Dave McMahon has just sent through details of NxtGenUG's next conference, FEST 08, being held at Microsoft's Reading Offices on Thursday June 12th 2008.  More details:

NxtGenUG don't do conferences, they just have a good time and FEST08 which takes place at TVP Reading, promises to be in the normal vein of NxtGenUG events.  Great sessions, Pizza and Swag.  The theme this year is "Data Today, Data Tomorrow" and there are new sessions from Oliver Sturm on F#, Dave Sussman on ASP.NET Dynamic Data Controls and Ridgian's BI expert Dave Morrow on SQL Server Analysis Services.  There will be the keynote from Rich and Dave and a brand new gameshow called "Who's Session Is It Anyway?

As before its free to all NxtGenUG members and £49.99 to non-members.  FEST07 was a memorable event last year, FEST08 will be equally memorable. You'll learn some great stuff about Data related technologies, meet some great people, have some fun and leave with a bag load of Swag! Don't miss it!

For more info - http://www.nxtgenug.net/Fest08/default.aspx

Developer Day Scotland is another great community event, being run by the community for the community.  The events is being held in Glasgow on Saturday 10th May 2008 and best of all it's free!!.  The agenda has now been published - http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Agenda/tabid/68/Default.aspx and there are some great sessions running.  Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make it to DDS, something I'm quite disappointed about but I have other family commitments in the North East on that day.

I urge any developers who live in Scotland or the North of England who can get to Glasgow on the 10th May to register for this event and attend - I'm confident you'll find it very worthwhile.

To register - http://developerdayscotland.com/main/DelegateRegistration/tabid/69/Default.aspx

The Irish Microsoft Technology Conference (IMTC) 2008 is a three day conference running from 7pm on Wednesday 2nd April till Friday 4th April, in Dublin.  Full details of the agenda can be found at http://imtc.firstport.ie/agenda.aspx, and it looks pretty impressive, with 8 tracks and 40 sessions of great technical content with some excellent speakers.

I'll be there to deliver a session on Internet Information Services 7 for ASP.Net Developers, and this will be my first ever visit to Ireland, so I'm really looking forward to going over and having another opportunity to speak on a topic which I have great passion for. 

There is a great offer for the first 300 people who complete their registration for IMTC as they will receive a personal copy of the IMTC 2008 DVD showing ALL 40 Sessions, interviews and Keynotes - so go on now - get yourself booked in for what looks to be an excellent conference and excellent value for money.

Next week is the UK Launch event for Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 in Birmingham and as part of the many, many community activities going on the NxtGenUG Boyz, will be running more rounds of their legendary gameshow - Swaggily Fortunes and they've sent a mail asking for some help from all of you out there - even if you can't attend the actual event!

Wednesday March 19th 2008 is of course the UK 2008 Launch Event.  As part of the event, those NxtGenUG Boyz http://www.nxtgenug.net are running one of their gameshows, which will take place about 6.00pm during the evening drinks and nibbles.  "Swaggily" Fortunes is a take on the well known TV Quiz show in which teams of contestants are asked, for example, "We asked 100 Developers ... To Name a .NET Language".  Those teams that guess correctly what the answers were get to win some fantastic "swag" -- after a few rounds of mayhem!

You can help be part of this 'great' occasion by going to http://www.nxtgenug.net/2008launch/swagfortunes.aspx and answering 8 short questions.  Your answers will go towards making up the choices which the teams have to guess.  The NxtGenUG lads have run this several times in the past always to great reviews, and it makes for a fun, relaxed way to wind down from the days sessions.

Well I went for my second BUPA Great North Run training session on Saturday morning, dodging the wind and the rain.  I started off on the same route as last weekend but had to cut it short as I experienced a lot of discomfort in my right ankle, so shortened my run and only completed 2.65 miles - http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-kingdom/sunderland/643691580 - still within a reasonable 25 minutes though. 

