With the new year now almost 2 weeks old, we have put online the first Visug events of 2011 (and we have a great list of upcoming ones as well, more on that soon).

To start with a bang, we have Scott Hanselman doing a session on January 24th! The final session content will be available soon, but it will be in the MVC/NuGet area. As we expect this to be fully booked very soon, register quickly via http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/37/Default.aspx

Secondly, Bart Wullems will be doing a session on Caliburn.Micro.
You've heard a lot about Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM), but you've struggled to see how it can help you in your day-to-day work. Or, you're experienced at implementing MVVM, but looking for some ways to maximize your investment in this methodology. In this session, we explore Caliburn.Micro(http://caliburnmicro.codeplex.com/), a simple MVVM framework, by iteratively identifying pain points in our UI development and eliminating them with simple solutions. You'll walk away with code, but more importantly with an understanding of how to apply some simple ideas to improve productivity with MVVM in your own projects.

Register here: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/36/Default.aspx

It will be another great Visug year!

I’m happy to announce that Microsoft, Visug and Azug are teaming up to bring you the PDC 2010 event in Belgium! We'll have live-stream of the 2 keynotes, a Windows 7 demo fest and great fun in al all-American style!

Agenda:
17u30 – Welcome and drink
18u00 – 20u -  Watch the PDC keynote live stream on big screen
20u – 20u30 – Dinner
20u30 – 21u30 – Demofest
21u30 - 22u30 – Networking

Registration only via this link: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032463933&Culture=en-US

I just created the Visug Twitter account. You can follow @visug from now on for updates, news etc.

And, best of all, we’ll be giving away a free ticket to TechDays 2010 in the coming days to one of our followers!

Last Friday, we had Scott Guthrie aka ScottGu aka The Gu in Belgium for a Visug/MSDN event in Kinepolis Brussels. The event was fully booked, there was not a single seat available anymore.

For the event, we had planned something special: we ordered red polo’s for every attendee (over 500 that is) and kindly asked everyone to put them on for the moment Scott came into the room. The effect of having over 500 people in one cinema theatre wearing exactly the same is overwhelming I can say! Of course, Scott received a polo as well.

Here are some of the pictures, more will be added soon. My complete list can be seen on my Flickr account.

The polo’s are piled up

Red ScottGu fans are starting to arrive

Me in the room with Katrien and Pieter, Scott setting up his laptops

Scott’s laptops (glad to see he likes Lenovo too :) )

Red peeps coming in

And there we have it…

Don’t you just love it? :)

And Scott is now a fan of TheGu also :) In the background: ASP.NET MVC 2!

And my Visug colleague, Pieter, got a bit chilly of all this.

Thanks Scott for this wonderful afternoon!

2009 has to be the year in which most “Microsoft VIPs” have been in Belgium! We already had Brad Abrams, Juval Löwy, Dino Esposito and many more. You thought that was it for this year? So was I…

Until last week, Katrien De Graeve told me and Pieter (my Visug-colleague) she had some news for us… MSDN and Visug will join forces for a Scott Guthrie event. Yes, "ScottGu” aka “TheGu” is coming to Belgium on December 4th. Erase any other appointments, meetings, vacations you have planned on that day (afternoon only), as Scott will give presentations and probably a Q&A session as well.

Location and exact content will  be posted very soon-ish, we know it’s very near, but I expect to that we will have everything set up this week. The event will be free in any case, thanks to Microsoft.

For now, start thinking of questions you may have, you will soon be able to start sending those in. As the event is only two weeks away, we hope many of you will be blogging, tweeting, Facebook’ing, “whatever”ing a lot!

More news soon, right here!

Brad Abrams, program manager at Microsoft, took time from his busy schedule he has to pay a visit to Visug. This session, hosted at Ordina in Mechelen, was attended by over a 100 people. This only shows that Belgian community keeps on growing and growing!

Brad posted his slides here or here. Thanks to Microsoft, the session is also recorded, I’ll post here when the session is online.

Here are some pictures:

Today, I gave the second Back2Basics session for Visug. Topics were caching and state management.
The presentation is a whopping 168 slides :). I’ve also included the demo’s.

