Guru Stop

This list:

• Ahmed Bahaa
• Ahmed Farrag
• Ahmed Nagy
• Ahmed Sidky
• Andrew Pardoe
• oris Jabes
• Goksin Bakir
• Mohamed Nar
• Mohamed Zaki
• Nohal Rady
• Patrick Hynds

For more details about each, check the official speakers page. The sessions associated with some speakers are not yet announced.

Some of the names that interest me:

• Ahmed Bahaa (One of the best local speakers I had, who later I insisted to have as my friend)
• Andrew Pardoe (A solid CLR guy - You know this kind of heroes!)
• Patrick Hynds (A great fun speaker, with great knowledge, I have reservations though this year mentioned in my earlier post)

More details about EDC 2008 here.

Microsoft EDC 2008 Website is UP. You Can Click Here To Register. EDC will be April 13 and April 14 - In Cairo International Conference Center (Agenda)

But Watch out. The Attendance Fee is 100 EGP. There're Invitations Available. An Invitation Code is required to register, and you get that by calling the guy mentioned in the right top part of the registration page, and you can call his mobile phone only on Egypt working hours.

I've written about Microsoft EDC 2008 (Egypt Developers Conference 2008) before by the time Microsoft Egypt started a facebook group for it.

Now they opened the registration website. The whole website is interesting in a really weird way. The first thing I noticed was that the pictures my friends uploaded in the facebook group (featuring me and them of course) were the whole pictures used in the website homepage :D.

The next thing I noticed was that the conference is set for only TWO DAYS !!! If you read any of my earlier MDC posts or even just my EDC post, you'd have realized that usually the MDC (Middleeast Developers Conference which is the preceder to EDC) used to be a FOUR DAYS event (Day 0 to Day 3, where Day 0 was for most current topics delivered by local speakers and the 3 other days are for pre-release related topics delivered by worldwide speakers).

The next clear thing about the agenda was the topics. The mapping between the tracks and some sessions is not that clear I guess. To me, seeing Expression Blend in the "Web" track didn't make much sense, and seeing another talk about AJAX (that I know will be delivered by Patrick, who gave many similar sessions in MDC, and even repeated his MDC 2006 session in MDC 2007!!) doesn't make sense at all.

Knowing who'll deliver the AJAX session and wondering among the rest sessions, especially the architecture ones, I turned to check who's going to deliver them and other sessions (For architecture I expected one of the earlier speakers, mainly Rafal or maybe Edgez [See the list below]). Guys, there's no speaker list yet. This doesn't sound really good, especially when the guys have very interesting naming for the sessions, like "Programming Silverlight talk/demo: a walkthrough creating a Silverlight application with many features". This is not a worldwide speaker naming I guess!! [See the list below]

By the way, another session is "Cool tools for developers" (in the "Web" track - Will FireBug be included?? :D - I wouldn't mind talking about IE 8 alternatives though :) )

While many around me suspected that the speaker list would have many .... hmm... let's say -not the same- speakers and topics, because it comes by the same time of the MVP Summit. and believed that's why it was only two days event, and why not all the speakers will be worldwide ones, the list I knew NOT ATTENDING from a friend while writing this, including some interesting names (I also heard that the majority of sessions will be Level 200):

Some Recently Excluded Speakers:

• Tarek Madkour (Lead Program manager C++ compiler team - Redmond
• Surupa Biswas ( Prgram manager .NET CLR - Redmond
• Andrew Pardoe ( Researcher in Phoenix team - Redmond
• Rafal lukawiecki

UPDATE:

I have blogged about the list of speakers here.

The Agenda

I'm not sure whether to love it or not like it that much, but, it's interesting still... (Read it at the official website)

Sessions I plan/intend to attend:

• Day 1
  • Introduction to Agile Software Development
  • Software + Services
  • Delivering Real-World SOA Solutions
  • Building Closed Loop BPM Solutions using MS BizTalk Server
    • Or [if lost in it :D] come say hi to Patrick in:  AJAX in the Real World
• Day 2
  • SharePoint Development
    • Or maybe:  What is new in Visual C++ 2008
  • Developing Applications with WCF and XOML Powered WF
    • Somebody tells me what the "Cool Tools for Developers" about :)
  • Office Application Programmabiliy
  • What’s new in SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence
  • Differences between the Silverlight CoreCLR and the desktop CLR
    • Or maybe: OLAP & DM

Anyway, that's just me - not my recommendations for you. I have already worked with VS 2008, ASP.NET AJAX, and LINQ since pre-release, I know much about IIS 7, attended many MDC AJAX and SQL performance sessions (actually delivered sessions on ASP.NET AJAX) and on the other hand am so curious about BI stuff and SharePoint with no real involvement in each, and not expected to get involved in C++ or rich UI mobility or Silverlight stuff so soon (while still interested in CLR stuff), so, if you are unlike me, you certainly will want to attend different sessions.

