Tag: Microsoft

Categories
Uncategorized

I’m in Calgary Next Week

downtown_calgary

tech_days_calgary

I’ll be in Calgary from Monday to Friday next week, catching up with my friend and co-worker John Bristowe (he’s Microsoft’s Developer Evangelist for Western Canada) and speaking at the Tech Days conference.

If you use (or are thinking of using) The Empire’s technologies, Tech Days is a pretty good place to get immersed. It’s a conference focused on learning about Microsoft tech on its target platforms – PC, web and phone – both current and upcoming. It’s also a chance for Microsoft developers to get together and network, and you leave the conference with a nice package of free stuff, including a full version of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition. (And just between you and me, if your company’s paying for it, Tech Days is also a good excuse to get a couple of paid days out of the office.)

In addition to the conference notes and reportage that you’ve come to expect from Global Nerdy and the accordion playing you’ve come to expect from me, I will be contributing in another way: I’m delivering the A Deep Dive into the ASP.NET Ajax Extensions presentation (it’s part of the web development track and taking place on Wednesday, December 10th at 1:00 p.m.. Here’s the abstract for the presentation:

The ASP.NET AJAX Extensions are the server half of ASP.NET AJAX. Aside from adding controls such as ScriptManager and UpdatePanel to the platform, they extend the ASMX model to support client-side callbacks and JSON serialization. In this session, we’ll explore ASP.NET AJAX on the server – both inside and out – in order to provide you with the knowledge you will need to exploit it to its fullest.

(If I had more time, I think I’d write my own abstract.)

I looked at the time slot I was given and went “uh-oh”. It’s one p.m., right after lunch, which is what people used to call the sexta hora in Latin. That means “sixth hour” and refers to the sixth hour of being awake, which is when people start to get a little bit sleepy. That’s where the word siesta comes from – it’s a bastardization of sexta hora. I’m going to have to make sure that I keep things interesting – I welcome that challenge.

See you in Calgary!

Categories
Uncategorized

The C# “Yellow Book”: Free as in Beer and Good as in Beginner’s Guide

Cover of the "C Sharp Yellow Book"

As a new Microsoftie and programmer returning to C# after a six-year absence, I have a lot of learning and re-learning ahead of me. In preparation for this, I spent the better part of an afternoon in the “Computers” section of my neighbourhood bookstore going through the C# programming books, sorting the gems from the junk. I took the “beginner’s mind” approach and looked at all the books on the shelves, regardless of the skill level they were written for, even the books that devoted whole chapters to basic concepts like looping and branching. At the very least, it would give me an idea of the current state of programming literature was like in the .NET world.

A couple of weeks later, I stumbled across the C# “Yellow Book”. It’s the standard book for first year computer science students at the University of Hull (I know of it thanks to a Black Adder episode) and written by Rob Miles, a Microsoft MVP and lecturer at that university. Each computer science student there is given a free-as-in-beer printed copy of the book, and now anyone can get a free-as-in-beer PDF copy online.

The C# Yellow Book is quite good, and can easily hold its own against some of the commercial C# books I’ve seen, which typically sell for about $35. It’s written in a clear and breezy style, explains it concepts well, has examples that actually work (I tried some out just for kicks) and often goes beyond typical beginners’ books with many asides called “Programmers’ Points” that explain good programming technique. Its 185 pages cover most of the basic C# language — and most of the example code is run in console mode except for the section near the end that covers basic Windows Forms. After finishing this book, you should have enough background material to tackle an intermediate book on C# or introductory books on .NET topics like GUI programming, ASP.NET or even game development for the PC, Xbox 360 and Zune (yeah, really, the Zune) with XNA.

I’d say that Rob has a strong incentive to make the book as good as possible because it’s the basis of a course at his university and because he can get some rather immediate feedback from its readership. If only that was true for a professor of mine back at Crazy Go Nuts University, whose Pascal programming book (it was the eighties) had terrible examples, an incomprehensible presentation and writing style and annual revisions to foil used-book sales and to force each new class to buy the latest edition. Kudos to Rob and the computer science department at Hull for giving away the course textbook for free!

If you’re a starving student looking to learn Windows programming, I’d recommend getting your hands on a copy of Rob Miles’ free-as-in-beer C# “Yellow Book” and pair it with Microsoft’s free-as-in-beer Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. Alas, I can’t point you to any free-as-in-beer computers.