Caching and state management ppt (slide deck): download.
Demos: download

Thanks for attending, I hope you enjoyed the session. Feel free to ask questions or post any comments.

Next week, on Wednesday 29th April, I’ll be doing a talk on session management and caching in ASP.NET for Visug. This session will take place in the Microsoft buildings in Zaventem. Contrary to our normal Visug sessions, this one will take place in the afternoon (starting at 14.00).

There are still some seats open for this free training session, so if you’re interested, head over to http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/3/Default.aspx to register!

At the end of my "Visug in overdrive" post, where I announced 7 sessions that we are planning in the next couple of months, I made a promise: another session with an international speaker was to be added...

Well, good news, I just added it: we are having Jason Beres from Infragistics over for a session on User Experience.

The session will take place on May 27th at Microsoft in Zaventem and will again be free of course.

Registration is available from here.

Now that Techdays, Mix09 and many other interesting conferences are behind us, it’s time to kick up the pace and organize a great number of Visug sessions. I’ve almost finished uploading all sessions, except for 2: my own one on ASP.NET caching (I still need to create the abstract) and another one presented by an international speaker (again!). I’ll keep you posted on the latter.

Here’s a list of all upcoming sessions so far announced:

Back 2 Basics: LINQ
Presented by: Kurt Claeys on: 15/4/2009
Registration: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/6/Default.aspx

Back 2 Basics: ASP.NET caching
Presented by: Gill Cleeren on: 29/4/2009
Registration: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/3/Default.aspx

Mocking
Presented by: Maarten Balliauw on: Thursday, May 07, 2009
Registration: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/4/Default.aspx

Back 2 Basics: Integrating Membership, Role Management and Profiles into Web Applications
Presented by: Pieter Gheysens on: 27/5/2009
Registration: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/9/Default.aspx

Domain Driven Design
Presented by: Yves Goeleven on: 18/6/2009
Registration: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/7/Default.aspx

IronRuby: The .NET developer should not fear the dynamic language
Presented by: Ivan Porto Carrero on: 30/6/2009
Registration: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/5/Default.aspx

ORMs: Entity Framework vs NHibernate
Presented by: Kurt Claeys & Davy Brion on: 10/9/2009
Registration: http://visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/8/Default.aspx

If you are interested in doing a session for Visug, please contact us! Send us a mail via board@visug.be .

Finally! It took us some more time then originally planned, but it is finally here: the all-new Visug website. You can reach it via www.visug.be of course.

While there are some new features as well (head over to the new included blog on the visug site), more will be added in the coming months. One of the new features that is now already in place, is an included RSS feed (http://www.visug.be/Blog/tabid/98/rssid/1/Default.aspx). We will use this feed to announce new events and site updates.

I hope you like it, it cost me quite some hours in the past few weeks to get it right!

I'm happy to announce that we are having Regional Director Juval Löwy again for a Visug event. I just posted the event on the old Visug site (we are almost done with the new one, just hold on...).

The event will take place on Thursday January 15th in Utopolis Mechelen. We have about 250 seats available and we expect them to sell out quickly!

Abstract of the session:

The .NET services bus is part of the new Microsoft Cloud Computing Windows Azure initiative, and arguably, it is the most accessible, ready to use, powerful, and needed piece.

The service bus allows clients to connects to services across any machine, network, firewall, NAT, routers, load balancers, virtualization, IP and DNS as if they were part of the same local network, and doing all that without compromising on the programming model or security. The service bus also supports callbacks, event publishing, authentication and authorization and doing all that in a WCF-friendly manner.

This session will present the service bus programming model, how to configure and administer service bus solutions, working with the dedicated relay bindings including the available communication modes, relying on authentication in the cloud for local services and the various authentication options, and how to provide for end-to-end security through the relay service.

You will also see some advanced WCF programming techniques, original helper classes, productivity-enhancing utilities and tools, as well as discussion of design best practices and pitfalls.

So, register fast, it is free like always!

