On June 26th, community day 2008 was held in Keerbergen. Last year I couldn't make it so I really wanted to go this year. It was all thanks to the sponsors that this event could be held in the first place and it was fun to see so many familiar faces. Old colleagues, other MVPs, ...

I followed these 3 presentations: Entity Framework, new things in SQL Server 2008 and 10 greatest new additions to SQL Server 2008. During the first session I even won a book (Programming Microsoft LINQ) given by one of the sponsors of the event. Tip: it pays off to be a Star Wars fan when you get a question.

After all the sessions we still had some time to enjoy a dinner in company of our peers. Of course a lot was talked about community day, technology, ... during that time.

Grz, Kris.

I used this site already before but then it only showed just plain links to blog articles or channel 9 videos. When I just took a look it was completely restyled. The Silverlight usage for the ticker looks pretty interesting but seems to lack content at the moment of writing.

Grz, Kris.

In case you're still unaware of it, Community day is going to be held on June 26th. This is a free day with interesting technical content provided by the combined forces of several Belgian user groups. Be sure to check out the agenda of what's provided that day.

I'm also going to be there so if you'd like to say, hi just come over and do so.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday evening I and several colleagues attended the MSDN evening about Visual Studio 2008. It was most of the time an introduction of the possibilities of the new IDE and there was a whole lot of talk about the enhancements to the C# language. Not that I mind because that's also my language of choice. Especially the principle of extension methods look great and very interesting. Too bad however that the new enhancements of VB.NET weren't shown as that's also a language that's used very often. My current project (winforms, .NET 2.0, NHibernate, SQL Server 2005) also is created with VB.NET.

Most of the stuff that they showed, enhancements for web developers, great integration of tools for CSS that I already used with Expression Web, I already knew off. The thing that I didn't saw before is the cool VSTO ribbon designer. No more crafting with custom xml files anymore, just design. Cool. I guess several of my colleagues, that are mainly using VSTO, were glad when they saw this.

Afterwards we all had a drink and it was nice to see some familiar faces again that I haven't seen for a long time. One of the reasons why I like to go to these evenings/events is the social aspect. According to some people I'm a walking Facebook application myself.

Grz, Kris.

Well, it seems I just hit the "magic" border of moderating 10.000 posts since December 18th 2006. A nice achievement but the most important part of it is that it helps out people that are looking for an answer to their question.

Grz, Kris.

Since I see a lot of questions in the ASP.NET forums that make me believe that people don't always seem to find the information they're after I thought I pointed out to this page: Community support. It lists links to quickstart tutorials, videos, documentation, ...

Grz, Kris.

I just read the sad news about the death of a great .NET community person: David Boschmans. I knew David as being a great and nice guy that took the time to listen to the community. I heard at the VIP community weekend that he had health problems but that he was recovering. Rest in peace good man, you'll be missed.

Grz, Kris.

Since I became an MVP I also got into the VIP pool of people. This was my first time but it was nice to see some other Belgian MVP's but also others that made it to the VIP pool thanks to their outstanding community awareness. First we had an informal meeting as to what direction Microsoft sees the community going and where the VIPs see it going. Not all people were developers but also IT pro's were there. Some of them I already knew but most of these people were strangers to me. After we had introduced ourselves there was an IT pro that came to me and said: "thanks for the help on the forums". Apparently he had asked a question on the ASP.NET forums and I helped him out (and actually gave a correct answer too).

After that meeting we settled down in our hotel rooms, a very nice hotel in Ostend (Golden Tulip Bero). After that we gathered for a small game in Ostend where we had to find several key locations and put a card on a board that corresponded with something we could see in the neighbourhood. It was fun and actually the team I was in did win. After the competition we had a nice dinner in the Kursaal (a known building in Ostend). After that we gathered in a lounge bar with a lot of possible cocktails. I had some nice chats with several people that evening/night and not everything was tech related.

The day afterwards, which came too soon as I nearly couldn't sleep during those 4 hours I spent in the hotels bed, I was the first of the group to eat breakfast. But soon several other members of the group joined me so I immediately had some new conversations going on.

Normally at 10 o'clock the group would gather to play some other games but some of us had to leave. I was one of them as I went to Westend to team up with my parents.

Actually I had a lot of fun and want to thank the people that made it possible for me to attend it and I hope to see the other VIP people back soon.

Several Belgian user groups, BIWUG, VISUG, SQLUG, IT-Talks, and Pro-Exchange, will be having a community day on juni 28th. If you're living in Belgium, eager to learn, and just want to talk to peers or have the opportunity to meet new people with the same interests, be sure to check it out!

I also would've loved to come but due to obligations at work I'm unable to attend.

Grz, Kris.

Since recently the ASP.NET forums got an upgrade to the new Community Server 2007 there's also the possibility to show your Fans and Friends. Not really much at the moment since the feature's a little unknown by most members at this moment and you have to enable some parts in your Profile.

If you're a member reading this you can enable it by clicking on the Edit Profile button in the right upper corner, navigate to the Favorites tab and check the Share Friends checkbox and hit save at the bottom of that page. After that it's easy to add friends by going to their public profile of a member you see on the forums or, if you know their nickname, navigate directly to http://forums.asp.net/members/nickname.aspx. So for me that becomes http://forums.asp.net/members/XIII.aspx.

Then click the Add as friend link and go back to your public profile and voila, the person appears in your friends list.

Grz, Kris.