Today I was told by the BCS that I have been awarded Fellow of the Society (FBCS) , I so very proud of the work the BCS is doing to improve the community and I feel that I am pushing to do my bit in the North of England (and the rest of the country given the opportunity occurs) I was waiting for some pictures (yet to …

The 4th annual Architect Insight Conference has just been announced and this year I am happy that Black Marble is helping make it happen. I will be presenting on Microsoft's Vision of modelling using “M” , I think M has a huge future in architecture and while it is only available in it base level , it is important to …

As well as speaking on the GDR release of VSTS Database Edition at SQLbits this weekend I will also be at VBug Newcastle on the 22nd April.

Whilst preparing for my session at SQLBits next weekend I was re-watched Gert Drapers' PDC session (TL45) where he used a command tool to deploy a database via a USB pen drive (about 30 minutes into the session). Now it seems that the createdeployment command line tool he used is not currently available outside …

On 12 May, we are hosting a Business Process Management Event here at Black Marble HQ, with PNMSoft. With a practical guide to Business Process Management in the “Real World” this could be the session you need to understand how BPM can aid your business. Great lunch included …

I have been away at the MVP summit and then on holiday for a couple of weeks. On this trip every hotel I stayed in had free internet, though often only wired. Seem many hotels have Wifi contracts with mobile phone companies and they are still charging for. So top tip make sure you have UTP cable in your bag. The 'most …

I did a post before going to the MVC summit called Do you need work item hierarchy in TFS? which mentioned the new tools from Notion for TFS. Well there are many ways to skin a cat, and also to produce a hierarchy of TFS work items. Also have a look at Artiso Workitem Manager. This product is interesting as it provides …

As I am sure you will have heard the MVC 1.0 has been released. I downloaded this on my Windows 7 and tried to install it but got an Error 1722, the MSI then rolled back. Turns out the problem was simply that I had Visual Studio open at the time I installed, it needs to be closed. It seems the MSI does not check for …

Black Marble are running a few more exciting and free events for you in April and May. On 30 April, at our usual venue near Leeds, we are hosting an informative SharePoint Workshop (Think Small to Win Big with SharePoint) – looking at how small efficiencies can add to big savings – “Many organisations focus on large …

Over the last week I have received many comments on my recent post about bad apples, it seems to have resonated with a lot of people in the industry ( many of whom already read the great coding horror blog ). The two common questions have been, i) how do you spot it? , ii) what do you do? The first is easier than the …