Martin Kulov's Blog

Please find the updated agenda of Visual Studio 2010 Official Launch event in Sofia, Bulgaria. The event is going to be held on 23rd April, Friday, from 09:00h at Technical University – Sofia, hall 2140.

In order to attend the event you need to register here!http://events.msbgregistration.com/Default.aspx?eventID=33

http://www.microsoft.com/bulgaria/events/visualStudio2010.mspx

Labels: Events, Visual Studio 2010

UPDATE: Due to air flight cancellations all over Europe, Brian Harry will not be able to make it. However the launch event is still going to be held. Same date, time and agenda applies.

http://www.microsoft.com/bulgaria/events/visualStudio2010.mspx

Visual Studio 2010 launch in Bulgaria will be held on 23 April, Friday. Event will be held at Technical University of Sofia, hall 2140.

We are honored to have Microsoft Technical Fellow and Team Foundation Server Product Manager, Mr. Brian Harry, who will be doing keynote about Visual Studio 2010. I am even more honored to do the demo for Brian’s presentation, so wish me good demo luck :)

I will be also doing a session about TFS for Everyone at 1pm so it is a great opportunity for all TFS fans.

Emil Stoychev and Branimir Giurov will do sessions on Silverlight 4 and Web and Windows Development in Visual Studio 2010.

Read more about the Official Visual Studio 2010 Launch and register in order to participate in the event for free using the link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/bulgaria/events/visualStudio2010.mspx

Who is Brian Harry?

Read more here - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/techfellow/harry/default.mspx

I am lucky to know Brian Harry from the years of interaction with him in Team System MVP mailing list. I would like to assure you that talking to this man is like drinking from a pure spring of natural, clean and proven software practices. Make sure you meet and talk to him during the event.

Labels: Events, TFS, Visual Studio 2010

Уважаеми партньори и колеги,

Амбициозният екип на Ай Ланс ООД, заедно с партньорската подкрепата на .net, Kaldata.com, ICN.bg, NEVEQ, Българската Мрежа на Бизнес Ангелите, Gemius - България, ABC Design and Communications имат удоволствието да Ви съобщят, че на 21, 22 и 23 Май, 2010 в гр. София ще се проведе тридневен обучителен семинар на тема „Предприемачество в софтуерния и интернет бизнес”. Местата са ограничени, поради специфичния характер на програмата и само 25 човека ще имат възможност да вземат участие!

ü  Какво са подготвили организаторите за Вас

Семинарът ще се проведе на английски език, поради международния характер на събитието. Tтеоретичните лекции и практически казуси ще бъдат представени пред малък брой участници в рамките на 30 часа. Третият ден от семинара – така наречения “VIP Day”- ще протече под формата на пряк диалог между инструкторите и аудиторията. Предвид настоящата икономическа криза, главен приоритет на мероприятието е участниците да обменят идеи, да споделят професионалните си проблеми и да придобият ноу-хоу от международни специалисти с богат опит. За да бъде постигната тази цел, организаторите залагат на индивидуален подход на преподаване, ориентиран към специфичните нужди на всеки един участник. Предвидени са повече от 10 часа посветени на разрешаването на реални казуси, както и прогнозиране и създаване на бизнес програми за действие. Нещо повече, след приключване на обучението на всеки един от участниците се предоставя възможност за пряк контакт с гост-лекторите и инструкторите за получаване на пакет от материали и допълнителна информация.

ü  Основни акценти в програмата

Организираното събитие е част от веригата образователни програми „Start in Garage”, които вече се радват на изключителен успех в най-развитите ИТ пазари в света - САЩ, Русия и Украйна.

Основните теми, заложени в сесиите на трите дни са: 

§  разработване на успешни стратегии и бизнес модели в ИТ сферата

§  създаване на стратегия за маркетинг и продажби на технологични продукти и услуги

§  привличане на инвестиции в стартиращи проекти

§  монетизация

§  защита на интелектуалната собственост

§  управление на човешките ресурси от създаването на компания до нейното развитие

ü  За кого е разработена обучителната програма „Start in Garage”

В целевата група на организирания семинар влизат мениджъри от софтуерния и интернет бизнес, както и предприемачи, желаещи да създадат и управляват ефективно своя интернет или софтуерна компания.