Yesterday, I gave a talk for Visug on ASP.NET 3.5 SP1. It was a long evening, with over 2 1/2 hours of content. The talk covered Dynamic Data, Ajax History, Data Services and Entity Framework (talk given by Kurt Claeys).

Below, you can find the presentation. If anyone is interested in the demo's, leave a comment and I'll upload those as well.

Slide deck

I hope you all enjoyed the talk! Remember to register early for our next events!

I just finished adding a bunch of new events on the Visug website. Here's an overview!

• What's new in Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario"
  27th November 2008 by Pieter Gheysens (Compuware)
  Abstract:
  Microsoft Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario" is the version of Team System that follows Visual Studio Team System 2008. It is an integrated Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance. Team System "Rosario" can be seen as a major release and will bring lots of new features in the areas of Project Management, Architecture, Version Control, Build, ... Come and enjoy a sneak preview of what will be shipped in the next version of Visiual Studio Team System.
  
• Resharper and Design Principles  
  16th December by Hadi Hariri
  Abstract:
  As systems grow in size it becomes hard to keep the simplicity.
  Testing becomes harder and understanding the code comes close to impossible. This session explains concepts that allow you make robust applications that are not only testable but maintainable. Concepts such as separation of concerns interface segregation, dependency injection and inversion of control are all covered with ample examples of IoC Containers as well as an introduction to mock objects and how to replace dependencies with them during tests.
  
• Christmas Geek Dinner
  18th December 2008
  Abstract... Not a real abstract but anyway...:
  For the third time already, we are planning our annual Christmas Geek Dinner. An evening full of fun, networking, good food and the real christmas spirit among fellow Visug-people... What more could you ask Santa for?

  This year, we selected Wok & Tandoor(Antwerp). It's an "all-you-can-eat", Chinese/Indian restaurant, located near the "Vlaamse/Waalse kaai".

  Seats are limited! Each participant pays for own food!

• WCF and entities
  22nd December 2008 by Kurt Claeys (Ordina)
  Abstract:
  Using the ADO.NET Entity Framework in a WCF SOA architecture. About the objectcontext, disconnected entities and entities as datatransferobjects in serviceoperations.

While I continue the work on the new Visug website/branding, we have used the old site to put online the registration for 4 new upcoming events.
(Note that the new site will allow you to subscribe to an event-RSS feed, so it'll be easier to see what new events are announced!).

There will be more events announced, even in between the now already fixed dates. We are planning on doing a "Best-Of-PDC" event, similar to the "Best-Of-TechEd" of last year. At the moment, no date has been fixed for that event.

In the meantime, you are able to register for free (as always) for the following events/sessions we are doing:

September 11th: ALT.NET Overview
Presented by Yves Goeleven (Compuware)
For the past year the alt.net movement has been stirring up the Microsoft community around the globe. Now it's getting hold of the Belgian community as well.
In this session I would like to present to you what the core values of the alt.net movement are, what principles, concepts and tools we hope to promote and to booth I would like to introduce the brand new 'Dutch alt.net user group'.

October 14th: ASP.NET 3.5 Special: MVC Framework
Presented by Maarten Balliauw
This session provides an introduction to the ASP.NET MVC framework. Starting with a short intro to the model-view-controller pattern and Microsoft's driving goals for this alternative to classic ASP.NET, toover some of the key differences between classic ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC like routing, extensibility, testing, ...

Note that the 2 ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 sessions are standalone sessions, you do not need to attend them both!

October 21st: ASP.NET 3.5 Special: ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ADO.NET Data Services and AJAX
Presented by Gill Cleeren (Ordina)
After you learned everything on the MVC Framework, Gill Cleeren (Microsoft Regional Director, MVP ASP.NET) takes you on a tour to see all the other new features ASP.NET 3.5 has to offer. Not a marketing overview, but real-life demo’s will make up this session!

We will stop at the following topics:

ASP.NET Dynamic Data: ASP.NET Dynamic Data helps you quickly build a fully customizable, data-driven application without writing code. Dynamic Data provides a rich scaffolding framework that is easily extensible by using the traditional ASP.NET programming model.

