It's time once again to announce our upcoming list of events for MSDN Events, MSDN Unleashed and ArcReady events. You can find registration information on my events page — and as an added bonus, I've listed the schedule below as well.

MSDN Unleashed
Join us at our MSDN Unleashed events for the latest tips, tools and technical information you need to build powerful applications and engaging user experiences. We'll show you how SQL Server 2008 delivers new development capabilities, including support for Spatial Data types, a fresh storage mechanism and more. You'll also learn how to leverage the Silverlight platform to build next generation applications for consumers and business. Don't miss these free, live sessions near you.

What's New in SQL Server 2008 for Developers
SQL Server 2008 adds numerous new capabilities for developers — from support for Spatial Data types to a storage mechanism for SQL BLOB data using the NTFS file system, and much, much more. The new release also delivers several improvements to development-related areas, from T-SQL to SQLCLR to XML. This presentation will provide a technical dive into the latest and greatest features you'll find in SQL Server 2008, while offering insight into how effectively apply them to your upcoming development projects.
 
Build next generation applications with Silverlight 2.0
Silverlight provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we'll take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next generation experiences for consumers and businesses, and demonstrate how to build a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft.NET. We'll explore how to use Microsoft Visual Studio to create applications, and how to create UI using XAML markup and code, controls, and File I/O. We'll also discuss networking, how to retrieve data from a Web service, and various other aspects of building Silverlight applications.

ArcReady — Professional Patterns on the Job
You're smart. You deliver. What more could your company want from you? Why don’t they come to you for the big technical decisions? Why won’t they listen to your proposals? It seems like everyone has an agenda and they’re doing everything they can to kill your great ideas.

Join us this quarter as we focus on the soft skills that architects need to master. Learning these skills will boost your emotional intelligence and help you become a more professional, well rounded contributor. You’ll gain insight into the architect’s role as leader, influencer, and business professional and learn how to leverage your position to become a positive force within your organization.

Mastering the Soft Skills
In this session, we’ll discuss key interpersonal skills and how they can affect your projects and career. We cover how to positively connect with humans, how to participate in and influence the business processes you support, and how to transcend your technical role and maximize your connections with all members of your organization.

Organizational Dynamics
This session examines the dynamic nature of large organizations — their structures, decision making processes, and political landscapes. We’ll discuss the goals of key business and technical decision makers and their influence on architects and software projects. We’ll conclude with some strategies for maximizing the soft skills from Session 1 to ensure successful outcomes for your projects and career.

Upcoming Event Schedule
Here's the quick summary of events happening in a city near you. Registration links are listed on my event site. (And for an explanation of the Heartland, Midwest and other terms, check out my glossary.)

I had the good fortune to be able to attend the inaugural Iowa Code Camp earlier this year and I am excited to  report the good folks from the Iowa .NET and Cedar Rapids INETA user groups have banded together once again to bring the developers of Iowa an amazing, community-driven conference-style experience.

This year the event moves from Cedar Rapids (where I used to live in the mid-1990s when I consulted at MCI) to Des Moines (where I lived, fresh out of college, when I worked for the Principle Financial Group). And if the success from the first event is any indication, this event will surely be a treat, featuring 20 sessions with some of the area's best presenters. Topic span enterprise themes like SharePoint and continuous integration to fun topics like XNA and high performance computing.

Although I won't be able to make it (too many trips this October), I assure you the event this past spring was amazing. I have no doubt this event will be just as amazing. And since they don't charge, you should definitely go and check it out.

Event Details

• Saturday, November 8, 2008, 8:00am to 5:00pm
• No cost for attendees
• DMACC West, West Des Moines, IA

Another micro-post (no, this isn't a trend; I'm just busy this week preparing for a Quarterly Business Review), this one on PDC 2008 and Windows 7. Not only will PDC attendees _see_ Windows 7 first, attendees will get pre-beta bits.

Now For the Cheesy Sales Pitch
But wait, that's not all! (What can I say? I'm in a cheeky mood.)

For those of you who have attended PDC, you know that "the goods" are the SWAG of choice for attendees. And for those of you who have never attended PDC, let me regale you with what "the goods" are. This is the stuff we all get, the SWAG, the bits we all want. The last PDC I attended, "the goods" were Visual Studio Code Named Whidbey (VS2005) and all manner of nifty samples, Frameworks, and software. A collection of DVDs laden with things developers crave.

This year, "the good" come on a 160GB external hard drive. I've seen it referenced as a "Hard Drive Chock Full o' Bits" (seriously, here's the post). This is even better than getting "the goods": you get all the bits on a supremely useful, and reasonably sizable, hard drive.

