Just found out about this site about security: Hellosecureworld. Take a look at it. It's in Silverlight (always a good reason to check something out) and it has comics (another good reason). What are you waiting for: click the link!

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.

Wow, this is a cool application. Be sure to check it out and have Silverlight installed. Funny thing for me is that I worked in a team in 2001 that was also into adding/upgrading a software tool for patient handling in hospitals. If we only had the UI possibilities of Silverlight/WPF in those days to work out everything...

Personally, I foresee much more of these kind of applications with these great technologies.

Grz, Kris.

I just noticed at home that the look & feel of live search has changed. Steve Balmer recently stated that Microsoft is updating its whole live experience and certainly search. Could this be a new step forward to a renewed platform? Recently I found myself using live search more and more instead of google.

Grz, Kris.

This morning I got up quite early to check my baggage a last time and drive to the rail station. There I met up with 2 other Belgian MVP's: Gill & Ilse. Once arrived at Schiphol, Gill and I got some bad news: our flight was completely overbooked so we had to sit down for quite some time while all the other people were already boarding the plane. Only in the last couple of minutes before the plane would take off our names were called for and we hurried to the plane (and through security). Then our long journey of about 10 hours could begin. We were actually very relieved that we could make it while we had to leave others behind in Belgium (Joris Poelmans didn't make it unfortunately). This was my first flight outside of Europe but the comfort on the plane itself was good: decent meals and several movies to see in the little screen in front of you (watched I am legend, The golden compass and National treasure 2). After arriving we checked in at the Sheraton hotel and afterwards went for the registration. After that, and some siteseeing/shopping in Seattle, we went to eat something in the Cheesecake factory: and delicious and giant hamburger. At first sight Seattle seems like a small city but I'm sure we didn't cover the whole city area yet .

First impression of Seattle while driving from the airport to the hotel:

The hotel room:

Street in Seattle:

Going to the registration:

And afterwards a burger (double pun fun hamburger) at the cheesecake factory (aka real American food). By the way it looked much better, and tasted way much better.

We actually couldn't finish it so we have to go out for desert, a delicious cheese cake, on a later date this week.

I also got to know already several MVP's from Tsuchiya, Chili, Denmark, Switzerland and I also had the pleasure to meet up with a Japanese MVP.

Grz, Kris.

Tomorrow I'm heading for Seattle for the annual MVP summit. I just got renewed so I'm quite happy to be there as a full blown MVP. This is also the first time that I'll be visiting the US. I'm very excited about the whole thing because it means also for me the chance of going to Redmond itself, the "Mekka" for people that are into Microsoft technology.

We'll be arriving on Sunday after a flight of about 10 hours and on Monday stay in Seattle itself. Tuesday and Wednesday all sessions will be at Microsoft campus and Thursday again will be in Seattle. A lot of it will be under NDA but I hope to be able to blog about my adventure while I'm there.

If you're also going: I'm staying in the Sheraton hotel. I'm a very social person that likes to meet new people so don't be shy to come to me and say hi.

Grz, Kris.

Tim Sneath, a well known evangelist of Microsoft was in Belgium yesterday. I got invited for a meet and greet with him by Microsoft Belgium. The first part was technical, Tim talked about Silverlight and we had the opportunity to ask questions. It was very interesting for me. The other fun side about it was that I got to know new people as well. Something I enjoy a lot since I'm quite a social person.

Afterwards we went with the group to a restaurant and enjoyed a very tasty meal in good company.

Here are some pictures that were taken:

Grz, Kris.

I got the message that I won a HTC Dual Touch thanks to a contest of one of the sponsors (Ausy) on last Visug event. It's a nice phone with a bright screen. The only thing that's lacking is wifi. Too bad because I would've really loved that feature.

Grz, Kris.

Last Thursday I attended a Visug seminar about WCF. This session was presented by Juwal Lowy, a dedicated and well known employee of IDesign. The session was great, really great. Juwal's a great presenter that could even make the belgian crowd to laugh on several occasions. That might seem strange but most foreign speakers know how hard it is to interact with a Belgian audience that mostly doesn't make sound and watches the presentation with a lot of interest. I've already followed several WCF presentations during the last years (TechEd, tech days, ...) but this one was actually the one I liked best. Most presentations show a host and a client and then dive right into the config files. Not this one. We got shown little chunks at a time and more about the architecture. Not so much configuration but small samples which showed the stuff. I liked this approach a lot.

Grz, Kris.

I just noticed this message in my inbox:

Dear Kris Van Der Mast,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way to say thank you for promoting the spirit of community and improving people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. We appreciate your extraordinary efforts in ASP/ASP.NET technical communities during the past year.

I admit that I'm at least a bit proud of myself. Especially because I was able to help out people that were in need of getting into the right direction. And for the next year? Well I'll try to do my best to keep on helping the community.

Grz, Kris.