“You are so ‘Money’, you don’t even know how ‘Money’ you are!” – Trent Walker, Swingers

Registration has opened today for MIX’08. Slated to invade the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas on March 5 – 7, 2008. In it’s short tenure (this is #3), MIX has become one of the top destinations to learn about the new directions in web design and development. With MIX #1, we heard about Microsoft’s entry into the design tools game with the Expression products. MIX #2 brought on all of the excitement around Silverlight and RIA-type application development. This year is sure not to disappoint as we have Steve Ballmer and Scott Guthrie lined up as keynote speakers. I can only imagine what those two have up their sleeves to let loose in Vegas.

Be sure to register soon. Both of the previous MIX conferences have sold out and this one is sure to do the same. If you register by January 15, you can save yourself $200 and you can feel better about yourself when you take that savings and blow it on the craps tables.

From the looks of it, the MIX’08 attendee party is at Tao once again. Heed my advice…. STAY AWAY FROM THE ORANGE DRAGON!

Tech∙Ed, Microsoft’s foremost yearly technical conference, has always had a somewhat split personality. On one side you have the Developer audience who land at Tech∙Ed to absorb as much information (and other things in the cocktail variety) one can possibly consume in a week’s time about Microsoft’s current and near-term development tools and technologies. On the other side, you have the IT Professionals coming to consume (sense the pattern here?) the latest in information and guidance in administration, server/desktop deployment, management, IT operations and such.

If you’ve ever attended a Tech∙Ed keynote as a developer, you felt somewhat jilted when the majority of the keynote’s content seemed to weigh more heavily on the IT Pro, and on the rare occasion when the It Pro attendees felt it was too developer heavy. Sure the developers have the PDC conference, but PDC has always been about future looking technologies. Products and technologies that won’t ship for another couple of years or so. In addition, the PDC is not an annual event.

I’m happy to report that, starting with Tech∙Ed 2008, the Tech∙Ed conference will be split into two separate conferences, running back to back. First up on June 3rd, the Tech∙Ed Developers 2008 conference will kick off in Orlando, followed up by the Tech∙Ed IT Professionals conference to be held in the same location starting June 10th.

Tech∙Ed is going to diminish as a conference in any way. Quite the opposite. For both the Developers conference and IT Pro conference, you’re still going to have the customary Pre-Conference Seminars, Keynotes, Breakout Sessions, Hands-On Labs, Instructor-Led Labs, Partner Expo Hall, etc. Tech∙Ed was getting too big for it’s britches. By splitting the conference over the two primary audiences over two weeks, provides the opportunity to thoroughly enjoy the experience and get the most out of it that you deserve.

You might ask, "what if I want to attend both? Is it going to cost me twice as much?" Nope! Microsoft will be offering special pricing packages for those that wish to attend both events.

For questions such as these, have a look at the Tech∙Ed 2008 FAQ.

I’ll see you in June, in Orlando. Somebody warn Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the gang that we’re coming once again!

Tech∙Ed U.S. Developers 2008 – June 3-6, 2008, Orlando FL, Orange County Convention Center

Tech∙Ed U.S. IT Professionals 2008 – June 10-13, 2008, Orlando FL, Orange County Convention Center

Visual Studio Team System is an excellent addition to any software development teams arsenal. It provides a mechanism for the team to stay on track, on time and on budget. This is all facilitated through development process methodologies integrated directly within Visual Studio Team System. The methodologies work to define the team roles, work item definitions, project document templates, etc. Visual Studio Team System 2005 shipped with two different methodologies out of the box. These two methodologies didn’t necessarily cover the needs for everyone, but these gaps were soon filled with the ability to either extend or create additional methodology templates to plug directly into Visual Studio Team System. One of the methodologies that came out of the shoot quick when Visual Studio Team System shipped was the Scrum process methodology.

At the November meeting of the Chicago Visual Studio Team System Users Group, Dave Laskowski, from Sogeti, and Edward Chaltry, partner and CTO for Centare Group, will lead a discussion on the Scrum process and how it fits into Visual Studio Team System.

What: Talking Scrum with Visual Studio Team System with Dave Laskowski and Ed Chaltry
Where: Microsoft, 77 West Wacker, Suite 2300, Chicago, IL (map)
When: Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 @ 6:00 PM

Space is limited. Please be sure to register.

The Chicago .NET Users Group (Loop Chapter) is holding a discussion this Wednesday (November 7th, 2007) on building applications for the Facebook Platform with .NET. Earlier this year Facebook opened up their social-networking platform to third party developers. Since then, there are well over 10,000 applications which have been built and deployed on top of Facebook.To ease the process of building Facebook applications for the .NET developer, Microsoft partnered with Clarity Consulting to build the Facebook Developer Toolkit. Since it’s release, the Facebook Developer Toolkit has moved into the open source jungle and is now hosted on CodePlex where it is one of the most popular projects on the site. Head on down to CNUG (Loop) on Wednesday, November 7th to hear from Ryan Powers of Clarity Consulting as he walks through the toolkit and shows how you can utilize the toolkit to build .NET-based applications for the Facebook Platform.

Of course, how can you have a discussion on Facebook without creating the event notice in Facebook. For those of you not a Facebook member yet… First – what are you waiting for?!?!… Second, here are the details…

What: Ryan Powers talks Building Facebook applications with .NET
Where: Clarity Consulting, 1 North Franklin St., Suite 3400, Chicago, IL. 60606 (map)
When: Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 @ 6:00 PM