ü  Международни инструктори и гост-лектори

Инструктори и гост-лектори на семинара са доказани руски и български мениджъри и предприемачи в сферата на информационните технологии, с изключително богат опит.

Ø  Д-р. Николай Митушин - инструктор

Към настоящия момент Д-р Митушин е инвестиционен директор в „ABRT Venture Fund”, Русия. Той притежава докторска степен в сферата на „Инвестиционната и стратегическа оптимизация”. Опитът си в управление на софтуерен бизнес Д-р Митушин добива в софтуерни компании и корпорации като „Intel”, „Arptek” и „Microsoft” – Русия където е бил Инвестиционен директор.

Ø  Иля Антипов - инструктор

Иля Антипов е операционен директор и консултант към технопарк „Ingria”. Завършил е бакалавърска степен и две обучителни програми за мениджъри в САЩ в престижните учебни заведения - училището по мениджмънт към Технологическия институт в Масачузец и бизнес училището към Калифорнийския университет „Бъркли”. Иля Антипов е един от основателите на „RUSSEE Consulting” и „TEKAMA Inc.”, а също така ръководи отдел за съвременни технологии в корпорацията „TransDecisions Inc.” За богатия професионален опит на г-н Антипов допринасят съвместната му работа с “Microsoft”, участието му в много стартиращи предприятия, както и самостоятелната му кариера като бизнес ангел.

Ø  Антон Тодоров – гост-лектор – управляващ партньор в „Българска мрежа на бизнес ангелите”

Ø  Марин Илиев - гост-лектор – инвестиционен мениджър в „NEVEQ”

Ø  Веселин Ангелов - гост-лектор - управител на „Gemius” България

Ø  Дончо Ангелов – гост-лектор – мениджър средства за разработка „Майкрософт България”

Ø  Горица Белогушева – гост-лектор – мениджър маркетинг и продажби “ABC Design and Communications”

Повече информация за събитието можете да намерите на официалната страница на семинара: www.startingarage.bg.

Labels: Events

Register for Microsoft Days 2010 and you can attend the TFS 2010 sessions below (also shameless plug :)).

Pay attention to the keynote as important announcement will be made, exclusively for Bulgarian TFS users.

• Team Development Enhancements in Visual Studio 2010 (Level: 300) by Luka Debeljak
  
• Планиране и автоматизация на тест процеса с Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 (Ниво: 200) by me :)
  
• Branching и Merging в TFS 2010 (Ниво: 300) by me again

User group members discounts apply. Contact me for more information.

Make sure that you drop by our Community Booth @MS Days 2010 and participate into exciting raffles :)

See you there.

Labels: Events, TFS

<repost from Emil Stoychev’s blog>

I’m very excited to announce the availability of SilverlightShow EcoContest -

Considering the alarming consequences of climate changes, and the actions taken to promote and carry out environmental-saving activities worldwide, we would like to give our share and show the power that web applications have to convince, persuade, and spread the word!

We invite you to use your Silverlight skills and imagination to design attractive, educative and informative Silverlight-based applications that help support and promote any kind of environment-friendly activities. We, on our end, will make sure the best of your masterpieces reached as larger audience as possible!

Prizes? You won’t believe it!

Our Grand Prize winner will receive a trip to MIX10 event in Las Vegas (MIX10 pass, 3-night hotel stay at Mandalay Bay Hotel and 1,000 USD for travel expenses included), and Telerik Premium Collection for .NET!
Two more MIX10 passes and more awards from Telerik await the first runner-up, and the Community Choice winner! Read more on the prizes.

WOW!

Hurry up to submit your entry – the deadline is February 15th, 2010!

