Tomorrow I’ll be speaking at the Madison Code Camp (MadCamp) where we’re dedicating a whole track to our recent New Efficiency launch events (one of which I participated in Chicago just the other day). In the morning, Kevin Remde will walk the IT Pro set through the new management features in Windows 7, as well as the new enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2 and what’s coming ahead in Exchange Server 2010.

In the afternoon, I will walk developers through the paces of how to light up their applications on Windows 7 by taking advantage of features such as the Ribbon platform, the Taskbar, Jump Lists, Libraries as well as underlying platform additions such as the new Sensor and Location Platform and Multitouch.

This isn’t all that’s going on at MadCamp but there will be two additional tracks with more great content for IT Pros and Developers alike.

We dug deep into our budget and pulled out some great giveaways including the opportunity to win one of the following:

• Dell Mini 10 Netbook with a copy of Windows 7
• Zune HD
• Games, Books, Peripherals, etc.

I hope you can join us!

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tweet: #madcamp09

I’d like to thank everyone who made it out to the Windows 7 Launch in Chicago yesterday. As promised, here are the slide decks from the Windows Client development sessions and a list of links to a number of the resources we discussed:

Presentation: Dev201 – Taking Your Applications to the Next Level with Windows 7 (.ppt, .pptx)

Presentation: Dev202 – Beyond Human Interaction with Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform (.ppt, .pptx)

Presentation: Dev203 – Build Next Generation User-Interface with Multitouch and Ribbon on Windows 7 (.ppt, .pptx)

Technical Resources

Windows Developer Center on MSDN

Windows SDK

Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers

Windows API CodePack for Microsoft .NET Framework

Windows Ribbon Framework: Developer Resources

Windows Application Compatibility Developer Center

Windows 7 Remediation Labs

“PhotoView” Reference Application (XP2Win7Project)

Racing Game XNA Starter Kit (XNA Game Studio required)

Training Resources

Microsoft Learning

Community Resources

Windows 7 for Developers Blog

Windows 7 on Channel9

PDC 2008: Windows 7 sessions

PDC 2008: Introducing Direct2D and DirectWrite

Test Equipment

Flexis JM USB Microcontroller: JMBADGE2008-B – the sensor board used for the Senor API demos with built-in light sensor and accelerometer.

Today Soma announced the release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Fx 4 Beta 2.  Soma also added a little nugget of information around the ship date of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 – March 22, 2010.

The Beta 2 bits are available today for MSDN Subscribers and general availability will be October 21st. It was also announced that Beta 2 comes with a  “Go Live” license, which essentially states that Microsoft will provide a smooth upgrade path to the final release as well as provide support for the product.

Visual Studio 2010 is a huge undertaking. There are many enhancements not the least of which is a complete rewrite of the shell! There are also a number of improvements to the underlying .NET Framework to provide the means to build great applications on top of Windows 7. The first step for you is to download and install VS2010 and .NET 4 Beta 2. Brian Keller provides a nice walkthrough on how to download and install the necessary bits and get you up and running.

The next step is to download the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit and work your way through all of the great training content. In addition, I’d set aside some time to watch the series of 10-4 episodes on Channel9 and learn about all the new features in VS2010 and .NET 4.

From there, I’d ask that you report bugs and provide feedback on the Visual Studio Connect Site. With your feedback we can be sure that Visual Studio 2010 is the product that *you* demand on March 22, 2010.

Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a great enterprise-class source-control, collaboration and reporting system. Since its release in 2005, TFS has been knocked a little on its complexity and pricing. It has always been about “enterprise-class” and with that the requirements for the needs of enterprises provided a more complex solution that smaller teams couldn’t afford or administer.

The team behind TFS has finally addressed the concerns of smaller development shops with the announcement of TFS 2010 and its support for Basic installs.

What this means is…

• No requirement for SharePoint Services
• No requirement for SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
• TFS 2010 can run on a local development machine running Vista or Windows 7 Home Premium and above
• TFS 2010 can run against SQL Express

The last piece of the puzzle is price. Although pricing hasn’t been announced yet, Brian Harry states on his blog that…

We’re not quite ready to announce the pricing and licensing for 2010 yet but I can tell you that it will be at least as easy and cost effective to get as SourceSafe has been.  Stay tuned for more info on this.

This effort is more then just providing a great solution for smaller development shops. Its a roadmap to get those shops to migrate off of Visual SourceSafe and into the modern source management era with TFS 2010.