ADO.NET Data Services: ADO.NET Data Services provide new services that find, manipulate and deliver data over the web using simple URIs. Benefits include an easy and flexible way to access data over the web, while enabling the separation of presentation and data access code.

ASP.NET AJAX History: We’ll how to take advantage of the new AJAX History feature to enhance the user experience of a web application.

ASP.NET Routing: The final stop is ASP.NET Routing. We’ll explain the ASP.NET Routing engine and how it can provide better control over your web application's URLs. It discusses the pipeline of a request as seen by the routing engine, and how it can be extended to work with any type of web resource.

November 27th: What's new in Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario"
Presented by Pieter Gheysens (Compuware)
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario" is the version of Team System that follows Visual Studio Team System 2008. It is an integrated Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance. Team System "Rosario" can be seen as a major release and will bring lots of new features in the areas of Project Management, Architecture, Version Control, Build, ... Come and enjoy a sneak preview of what will be shipped in the next version of Visiual Studio Team System.

I hope you'll find something in there you like and I hope to meet you soon at one of our events!

Just 2 weeks ago we had Juval Löwy over for a session on WCF. Now today I got the confirmation that Ken Levy, community program manager on the Visual Studio Ecosystem team, will join us for a session on Visual Studio Extensibility.

Here's the full abstract:

Visual Studio provides a great set of development tools out of the box, and extending your platform with additional functionality brings you the benefits of the expanding VS ecosystem.  
 
Visual Studio provides a great set of development tools out of the box, and extending your platform with additional functionality brings you the benefits of the expanding VS ecosystem.

Fasten your seat belt and get ready for a demo-centric roller coaster ride touring the end to end story around extending Visual Studio. From adding free or commercial extensions to VS like those found on our new http://visualstudiogallery.com web site, to building your own simple extensions for your own use, to distributing integrated packages to others for free, to creating a business or commercial product for VS developers, to innovating applications based on the new VS Shell royalty and license free. VSX, a shortcut name for Visual Studio Extensibility, represents the community which is a virtual and growing ecosystem that includes the VS SDK, all aspects of extending VS (packages, add-ins, macros, visualizers), .NET developers who extend VS, VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partner) program companies, and the VS SDK team (also known as the VSX team or the VS Tools Ecosystem team).

For more information about VSX, visit the Visual Studio Extensibility Developer Center at http://msdn.com/vsx and the VSX Team Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/vsxteam .

Registration is open as of now, as usual on www.visug.be .

I do want to thank Microsoft for this oppurtunity (thanks Katrien and Tom).

In less than 2 weeks, Visug has Juval Löwy for our next big event. In case you haven't registered already, there are still some seats left, but hurry as places are limited.

We managed to rent a cinema theatre (Utopolis Mechelen) again, there will be food, there will be drinks and most of our sponsors will be there too. And it's all for free, as you are used from us!

Juval will be talking about WCF, to be more precise: "WCF - Beyond the endpoints".
WCF is more than just the next generation platform for building connected systems. In many respects, WCF is the next development platform for Windows applications, providing system features that are presently crafted by hand on top of .NET and Windows. This session shares the power and productivity of WCF, demonstrating it as a 'Better .NET'. The sessions will focus on the on the key system features of WCF, enabling you to make educated decisions on aligning your product roadmap with WCF, and assess its benefits and advantages. The session starts with a brief overview of what is WCF and the WCF architecture, and then proceeds to demonstrates multiple aspects such as data contract tolerance, instance management, one-way calls, transaction propagation, automatic synchronization, queued calls and automatic security.

Convinced you can't miss this event? I bet you are! Head over to our site and register, it's free.

To summarize, here's all the info in a nutshell:
Speaker: Juval Löwy
Location: Utopolis Mechelen (includes roadmap)
Catering: free food and drinks
Date: Thursday April 3rd
Time: 18h

We hope to see you there!

As one of the largest user groups in Belgium, we are planning with Visug to do some redeliveries of launch sessions of the Heroes Happen Here Launch event. By doing this, we want to give everyone, especially those that are not able to visit the launch next week in Ghent, to see the new features of Visual Studio 2008.