See you at MIX10!

Labels: Events, INETA

The second of the series of meetings targeting Visual Studio 2010 launch is announced. You can find the details in the Visual Studio 2010 Planning and Deployment Facebook event. It will be held tomorrow, 19^th of November, at 10am (CET+1/GMT+2). The event will be held in Bulgarian and will look at different scenarios for upgrade to TFS 2010, deployment and performance problems in TFS 2008 and how they are solved in TFS 2010. Also compatibility issues between different versions of Visual Studio will be discussed.

Also make sure that you join the VS2010 Beta 2 Focus Group on Facebook and you will receive future notifications about similar events in this focus group.

All participants in the meeting will receive one Visual Studio Planning Poker Cards Deck kindly provided by Visual Studio Product Group.

UPDATE: Link to Outlook calendar can be found here - http://www.kulov.net/blogs/martin/VS2010%20Planning%20and%20Deployment.ics

Labels: Events, INETA, Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft just announced a bunch of new codenames. It is really hard for me to go into every single one of them so I will provide the highlights as I see them:

• Azure will support virtual machines. You will be able to deploy and run a virtual machine that you have customized. I guess more on that is still to come.
• Windows Server AppFabric is the new name of “Velocity” and “Dublin”. You can download Beta 1 from here.
• Bizspark partners will receive 750 free compute hours per month for eight months for Windows Azure.
• ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta is just released.  Unfortunately it does not support Visual Studio 2010 so far, but it will do as ASP.NET MVC 2 is packaged in the final version of Visual Studio 2010.
• New data service called “Dallas” that enable companies to provide and access data, imagery and real-time web services using unified framework and the highly available Azure Platform.

Read more about the keynote at PDC09 Virtual Pressroom.

Labels: ASP.NET, Azure, BizSpark, Events, PDC

Watch the keynote from PDC 2009 live at http://microsoftpdc.com now!

Labels: Events, PDC

I am currently in Berlin doing the Ask The Experts for TechEd EMEA 2009. Most of the time I will be at the Visual Studio ALM booth. if you happen to be there too, please drop by and get in touch.

Berlin is great! We attended the 20th anniversary show of Berlin wall fall.

And of course the inevitable Windows 7 as it was launched just 3 weeks ago.

Labels: Events, TechEd

The recording from the Visual Studio 2010 Focus Group is available for download.

    Subject: VSTS 2010 Focus Group - Visual Studio 2010 Pricing and Licensing
    Recording URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/view?id=4737R8

Next meeting will be on 19 Nov 2009 and we will be covering “Visual Studio 2010 Planning and Deployment”.

Thanks to everyone for participating and will see you at the next meeting.

Labels: Events, INETA, TFS, Visual Studio 2010

At DevReach 2009 (www.devreach.com) was announced the launch of a new focus group targeting the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2010. This focus group will deliver series of discussions until Visual Studio 2010 RTM in 22^nd March, 2010.

On 19^th October Microsoft announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. This version is of significant importance as it comes with Go Live license for production systems. Go Live license allows you to deploy and run .NET 4.0, VS 2010 Beta 2 and TFS 2010 Beta 2 for commercial use and have full support from Microsoft. Upgrade from Beta 2 to RTM version is also supported.

It is also worth mentioning that this is one of the biggest releases of Visual Studio so far.

Here are the first scheduled sessions so far:

• 05 Nov 2009 – Visual Studio 2010 Pricing and Licensing
• 19 Nov 2009 – Visual Studio 2010 Planning and Deployment
• 26 Nov 2009 – SourceSafe is dead, Long live TFS Basic!

The most active participants will be included in a raffle provided by Microsoft Bulgaria.

The meetings will be delivered using Live Meeting discussions in Bulgarian and will be held at 10am (CET) for an hour. Attending the first meeting is easy – just click on this link. Our idea is to allow more people to join from their working places and avoid time usually spent in traffic.

