I’m happy to announce the upcoming Boot Camp series of free developer training events including: Web Camp, Windows Dev Boot Camp and Azure Boot Camp.

Web Camp

Microsoft’s Web Camps are events designed to teach you all about building websites using ASP.NET MVC, WebMatrix, OData and more. There are 1-day and 2-day events being offered with interactive sessions on:

• Introduce ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages and WebMatrix; discuss possible uses of these
• Explore new features of ASP.NET MVC 3
• Take a dive deep into jQuery
• Facilitate an in-depth discussion on when to migrate ASP.NET WebPages applications to ASP.NET MVC
• Discuss configuration and deployment of web applications.

Clark Sell has more details on the Web Camps taking place in the Central US.

Windows Dev Boot Camp

The Windows Development Boot Camp is a one-day deep dive class on client development. The event covers developing for Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9, and Silverlight 4 out of browser. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience presenting content, as well as a series of labs so you can write some code and practice what you just learned.

Interactive sessions will include topics from throughout the Windows development platform. We will look at application compatibility and transitioning your applications to Windows 7, integrating with the Windows taskbar, developing for IE9, utilizing the cool functionality in the Sensors and Location Platform so that your application better responds to its current environment, leveraging the multi-touch capabilities (especially in kiosk scenarios), and creating Silverlight 4 out of browser applications.

Azure Boot Camp

Windows Azure Boot Camp is a two day deep dive class to get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned. The agenda will cover:

• Introduction to Cloud Computing and Windows Azure
• Web Roles and Worker Roles
• Queues, Tables and Blobs
• Convincing the Business to use Windows Azure
• Diagnostic and Management API’s
• SQL Azure
• App Fabric
• Cloud Scenarios

For details and locations for each of these events, visit the respective website for each boot camp.

The release of Visual Studio 2010 is right around the corner. For several months, developers have been plugging away at the Beta bits and we have received valuable feedback. Based upon that feedback, the Visual Studio team has decided to push out a Release Candidate (RC) that is now available for you to download.

Jason Zander provides some additional details regarding the RC…

We got a lot of invaluable feedback on Beta 2 through Connect as well as your survey responses.  In particular many of you pointed out areas of performance where we were not at parity with VS2008 and it was impacting your ability to adopt the product.  Some of those areas of feedback included general UI responsiveness (including painting, menus, remote desktop and VMs), editing (typing, scrolling, and Intelisense), designers (Silverlight and WPF in particular), improved memory usage, debugging (stepping, managed / native interop), build times, and solution/project load.

You can now download the Visual Studio Release Candidate and continue to provide your valuable feedback.

Scott Guthrie is taking it one step further by inviting you to submit your feedback to the Visual Studio Connect website, but also sending him an email directly:

Our goal with releasing the public RC build today is to get a lot of eyes on the product helping to find and report the remaining bugs we need to fix.  If you do find an issue, please submit a bug report via the Visual Studio Connect site and also please send me an email directly (scottgu@microsoft.com) with details about it.  I can then route your email to someone to investigate and follow-up directly (which can help expedite the investigation).

The team is also looking for feedback regarding the install experience as well.

Visual Studio 2010 is a MAJOR release. A number of items (based on customer feedback) has been ripped and replaced with leading-edge technologies. All of this effort to gain customer feedback is to make sure we’re ALL (Microsoft and the community of developers and users) is happy with this release. We all want a tool that is going to help us succeed in what we do – write software!

Go download the bits now!

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.

This is a great collection of insights and essays from some of the stalwarts of the .NET developer community.

Working with Brownfield Code by Donald Belcham (Microsoft MVP)
Beyond C# and VB by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)
Remaining Valuable to Employers featuring Barry Gervin, Billy Hollis, Bruce Johnson, Scott Howlett, Adam Cogan, and Jonathan Zuck
All I Wanted Was My Data by Barry Gervin (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
Efficiency Upgrade by Derek Hatchard (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
Getting Started with Continuous Integration by Sondre Bjellås (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
On Strike at the Software Factory by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)
C# Features You Should Be Using by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)
Accelerate Your Coding with Code Snippets by Brian Noyes (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
Is Silverlight 2 Ready for Business Applications? by Jonas Follesø (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
Innovate with Silverlight 2 by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)
Real World WPF: Rich UI + HD by Gill Cleeren (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
Hidden Talents by Peter Jones
Creating Useful Installers with Custom Actions by Christian Jacob
Banking with XML by Peter Jones
Sending Email by Derek Hatchard (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

You can download the PDF eBook at http://devshaped.com/files/developersdevelopers.pdf. For those of you who like to read offline, you can purchase a full-color version or black-and-white version from Lulu.

