Rob Windsor's Weblog

ObjectSharp is Hiring

I once said that ObjectSharp Consulting's motto should be "Taking over the world one developer at a time" (OK, maybe you can replace the world with Toronto... for now). Well, right now we are hiring not only .NET developers of all levels but people who have associated skills (e.g. SQL Server, SharePoint, Team System, BizTalk). If you are interested in joining a team of extremely bright and community oriented individuals then please let us know by sending an email to careers@objectsharp.com.

Below is a scan of a flyer we were passing out at DevTeach.

Tags: [ObjectSharp] 

PDC Postponed

Microsoft has decided to postpone the PDC. I guess all the major new stuff was announced at MIX. From the web site:

We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones. By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch, which is where we’ll focus our developer engagement in the near term. We will update this site when we have a new date for the PDC that is better timed with the next wave of platform technologies.

Tags: [PDC] 

Google Code Search

I don't how how I missed Google Code Search in the past. One of the attendees at my DevTeach talk on discoverability recommended it.

It's a search engine that allows you to find code posted on the Internet. Google Code Search helps you find function definitions and sample code by giving you one place to search publicly accessible source code hosted on the Internet. With Google Code Search, you can:

• Use regular expressions to search more precisely
• Restrict your search by language, license or filename
• View the source file with links back to the entire package and the web page where it came from

In my brief tests, it appears that it only crawls code in source code files, not snippets in blog posts or web pages. I'll be looking into this tool more to determine if it's worth adding to my favorites.

Et Tu ????, then Fall Vista

One of things I found interesting at last week's DevTeach conference was the number of conversations that ended up as *** sessions about Windows Vista. Issues with drivers, with intermittent bugs, with the network stack, with UAC, and on and on. The best quote (said partially tongue-in-cheek) being that because of these issues, Windows XP SP3 is going to end up being the most successful product in Microsoft's history.  My personal favorite is just an annoyance - when you right click on a program and select Run as Administrator, Vista immediately puts up a dialog asking if you want to run the program with administrator rights.

Hopefully these issues will be addressed quickly. In the mean time, it makes me feel much better about my decision to install Vista on a laptop that is strictly used for user group/conference presentations and leave XP on my other machines.

Tags: [Vista] 

DevTeach 2007 Recap

Another year, another DevTeach. Once again, a great week at a community oriented event. The big announcement this year is that upcoming events will be just six months apart and will be held in Vancouver and Toronto as well as Montreal.

As they have done in previous years, MSDN Canada and DevTeach organizer Jean-Rene Roy hosted the annual get together for the Canadian user group leaders. This is an invaluable event where the group leaders have a chance to share techniques they use to effectively run their groups and help their community. It's also a chance for the group leaders, as representatives of the developer community, to help MSDN determine how to best allocate the their budget for the upcoming year. This close communication is what makes the Canadian developer community one of the strongest in the world. 

Doing three sessions on the first day and helping man the ObjectSharp booth the other two limited the time I had to attend sessions. I did have a chance to see a few that I found interesting, including Kate Gregory's talk on building Vista ready applications and Berry Gervin's on running Windows on a Mac. Both of these sessions took place in the most unusual conference room called Le Caf Conc, it is actually a theatre with two balconies and pictures of Can Can dancers on the wall.

The other notable events took place at the end of talks. At Beth Massi's on the future of VB, EDMUG member Dave Woods decided to forgo the normal technology questions and instead ask Beth how she stole his heart while presenting her with a bouquet of flowers (this was prompted by Donald Belcham telling Beth that Woodsy had a crush on her the previous evening). The other took place at one of the agile sessions (which I missed), Roy Osherove ended the talk with a song (fortunately this was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube).      

For more on the conference, check out the coverage by Universal Thread. I hope to make it to the Vancouver event and I hope to see you there.

Tags: [DevTeach] 

TechEd 2007

I made a last minute decision to go to TechEd this year. I need to cram on the new stuff in SharePoint and I thought this conference would be the best place to get started.

After attending TechEd last year I wrote A Guide to Attending TechEd or PDC. One of the things I mentioned in the post was to not worry too much about the sessions.

This does not mean that you shouldn’t go to sessions. It does mean that you shouldn’t feel you have to fill your schedule with sessions. Remember, you can get slide decks and sample code from CommNet, you’re going to get a set of DVDs with all of the recorded sessions after the conference, and many of the conference sessions are already available as webcasts. Leave a slot or two per day to visit the experts area and do some hand-on labs.

Obviously I'm not very good at taking my own advice. I just finished putting together my schedule and, unless I figure out a way to clone myself a few times, there's no way I'm going to attend half the stuff I'm interested in. Oh well, this schedule is just a guide anyway - things always change when your actually at the event.

I'm going to spend a little less time networking (read partying late into the evening) so I'll be able to get in some hands-on labs during the breakfast hours and catch the morning sessions. I will be at the big social events like the Party with Palermo and the Attendee Party at Universal Studios. I'm also going to try and make the Jam Sessions one of the nights (at least I think I am - I'm not even sure what they are at this point). If you going to be in Orlando and you want to get together and talk geek send me an email, I'm sure I can fit you in between Building Advanced Web Parts and Creating Custom Field Types on Wednesday :)

Tags: [TechEd07]