See you in EDC 2008 :)

Let me give a very big thank you to all of you who have come to dotNETwork 3rd gathering yesterday. To those who don't know what I'm talking about, read here :).

I've enjoyed with you all Mohamed Hossam's great session on Windows Workflow, and enjoyed you, the great attendees during my Scrum session. his came clear in many areas. The fun sole that you all had was great, the input and interactivity from the most was very inspiring, and the way how our talk moved from applying Scrum in the real world environments from the real world perspective to the issues that any developer would suffer from / worry about in his company in  general - the job security talk was fun too, LOL - so, I hope I could share with you some real world experience I had through my friend developer net as well as shared what Scrum is mainly about, and the small enhancements/techniques I have invented and/or learned from colleagues though applying it.

The gathering files have already been uploaded. WF's session files contain the session slides as well as the files for the session's main demo. The files for Scrum session include the slides and sample Excel files used for tracking and Burndown chart generation.

You can check the slides shown below:

| View | Upload your own

For download, you can find the sessions' file as a single ZIP file available dotNETwork official website in the downloads page. (direct download)
Update: The dotNETwork site was updated and didn't keep old files. Alternative download location - download from HERE.

Again, thank you all for coming :). See you next gathering.

This is the email I sent to SilverKey Tech. Egypt dev team yesterday, sharing here as usual.

• Article: Info Q: Don't Let Consumers and Service Providers Communicate Directly
  • Just because someone is developing with Web Services does not mean they are following SOA principles
  • Just because you're using HTTP and HTML doesn't mean you get into that camp and vice versa
• Weblog: "Making IT work" - Musings of a Holistict Architect
• Weblog: Udi Dahan
  • Article: Autonomous Services and Enterprise Entity Aggregation
  • Discussion: Does REST simplify communication more than SOA?
  • Article: Asynchronous, High-Performance Login for Web Farms
  • Article: How to create fully encapsulated Domain Models
• E-book: Info Q: Enterprise SOA Adoption Strategies
• MSDN Magazine
  • Article: Web Service Software Factory Modeling Edition
  • Article: Workflow Services
• MSDN Code Gallery
  • Sample Code: SOA'izing MSMQ with WCF (and Why It's Worth It)
  • Sample Code: Perseus: Entity Framework EntityBag (Perseus is a small project designed to explore ways for exchanging graphs of Entity Framework entities over WCF web services)
• Weblog: Wide Awake Developers / Architecture

Bonuses (AKA, unrelated links – definition)

• PDF Notes: SOLID Principles (hint: SOLID is a collection of object-oriented design principles)
• Article: IoC Containers, Unity and ObjectBuilder2 - The Saga Continues
• Article: Info Q: Aspects of Domain Model Management
• Reference: LINQ: Query Keywords (in case you wonder if you miss any!)
• Just for fun
  • Discussion: Continuous Education++
  • Discussion: I don't multitask
  • Article: Building a Vista Style Folder Browser with ASP.NET 3.5 and a Custom Hierarchical DataSource Control

dotNETwork third gathering has been announced. It's Saturday of the 3rd week of the month as planned since the 2nd gathering.

If you are unfamiliar with dotNETwork as a whole, that's simply (as I mentioned before here & here) the first big offline .NET usergroup in Egypt. So far the main activity of the group though is to provide FREE monthly events ton .NET related topics, focusing on the latest topics that matter for the average .NET developers.

Windows WorkFlow Foundation, AKA, Mohammed Hossam (Bahmohandes)'s Session

Mohammed Hossam is known for many deep technical blog posts in his popular blog Bashmohandes. He's also the founder of the Middleeast Developers Yahoo group (an INETA Community). To me, he's an old friend from ArabTeam2000 online forum and small offline community. He's also our lead software engineer here in SilverKey Egypt. During this, he was very essential in preparing our couple of DemoDay public free events and his DemoDay sessions used to get the highest ratings. Now he is moving to Microsoft Canada to work in Windows Live Team)

At least through working in SilverKey, Mohammed was involved in very advanced implementations and customizations of WF that required direct contact with WF guys inside Microsoft since WF was still in BETA, and identifying bugs that remained even to the current release :D.

