Last week I had the privilege of attending Microsoft’s Global MVP Summit in Bellevue Washington. While I can’t talk about most of what was covered (NDA) I wanted to mention two projects that I learned about while there and mention some of my thoughts from the event.
Last month (November 4th, 2009), I had the privilege of speaking at Microsoft’s “The New Efficiency” Launch for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in Dallas. While no one was there to record *my sessions* specifically, Microsoft has posted similar session from other parts of the country. I wish I could link (or embed) them directly since it takes some clicking to get to them. Instead, here’s a quick walkthrough. Enjoy!
1. Go to Microsoft’s “The New Efficiency” website http://thenewefficiency.com *
Last Thursday I posted my thoughts about Microsoft’s OSS announcements (go digg it: 3 Reasons Microsoft Needs an Open Source Officer), namely the formation of the CodePlex Foundation (awesome) and the departure of Sam Ramji (bummer). My take is that this is a great opportunity for Microsoft to take open source projects at Microsoft up a notch and raise the stakes with a big bold move by bringing in someone like my friend whurley (William Hurley – currently the chief architect of open source strategy at BMC).
This morning I turned on my computer to see that Todd Weiss and the folks at Linux.com had featured this idea on their home page. Go check it out the full article!
While I was out at the MVP Summit this summer I had a chance to catch up with Brian Prince from Microsoft and we talked about using Dependency Injection for better code level architecture. Check out the full video on Microsoft’s ARCCast.
When you’re done. Check out my Dependency Injection on Silverlight presentation.
Today there were two big announcements from Microsoft regarding their involvement with the Open Source communities. First, was the formation of the CodePlex foundation, an open source foundation for the
Enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities
Awesome. Great. Fantastic. This is the natural progression of a lot of the open source work that’s been happening at CodePlex, in the ASP.NET MVC stack and a lot of the other OSS projects that Microsoft has been initiating and contributing to lately.
The other announcement was more disappointing, Bill Hilf, the general manager of Windows, announced that Sam Ramji would be leaving his post at Microsoft to be the interim president of the CodePlex Foundation (cool – but why interim?) and then he would be pursuing some other opportunity.
In June I’ll be the local Silverlight expert, leading a technology track on Rich Internet Applications (RIA) at a Microsoft’s BizSpark event, SparkStart.
From the official announcement:
SparkStart is a full day of business and technology discussion (open format) and learning event for startups (“startup bootcamp”). This event will also be a networking opportunity for those startups who are new to the BizSpark program and not yet enrolled in the program and would like to mingle and learn from key business and technology influencers. It will also be an event for those startups who are recently enrolled and need to keep the momentum going by learning key strategies for success, both in business, and in technology.
I’m looking forward to checking out Microsoft’s new Technology Center in Las Colinas, TX – It’s an amazing building!
It’s going to be an incredible event for startups and entrepreneurs to learn, network and get to know some of the incredible technologies that are now available. I’m especially looking forward to hanging out with some of the other people that will be presenting at the event. (too name a few)
Check out SparkStart on twitter and read some of Christian’s other related posts. Be sure to register. It’s going to be an amazing day!
With all of the great press that Improving Enterprises has been getting lately (6 of the most talented MVP’s in DFW area work here, we’re a Microsoft Gold Partner in multiple competencies, our Rural Sourcing offering has been making waves, even our marketing team and java guys have been making news lately.)
It’s easy for people to look at us and think that we are *just* an amazing consulting and rural sourcing company pioneering agile in the Microsoft space and providing incredible service to our customers… well, I’m writing this post to make sure that you (yes, you specifically dear reader) know that we are also an incredible Microsoft Training Company.
While there weren’t *actually* any Linux MVP’s announced on April 1st, there were several new MVP’s announced. Now, over 10% of the people at Improving Enterprises are recognized by Microsoft as “Most Valuable Professionals”. By the way, that “over 10% number” is not just our .NET developers… I’m including everyone.
What is an MVP? From the official site:
“MVPs are a select group of experts representing technology’s best and brightest people who share a commitment to community. While MVPs come from many backgrounds and a wide range of technical communities, they share a passion for technology and a demonstrated willingness to help others”
So without further ado… let me introduce the 6 Microsoft MVPs from Improving :
Several exciting things happened today. First, I was re-rewarded with an ASP.NET MVP (thank you, thank you… I’d like to thank that academy… oh wait), Microsoft announced the *much anticipated* Silverlight MVP expertise, and finally, to everyone’s surprise, the new Linux MVP award.
“The Microsoft MVP Award Program recognizes and thanks outstanding members of technical communities for their community participation and willingness to help others. The MVP Award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real-world expertise with technology users.” – Says Rich Kaplan, Microsoft Vice President
I’m especially encouraged by the first three Linux MVP’s that were named… Read more »
This week I will be at the Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle, while I’m there I will take the time to present at the local .NET User Group. If you are in the area be sure to stop by. It’s going to be a “double feature” between my “Developing Loosely Coupled Applications” talk and my friend, and fellow MVP, Dennis Bottjer will be giving his amazing talk on SharePoint Performance. It’s gonna be awesome!
Caleb Jenkins, is a recognized Silverlight expert and Senior Architect Team Lead at Six Flags Corp, a National Speaker for INETA, a Technical Editor for Wrox Press and is a Microsoft MVP. He lives in the Dallas, TX area where he continues to date his beautiful wife and busy himself playing Candy Land and xBox 360 with their four incredible children. Eventually he’ll post some of the gazillion interviews that he's recorded on CommunityCast.tv or blog more... or stop speaking of himself in the third person. more...
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