Currently, we have 4 sessions planned, more will be added soon.

Wednesday May 7th 2008: TFS 2008: Best practices by Pieter Gheysens

Wednesday May 14th 2008: ASP.NET 3.5, AJAX and LINQ by Gill Cleeren

Tuesday May 20th 2008: ASP.NET 3.5, AJAX and LINQ by Gill Cleeren

Wednesday 21st May 2008: TFS 2008: Best practices by Pieter Gheysens

There will be some prizes to be won at each of these sessions, more on that later.

These events are free, just as our other events. Again, registration is required, so head to www.visug.be to register!

That's all the news for now I have from our community!

Another VISUG update: we are doing a BIG survey among our members. We really want to find out if you think we are doing a good job... or if are messing things up (let's hope not ;-) ).

So, please take this survey: http://www.visug.be/Survey/tabid/77/Default.aspx .

Yep, we did it again: VISUG is hosting an event with a world-class speaker. This year, we managed (thanks to Pieter Gheysens btw) to catch Juval Lowy for a session on WCF.

Here's what he will be talking about:

WCF is more than just the next generation platform for building connected systems. In many respects, WCF is the next development platform for Windows applications, providing system features that are presently crafted by hand on top of .NET and Windows. This session shares the power and productivity of WCF, demonstrating it as a 'Better .NET'. The sessions will focus on the on the key system features of WCF, enabling you to make educated decisions on aligning your product roadmap with WCF, and assess its benefits and advantages. The session starts with a brief overview of what is WCF and the WCF architecture, and then proceeds to demonstrates multiple aspects such as data contract tolerance, instance management, one-way calls, transaction propagation, automatic synchronization, queued calls and automatic security.

The session is, as always, free of charge, but registration is required. Go to www.visug.be, seats are limited!

Our session "Building Services with the Service Factory: Modeling Edition" that we're organizing with Visug next week is a big hit!

The bad news: all seats are taken...
The good news: I just added 10! We are now at a capacity of 60 people, so that's all we can accomodate.
So if you want to join, hurry up and register for one of the "wild card" seats.

Registration is like always on our Visug website: www.visug.be .

Yesterday, I added a new session on the Visug website. We have Olaf Conijn from the Netherlands giving a talk on Software Factories: "Building Services with the Service Factory: Modeling Edition".

Here's the abstract:

Being an extremely useful tool for architects and developers, the next release of the Service Factory adds one of the most often requested features: a graphical tool for designing message contracts and service interfaces based on the Visual Studio SDK, DSL Toolkit and Guidance Automation Toolkit. There are clear advantages of using a modeling environment when building services. The development team has more flexibility when the modeling environment includes logical models that don’t force platform and language decisions too early in the project. When this environment has a great deal of extensibility, the capabilities are only limited by imagination. The Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition provides this type of modeling environment. Attend this demo-heavy session to see how the Service Factory can be used and extended by your service development team.

Want to register? Go to our website and do so, it's free as always!

I'm proud to annouce the Belgian availability of the first European Silverlight Challenge, organised by Ineta Europe. In Belgium, Visug, the Belgian Visual Studio User Group, is the usergroup that organises this challenge.

Probably, you haven't heard of this competition yet. Well then, let me explain what you have to do in order to participate, and, maybe more importantly, what great prices are to be won!

The goal is to get more people developing Silverlight applications. As a participant, you can create whatever application you wish in Silverlight (may be in combination with another technology, for example ASP.NET/ASP.NET AJAX). You can upload your creation to our Belgian competition website, http://belgium.silverlightchallenge.eu. Do not upload it to the general website (www.silverlightchallenge.eu). The creations that reach us before January 31st 2008, will take part in the competition. A jury will then decide on 4 winners between the Belgian creations. The best creation will be entered in the European contest afterwards, where a jury will select the best participation over all countries.

Ready to start creating your Silverlight application? Maybe you'll get even more creative when you hear what great prizes you can win!

For the Belgian competition, these are the prizes:

If you attended my small talk on ASP.net futures (Silverlight and MediaPlayer controls) and you want to see the slides or the demo's again, click here.

