A big thanks to everybody who came to the Server 2008 launch event last week. Andy and myself had a great time presenting to such an enthusiastic crowd. In the end we ran long because of the amount of dialogue around the new features of Server 2008 and I hope everyone went away having got something useful. Now I need …

Microsoft Research have been working on the next generation of compiler optimisation and analysis tools for sometime, if this is your area I recommend looking at the Phoenix Connect Web Site. I saw Jim Hogg ( with a surname like that , how great must this guy be :) ) , present on Phoenix a few years ago and it promises …

I thought it would be useful to keep my links for BizTalk in my blog, I will keep updating this list when new BizTalk items ( or old ones I have missed ) present themselves. Tools BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer V1.1 BizTalk LoadGen 2007 Tool BizTalk Undeploy Tool ESB ESB Guidance ESB Installation - …

Well the IMTC has finished , it was great fun and it was really nice to see so many great presenters presenting on a wide range of great subjects. I managed to see some of the slots but I was busy preparing for my two sessions. Overview of Microsoft Live Labs Volta Well the writing was on the wall as soon as I had …

A busy time in the next few weeks for free community launch events for Windows 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL 2008. This week we at Black Marble are hosting a series of three evening events (See online booking) where you can see virtually the whole set of Black Marble speakers. On the 30th of April there will be a …

After an uneventful journey I have got home from the IMTC conference in Dublin. Thanks to the organiser for running the event, it seemed to go well. I hope I managed to answer any question my sessions on SQL BI and Scrum raised, if not send a message via this blog. I suspect there might be a few from the Scrum session …

It is the school holidays, so I am sitting in a children's indoor jungle gym sorting out my slides for Ireland while my son rushes around. Having someone working on a laptop here seems to be a bit of novelty. I have had a number of children rush over to see what I am doing. They don't stay watching long when they spot …

But I am now a MVP for BizTalk , Hurrah. My thanks for the support the VS team has given me in the last year and I look forward to working with the BizTalk chaps and chapettes over the next year even more than I have this year. Also many thanks to the MVP support team as I know due to the broad areas of the community I …

Just found out that Robert and myself are both now doing two sessions at the Irish Microsoft Technologies Conference next week. **Thursday **13:45 - BI in SQL 08 (Richard Fennell) 16:45 - Microsoft Volta: Next Gen .NET Client-Server Apps (Robert Hogg) **Friday **10:00 - Overview of Business Process Automation and …

With the advent of Silverlight we are going to see more and more web delivered applications. A good example of what we can expect is the Microsoft HEROES happen {here} virtual launch site. If you did not make it to the event it is well worth a look with all the slides and videos of the sessions. This site does makes …