Links

Categories
Uncategorized

I’m Bringing Hexy Back (or: Programming Articles Will Return to Global Nerdy)

Disruption

A wrench jamming a machine Soon – probably in December – in addition to pointing you to interesting tech news articles and bits of geek culture, I will also be returning to writing development articles. And yes, that includes the long-on-hiatus Enumerating Enumerable series of articles cataloguing the methods in Ruby’s Enumerable module.

The past couple of months have been disruptive as all Hell, what with:

And now,

  • Working like mad to acclimate myself with a new employer — my first Fortune 500 company, and my first with over 200 employees!)
  • Readjusting to a new work style: working largely from home, with runs out into “the field” and the Mississauga and downtown Toronto offices
  • Re-acclimating myself with Microsoft development tools, which I haven’t used since early 2002

It’s been exciting and fun, but there are only so many hours in the day and so much energy one can muster to do things, which meant that the programming articles, which take a lot of work, testing and verifying, had to fall by the wayside. But they’re coming back soon.

Country First

Joey deVilla poses with a Mountie outside the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC
Me and a Mountie at the Canadian Embassy
in Washington, DC in 2000,
a.k.a. the “experimenting with nutty hair colour” year.

“We hired you first and foremost for Canada,” said my boss, John Oxley, Director – Audience Marketing at Microsoft Canada, “and for Microsoft second.”

That means that while I’ll be writing a lot about Microsoft developer tools and technologies, my primary goal as Microsoft Developer Evangelist is to use my tech evangelism powers to encourage, assist, grow and cast a spotlight on the Canadian software industry. I get it; a healthy Canadian software ecosystem is good for all players, including “The Empire”.

If you’re a software developer in Canada, whether you’re writing enterprise software for a big corporation or a one-person shop operating out of your den, a full-time employee or a student in high school, or a Microsoft tech “true believer” or a hardcore Free Software/Open Source type, you are the person I’m trying to reach.

So if you’re a developer, watch this space – some meaty development articles are coming soon!

Categories
Uncategorized

Looking Forward to Trying This Out Later Tonight…

Photo of my TV showing the 'updating' dialog box for the New XBox Experience.

Categories
Uncategorized

Don Dodge at Startup Empire: Starting a Company in Difficult Times

don_dodge

startup_empire The first speaker at yesterday’s Startup Empire conference was Microsoft’s own Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team and author of the blog Don Dodge on the Next Big Thing.

Don’s been in the industry for over 20 years. He started with Digital’s database group and went on to work with five startups over the next dozen years: Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet and Groove Networks. He now works with VCs and startups in my home away from home, the Greater Boston area.

I got a video interview with Don about BizSpark that I’m currently encoding; in the meantime, here are my notes from his presentation, Starting a Company in Difficult Times.

It’s a Good Time to Start a Company

  • In spite of the business news out there, it’s a good time to start a company – it’s a tough  time, but a good time
  • Markets are driven by two things:
    1. Fear
    2. Greed
  • Fear is rampant now
  • Even Microsoft is down 40%, Google down 60, maybe 70%
  • When fear takes over, markets get irrational
  • But remember:
    1. Fear is temporary
    2. Greed is permanent
  • Greed will eventually take over and markets will get better

Why start a company now?

  1. People are the most important determinant of success
    • hurdle is finding great people
    • When the economy is in a shambles, great people are available
    • During the AltaVista/Napster era, it was the boom times, and it was hard to find people
    • In bad times, companies entrench and do just the core things
    • The good people at companies get bored doing just the core things — it’s a hiring opportunity for you
    • Great people get bored during lulls
    • Startups are fun — they’re challenges, but people like challenges
    • Startups create tremendous value that allow great people to make a lot of money
  2. When the economy is bad, customers want to save money
    • If you have a product or service that will save them money, they’ll buy it
    • Tough times make customers willing to try new things if they believe they’ll make times less tough
    • You have to demo to customers how your product/service will save them money
    • Productivity boosts are not enough
    • Ask yourself: "Is your product or service a vitamin (a nice-to-have) or painkiller (a must-have)?"
  3. VCs are sitting on tons of cash right now
    • In Boston, 10 VC firms are sitting on $2.5 bn
  4. Infrastructure is cheap