I don't know about all the details of the story. I'm not also sure what he has in mind for the session, but honestly you can take my word that this is going to be a very special WF session for you!

Scrum for Developers, AKA, My Session

The 3rd gathering is very special to me as I'll attend it as a speaker this time not as an attendee. I'll be talking about Scrum. The information that developers need to know whether they work in an organization that is still evaluating Scrum, or that's already implementing it on the go. I'll be focusing on the practical implementations and even customizations of Scrum emphasizing what the developer needs to know rather than waiting to be told by the project manager. Most of my Scrum experience comes from practical implementations of it in SilverKey, so, the achievements, winnings, gotchas and even mistakes of implementing Scrum in different projects in SilverKey are likely to drive my session.

Of course I'll also go into an introduction to Agile methodologies in general by the opening, as I expect many to not be familiar with Agile concepts in general.

Although I have presented before in public events like SilverKey public DemoDay I and II (which had even more audience than dotNETwork), and private events like SilverKey internal DemoDay and ITWorx internal CuttingEdge club, this event is very special to me because it's formed by totally independent efforts of a usergroup, which I used to believe we completely miss in Egypt.

I would sure like my very first session in .NETwork to be a more into coding, but hey, I'll be talking after Bashmohandes anyway :).

How to get there

the event will be in Canadian International college (CIC).

On Saturday, March 22, 2008 : 12:00pm to 4:00pm.

There will be busses in 'El-Saka El-Haded' club ("Nady El-Seka") at 11:00 AM.

The agenda is shown in the first picture to the right.

Hope to see you all there. Again, this is a FREE event ;).

More Information

Note: I'm not going to be blogging about the detailed minutes of this gathering as before (1 , 2) of course, as during WF session, I'm likely to be having the last checks on my own presentation, and during my session, I'll be busy giving the presentation itself, LOL!

Of course the slides and even event videos will be available soon after the day.

Related Links

• This Gathering
  • Facebook Event (.NetWork.org 3rd Gathering
• dotNETwork
  • Facebook Group (Main Activity)
  • Yahoo Group
  • Official Website
• Weblogs
  • Mohamed Hossam Weblog (Bashmohandes)
  • Local Events Blog Posts in My Old Weblog (Still updated with this one)

Last Word

As I'm still in the process of making my presentation, it'll be great to hear from you all what you'd like to hear in a Scrum session. Your input is highly valuable as the most I care about is make this session helping a developer to get to start with Scrum, not just hear a few words about what it is, and forget about it totally afterwards :D.

So please, drop your comments here, or send me email (use the "Contact" page, or reach me via Facebook or private email if you have any) and tell me what you recommend to include, or how you imagine such a Scrum session to look like.

Thank you very much in advance, and hope to see you all very soon.

It's very nice to know that the launch event is not merged with EDC 2008, but comes before it. The 2008 launch event covers VS 2008, Win 2008 and SQL 2008.

It'll be held March 24th @ Intercontinental City Stars Hotel (Register Now)

The agenda:

Found Via Amir Magdy.

With MIX, and meeting the announced MVC roadmap, the new versions of AS.NET Extensions are now publicly available.ASP.NET MVC Framework Preview 2 is available also as separate download, same as Silverlight 2.0 BETA 1 (and Expression studio, Silverlight VS 2008 Tools).

Download Links:

• ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview 2
• ASP.NET MVC Preview 2
• Silverlight 2 Beta 1
  • Expression Studio 2.0 Beta
  • Silverlight 2.0 Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008
  • UPDATE: Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 SDK
• UPDATE: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is also available for download

Additional Resources:

• UPDATE: ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Quickstarts (Including MVC, Silverlight Controls)
• ASP.NET MVC
  • Official Videos Homepage
  • New Videos (More advanced than the earlier ones)
• Silverlight
• Feature Matrix: Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0
• Brad Abrams Silverlight Articles (including Expression Studio and ASP.NET Controls for Silverlight articles)
• Scott Guthrie Silverlight Articles (The latest two are focused on Silverlight 2.0)
• UPDATE: Silverlight 2.0 Video tutorials
• Announcements
  • Brad Abrams MVC Preview Announcement
  • UPDATE: IE Blog: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers Now Available

Have fun :)