Speaking of Team System, I found out last week that I have been officially inducted into the Team System MVP group.  Earlier this year, I was awarded as an MVP in the Client Application Development competency.  Don't get me wrong, I still love WPF & Silverlight development and will continue to be involved in that community in the future.  I'm even working on finishing up the technical editing of a Silverlight 2 book right this minute. Or actually I'm procrastinating writing blog posts :)

Being part of the Team System MVP group, I'm really joining one of the most awesome groups ever.  I spent all of my time earlier this year at the MVP Summit at all of the Team System sessions and they truly are one of the best product teams at Microsoft.  They truly value our feedback and the Team System MVPs really love and care for the product just as much and want to see it grow by leaps and bounds.  And when I say love and care for the product, you don't even understand! :) This is definitely a good fit and I'm honored to officially join the group.  So when do I get to learn the "secret handshake?"

Ed B.

It's finally available!  Seriously - this CTP has quite a bit of features that they have added and you can start to see that VSTS is and will continue to be a strong if not the best ALM offering.  The new features are added to Head over to Jeff Beehler's blog post to find out more details of what has been added...

I haven't picked a favorite feature just yet :)  The three I just really like the most across the whole offering:

• New Team Build System based on Windows Workflow Foundation
• Historical Debugging (this will really help with the Debug and Repro scenarios)
• Great Test Case Management System

Here's a list of all the new features!

Architecture Edition

• Exploring the existing code structure
• Designing process flow as activities
• Designing user interactions with systems
• Designing system functionality as components
• Visualizing and designing types in systems
• Visualizing and designing interaction sequences in systems

Development Edition

• Simplify Code Analysis rule selection with rule sets
• Find and fix a bug using the historical debugger
• Identify the test impact of code changes
• Find a bug on a separate machine using the standalone debugger

Database Edition

• Building and using an off-line representation of your operational database as a “sandbox” development environment.
• Using Data Generation to custom-build data for testing your database application.
• Making and unit-testing schema and code changes in an off-line environment.
• Performing static code analysis of your programmability objects.

Test Edition

• Planning a testing effort
• Executing manual test cases
• Verify the fix
• Automate a manual test and add validation.

Team Foundation Server

• Managing an Agile schedule
• Easier reporting from Excel
• Managing features with the CMMI Process
• A new Add Files to Source Control wizard and support for drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Source Control Explorer
• An enhanced, non-modal conflict resolution experience, integrated into the pending changes tool window
• A new history view that shows labels applied to a file as well as how changes were merged across branches
• A new automated build system built on Windows Workflow Foundation, featuring dynamic build machine allocation from a machine pool and distributed build functionality
• Rollback for a check in (currently only available at the command line)
• Many Source Control Explorer usability enhancements

Be sure to head to their Connect site with your feedback!

Ed B.

I was just reminded this morning by an old colleague that Ed K. and I have been slacking tremendously since we haven't had any blog posts since November :)  I want to wish everyone a happy new year and share some news.  Last week, I moved back to Dallas and will be working remotely from home.  It's new for me so I'm still trying to get into the groove of things.  Scott Hanselman's latest posts about being a remote worker have been extremely interesting to me.

It's been a little hectic in the last few weeks.  I needed to wrap a few things up before I went on vacation at the office.  Also, we had our final NJ .NET User's Group meeting for the year which turned out to be terrific.  Since it's a new year, we also had announced a new leader - Jess Chadwick.  It has been a privilege to serve as a leader of the group for 2007.   I really want to thank Jess, Tony, Ambrose, Kathleen, and Peter for the help during the year in leading the group.  I'm looking forward to rejoining the Dallas .NET community and also the newly formed Dallas VSTS Users Group (How exciting!)

From there, there was:  packing, cleaning, movers picking up, cleaning, driving, getting the new place, movers dropping off, unpacking, getting new furniture, setting up the new office, having out-of-town guests, whew... and getting ready to host a party!

After waking up from a very long but extremely fun night on New Year's Eve (which ended up being my housewarming party as well since all of my friends were in town,) I was surprised to find an e-mail in my inbox:

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award!

Oh I was/still am pretty excited! :)  It's exciting to be working at Infragistics for many reasons.  They have been the most supportive company that I have worked for when it comes to being involved in the developer community which is one of the primary reasons I came aboard a year ago.  Describing Infragistics as "community-friendly" would be putting it mildly!  There's a total of SEVEN MVPs now at Infragistics which is a testament to the quality of people that I have the privilege to work with every day.  We really do have the best people in every department around the company.

There are so many people who really have been extremely helpful to me.  I want to specifically thank Ambrose for his mentorship as my coach for the majority of 2007.  He has been very influential in my career and cared about my professional growth.  Thank you!  So many people deserve Kudos:  Ed K., Jess, Tony, Jason B., Peter, Grant, Kathleen, Devin, Josh, Tim, Caleb, Omar, Fraser, Jason T., Chuck, Mel

I'm still working on getting my profile to get it all set up with my information so for now it's a work in progress:  My MVP Profile

All in all, I'm looking forward to the new year and what exciting things are in store both at Infragistics and with my continued involvement with the developer community.  It's going to be an awesome year!

Ed B.

Ever since I started at Infragistics, I had been working in the User Experience Group (under the Evangelism umbrella) primarily with WPF & WinForms.  As some of you know, I wasn't too fond with WPF at the beginning :) but now I love it.  [Shameless Plug:  Have you checked out Tangerine?  See my blog post about it.]