If you want to see the other slidedeck, I have just posted them on the Visug website on this page.

Thanks for attending, it was a fun event!

Like last year, we at Visug are organising another geek dinner. This time, we have selected Leuven to be our location for this event. The Rodins, located at the Oude Markt, will be the place to be on December 21st (the Friday evening before the Christmas vacation)

If you're not familiar with the concept, here's a small intro. Basically, a bunch of people that have a passion for Microsoft technology, come together in a restaurant. They eat, they laugh, they drink, they talk about technology and get to know other people with the same interest. It's a very formal evening were you have the chance to talk geeky around the dinner table!

Want to join? Great! Just head over to our Visug website and register for this event. Seats are limited because of the size of the restaurant!

Oh and pssst... here's a little secret... Visug will be doing something special for those attending... but don't tell anyone ;-) .

Many people are interested in Silverlight! How do I know? Well, just one day after sending out the invitations, my Silverlight session is fully booked!

On one side, that's great news! However, some of you might have missed out. Therefore, we are doing the session a second time, on Wednesday September 26th 2007. This session will take place at Ordina Leuven (Haasrode).

To register, go to www.visug.be . You can register for the other upcoming events too, including a Geek Dinner!

I'll be doing a session on Silverlight next month, on September 20th for Visug, the Belgian Visual Studio User Group. In this session, I'll give an overview of XAML too, so that if you've got no knowledge, you'll still be able to follow the entire session. This event will take place in the Ordina (my company) buildings in Schelle.

I will announce the complete overview in a few days, as I'll be working on my session in the coming week (I have a week off, but I'll be working anyhow ;-) ).

If you want to register for this free training, please go to www.visug.be and click on the event! So, what are you waiting for?!?!

Being a board member of Visug, I'm proud to announce Community Day 2007!

From www.communityday.be :

The Belgian community has a very strong reputation internationally with many individuals making their mark in their fields of expertise. Lots of individuals, like yourself, are hungry for more information about the many Microsoft products and technologies. In addition to the technical information, there is also very often the need to just socialize with other persons within the same domain of expertise.

Five belgian usergroups, BIWUG, VISUG, SQLUG, IT-Talks, and Pro-Exchange, have decided to combine their efforts to organize a joint-event just before summer starts. This event will be the biggest community event in Belgium!  So if you are eager to learn, eager to get answers to your questions and eager to socialize, come and join us for our very first Belgian Community Day.

The event will take place at the premises of SemCom in Keerbergen on Thursday, the 28th of June 2007.

So, hurry and get registered!

PS: I made the "Community Day" site over the weekend... Any suggestions/remarks? Please leave a comment!

I just got home of DevDays 2007 (and now already I'm typing a report...), and man, it was a fun ride! If you weren't there, you did miss out on  great sessions and great fun (and great little pies... still don't know what was in them, but they tasted great). In my DevDays report, I want to highlight some of my personal 'fav-moments', some nice little tools I learned about and show some of my pics I took (maybe you're on them somewhere...).

(I wasn't at the pre-conference, so no report on March 27th...)

Day 1
6.00 am. Very early... Must get up to avoid traffic jams.
7.30 am. Breakfast at ICC Gent, avoided all traffic jams (jeej).

The day began like usual with an opening keynote, given this year by David Chappell. He went over what he thought would be the most important Microsoft-related innovations for 2007. These included the .net 3.0 framework, Forefront, Security Center and Longhorn Server.
 
After that, I went to the Blend demo, given by Carrie Longson. She showed some XAML effects created easily using Expression Blend. After that, she showed some impressive applications created with WPF. One of these was an application created by Microsoft UK for the Londen Underground (the tube). It was able to give an overview of the trains, where they were, all rendered in real time. It was even possible to rotate the viewport, completely in 3D. The application, while very impressive, took only 3 weeks to create with WPF.

Jeff Prosise is the speaker I saw the most sessions of (you'll find him again later in this article). The first one on Asynchronous ASP.net was impressive. He showed how to (and how not to) program threaded ASP.net. Doing this correctly can create a vast scalability for your web application. I hope to find some time to blog on some of his thoughts on this subject (hold your breath).

