Last night I have visited the 5th anniversary of the Dutch .NET user group: DotNed.nl. For me it was the first time that I joined an event of that user group. And definitely not the last! First I wanted to congratulate the people, because they are doing a wonderful job. It is always nice to chat with some colleague MVP’s like Dennis Vroegop, Sander Gerz, Pieter Joost van de Sande and the former chairman of the group Michiel van Otegem. But there was another reason why I came up…. In my role as VP Speakers Bureau INETA Europe I was able to get Chad Hower to come over to Holland. He filled the complete evening with two great sessions. It was fun. Really fun. Ever thought you were able to connect your Wiimote to your PC and play around?…. Get some freaky numbers in Excel by moving the Wiimote around.. or even better… connect an USB Rocket Launcher…. Toys for boys.

The Dutch developer community Rocks!

For those who are interested...

Chad Hower / Kudzu
Wiimotely controlled wee litlle rockets...   Fun!
Dutch.NET User Group DotNed.nl

About ten years ago, when I was Visual Basic rooky, I was an enthusiastic reader of the Visual Basic Programmers Journal. It was the time I was calculating in months. I was counting the weeks and the days till the next issue. After two or three hours I’ve read the complete magazine. And then I had to wait again for one month… man, that was hard. In the same period I became an Internet connection and discovered Carl & Gary’s Homepage! Do you remember that website? It was the first website dedicated to Visual Basic. Now I could read my ‘Visual Basic food’ on a daily bases. That was a great improvement!
One of the guys behind that page was Carl Franklin (BTW…Who was or is Gary?).  Carl is now, with Richard Campbell, one of the hosts  of the immense popular .NET Rocks! Shows. Last year at TechEd Barcelona, I met Carl Franklin in person. I was one of the guys of the jury of Speaker Idol and Carl and Richard were the hosts of that competition. He is a really nice guy! Today I discovered Carl again… I never knew that Carl is such musical guy. He’s not only very talented in explaining new technology, he’s a profession drummer, pianist, guitar player, bass guitar player and singer. Beside the fact that I want to mention that he created an awesome HD Silverlight video, he produced his own version of Steely Dan’s, Home at Last. In one word amazing! That kind of video’s makes me happy…

 Carl's version of 'Home at Last'

Tonight Damir Tomicic announced, on behalf of our complete INETA Europe team, the kick-off of the 'European Silverlight Challenge'. We run this developer competition in collaboration with Microsoft. This competition is based on the development of a web component or application using Silverlight for its user interface and with the only condition that it to be published as Open Source (license MS-PL), being able to apply these components free of charge to the user group’s web sites and online technical communities.

Believe in your talent and join! – Dare to participate with us on the European Development Competition about Silverlight and win fabulous prizes, and of course the recognizement of wining one of the first places ;)

 European Silverlight Challenge

Scot Guthrie announced today that Microsoft will release the source code of the .NET Framework libraries later this year with the .NET 3.5 and VS2008 release. That will give an amazing debugging experience!

... "We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows).  We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ).  The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

You'll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally).  We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008." ...

What a great news!

Read more...

Have you got what it takes to rock the stage?  Jumpstart your career on the technical Speaker circuit by entering Speaker Idol at TechEd Developers 2007!  Demonstrate your exceptional presentation skills and become next year’s rock star presenter.
The top Speaker Idol presenter will win a Speaker ticket for TechEd Developers 2008, with the opportunity of presenting a technical breakout session to an audience of developers attending the conference.  The first runner-up will win a delegate ticket for TechEd Developers 2008.

Last year I was part of jury of Speaker Idol... and really it was fun! And that you can boost your career proved Bart de Smet.. he was the winner of Speaker Idol 2007 and he is now working for Microsoft Corporation in Seattle.. ;-)

:-))

My good friend and fellow community leader of VBcentral, Willem van den Broek, released a package which will help you to create Dutch setup programs from within Visual Studio 2005.
The package installs all, in Dutch (Netherlands) translated files, necessary for creating Windows Installer packages in the Dutch language from within the Visual Studio 2005 IDE. To be able to choose the Dutch language directly from the IDE, the locale info for Dutch (Netherlands) is inserted into the Windows registry also.

This language pack is offered to you, free of charge, by the Dutch Visual Basic community VBcentral.

 http://www.vbcentral.nl/msi

At the MVP Summit I saw a handout with all the default shortcuts in Visual Basic 2005. Till now, I didn't know that you can download that poster from the site of Microsoft.. ;-)
 
This poster contains the default key bindings for Visual Basic 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print. Keyboard shortcuts can help increase productivity when performing certain tasks within the Visual Studio 2005 IDE (Integrated Development Environment). This wall poster provides the shortcut and associated description for the default key bindings setup in the Visual Basic 2005 profile. The poster is provided in both color and grayscale for you to print locally as a PDF file. It is best printed landscape on paper size A3 (297mm/11.7” x 420mm/16.5”) or larger

So here's the link..
 Visual Basic 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

... Microsoft awarded me for the 2nd time as MVP for Visual Basic! Yes!!

"Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2007 Microsoft® MVP Award!
 
The Microsoft MVP Award is our way of saying thank you and to honor and support the significant contributions you make to communities worldwide. As a recipient of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional award, you join an elite group of technical community leaders from around the world who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing your real world expertise with users and Microsoft.  Microsoft salutes all MVPs for promoting the spirit of community and enhancing people’s lives and the industry’s success everyday.  To learn more about the MVP Program, visit: www.microsoft.com/mvp.

Your extraordinary efforts in Visual Developer - Visual Basic technical communities during the past year are greatly appreciated. ..."

The Visual Basic team has put together a "Live from Redmond" webcast series aimed at the next version of Visual Basic and Visual Studio code named "Orcas". The series will start April 18th and will continue into June. Some topics that will be covered: Orcas Overview, LINQ Overview, LINQ to SQL Server & O/R Designer Deep Dive, Building N-Tier Applications, Offline Data Caching, Building Service-Oriented Applications, Using the Interop Toolkit to Migrate your VB6 Application and a couple more!

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