asking the family member who was a physician about medical questions all day. Now it’s us.

What is RAM? How do I replace the smoke that came out of my computer? Which side is up on this new blank paper?

Do not let another Thanksgiving go to waste by being cornered by all the needy humans in your family that need help with their computers, or home networks, or home made scale models of the death star in their backyard. Keep in mind that help with Xbox achievements are perfectly acceptable, and provide a way to dodge all of the other requests..

To start PSR, click on the start menu, and type PSR in the search box. Done. When you start it you will see a little bar popup. Just tell the user to click the record button, and reproduce the problem.

Once the problem has been reproduced, they should click the stop button. This will ask them where to save the file (perhaps the desktop in this case so it is easily found again.) PSR creates a static HTML file with everything embedded, all in one file. No mess of directories with pictures and text scattered everywhere, since that would be brittle. Have the user email or IM you the file.

From there you will see a step by step document on what the user was doing, with built in highlights to see what they were clicking or typing.

While this was developed with the intention of helping IT Support get a better picture of how a user was breaking something, think of all the other uses. You could use it to easily generate documentation for your application, or document how policies should be implemented.

I just used it the other day to explain how to mark an assembly as ‘copy local’. It was a lot easier to send this small html file that it was to describe it in words in an email. The friend I was helping ‘got it’ immediately, and helped them get on with what they were doing.

You should try out PSR yourself and see how it works. I really love small, light, and easy to use solutions to problems that we all have. PSR gets my “Utility that is automatically included in Windows” award of the year. The runner up is the Snipping Tool, which was shipped in Vista.

Note: I love my family, and everyone in it, and I love helping them with technology, and talking about it. This whole post is all in jest. Enjoy your turkey day.