And that's the SWAG every attendee will get. Too bad I'm not actually _attending_ the conference. I'll be in LA, but just for side meetings and dinners, and other fancy, pseudo-LA stuff.

But I Digress
Also now announced are more sessions as well as a larger lineup of speakers, with Bob Muglia, Scott Guthrie, and David Treadwell joining Ray Ozzie on stage for keynotes, demos, and all things of interest to developers.

If you haven't registered, there's still time to register. And if you do go, drop me a note on my blog and perhaps we can meet up!

Here's a quick post for you... The slides and demo code from the September 2008 MSDN Unleashed events are now available. ArcReady slides are also available. Get 'em while they're hot.

EDIT: I apparently cannot spell, so I'm cleaning this up using Live Writer. Plus I forgot my tags. Poor form.

Here's another training resource that I cannot possibly believe I missed: Ramp Up. It's been available for a while now, and I only just became aware of it when I got a laptop sticker from Brian Gorbett a couple of weeks ago. And while I slapped that nifty looking laptop sticker on my M1330, it took me those extra couple of weeks to follow the link and see what Ramp Up is all about.

What Ramp Up Is All About
Put simply, Ramp Up is a training resource. To be fair, it's probably more accurate to call it a readiness resource, or a learning resource, but that's me just mincing words.

Now, admittedly, it looks a bit outdated — a lot of the content currently on the site is focused on Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework v2.0 — though I would expect some more Visual Studio 2008 content to be coming along soon. (There is already some VS2008 content on the site, based on some TechEd materials posted earlier this year; there is both a Visual Basic 2008 learning plan and a C# 3.0 plan, each with over 10 steps.)

The learning plans on the site follow four core "routes":

• Aspiring Developer — focused on fundamentals, helps people get started in programming
• Java Developer — a Java-to-.NET learning plan focused on C# and the .NET Framework
• Visual Basic 6.0 — a learning plan for experienced VB6 developers interested in learning about .NET
• VS2002/2003 — a learning plan for .NET Framework v1.x developers interested in moving to .NET v2.0

Each of these four core tracks has four, five or more levels of resources, with several supporting resources linked from them. The Aspiring Developer route, for example, covers topics such as programming fundamentals, an introduction to the language of your choice (VB or C#), an introduction to the .NET Framework, an introduction to handling data and security, and an introduction to both Windows web development basics. The programming fundamentals section is further broken down into four sub-sections detailing how to design solutions and solve problems, OO design, how computers process and store data, and how computers "think" and make decisions.

Each course has technical articles, videos, and other resources to help you learn. So if you're in the learning mood, check out Ramp Up, and let me know what you think.

So — how's that for a Microsoft-ism? — a friend forwarded me a link to Project Rosetta, and — not knowing a thing about design — I found it to be an interesting resource. Not just an interesting resource, but potentially an interesting _training_ resource.

What Is It?
Project Rosetta, to my untrained eye (trust me on that, I really know nothing about design; I mean, you have *seen* my blog's design, haven't you?), looks to be a series of articles on how to accomplish a variety of design and development tasks in Microsoft's Silverlight. If you are interested in learning about how to mark up XAML, as well as program a variety of activities using your favorite .NET development language, these articles could prove to be extremely helpful in learning more about Silverlight. Moreover, these articles show you how to use Expression and Visual Studio to accomplish the tasks. Most articles include easy-to-understand screen shots, downloadable source code, and live, running applications to illustrate the runtime behavior.

I've read a couple of the article, and skimmed several more. According to my way of thinking, they an "atomic" example, basically building block pieces (like make a dot appear with a mouse click or have some swank animation follow the mouse pointer), that illustrate a single, specific core technique or a small group of related techniques. With a little bit of study, you could combine those techniques into more robust applications. From there you can begin to experiment upon the solid foundation and start creating real applications that do even swankier stuff.

But Wait! There's More!
Not only is Project Rosetta a potentially valuable training resource for nascent Silverlight developers, the authors go one step further by essentially offering side-by-side examples in Flash to help Flash-savvy designers and developers see the parallels in technique using Silverlight. It's a great approach to help experienced and new designers alike learn more about another potential tool they can stash in their technology bag of tricks.

And all indications are Project Rosetta is just at the beginning of a continued series of how to articles on using Silverlight, with parallel examples in Flash. So go check it out.

50 New Sessions Announced
The PDC Planning Team just announced they've published over 50 new sessions to the PDC 2008 site. From the looks of it (based on my cursory skim of the session list), PDC 2008 may be well on its way to 200+ total sessions. Here's what they have to share with us...

