Phil was, AFAIK, first to get the drums out and start the DDD Ireland beats sounding here in blogsphere!

The web-site itself carries most of the salient information, however do expect it to change its look’n’feel over the next few weeks – we’re planning to adopt the full Silverlight experience!

This is a DDD-styled event, insomuch as it’s held on a Saturday, it’s free, there are no Microsoft speakers on the agenda, there’s a mix of regular experienced speakers and a few fresh faces and there’s an excellent opportunity for a social activity afterwards!

As of today, there is an agenda available: please, do expect this to change a little bit between now and the event itself. One or two of the speakers are still awaiting the outcome of other commitments.

Over the weeks leading up to the event, we are hoping to publish a number of 5-minute videos from the speakers. These videos will give you a sneak peek at the session content, the speaker and will hopefully help you decide which sessions you want to attend!

In addition to the agenda’s five tracks, there is a WCF In Depth track where you can immerse yourself in the Windows Communication Foundation, learning from Dominick Baier, Christian Weyer, Daniel Fisher and Michael Willers (blog/URL tbc, podcast here). This is essentially a full day’s worth of training that won’t cost you a penny in attendance charges!

In the mean-time, please feel free to keep the jungle drums beating by passing news of this event on to all who might be interested. If you are a Facebook user, we do have a group and an event setup already.

Technorati Tags: DDD, DDD Ireland, DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper, Ireland, Developer Event, Galway, Phil Winstanley, plip, Silverlight, Dominick Baier, Christian Weyer, Daniel Fisher, Michael Willers, WCF, Windows Communication Foundation

Registration for SQLBits II IS now open.

If this a super data-oriented event; if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, click here.

More details can be found here:
http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/sqlbits/

Technorati Tags: SQLBits, SQL Bits

Location: Microsoft, Thames Valley Park, Reading
Date: 31st January 2008
Time: 6pm

Agenda
Microsoft’s James O’Neill and Vista Squad’s Ray Booysen will be giving a talk on Windows Server 2008 and Virtualisation.

They will show us some more detail on Silverlight. Some exciting give-aways at this meeting, one copy of Windows Vista Ultimate courtesy of Microsoft and 2 free licenses for Resharper courtesy of Jetbrains.

Further information about this event and Vista Squad can be found here.

Technorati Tags: Vista Squad, James O’Neill, Ray Booysen

DDD Scotland takes place on the 10th of May 2008, in Glasgow.

The Call For Speakers closes w/c 4th February 2008 – if you are interested in speaking at this community event, please get in touch via this page.

Technorati Tags: DDD, Developer Day Scotland, developer, community, event, Glasgow

BarCamp Scotland will be held on Saturday the 2nd of February 2008 from 10.00 to 21.00 GMT in the Concourse of the Appleton Tower at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland.

For further information, please visit this web page:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampScotland2008

Technorati Tags: BarCamp, BarCampScotland

Chris Dalby, Live Meeting guru extraordinaire, is holding a web-cast tomorrow at 1600 GMT. Microsoft’s Mark Deakin is also going to be present, so if you’re looking for any advice about Live Meeting or unified communications, this is the web-cast for you!

Event organising with Live Meeting 2007 and Round TableDate: Wednesday January 24th 2007, 4pm GMT
Speakers: Chris Dalby: Live Meeting User Group and Mark Deakin, Microsoft UK
Where: Online – Live Meeting webcast
Product: Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007
Audience(s): Users, presenters, developers and resellers of Live Meeting
Duration: 60 Minutes ish
Language: English.

More information and sign up details can be found here:

http://livemeetinguser.org/blogs/announcements/archive/2008/01/23/round-table-webcast.aspx

Technorati Tags: LiveMeeting, user group, live meeting user group, Chris Dalby, yellowpark, Mark Deakin

Barry’s delivering an MSDN geekSpeak session next month.

Barry Dorrans talks about problems and solutions when implementing a Windows CardSpace identity provider in the real world.

More details, and a means of submitting your own questions, can be found here:

http://idunno.org/archive/2008/01/18/upcoming-msdn-webcast–geek-speak-quotproblems-and-solutions-when.aspx

Technorati Tags: MSDN, geekSpeak, Barry Dorrans, CardSpace

Windows Server 2008 for developers – 23rd and 24th January 2008 – sign up here.

Session 1: Windows Server 2008 Part 1 and Session 2: Windows Server 2008 Part 2
Whether you are building Web applications or writing core server-based system services, Windows Server 2008 provides many new features that you can leverage to build more secure, flexible, and innovative applications. In this 2-session event we will go through the “Top 7 Ways to Light Up Your Apps on Windows Server 2008”. Demos will include IIS7, PowerShell, Transactional File System (TxF), restart/recovery APIs plus more.

—

Building Dynamic Web Applications with Microsoft Silverlight – 19th and 20th February 2008 – sign up here.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering rich media experiences and interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight provides a highly productive platform for designers and developers to collaborate in building a new generation of web experiences enabling you to build visually stunning interactive content and applications that run on multiple browsers and operating systems.

Join us for a spin around the XAML Canvas to experience the capabilities of the Silverlight platform. We’ll take an in depth look at what Silverlight is and how we can make use of it in web applications. We’ll look at both the 1.0 and 1.1 versions of the technology and probe into the programming model and tools you’ll need to build compelling Silverlight applications. We’ll also look at some related topics such as calling back-end services and asynchronous content download.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, MSDN, MSDN events, Edinburgh, Silverlight, Windows Server 2008, IIS7, PowerShell, Transactional File System, TxF

If you attended DDD6 last November, and you haven’t already submitted your feedback, could I ask you to take a few minutes to submit your feedback here:

http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/feedback.asp

Technorati Tags: DDD, DDD6, Feedback

The sixth DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper took place last Saturday, the 24th of November. 307 attendees enjoyed a good mix of topics, caffeine, chocolate and an excellent geek dinner afterwards.

As organisers we are grateful to all those folks who attended and those parties who played a part in making it happen. We are especially grateful to Microsoft who provided an unparalleled level of support: they provided the venue free of charge, the catering, the attendee management system, the lovely event staff who have the ability to smile all day long and the security. However, special thanks need to go to Clare Burgess for all her efforts in making DDD6 happen too. And that’s not to say the DPEs don’t deserve thanks too – their presence lends weight to the community spirit that DDD has to offer, they get involved, they wear the DDD polo shirts, they mingle, they chat: in this instance, Dan, Martin, Mike, gracias!

We should have made this notice of appreciation on the day itself, however I failed to write it down on the closing remarks sheet that I wrote minutes before it was required (thanks to the event staff for copying it!) Apologies for that, it was my oversight. Will do better next time.

Technorati Tags: DDD6, Microsoft, Dan Moth, Martin Parry, Mike Taulty, Clare Burgess