Martin Kulov's Blog

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