I have taken a new position now as what is usually referred to as the Configuration Manager (HR Title:  Configuration and Process Improvement Engineer.)

As some of you know, I have been working with Team Foundation Server since pre-beginning (is that a word?) like during the Betas.  [Strolls down memory lane... Anyone remember the Beta 2 to Beta 3 upgrade? whew... Ed K. remembers that day with the 3-hour phone call from the TFS Product Team.  Those were the days. I got a cool TFS All Stars shirt from it though!]  I digress.  Infragistics has decided to adopt TFS and planning to migrate pretty much all of our separate systems to it.  So, that's what I'm doing now in the Engineering department!  Although I'll be missing doing WPF and Evangelism work, I'm pretty excited about getting to do TFS stuff full-time.

If you were at Grant and I's talk at Boston ReMix or my talk at Tulsa Tech Fest, you got the preview of a community WPF application that we're working on to gather data from TFS and replace our Release Status Wall.  It's basically an application to visualize your release process.  As soon as we get something ready to preview, I'll definitely post up on here.  So I get to put my love of both WPF and TFS together!  Grant's a God-send when it comes to making applications look great. I'm really blessed to be working for a company that has a dedicated Visual Design team... We have 5 dedicated Visual Designers now... wow.

Another one of my goals with our new system of tracking development data is to provide more transparency to our customers in regard to feature tracking, bugs, etc.  I think it's important (as a previous customer) to be able to have that kind of transparency.  I'm thinking something along the line of Microsoft's Connect website.

So I look forward to being able to talk more about TFS and coming out with some exciting tools and information.  Don't worry, I still do WPF development too so you'll still see me from time to time blogging about it and speaking.  I just finished up a WPF magazine article yesterday even :)

BTW... I'll be in DevConnections next week in Las Vegas doing some WPF Evangelism stuff so be sure to hit me up if you'll be in town!

Ed B.

Grant Hinkson (our Director of Visual Design at Infragistics) and I will be doing our talk "Meeting in the Middle - Designer/Developer Interaction in WPF."  It looks like we have the first breakout session on Tuesday, October 9 at 9:00 AM.  Take a look to see what other sessions are going on:  https://admin.viewcentral.com/events/uploads/ms_events/agenda.html

Session Details

Date:  10/9/2007

Time:  9:00am – 10:15am

Title:  Meeting in the Middle - Designer/Developer Interaction in WPF

Abstract:

In this session, Ed and Grant will highlight many of the lessons they learned when developing the enterprise-level WPF reference application, Tangerine. Tangerine is an asset browser built using the data provider model to browse the Amazon online catalog. Additionally, they will discuss the Software Release Status application currently under development. This project management tool uses the power of WPF to visually represent the status of your software projects using data from your Team Foundation Server. You'll get an inside look at the interaction between development and design, and gain insight into practical solutions for common problems.

Brad Abrams, Group Product Manager for the Microsoft .NET Framework, will be the keynote speaker and will be talking about the Rising Tide of User Experience.  Pretty awesome!  You know we like UX!

Want to Save Some Money on Registration?

Well, just because I want to make sure everyone is coming... If you use the following RSVP code, RM07EXTB, it will save you $100 of your registration.

More Info

http://www.remix07boston.com

What to expect at ReMIX07 Boston …

If you’re in the web business, learn about:

• Building a better user experience to unlock new revenue opportunities
• Forging tighter, stickier customer connections
• Building innovative media experiences into your site

If you’re a web developer, build:

• Silverlight applications quickly and easily
• Sites and applications that consume Windows Live services
• Rich, interactive sites made for the next web

If you’re a web designer, learn about:

• Using Silverlight to design gorgeous and highly functional user interfaces
• How a real-world application is built and the best practices associated with it
• The suite of Expression tools that revolutionize the way designers work with developers

If you attend, regardless of your job role, check out:

• Xbox Gaming Area where you can test your skills at Halo 3 and Guitar Hero among others
• Express Yourself Design Contest where key design agencies compete to solve a real-world design problem
• Stay tuned: We may feature some cool products and demos around XNA, Popfly, Robotics Studio and Surface

It’s Happening Here

Monday-Tuesday, October 8-9, 2007

October 8:             Registration & Breakfast from 7:00-9:00 am
Keynote & Breakouts from 9:00 a.m.-5:45 pm
Welcome Reception from 6:00-9:00 pm

October 9:             Registration & Breakfast from 8:00-9:00 am

                                Keynote & Breakouts from 9:00 am-5:00 pm

Hyatt Regency Cambridge

575 Memorial Drive,
Cambridge, MA 02139

For directions click here.

Ed B.

It's out there and available:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions

MSRP:  $499.99 - OUCH!

Bad thing though is that Expression Blend (along with the rest of Expression Studio) is only available for Team Suite with MSDN Premium subscribers.  Expression Blend and Web are the only products released in the Studio as of now.  MSDN Premium subscribers without Team Suite are still licensed for Expression Web which is already available in Subscriber Downloads.

In the words of Rob Caron:

The best deal is reserved for Team Suite customers with MSDN Premium subscriptions, who will receive the entire Expression Studio. The value of Team Suite just gets sweeter.

You can read more about the Expression Studio for MSDN subscribers announcement here:  Listening to your feedback - Expression and MSDN

Ed B.

Well, we finally got the domian name we wanted, after waiting till some squater forgot to renew it :). So, our blog is up and we will be posting day to day stuff...sometimes it will be code, daily thoughts, ramblings and even crap that we want to be able to google later on.

Ed K