Rob Windsor's Weblog

Community Radio at MSDN Canada

Community Radio at MSDN Canada

Yes, more podcasting goodness (you'd better upgrade to the 40 gig iPod) from the Great White North. It looks like Mark and Craig are going to do a show every other week intermixed with community event updates. It's a great way to keep up-to-date with what's going on in the Canadian developer community.

TVBUG Wins the MSDN Canada Inter Usergroup Competition

The final judging for the MSDN Canada Inter Usergroup Competition was held last night and my group, the Toronto Visual Basic User Group (TVBUG), wound up taking first place.

Most of the details of last night's event have already been posted by Ken Cox but I would like to add a few comments:

First off I have give props to all the teams on their efforts. Each team had an impressive entry and obviously spent a lot of time on their projects.

Secondly I'd to thank Sasha Krsmanovic and Craig Flannagan of MSDN Canada for putting this contest together and for organizing an excellent event last night.

Finally I'd like to both thank and congratulate Tony Cavaliere and the rest of the TVBUG team: Leila Mahdavi, Henry Segal, John Lin, Eugene Onutan, Pankaj Verma, Alex Vlasov, Lan Tse, Ken Cox and Igor Shtygashev! This victory really belongs to Tony, I'm glad his hard work and dedication to the project paid off.

Update: Sasha posted links to the video presentations done by each group:
http://www.geekswithblogs.net/sashak/archive/2005/04/22/37417.aspx

Refactoring in Visual Basic 2005

Let's travel back in time to November 2004. The world was a much simpler place then, we were all younger, naive, and full of hope, but then posts from Soma and Paul told us that Visual Basic 2005 would not have refactoring support. The world became a cold and bitter place...

Today, as spring is in air, as the days grow longer, as the Boys of Summer begin to realize that the Yankees and Red Sox may never let them win another series, as people line up at Grauman's Chinese Theater for a Star Wars movie that won't be playing there when it opens a month from now we find that things are not in fact as dark as they seemed. Microsoft will announce today the availability of Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005, a free plug-in from Developer Express that enables Visual Basic developers to simplify and re-structure source code, making it easier to read and less costly to maintain. Refactor! supports more than 15 individual refactoring features, including operations like Reorder Parameters, Extract Method, Encapsulate Field and Create Overload.

Developer Express has a version of Refactor! that you can start using right now with Visual Basic 2005 Beta 2. For full details check out the following links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/refactor/ 
http://www.devexpress.com/vbrefactor/

Scott and Rory #4 - It's all about Community. And Ice Cream. And Baby Carrots.

Canadian Developer Community Radio Beta

Missing VSLive! Toronto

I'm in Ottawa this week teaching a Smart Client course so I'm going to miss VSLive! in Toronto. I'm not only going to miss the three days of great content but the user group night and the ObjectSharp speakers event as well. I guess I should have called in sick.

Check out this post to see my report on last year's event.

Another ObjectSharp MVP - Barry Gervin

ObjectSharp Consulting now has it's third current and fourth lifetime Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). Barry Gervin, who is already a Regional Director (RD), has been given the MVP Award as a Solution Architect.

Congratulations Barry. 

VS Live! Toronto Mega Deal