Up next was the first of 2 sessions of Raj Pai. This first one on Linq (.net Language Intergrated Query framework) explained in depth the possibilities of this extension of C# that will be included in C# 3.0. While the syntax on some moments still feels weird (it's odd to see Select and From in your C# code sometimes, even if you've been playing with it for some time), the session was very clear.

Like I said, Jeff Prosise would come back in this article. The next session I attended, Optimizing and Extending ASP.net Ajax, was very helpful for me. I've doing quite a lot of Ajax in the last months, but 1 thing I didn't use a lot yet, is the Ajax Client Script Library (the javascript). This library is not documented very well at this moment, so it's sometimes hard to figure out what you can do with it, and even harder how to do it. Luckily, this session cleared some clouds in my brain, so I think I'm on my way with it now!

The last session of the day, Hardcore debugging of .net applications given by "Mr Type Fast" Ingo Rammer was easily the one where I learned the most. I didn't know what to expect from it, but the demo's of this session literally blew me away.
He started by showing how to use WinDbg (WinDebug). While this is not a .net debugger, it can be used (loading in some DLLs) to debug running (production) .net applications. I actually never knew this was possible. This program is not the most user friendly, but it can be a real time saver. It does however use a lot of commands, and so I hope this session will certainly be included with the DVD.
He went on showing some other interesting tools. ADPlus is another tool (command line) that can be used to create a memory dump on any PC, that can afterwards be analyzed using WinDbg. Using these 2 can give you insight on why an application crashes or hangs.
The last shown tool was HawkEye. The free version can be used to inspect any .net forms application: you can see all properties of any control (name, color...) on a forms application.

After that, Visug, the Belgian Visug Studio User Group (of which I'm the webmaster), organised a bowling in Gent. We started playing at 9 pm, but due to a blackout in a large part of Gent, we were forced to stop playing around 10 pm.

1 am: in bed ;-)

       

Day 2

6.00 am... you know the story...

The day started with the second session of Raj Pai, that closely intergrated with the session of day 1. In this session, he explained the new features of C# 3.0 (of which I'll be blogging in the coming weeks): extension methods, automatic properties, how LINQ works internally...

I was lucky enough to be able to attend 2 "sidemeetings" with 2 speakers, namely Raj Pai and Jeff Prosise.
At 11am, I met in person with Raj on the top floor, and together with some collegues of Ordina, we got to ask him questions on LINQ and C# 3.0 .
He explained in detail what went on behind the scenes when you run a LINQ statement. Seeing this more or less eased me! On my question on how you could debug a LINQ statement, he advised me to break the statement into pieces, and add a ToList() to each part. That way, you can easily see what each part of the statement actually returns.

Another question we asked was the following: how do you see LINQ in a DAL? Sadly, on this topic, they're actually still working themselves, and he promised that some white papers will be available soon.

I also asked his vision on the "over-use" of extension methods in C# 3.0. Using these methods, you can for example write your own System.String.In() method. Personally, I think this will make code review very hard. Raj agreed with me, and said there will be some patterns and practices available later on when to use these methods.

Due to this private session, I was unable to attend the session given by my collegue Kurt Claeys. I did hear nothing but positive comments afterwards, so Kurt: congrats!

The next session I attended was again one given by Jeff Prosise, this time on WPF/E.
This session was closely followed by my second private session, this time with Jeff. During this session, we talked on the future of the 3 web technologies Microsoft is currently using/developing: ASP.net 2.0, WPF/E and ASP.net Ajax. He thinks that all these will intergrate more in the future, certainly WPF/E and ASP.net Ajax.

He said that what we have seen so far of WPF/E is only a fraction of what it will really become. He believes that on some aspects, the final version will be better that it's competitor, Adobe Flash. He seemed very excited on some features that will be announced at Mix '07, including the final name. This session was not only fun, it gave a great insight in what web technology is evolving too.

In the last session of the day, Ingo Rammer explained some more of on profiling .net applications using CLR profiler and SQL profiler.