These meetings of the focus group are part of SofiaDev.NET User Group.

For additional announcements, please watch out Martin Kulov’s blog at www.kulov.net/blogs/martin and Face Book group VS2010 Beta 2 Focus Group.

Labels: Events, INETA, TFS, Visual Studio 2010

Norm Judah, Chief Technology Officer - Worldwide Services and IT, will be visiting Bulgaria on 7^th of October. He manages about 16,000 professionals in Microsoft Services worldwide.

Norm will give inside information for the future of Software+Services in Microsoft and how technologies are going to change the way people communicate today.

More information about the event you can read from Microsoft Bulgaria DPE blog.

Until that – we can listen to the 20min podcast from Scot Hanselman about Building Community with Norm Judah.

Labels: Events

I will be speaking at Macedonian .NET UG’s CodeCamp at Skopje this Saturday, 13th of June.

I am going to present a session on Building Highly Scalable Web Sites using Microsoft “Velocity” (Level 300).

If you happen to be in the same area, drop me a message and we can get in touch.

Labels: Events

I have put a page with all Bulgarian User Groups that I know and that are active (at least almost all :)). Of course Microsoft related only :).

If you feel that I missed something or you just have some feedback, just comment on this post. I would love to get your opinion.

In addition, I have set up a Facebook group called IT Events in Bulgaria. I try to post there for all the events in Bulgaria and close region that I know of but it is sometimes hard to put all of them. So if you want your event to be added there, the easiest way is to send me a link to Facebook event that you have created and I will add it to that group. I have made the group moderated, because I would like to keep it low noise and out of marketing or low value events. Other than that I would love to post your event in there.

And last – I am happy to be awarded again as Most Valuable Professional for 2009 in Team System category. Team System product group totally rocks! I am happy to be part of this group.

Labels: Events

In less than 12 hours is starting TechDays Developer 2009 – Defy All Challenges – 24-Hour virtual event!  For the first time, it is gathering developers from all over the world in one continuous 24 hours of learning around the clock on April 1, 2009. 

Through the TechDays virtual event portal, attendees will be able to access more than 95 sessions in person or on-demand later at their convenience with renowned technology experts.  TechDays Virtual 24-Hour event provides an online environment for developers to learn to be more productive and increase their skills during these changing times. 

Register and go to Session Builder to select your list of sessions.

Labels: Events

Today at MIX09 ScottGu announced the availability of Silverlight 3 Beta. I am very excited about the new databinding capabilities and the HD streaming support. Microsoft definitely put a lot of efforts in this release. Check out the Silverlight 3 Beta release page.

Interesting fact – although all the new features that are added, the download distributive of Silverlight 3 Beta is 4.4MB, with 40Kb less than Silverlight 2.0 – says ScottGu.

Check out Silverlight 3 Beta Development Center.

Here are some of my highlights in this release:

• Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming
• IIS Media Services
• Native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio
• True HD playback in full-screen
• Bitmap Caching
• New Bitmap API
• 60+ controls with source code
• Element to Element binding
• Data Forms
• New features for data validation
• Support for business objects
• Enhanced Deep Zoom
• Internet connectivity detection
• Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import
• Team Foundation Server support allows easier integration of the Blend user into Team System

Labels: Events

Check out MIX09 keynotes and live sessions as they become available. Video on demand will be provided also soon.

Labels: Events

MS Days 2009 registration is open. This year the conference will have IT and Dev sessions held in different days (IT sessions: 14, 15 April – Dev sessions: 16,17 April). Along with the great line up of speakers, I would like to point to you two of them - Dean Vitner and Dino Esposito. They will deliver sessions on SQL 2008 and Architecture Practices.

I will be also delivering two sessions on “Visual Studio Team System 2008 Overview” and “A Lap around Software Quality in VSTS 2010 with Team Test”.

If you haven’t registered yet, do register now and save your seat since space is limited.