You can download the bits, submit feedback to the Connect site and participate in the ongoing conversations on the Beta forums. The documentation has been removed from the download for Beta 1 but you can find all of the documentation online on MSDN.

Once you kicked off the download, be sure to read What’s New in .NET Framework 4 and What’s New in Visual Studio 2010.

You can install Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with other versions of Visual Studio or you can drop it into a virtualized machine with something like Virtual PC.

Once you have everything up and running, download the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit to learning about the latest features and enhancements. There are also a number of walkthroughs posted highlighting some of these new features.

Enjoy!

As I was able to relay to some of you (Sorry, Indy), the Expression Web product discs are currently on the assembly line and should be shipping out around May 28th. If you attended the OnRamp240 session and filled out an evaluation, you should be receiveing your copy in the mail shortly thereafter.

There are quite a few resources I pointed out during the session and I promised all of you that I would post them here.

First and foremost, no one should miss ScottGu’s keynote from the MIX’07 conference. Scott lays out the full Silverlight story and invites a number of customer’s up on stage to show what they’ve been able to do with the technology in a short amount of time. Simply one of the best keynotes I’ve ever seen and not to be missed!

For the developers, Ihighlyrecommend viewing Omar Khan’s MIX’07 session on Using Visual Studio Codename “Orcas” to Design and Develop Rich AJAX Enabled Web Sites. The Javascript Intellisense feature and debugging support is enough for any Javascript developer to take notice.

Unfortunately we had a short amount of time to cover a lot of material. We weren’t able to go into ASP.NET AJAX as I would’ve like and some of you might have hoped. No worries, though. Head on over to the ASP.NET AJAX Community Site and check out Joe Stagner’s “How-To” video collection on ASP.NET AJAX.

For those of you looking to make the plunge into Silverlight. Everything you need can be found on the Getting Started page of the Silverlight community website. The Sprawl game, that seems to kick my butt everytime, can be found in the Silverlight 1.0 Gallery, whereas the Chess and Silverlight Airlines samples can be found in the Silverlight 1.1 Gallery.

Each month DevCares brings you the insight into the latest technologies coming out of Redmond. Through the generous support of our partners (Crowe Chizek, Information Management Group, Clarity Consulting and Inacom), we have now expanded to 6 cities and 3 states in the Midwest district.

This month we take a look at the upcoming release of Visual Studio Codename “Orcas”:

Visual Studio code name “Orcas” delivers on Microsoft’s vision for application development by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality rich user experiences. This next version of Visual Studio enables developers to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and more reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. This session will provide insight into the exciting new features coming in the next version of Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” and we’ll dive deep into the new programming features “Orcas” delivers such as those found in the Language Integrated Query (LINQ).

• Session 1: A Lap Around Visual Studio “Orcas”
• Session 2: Data and Programmability in Visual Studio “Orcas”

Chicago (Loop), IL, May 8th

Downers Grove, IL, May 24

Brookfield, WI, May 30th

Indianapolis, IN, May 22nd

Appleton, WI, May 29th

Madison, WI, May 30th

Each attendee will have a chance at winning a Zune. Who knows, it may even be the recently released Pink Zune!

To see if DevCares is coming to your neck of the woods, be sure to visit DevCares.com.

Update: Turns out I was given the wrong voucher code. Isn’t that nice?!? If you tried the voucher code and received an error, be sure to use this voucher code instead, 6841-USDPEMW-5316. This has been updated in the instructions below.

As a Developer Evangelist, part of my job responsibility is making sure our development community has access to the resources and training materials that is going to make them better developers. I?m happy to report to you that I?ve been given the opportunity to pass a great training opportunity on to the readers of this very blog. For a short time only (April 15^th to be exact) you have the opportunity to register to receive up to 4 of our best developer focused training modules found at http://www.microsoftlearning.com. Here are the steps to take advantage of this great opportunity?

1.) Go http://www.microsoft.com/learning/access

2.) Input your access code: (The code is case sensitive)

3.) ACCESS CODE: 6841-USDPEMW-5316

4.) You will be prompted to sign-in using a valid Microsoft Passport ID. If you already have a profile on microsoft.com, use that Passport ID. If you do not have a Passport ID click ?Register? to create one.

5.) From the ?Thank You? page, click on My Learning to see the list of available courses.