Well, it happened again. I meant to post more in August — I even mentioned this last month. And what happened? The month got away from me and a "forcing factor" has me posting again.

Forcing Factor
The forcing factor is simple: I need to let all nine of you know about new events we have coming up in the next couple of weeks. You see, Microsoft started our new fiscal year (FY09, for those of you in the know) on July 1, 2008 (I know, FY09 in 2008 — took me a while to get used to it, too). My team and I have been spending a lot time the past couple of months planning for this new fiscal year (one could argue almost to the point of too much planning). We spent the last couple of weeks shifting gears from planning mode to executing mode.

Now I must admit there are still some planning efforts underway, namely budgets, year-end reviews, new FY commitments, and so forth. But the team is ready to unleash their efforts on for our technical audiences and communities in the Central Region. And by unleash, I mean MSDN Unleashed, our effort to expand the reach of the well known, highly respected MSDN Events format to more cities more consistently.

But that's not all! (Sound's like a knife commercial, doesn't it?) In addition to delivering MSDN Unleashed events for developers, we are also running ArcReady events. What's our calendar-of-events? Head on over to Elysium Systems to find out. To learn more — read on...

MSDN Unleashed
The MSDN Unleashed events will follow a similar, albeit smaller, format to what you will find in their larger MSDN Events cousins. In this quarter, we will deliver two topics, Demystifying WPF and Developing Applications with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. Both will also be featured in formal MSDN Events, and the larger event format will also highlight the Ten Reasons your Applications will be More Secure when Deployed on Vista.

Demystifying WPF
Today's applications need to do more than simply work. They need to draw in the user, and provide a differentiated experience. This means moving beyond battleship gray forms, boxy UIs, and providing a positive user experience. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides powerful capabilities to develop a compelling user interface, the kind that makes an application stand out. In this session, we'll examine the core concepts of WPF such as layout panels, data binding, styles and control templates, and we'll use them to develop an application UI from the ground up.

Developing Applications with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
Service Pack 1 and Visual Studio 2008 introduce a wide variety of new features for targeting Windows, Office and the Web. This includes more controls, a streamlined setup, improved startup performance, fresh graphics features, improved AJAX support, and much more. We're also introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, which are designed to simplify application data access by providing an extensible, conceptual model for data from any source, while enabling this model to closely reflect business requirements. Don't miss this lively session and learn how to use these powerful new features in your applications.

ArcReady
These events are for established solution architects, aspiring architects, and senior developers. They focus on practical application architecture to meet real-world business and technical needs. This quarter's focuses on Architecting Modern Distributed Applications, and features two sessions, Blueprints for Success and Making It Real.

Blueprints for Success
In this session, we will survey the modern architecture landscape from the ground up, including infrastructure, application, and client solution choices. We’ll discuss how current industry trends are shaping our architectures and present an innovative architecture mapping technique for analyzing our customer’s needs and aligning them to today’s technologies and solution patterns.

Making It Real
In this session, we’ll take a look at several case studies to learn how to apply the mapping technique from Session 1 to architect real world solutions that add true business value. We’ll examine applications we use every day and take a walk through a Microsoft reference architecture that explores many of the decisions we face when building modern distributed applications.

In Closing, I Would Like to Thank the Academy...
We have a couple dozen great events on deck for you to attend, and we have plans to deliver more in the next quarter. Starting in the first of the new year, we hope to expand our informal event efforts to more cities in more venues, and we may just change things up a bit so the events themselves offer something new and unique.

So, visit the events page on Elysium Systems and register to attend the events.

I've noticed a bad habit creeping up in my posts. Namely the use of internal Microsoft terminology when I type. Wow, a new bad habit to break. Like drinking caffeine (which, I am proud to say, I've largely quit drinking).

When Speaking Publicly, Are you this Annoying?
Oddly, not so much. At least, I don't use Micro-speak (yup, it's even referenced on the intarwebs) to a great degree when delivering presentations or speaking publicly. I am often mindful of my audience when delivering a presentation. I often — although not always — manage to explain acronyms. I rarely use a technology term without explaining it. And, most importantly, I really try to only use Micro-speak with audiences "in the know", such as our valued partners, MVPs or RDs.

So... Why in Written Form?
Honestly, it's probably laziness on my part. So I will try to do my level-best to clean up my Micro-speak. And to provide you with a handy translation guide, I just created a glossary of terms I find too hard not to reference in posts. I'll work on keeping that up-to-date.

Thank you for your patience.

Common terms that I occasionally (and inadvertently) use in blog posts. One could call them "Micro-speak".

I will try to keep this article up-to-date with terms that I use (and shouldn't). Consider it something of a map to help you translate my lazy posts.