Joe Sango's Blog

Launch Update: Sydney done....Perth to go.

Todays lauch event in Sydney was great and the there was a really good crowd that came along. I am starting to get the hang of this whole presentation thing and actually starting to enjoy myself! So far, the group VSTS session that myself, Andrew Coates, Dave Glover and Rob Caron have given in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney has evolved quite nicely and it keeps getting slicker. By Perth it will be like oil.

Had a great dinner last night with Dave Lemphers, Rob and his wife Nicole after the community launch party and it seems the bigger the menus are at these swish places, the more classier they seem to be! :P
Finished off tonight at Coatsies house with a great get together with everyone and I have to say that the nibblies that were on offer at casa de Coates were awesome!!!!! Big thanks to Sam and Andrew. :)

Anyway, looking forward to Perth next week and just hoping I can get out of Sydney tonight.......bloody Melbourne weather seems to be following me!!

VDNUG Hands On Day

Saturday saw me presenting an Intro to VSTS session at the hands on day run by VDNUG and apart from running a bit out of time, it went pretty well. I wanted to make it as “hands on” as possible without having any labs for everyone to go through. I tried to get through functionality for PM's, Architects, Dev's and Tester's by going through the VS2005 IDE and demo'ing certain features but with questions from the audience thrown into the mix, I didn't get a chance to show off some of the testing functionality.
That's ok though. There is a lot of stuff to cover across the board and 45 minutes aint gonna do! That's why I have decided to cover each piece of VSTS separately and more thoroughly in our upcoming VSTSUG meetings. Specific details to follow shortly.

Anyway I had a great time on Saturday and a big thanks to VDNUG guys for putting on such a great day.

Ready Launch Update

The Melbourne leg of the Ready Tour finished off last week and it was a really good turn out. Our VSTS session, the ASP.NET 2.0 and SmartClient sessions were pretty full and I was glad to catch up with some of the community for a chat after the presentation.

Now it is Sydney's turn with community launch party happening tonight at Microsoft's HQ with the Business Launch rolling on tomorrow. Can't wait once again to catch up with lots of MSFT and community people and have a bit of fun!

See you there.

Goodbye Adelaide...Hello Melbourne

The Adelaide launch is over and the machine now rolls on to sunny Melbourne!. It was great catching up with lots of people today and last night at the community launch. I forgot to bring my camera but I will definitely bring it along to the rest of the states to capture the love and hijinks. ;) These are memories frozen in time people!!

Anyway, looking forward to seeing everyone at the community launch party in Melbourne tommorrow night and looking forward to the business launch on Thursday.

We are through!!!!

After many heartbreaking years, especially '97, Australia are finally going to the World Cup again!!!! Germany here we come!!!

It went down to the wire with Uruguay but we prevailed in penalties. Ahhhh life is good.

From the age.com.au

and party we shall!!!

VSTS RC VPC has hit!

The long awaited Team System RC VPC is here. You can grab it from MSDN.

I haven’t had a chance to grab it and take a look but it should be a good start for everyone out there to start playing with VSTS and actually see it’s capabilities without going through the whole setup process. Although I do recommend you go through that process .

VPC Contents

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite RC
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 3
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Redistributable Package RC
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Community Technology Preview
• Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition

Get Ready Australia!

The Ready Launch Tour 2005 is set to roll around Australia!!

The dates are:

• Adelaide – 22nd November
• Melbourne – 24th November
• Sydney – 29th November
• Canberra – 1st December
• Perth – 6th December
• Brisbane – 8th December

I am really looking forward to presenting at the Adelaide, Melbourne Sydney and Perth events and catching up with a bunch of great people that I haven’t had the chance of meeting face to face.
Speaking of which, some more cool news, the one and only Rob Caron will be here for the whirlwind tour! How cool is that! If you read my blog, no doubt that you read his as it’s the hub of all things VSTS. 
Rob’s Team System walk-about will include the Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra events.

Hope to see everyone there!

World Cup Qualifier and VSTS Developer and Tester Public Chat

It’s that time again. Check out the November chat for VSTS Dev’s and Testers.

Team System Developer & Test SKUs Public Chat
Join us to discuss the Profiler, Test Tools (Unit, Generic, Manual), Web Load Testing, and Code Analysis (FxCop & PREFast). We have questions for you, will answer questions from you, and will just chat about the exciting technology.
Every 3rd Wednesday of the Month @ 10am Pacific time. http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats

November 16, 2005
10:00 - 11:00 A.M. Pacific time

That is 5am Thursday morning (17th)  for us Aussie’s.
Just off topic for a sec, the Socceroos are playing the crucial second leg of the world cup qualifier (soccer) in Sydney the night before against Uruguay. Let’s hope that we have something BIG to celebrate come Thursday morning. Go Aussies…..If anyone has a spare ticket for that match in Sydney, LET ME KNOW PLEASE!!!! :P 

VS2005 - SQL2005 Hands on Day

I will be giving the Team System presentation at VDNUG’s Hands-on day on the 26th November. This is the second of such events and I heard the first one rocked! I’m looking forward to being there and showing everyone VSTS in all its glory.

My preso is actually the last of the day. Get along to see some great presenters also talk about SQL Server 2005, CLR, VB.NET and C# in 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 to name just a a few cool topics being covered. And you get to sit down and try the tonic yourself!

Better hurry if you want a place though. Go here to register or here for more info on the event.