Laurent Duveau : Personal

MVP Silverlight!

pluginbaby — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:02:53 GMT

Back in march while at the MVP Summit I was thrilled when Scott Guthrie announced the addition of a Silverlight expertise in the Microsoft MVP program.

Earlier this week I received an email saying that I am joining this new small group (6 MVPs for now), so I move from ASP.NET MVP to Silverlight MVP!!

This is awesome because Silverlight has become my main focus since MVP Summit 2007 (the technology was called WPF/E then...) I made so many Silverlight presentations here in Montreal and I can feel the buzz growing, also because ASP.NET (my current expertise) is a large group and I think I can bring more impact and work closely with product team in the Silverlight field.

To learn more on the Microsoft MVP Program:
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

Third time's a charm (MVP award)

pluginbaby — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:34:00 GMT

The very first email of the year is still a wonderful one as I got awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Microsoft. This is the 3rd year in a row so I am pretty honored and excited about that. I have been involved in so many community events this year, with great opportunities to speak at EnergizeIT, TechDays, DevTeach, and W3 Québec as well as take part in worldwide conference like TechEd America, MIX Las Vegas and the famous MVP Summit in Redmond! Lately I also wrote an article for MSDN.

Expect more Silverlight content here as this has become my main focus. 2009 is the year where Silverlight 3 will see the light (he he he), the first version I saw seems promising, so I hope to do as many new Silverlight presentation as the past year, and speak at Microsoft events about this exciting technology. Hopefully I will be at MIX09 in Las Vegas to learn all about the latest stuff. I will also continue teaching the French version of the Silverlight Tour in Canada and Europe and I like it! I don’t forget the Montreal .NET Community which will host a CodeCamp and many more cool activities!

Happy New Year!

Certified ASP.NET 3.5!

pluginbaby — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:57:47 GMT

I completely forgot as I did this in beta 3 months ago… that was a surprise this morning to get a notification that I earned the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development competency (exam 70-562).

Certifications are not important for anyone, but for me as an MCT I need to be certified to teach training, so this one is good for Visual Studio 2008 courses!

The 70-562 exam should be available to public in august 2008.

The preparation guide is already visible here:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-562.mspx

RunAtServer website new version

pluginbaby — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:29:15 GMT

As you may know I am the co-founder of RunAtServer Consulting, a company based in Montreal, we are specialized in web development with Microsoft technologies such as ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight.

We have launched our new website! www.runatserver.com

9 month after the launch of the first version, we grown very fast (we hired several consultants and we became Microsoft Certified Partner and Microsoft Silverlight Partner!). Our website needed to reflect those changes with a fresh new design and sections focused on our new activities around RIA and Silverlight.

Project codename “Princess Leia” finally released!

pluginbaby — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:29:00 GMT

After a 9 months beta period, project codename “Princess Leia” was released on June 12 and has now a name: Léana.

Unfortunately while we went live we encountered dramatic issues (project leader was not hurt), so we had to go back to dev for some hard bug fixes.

After several intensive days the product seems stable enough but remain on heavy monitoring.

Finally product team is very proud of their "baby" and wait for your feedback!

My experience at TechEd 2008 Orlando

pluginbaby — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:45:28 GMT

I am back from 10 days spent in Florida, where I was a trainer at Microsoft TechEd 2008 Orlando.

I had the chance to be selected as an instructor for the Hands On Labs (HOL) to train on technologies such as Silverlight, ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET MVC, VB9, C#3, ADO.NET Data Services, LINQ, Entity Framework and WPF.

In my free time I did some labs myself and I can say that the best you can do at TechEd is going to the HOL area. We had more than 130 labs setup and ready for you, spread in more than 600 computers!!!
Want to learn and get your hands dirty on SharePoint, Team System or Micro Framework without the need to install all the stuffs on your computer ? Just launch one of our VPC and enjoy!

More than that the MCT Team was perfectly trained and the organization was awesome!!! I really enjoyed my week and hope to repeat this experience in the future!

Technorati Tags: TechEd

My talk on MIX08 (french)

pluginbaby — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:27:00 GMT

This month I was a guest at the Visual Studio Talk Show, a well known french .NET podcast here in Quebec.

We talked (in french...) about all the announcements (mainly IE8 and Silverlight) made at MIX this year, so in case you need a recap of this show...

Les nouveautés de la conférence MIX 2008:
http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com/Archives/070-14mars2008-LaurentDuv.html

Technorati Tags: MIX08,Canadian MIXers,podcast

Fix my CSS, win a Prize!

pluginbaby — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:53:00 GMT

[Update: I have a Winner... contest closed!]

I was told that my blog does not display very well (or not at all) in Opera browser...