Labels: Events

There is a new Silverlight User Group starting in Bulgaria. Their first meeting will be on 03 Feb 2009 at hotel Greenville in Sofia (next to Microsoft Bulgaria office).

The first session will be about “Creating a Silverlight Application – Manager, Designer, Developer”.

For more information please read the invitation and visit the event page.

You can register on the web site to receive future updates.

Labels: Events

VORT-EX is the virtual CEE Remix event that Microsoft just started today. Join us at http://www.microsoft.com/vort-ex/ to see live the keynote of the event at 19h BG time (18h CET).

Tomorrow (19 Nov) is the second day of the event. I am very happy to find out that Chad Z. Hower a.k.a. "Kudzu" will also give a session on XNA.

You can find the full agenda here:

http://www.microsoft.com/vort-ex/agenda.aspx

In order to watch the show, you need to have Silverlight installed and must have Live ID.

Labels: Events

It is just one month before Sahil Malik comes to Bulgaria. Sahil has a very popular blog at blah.winsmarts.com discussing Microsoft SharePoint.

Sahil is coming to Bulgaria between 24th and 28th November to teach Advanced SharePoint 2007 Development for 5 days intensive course with hands on labs. 

Sahil is a very good professional who writes code every single day. His course materials are prepared based on his personal experience and all the demos will show how to handle in practical situations. This is the best way to learn the technology from one of the best professionals in the world.

Here are few of the main accents from the course agenda:

• Site Collections
• Object Model Basics
• Features vs. Solutions
• WCF in SharePoint
• Architecture for Web Pages
• Deployment Best Practices
• CAML Basics and LINQ
• WCF Bindings
• Silverlight in SharePoint
• List, Libraries, Content Types
• Search in SharePoint
• InfoPath
• Workflows
• User Profiles
• Branding MOSS
• Business Data Catalog
• SharePoint Security
• Excel Services
• Reporting Services in SharePoint

If this outline looks interesting for you, makes sure that you register in good time, since space is very limited.

Another chance to catch Sahil is on a user group presentation, that same week in November. Details will be announced soon.

Labels: Events, SharePoint

Labels: Debugging, Events

For a third year in a row DevReach 2008 is going to be the most popular, technical and fun conference to attend. The line up of speakers is just outstanding and I am not going to name them here since I have to write them all :). Check out the speakers and sessions pages. There are total of 40 sessions divided in 4 tracks: Presentation, Business, Data and 'Architecture and Practices'. Do not miss the fun and of course the opportunity to learn from world's best speakers. Register now and save 20% until 15^th September for only 80 euro.

Labels: DevReach, Events

Tomislav Bronzin and Andrej Radinger, two great guys from INETA Europe Board, are delivering a very deep technical training on mobile technologies in Zagreb next month. The conference is called Mobility Day 2008 and it is all about empowering your mobile experience. It does not matter if you are developer, IT professional or manager, the conference will fit all your needs. It is organized in three tracks – Business, Development and ITPro covering various aspects of mobile application development and integration. Tomislav and Andrej have immense knowledge in this area and I would highly recommend attending there.

The conference itself is on 9^th of September in Zagreb which is not so far from Sofia. Imagine also taking the weekend before to visit the wonderful Croatian coasts … :) Priceless (as a commercial says :))

For more information visit Mobility Day 2008 web site.

UPDATE: The link to the site is corrected now! Sorry about that.

Labels: Events

Tomorrow I am going to attend a Risk Management Course in Sofia organized by RammSoft. The course will not only show Risk Management theory but we are going also to participate in a sample project in which we will try to identify the risks, evaluate their probability and after that a discussion on how to avoid them. I love when the practice is much more than the theory, so I am glad that I registered to this course. Also I must also add that I personally know Mike from RammSoft from a long time ago and I am pretty sure that the course will be executed well and will provide me with good value.

