From the category archives:

TechEd

TECHED: Lock note – Predicting the next 10 years in IT

September 7, 2008 Main

Easily the best TechEd lock note I’ve seen (but then again I’ve only been to TechEd 4 times).
Miha Kralj talked us through the technology changes we’ll be seeing over the next few years.
If you get a chance to see his presentation (I’m sure it will be repeated at other events, or put up on a [...]

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TECHED: Web futures, SQL tips, LINQ to Entities, The future of IT

September 4, 2008 Main

Back for the final day at TechEd and I’m in good spirits – it has been a good event.
Web futures (Mixed panel)
Sorry folks, this was just too disorganised and ill-informed opinion for me. Seemed as though the panel hadn’t been prepped on any of the questions, and there wasn’t any overview or structure for [...]

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Two little things

September 3, 2008 Main

Andrew Coates on Facebook
If you are on Facebook, and haven’t already, please join the ‘Convince Andrew Coates to join Facebook’ group. We need 250 by this Friday afternoon. Click here to join.
TechEd Windows app for checking sessions :  What’s on Now?
Here’s the little Windows app I use for checking what sessions are currently on. It’s [...]

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TECHED: PowerShell, WMI, Web high availability, SQL fulltext, REST

September 3, 2008 Main

It was great to start the day catching up with a few people I hadn’t seen in a while (Castro powering on with SQL, and best of luck to Luis for your wedding in a few weeks).
Then, onto a few sessions…
Windows PowerShell and WMI (Mitch Denny)
Mitch covered the basics of PowerShell (blog), which was a [...]

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TECHED: Office, SharePoint, User experience

September 3, 2008 Main

A great first day at TechEd 2008.
Keynote
I missed the keynote. And deliberately so. The reason being: I slept in. I had a late-ish night and wanted to ensure I was fresh for my session in the afternoon. So I had a full 8 hours sleep and great breakfast. Sadly, this meant missing the keynote, [...]

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TECHED: TechEd 2008 is on

September 2, 2008 Main

Just home from the TechEd 2008 Welcome party. It was great to catch up with a few friends. Here’s a couple of piccys.
First up, the Breeze gang in the RFID boiler room. Scott Scovell (Breeze), Rahul Garg (Microsoft) and Mick Badran (Breeze). Scott and Mick are the guys making all the RFID palava happen. Here [...]

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VSTO: Deployment via SharePoint

August 29, 2008 Main

Deploying a Word document level VSTO add-in via SharePoint
Actually, more correctly, we are going to deploy via ClickOnce but deliver via SharePoint.
This the second demo on VSTO deployment, and follows on from my previous post about VSTO deployment via ClickOnce.
It covers building a very simple Word document level add-in, deploying to a network share, uploading [...]

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VSTO: Deployment via ClickOnce screencast

August 29, 2008 Main

Deploying an Excel application level VSTO add-in via ClickOnce
If you are new to VSTO deployment then this simple little screencast (just under 14 mins) may help. It covers the scenario of deploying an application level add-in via ClickOnce to a network share, and then the experience a user would have installing it.
TechEd 2008 – Session [...]

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TECHED: RFID Palava

August 25, 2008 Link

UPDATE: I changed some wording slightly – the term ‘tracking people’ was misleading – see comments for more details
It’s going to be interesting to see the reactions of attendees to the RFID tag palava at this year’s TechEd in Sydney.
For those who missed it, the dudes at Breeze (Mick Badran and Scott Scovell [...]

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TECHED: Interesting mix of non-bloggers

August 24, 2008 Link

I have to say I’m very much looking forward to TechEd next week. There’s a ton of exciting things to learn about this year, and with a swag of releases under their belts I’m sure Microsoft has had a tough time putting together the session tracks.
As per usual I’ll be attempting to cover almost all [...]

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SIMPLE: Rocket science

August 12, 2007 TechEd

Not wanting to pick on anyone in particular, but I’ve heard the expression “it’s not rocket science” all week at TechEd, usually in the context of how easy it is now (as compared to previous versions of products) to build wonderful, enabling, awe-inspiring solutions to enterprise problems.
I have to admit I wasn’t exactly sure what [...]

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TECHED: Why attend the locknote?

August 11, 2007 TechEd

I’ve held off talking about the TechEd keynote from Wednesday (because it was extremely disappointing), but thankfully the locknote was slightly (but only slightly) better.
It was good because it was a chance for us developers to say goodbye to Frank Arrigo (he’s heading over to Redmond). Frank has had an amazing impact on the [...]

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TECHED: Why Computer Forensics?

August 11, 2007 TechEd

I popped into the end of a session delivered by some of the AFP (Australian Federal Police) Computer Forensic experts. The surprising discovery for me was how under-resourced they are. Sure, they know how to recover data ‘deleted’ from a hard drive, and they also get pretty good at finding incriminating stuff, but overall my [...]

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TECHED: Why Online/Offline Gadgets?

August 11, 2007 TechEd

More out of interest than any compelling business need I dropped into Neil Roodyn’s session on Vista Gadgets.
And I have to say I found it quite thought provoking. Neil went through some simple examples but most importantly stressed some of the design considerations to be employed. Designing for Offline (or worse, unexpected disconnection scenarios) from [...]

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TECHED: Why SharePoint Branding and Customization?

August 11, 2007 SharePoint

Why SharePoint Branding?Answer: Because we can. Finally.
Yes, the customization ‘features’ of SharePoint have been well criticised for a while, so it is good to see that branding and formatting is now a simple combination of master page changes and CSS.
Not that it is trivial, but as Kathy Hughes covered (extremely well I might add) in [...]

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TECHED: Why Silverlight?

August 9, 2007 Silverlight

What an awesome end to the day. I’m already sold on the whole Silverlight concept, but this session was an eye opener. Joe Stegman impressed, with a slickly crafted presentation, perfectly delivered. No woffle or hype, just demo after demo of Silverlight goodness.Part of the attraction of Silverlight is how it opens up the programming [...]

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TECHED: Why WPF?

August 9, 2007 TechEd

The old joke about WPF being the answer to a question that hasn’t been asked is still around I guess, and thus a session on WPF is treated by some with a little bit of skepticism. Although only a mini-session, Paul Stovell did a great job of explaining why WPF is now relevant. Actually I [...]

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TECHED: Why LOLCODE?

August 9, 2007 TechEd

INSERT INTO cheek (tongue)
This was a great mini-session, with the remarkable Nick Hodge covering the all-too-important science of LOLCODE.I’m with Nick on this, in believing it to be the single most important technology initiative in years.The benefits are countless, but include the long lost art of ensuring maintenance coders are amused long into the future, [...]

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TECHED: Why ForeFront Server Security?

August 9, 2007 TechEd

Developers (like me) often can’t comprehend the overhead of installing security tools across a large server count. Afterall, we are usually only dealing with a handful of servers. So how do the people looking after large numbers of servers (eg hundreds) cope?This is a difficult problem and a number of vendors are targetting applications at [...]

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TECHED: Why BizTalk and BAM?

August 9, 2007 BizTalk

Business Activity Management (BAM) is an important area for growing businesses to embrace. IT is basically the act of observing key processes in a business and being able to proactively respond to issues.
In this session Mick Badran (local BizTalk guru and MVP) along with Rahul Garg (Microsoft Technical Specialist) took us through an introduction to [...]

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