Like most of you I don't have time for this, and community server's css are a real mess, so if someone takes time and send me the fixed css I will be happy to send him this DVD of Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition (Full version with licence key) :

So Paul Bidwell was the first to send me a fix:

"/Themes/Blogs/marvin3/style/DynamicStyle.aspx?SectionID=559" Line 156:

#sidebar-a {
width: 200px !important;
}

Change the width to 199px;

Also an img tag was no properly closed... (fool me!)

[MIX08] Back to Montreal

pluginbaby — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:56:00 GMT

Due to major snow storm in Montreal area I spent 31 hours on my trip back from Las Vegas, finishing with a 11 hours bus ride from New York....

Home Sweet Home.

Two days ago I was burning in Death Valley (California)...

Technorati Tags: MIX08,Canadian MIXers

MVP Insider Canada

pluginbaby — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:09:00 GMT

For those who may want to know a bit more about me (as well as Bob the Sponge and Superman...)... I am the February 2008 MVP insider.

MVP: one more time!

pluginbaby — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:29:00 GMT

The first email of the year in my inbox is as sweet as last year...
I am renewed as an ASP.NET MVP!

I am very proud to be recognized by this program again and I feel lucky for that. Last year was awesome, I had the opportunity to attend great events like MVP Summit in Redmond, DevTeach Montreal, EnergizeIT in Toronto and several MSDN Canada tours. Also having lots of interactions with the local .NET community through the GUVSM and CodeCamp was a lot of fun and I love that!

In 2008 I will continue to focus on my favorites topics:

ASP.NET 3.5
ASP.NET AJAX
Silverlight
Windows Live
Expression

as well as data technologies which make my life easier as a web developer:

LINQ
Entity Framework

This year should be as amazing as the previous one: In march I will go to Las Vegas for the MIX08 and in april I'll go back to the MVP Summit in Redmond. Not to forget the big Launch of 2008 products scheduled in february.
Also I will push things forward for our promising company RunAtServer, which specialize in ASP.NET for the Montreal area.

Let's have fun!

Learning ASP.NET (links to resources)

pluginbaby — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:40:46 GMT

People often ask me where to find resources to learn ASP.NET

I must say that I learnt almost EVERYTHING from the QuickStart Tutorials:
http://quickstarts.asp.net/QuickStartv20/aspnet/Default.aspx
These tutorials are very good and shows every features of ASP.NET with code samples in C# and VB!

The forums also provide invaluable answers to questions you could have:
http://forums.asp.net/

Also there are a great number of videos available and the famous "How Do I?" series, small videos each focusing on a specific feature:
http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/

So this is it, everything in the same place! I definitely recommend WWW.ASP.NET !!!!!
This is far behind the only place in the world where you can find such great resources.

You start from the ground?
Get the free Visual Web Developer Express and try the MSDN Beginner Developer Learning Center:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/

Expression Quizz at Code Camp Montréal

pluginbaby — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:17:24 GMT

Come to my session at Code Camp Montréal this Saturday and get a chance to win one of these 3 boxes !!!
(thanks to Paul Laberge at Microsoft!)

"Introduction à la suite de produits Expression"
Marriott Château Champlain à Montréal - Salle Viger A - 10:30am, it is free!!

See you there!

Laptop screen guide and graphic cards reviews

pluginbaby — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:45:02 GMT

I am in the process of buying a new laptop and was a bit confused while choosing the screen resolution, specially as Dell do not show pixels resolution but abbreviations like XGA, SXGA, WXGA, WUXGA, ... which don't make any sense.

So I was happy to find this Notebook Screen Guide:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2549
Here is the interesting part:

"Standard" Screens
Abbreviation / Resolution / Aspect Ratio
XGA / 1024x768 / 4:3
SXGA / 1280x1024 / 5:4
SXGA+ / 1400x1050 / 4:3
UXGA / 1600x1200 / 4:3

"Widescreen" Screens
Abbreviation / Resolution / Aspect Ratio
WXGA / 1280x768 / 5:3
WXGA / 1280x800 / 8:5 (16:10)
WXGA+ / 1440x900 / 8:5 (16:10)
WSXGA+ / 1680x1050 / 8:5 (16:10)
WUXGA / 1920x1200 / 8:5 (16:10)

Another point was the choice of the graphic card, as mentioned by Guy, Notebookcheck provides a great comparison of graphic cards for notebooks.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Grafic-Cards.130.0.html

My talk on Silverlight

pluginbaby — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:43:32 GMT

I was quiet on the blog this summer, nice vacations and... professional change as I now run my own business as a freelance in .NET technologies (Montreal area, Qc, Canada).

Also late this summer I did a podcast on Silverlight. Unfortunately for most of my readers... it is in french (my mother tongue) you can download it there :
http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com/Archives/057-22aout2007-LaurentDuv.html

And for the last news I'll be a speaker at CodeCamp Montréal in october to show... Silverlight!