What is this risk management about? Risk management is not something new in the area of Software Development Lifecycle process. It is basically trying to identify the possible risks so you can be proactive in the way you manage your project so that eventually you will lower the probability of their occurrence. If after all the risk appears, your decisions taken earlier can isolate the impact of the risk so you do not threaten the whole project. In today's demands, clients ask for shorter and faster deliveries. In such small time frame, if something delays your project for a week or two, you are in huge trouble. Although small projects are much easier to plan, the risks that may happen in such a short time are often the factors that makes small projects so hard to deliver on time.

Why should you, as a software developer, care about this? There are many risks in a software project that require very deep technical knowledge. It is probably only you in the whole team that is aware of them. Knowing how to handle such issues, or at least how to identify them, will help you do better job and will benefit to the whole team.

Labels: Events

I am going to speak this Saturday at a brand new conference at Warsaw, Poland called Communities to Communities 2008 - " the first ever countrywide IT conference in Poland organized by community of Microsoft .NET and SQL Server professionals and geeks". I am going to talk about Debugging and Crash Dump Analysis of ASP.NET Web Sites where I will show real life examples how WinDbg saved my poor soul a number of times. WinDbg and related debugging techniques are something that every single production manager should know and shouldn't be scared to run and try. I will also show how you can analyze a sample stack trace and track down a specific value in stack. If you are in the area, I would love to see you there and talk to you.

Labels: Debugging, Events

I am going to teach a one day course on what is new and shining in Visual Studio 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2008. The course is delivered by WebAcademy.dk. It will be held on 13th March (this Thursday). Below is course agenda in Denmark (as Steven Forte says - I hope they know I will not speak in Danish :)). The course will be held at a wonderful location called Raadvad Kro in Copenhagen area.

A great prize is expecting its lucky winner :)

There is still a chance to register if you didn't yet.

Looking forward for this great event!!!

08:00-09:00 - Check-in, udlevering af materiale og morgenkaffe
09:00-09:15 - Velkomst og præsentation
09:15-10:30 - What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5

I denne session kigger vi nærmere på alle nyhederne i Visual Studio 2008. Vi vil også lære dig hvordan du bygger dine løsninger imod forskellige versioner af .NET frameworket, og afsløre næsten hemmelige debugging tips som hidtil kun har været kendte af eliten. Vi vil også vise dig hvordan du bedst udnytter webudviklings features såsom JavaScript debugging, IntelliSense, JSON support og meget mere. Til slut vil vi lære dig hvordan Visual Studio 2008 vil hjælpe dig med at speede din udviklingstid op og forbedre dine debugging skills, til et niveau som dine kolleger vil misunde dig.

10:30-10:45 - Pause
10:45-12:00 - Implementing Best Practices with Team Foundation Server 2008

At bruge best practices i software udviklingsprocesser kan være en langtrukken og kedelig opgave. At håndtere, ændrede anmodninger, enhedstest, løbende integration, peer reviews, daily build, web, load, performance tests, defekt management…. du har hørt om dem alle, men hvor mange af dem bruger du virkelig i dine udviklingsprocesser på nuværende tidspunkt? Team Foundation server kan de fleste læse om i ugevis, men alligevel gå glip af de mest banebrydende og nødvendige features. Vi lærer dig hvordan de nye features i Visual Studio 2008 og Team Foundation Server 2008 kan bidrage til at din virksomhed leverer bedre og hurtigere resultater. Denne session vil også introducere dig til tredjepartsværktøjer der vil gøre din udvikling nemmere end nogensinde før.

12:00-13:00 - Frokost
13:00-14:15 - LINQ - the New Way for Data Access

Language Integrated Query (LINQ) er en ny programmeringsmodel fra Microsoft der gør det at arbejde med data i .NET frameworket til en simpel og ligetil opgave. I Visual Studio 2008 er C# og VB sprog kompilieringen væsentligt forbedret for understøttelse af nye udvidelser. Imens at sådanne muligheder længe har eksisteret i 3. parts værktøjer er .NET frameworket 3.5 det første til at understøtte lokal adgang til forskellige datakilder ved brug af en ny dataorienteret metode i C# og VB. I denne session vil du også lære hvordan du bruger den indbyggede Object Relational Mapping (ORM), der muliggør at modelere relationsdatabaser til objekt orienterede modeller og nemt skabe, læse, opdatere og slette (CRUD) data ved brug af .NET objekt adgang.