After this session, I went home, tired, but happy!
Great job guys!

The Ordina booth
My company Ordina was Platinum Sponsor of this event, and so we had a very large booth. On the following pics, you can see more of this.

 

All my DevDays 2007 pics can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillcleeren/sets/72157600035030532/

What I brought home...
Het Computerwinkeltje, Belgium's largest computer book store, was also here, and they organised some book signing sessions. I just bought the new book on Powershell, Manning's Windows Powershell In Action , writte by Bruce Payette. I got my copy signed!

I also brought home the new book from Apress on LINQ.

REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 26, 2007 — On Tuesday, Jan. 30, Microsoft Corp. will unveil the Windows Vista™ operating system and the 2007 Microsoft^® Office system to consumers worldwide, transforming the way people communicate, create and share content, and access information and entertainment in the new digital age.

To help celebrate the launch of these flagship products, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will kick off a series of local retail events around the country by visiting a New York City Best Buy store. Ballmer will share his own “wow” moments with Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, the most thoroughly tested software releases in Microsoft’s history.

Microsoft has also partnered with retailers to host events in more than 30 locations across the United States.

•	Starting at 10 p.m. on Jan. 29, Microsoft has teamed up with retail partners and FOXSports.com to host red-carpet events for sports fans and enthused customers featuring DJs, special offers and pro football player appearances.
•	On Jan. 30, Microsoft and its retail partners have lined up a day full of events for consumers, with hourly hardware and software giveaways including Xbox 360™ drawings from 4 to 7 p.m. locally. Microsoft experts will also be on hand in stores to demonstrate the latest innovative features in Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
•	In addition, consumers can sign up their local K–12 school for a chance to win a PC lab makeover worth approximately $25,000 at each participating retail event.

Snowball.be has a first for you!

As webmaster of Visug.be, I just finished the work on the the registration page for this groundbreaking event: Scott Guthrie is coming to Belgium, and moreover, he's coming to Visug, the Belgian Visual Studio User Group.

Scott Guthrie, co-creator of ASP.NET at Microsoft, will be in Belgium for the first time onFebruary 1st 2007. VISUG is very proud that it can host - in collaboration with MSDN Belux - 2 presentations of this renowned speaker. In the first presentation, Scott will talk about the next version of ASP.NET, code named ASP.NET “Orcas”; during the second presentation Scott will give practical tips and tricks on ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX. Want to join this unique oppurtunity? Register here!

Today, I put the new Visug website online (go check it out @ www.visug.be ). The new site is aimed to be functional and new features will be added continuously in the coming months, since the site will be the main option for announcing events of the user group!

-On December 11th, we are doing a discussion evening on Exception handling. Since there is no speaker for this event, everyone will be able to take part in the discussion.
-On December 21st, Visug's first geek dinner will take place, somewhere in Antwerp. We're still searching for a perfect location!

Visug, the Belgian User group of Visual studio users, is organising a 2 day event on Visual Studio 2005 Team System.

Some info:

Description: This day and a half community event provides VISUG members with deep dive information on Visual Studio Team System 2005. During this event we will demonstrate the capabilities Visual Studio Team System 2005 in a way only user group can: not in theory but by live examples.

Event Outline: • Event Overview : Overview, Business value of VSTS, core scenarios, licensing • Planning for VSTS: Hardware and software requirements, selecting projects or solutions • Deploying & Maintaining Team Foundation Server: Installation, Administration, back up and restore • Working with Team Foundation Server: Architectural overview, services, extensibility • Team Projects & Reporting: Project planning, methodology, reports • Process Template Customization: Process guidance, work item types, workflow • Source Code Control: Overview, migration, administration • Building Code (MSBuild): Overview, customization • Architect Tools: Application designer, class designer, logical datacenter designer, SDM SDK • Developer Tools: Profiling, code coverage, code analysis • Testing Tools: Test management, test types, unit testing • Integration Scenarios: Commonly encountered integration scenarios

When: Friday 31 June 2006 from 13:00 until 17:00 Saturday 1 July 2006 from 9:00 until 16:00

More can be found on www.visug.be !