year=2008&monthnum=07&day=03
Building Team Cohesion Quickly
July 3, 2008 | Comments Off
When forming a new team to build that Killer Web App ™ it is very important that the team work as a cohesive unit. Much has been written about how to build a collective team spirit and I won’t rehash that here. Sufice to say, if you don’t have a cohesive team you probably won’t be able to execute on your grand ideas and the project will eventually fail.
Today on TechCrunch there was a terrific article that details how one group of like-minded individuals came together to build a web application in a few days for a meer $10,000. Check it out.
Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008 – See you there?
July 3, 2008 | 1 Comment
The last time I attended the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference was back in 2001, shortly after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Just over 6000 people made the trip to Los Angeles to learn about the latest technologies from Microsoft, as they were in the midst of rolling out the .NET Framework. They were pushing Hailstorm (I still have the free book they gave everyone with the Hailstorm API in it. I never did get a chance to use it though.). Everyone was excited about building new web services using .NET and C#.
A lot has changed since then. Vista and Windows Server 2008 are here, the .NET Framework has gone through three major revisions, Visual Studio has seen major improvements supporting team development, Intel has delivered multi-core processors and Microsoft still hasn’t delivered on the promise that was Hailstorm.
The preliminary agenda for PDC 2008 has some interesting sessions listed. Topics I am hoping to learn more about this year include:
- Silverlight
- Visual Studio 10
- Windows 7
- Multi-core Programming Techniques
Even though Bill Gates is now officially retired it looks like he is scheduled to speak at the conference as well. For a geeky college dropout with a whiny voice he does a great job delivering keynotes to developers. He doesn’t have the stage presence of a Steve Jobs, but he isn’t running Apple either. I look forward to hearing what his message for Microsoft developers is this year.
The dates for the conference are October 26 – 30, and the event is being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center once again. I hope to see you there.