14:15-14:45 - Kaffe og networking
14:45-16:00 - Scenarios for Integration of WCF and WF

Med tilkomsten af Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) og Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), tager Microsoft konceptet om forbundne systemer skridtet videre. Denne session vil vise dig hvordan du integrerer WCF og WF i forskellige scenarier og lære dig hvorfor du bør gøre det.

16:00-16:15 - Pause
16:15-17:30 - Profiling, Load and Web Testing in Visual Studio 2008

Denne session vil bl.a. lære dig hvordan du tester den maksimale load på dine systemer, ved brug af de i forvejen skabte brugsscenarier. Til slut vil vi vise dig hvordan vi under load testing kan måle din kodes ydelse bedst muligt.

17:30-18:00 - Afslutning / Bingo

Kurset foregår d. 13 marts i inspirerende omgivelser på Raadvad Kro nord for København. Prisen er 3.900,-, inklusiv frokost og forplejning.

Labels: Events, Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft has just announced their annual conference MS Days 2008 on 24^th and 25^th of April in the International Exhibition Center - Sofia. For the second time the conference is paid one, but the price is only 50 euro for two days which is absolutely nothing compared to what you get. Having a paid conference makes a lot of things also possible. They now have three external speakers (and may be even one more, but he is still tentative) and great prizes to give out to lucky winners. The prizes are three 3 ATV motor cars! They are also planning a party on 24^th :)

Hurry up and register because I have the feeling that after few weeks it will be sold out so do not blame me that I did not tell you this :)

I will be presenting two sessions there:

Testing with VSTS 2008

Testing is progressively becoming a real first class citizen in Visual Studio Team System. In this session we will show you what tools you have available in different Visual Studio 2008 editions and how to use them effectively. This session is intended for every team member who cares about how to write high quality code without sacrificing productivity.

Debugging and Crash Dump Analysis of ASP.NET Web Sites

This session will show you how you can debug and resolve problems in web applications that are running on a production server. We will take a look at the features in developer's best friend - WinDbg. You will see different problem scenarios that may sound familiar to you and ways to get problem located on the live server. Additional tools for tracing and diagnostics will be shown.

Find out more at MS Days 2008 Agenda and MS Days 2008 Speakers.

Labels: DevDays, Events

So many things are happening in Bulgaria and in Microsoft technologies in general that I can hardly manage to write a line about everything, but I will try to do this in series of posts.

The second match of IT Boxing has just finished. This time the fight was about "ASP.NET vs. Java & JSF vs. PHP vs. Ruby'. Alex Thissen did a great job showing new things in web development with .NET 3.5 and VS2008 and also the fresh Preview 2 of the ASP.NET MVC pattern. I was disappointed to find out that Java team won, after all they showed to the public was a recorded usage of a simple CMS system and general description of how enterprise is J2EE, although we did not see almost no demos from them. I guess that the Java fens just were outnumbering the .NET fens. Poor Java guys - after all they saw from Alex, Stefan and Emil and they are still voting for Java - same as Bulgarian politicians - they never know what they are voting for.

Labels: Bulgarian Association of Software Developers, Events

A very good friend of mine, Mihail Mihaylov (a.k.a. Mike Ramm), is starting professional training services.

His first course will be next week (13 March 2008) on Software Project Management Fundamentals. Usually I find such project management courses a total waste of time. However I know that Mike was in all the hell of project management in small outsourcing companies. I know that his experience is real and he is feeling the pain of developers and their direct managers.

If you are still reconsidering attending, do not think - register! Seats are limited!

Mike is also running the PM Stories blog, Nova Rabota and few others.

Labels: Events

Labels: Events