6.) For E-Learning, click on a course title to launch the offering.

a. You will then be presented with a description tab and a content tab. Read all the course requirements and description.

b. Please note: Review the ?system requirements? tab to be sure your computer is properly configured to access virtual labs.

c. From the ?Content Tab?, click on a lesson to begin training.

7.) When you return to the site, please click on the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mylearning and sign in using your Microsoft Passport ID. Then click on ?My Learning? to access content and continue your learning path.

The courses available include the following?

Upgrading from Visual Basic 6.0
Collection 2562: Getting Started with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005 for Visual Basic? 6.0 Developers

Data and XML
Collection 2541: Core Data Access Development with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

Collection 2542: Advanced Data Access Development with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

Windows

Collection 2546: Core Windows? Client Development with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

Collection 2547: Advanced Windows? Client Development with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

Web

Collection 2543: Core Web Client Programming with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

Collection 2544: Advanced Web Client Programming with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

Distributed Applications

Collection 2548: Core Distributed Application Development with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

Collection 2549: Advanced Distributed Application Development with Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005

.NET Framework 2.0

Collection 2364: What’s New in Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005 for Existing Visual Studio .NET Developers

ASP.NET 2.0

Collection 3201: Developing Microsoft? ASP.NET 2.0 Web Applications

Enjoy!

Head on over to the Microsoft Web Developer Learning Series and get your learnin’ on.

I didn’t mind being singled out. I’m actually quite happy I was. It prompted some of the attendees to ask some great questions about Microsoft and the “So… why are you here? What do you hope to get out of this?” questions, completely in a non-confrontational way, of course. Believe me, if someone wants to have a religious conversation about programming languages, OS or Hardware, I move on my marry little way onto more important things I want to spend my time on. But, the question was a valid one. I was like every other person in there. I wanted to learn more about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. In my job I get the incredible opportunity to talk toa lot of developers. When Ruby/RoR comes up in a conversation, I want to make sure I can contribute in an educated fashion. I also want to understand what the allure is with Rails and try to understand how we can enhance our products to cover areas that we may be missing. I am quite disappointed that I forgot my Rails logo’ed mug that was given out to each attendee. I can rest any conspiracy theories in that the Microsoft guy wouldn’t take a Rails mug with him – he was just an idiot and forgot it.

One of the conversations I had with some of the attendees was how easy and productive Rails was. My comment was ASP.NET was easy and productive as well. The rebuttal was that ASP.NET was not. My counter rebuttal is in it all depends on what you’re trying to do, and that goes for both technologies. RoR certainly has it’s place in building web applications. So does ASP.NET. I have a feeling that people are being led to overly complicated ASP.NET “best practices” for the things they are trying to do. They turn to RoR because it’s “easy and productive”. I’m sure it is. But RoR has its faults just like any other programming language/framework. ASP.NET does as well. The thing to realize about ASP.NET is that you have many different ways to build your ASP.NET application, you just have to pick the best architecture for you and your application. Visual Studio .NET provides some facilities to create quick and dirty applications. That doesn’t mean it’s the best architecture or implementation for you. Take the scaffolding process in Rails. Same concept.

What I want to do is a) find out where we can improve our web development message and show the “easy and productive” parts b) become more acclimated to technologies like RoR and PHP to get a better understanding on what the pluses/minuses are compared to our technologies c) try and help deliver the message for both a and b.

There was a couple of links that I was discussing with some of the attendees today. The first isLINQ and the new language enhancements coming in Orcas. The second was is Blinq. I have to admit that I haven’t had time to dive into BLINQ just yet, but its something the RoR developers might want to keep an eye on. Also, check out Scott Guthrie’s series of articles on LINQ. These all provide some great insight into where we’re going. Hopefully we’re making improvements in both the languages and tools that’s going to continually lead to easy of use and developer productivity.

The class was great. It was a great opportunity to meet some new people who I wouldn’t have normally met and it’s always a great opportunity to hear how Microsoft can improve. Jeff and Ben didn’t have a formal eval form, they asked us to do what all good Web 2.0 users should do, blog about it. A couple of items for you, Jeff and Ben (all minor, but important)…

1.) Print out your slides and make them available or create a soft copy and handout to class prior to the start of the class.

2.) Create hard copies of your hands-on portion of the class and break up the class to include lab time. It was slightly difficult to follow Ben and his lightning fast fingers, especially when we missed a crucial piece or encountered an error. I know it’s difficult to take even more time away from the class to include lab time, but not impossible.

All in all, a great way to spend some time on a Saturday, Riding the Rails. Thanks, guys!