It’s Who You Know

  • In the recent past, in Silicon Valley and Boston, even marginal ideas got funding
  • Times are tougher now, and “me too” ideas will no longer get funding
  • Of the 200,000 companies that got VC funding since 2001; only 380 went public
  • That’s a small percentage of successes, but those 380 were enormous hits
  • Venture capital is like the music industry; it’s a hit-based business – just as one hit single or album can pay for dozens of so-so ones, so can one great investment
  • Ad-supported models will be questioned
  • Do the math to figure out what how many hits and what CPM you need to make a million dollars from advertising — it’s shocking, I tell you
  • Experienced people with great ideas will always get funding
  • Investors will fund people they know or ideas they understand
  • The difference between angels and VCs
    • Angels are easier to convince to invest in you:
      • If they know you or know people who vouch for you, or
      • If they understand the business and have an affinity for it
    • If they don’t know you, they’re more difficult to convince
    • VCs are easier to convince in you if your situation isn’t suited for angel investment — they take more risks and are more willing to “think outside the box”
  • Networking is incredibly important
  • In Silicon Valley, "we have events like this [Startup Empire] every week"
  • Investors get comfortable with people they see all the time
  • Take time to do some homework on the investors, know who they are and who they’ve invested in

Infrastructure

  • Infrastructure is cheap
  • When we were starting Napster, it was the boom times
  • Finding people and getting office space were incredibly difficult
  • Our office’s landlord made us pay 2 years’ worth of rent up front in cash and also demanded stock options
  • In these recessionary times, the tables are turned
  • Several companies have renegotiated their leases — one has cut their lease down to one-quarter of the original
  • You can sublease spaces — many companies have leased too much space and are looking for people to fill it for peanuts
  • Office equipment: you can buy used

BizSpark

  • Another way to save money: Microsoft’s BizSpark program
  • BizSpark provides software for startups, basically for free
  • Your startup is eligible to participate in the BizSpark program if:
    • Your startup is less than 3 years old
    • and makes less than $1 million per year
  • Program members get full-featured software:
    • Development tools like the full versions of Visual Studio and Expression
    • Platform tech like  Windows Server, SQL Server and Sharepoint
  • You’ll get visibility from being promoted on Microsoft Startup Zone
  • We’ll connect you with a united global community of support resources
  • It’s so easy to start a startup right now — everything is in your favour
  • Cloud computing make things cheaper — you can go with Amazon, Microsoft or other cloud providers
  • For more about BizSpark, contact David Crow, Mark Relph or Don Dodge

Q&A

Q: What’s the idea behind BizSpark?

  • Microsoft can’t succeed without lots of companies building on its platform and technologies, using its tools
  • We’re competing with open source
  • When startups are tiny and just getting started out, they take the easy route and go with free software
  • Why not level the playing field and make our software free for startups for the first three years or after they get $1 million in revenue?
  • So we give them free software, support and visibility

Q: Is Microsoft’s cloud service available through BizSpark?

  • Yes. It’s not just the tools, but the cloud services are also available for free
  • More details on the site

Q: Are there any particular types of applications that BizSpark is looking for?

  • BizSpark is open to any application
  • If you’re building an application that adds value or fills a gap, we want to talk to you
  • MS acquires about 20 companies a year
  • Those companies are generally filling gaps in our product line, doing things better than us or opening new markets
  • We partner, and if things go well, we acquire

Q: Do we sign NDAs before going on BizSpark?

  • We don’t get into that
  • Don’t tell us your secrets
  • VCs are the same — most will not sign NDAs
  • In my experience as a VC, not a single NDA was invoked — they’re kind of pointless

Q: Could you provide some examples of the types of companies you’ve acquired?

  • Powerset
  • Fast
  • aQuantive
  • Currently, the “hot spots” are advertising and online services, but our acquisitions are all over the map

Categories
Uncategorized

“The Onion” Compares Apple’s OS X “Snow Leopard” Against Windows 7

…and hilarity ensues:

snow_leopard_vs_windows_7

Links

Categories
Uncategorized

Interview with IronRuby’s John Lam at PDC2008

I’m meeting up with a lot of interesting new people and catching up with old friends and collegaues here at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008 in the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the people I ran into was John Lam of the IronRuby project. This was the prefect opportunity for me to conduct my first podcast interview as a Microsoft Developer Evangelist. I asked John to explain IronRuby to people who’d never heard of it and to give us a quick summary of the current state of the project.

My thanks to John Bristowe for suggesting that I conduct the interview and for doing the camera and post-production work!