I played football last night and this morning my right ankle's still feeling a little sore.  I'm not playing till Thursday this week so will see how it holds up, probably going to invest in an ankle support though.  Will see how things are before pushing myself too far - don't want a serious injury so early into my training.

Just been reading  Web Harmony - where designers and developers kiss and make up on James Senior's Blog and have to say it made me laugh - I've not been in quite a bad situation myself but it is quite realistic :-).  Check out the video with accompanying Duelling Banjos at http://www.web-harmony.co.uk/ .  In my current environment I am awaiting an announcement (hoping, fingers crossed) that Expression Web 2 will integrate with Team Foundation Server as the functionality is sadly missing in Expression Web 1.0.  Fingers crossed....

Yes, it's true, as has been muted on a number of blogs recently, on Saturday May 3rd 2008 the Developer Day Crew will be heading over  to Galway to take the DDD Concept/Event/Cracking Day full of Developer Content to the Emerald Isle!  Once again this will be a free event and the line up of speakers and content is looking very, very impressive - http://www.dddireland.com/agenda-1.htm; plus as an added bonus there will be a full track covering WCF, delivered by Dominick Baier, Christian Weyer, Daniel Fisher and Michael Willers!

Registration is now open for what is shaping up to be a great event so I advise any Irish Developer to take a look at the agenda and get yourself there, after all it's on a Saturday, it's free and it's by The Community FOR the Community! - http://www.dddireland.com

It's getting closer and I'm probably a little late in posting about this but hoping I catch the eye of a number of developers in the North of England.  Developer Day Scotland is being held in Glasgow on Saturday 10th May and the session voting is now open.  If you are considering attending DDS this is a great way to have a chance to influence the content of the day - so get voting now! - Developer Day Scotland!

I managed to get hold of this book a few months ago, about the time I flew out to Tech Ed in Barcelona.  Unfortunately it's taken me till now to write up my impressions and views on this book.  Initially I was a little apprehensive about reading this book due to two particular reasons: firstly I don't generally get along with Wrox Press books and in the past have found them difficult to read compared to other titles from other publishing houses; secondly this book is a considerable size - totaling 670 pages!!  I was however eager to read it, as I am any new titles that appear on the subject of IIS 7.  This one had particularly grabbed my attention due to it's initial indications of specific relevance of how to exploit the power of IIS 7 in ASP.NET Applications and Programming.

In essence I would say that this book is a must have on the bookshelf of any serious ASP.NET developer who is looking to exploit and use the full power of IIS 7 in their applications.  As opposed to a previous title I reviewed - Book Review: IIS7 Implementation and Administration - this book is most definitely aimed at the Developer.  There are only 12 chapters in this title however they are very detailed chapters and really go into great detail.  Topics covered include using the integrated configuration system (<system.webserver>), how to extend the configuration system, extending the management interface, extending the request pipeline and it even has a great chapter on the integration of WCF in IIS 7 - something which I've been looking for good sources of information on.

What is great about this book is how in each element Dr. Khosravi has gone into immense detail and broke down each part of the object model and configuration model, explaining the effects of each option and the affect that can have on your application and the web server itself.  This is a feature which I and I would imagine many others will turn to over and over again as new requirements appear in my/their projects.  Although initially the content of this book can be daunting to a beginner in time they will grow in knowledge along side this book, and it is a title which can be constantly revisited and digested at the reader's own pace, this is a must for any IIS/ASP.NET Developer's bookshelf.

In response to my initial two concerns about this title, I've been convinced.  I enjoyed reading this book and possibly my reading style and ability has improved/changed since I last read a Wrox title, but I didn't have a lot of problems reading this book, although the content can be quite heavy going as it is so detailed, which I've already identified as a strength.  The size of the book is also of no problem and indeed is vindicated in the quality of the content.

Book Details:

Title: Professional IIS 7 and ASP.NET Integrated Programming

Author: Dr. Shahram Khosravi

Publisher: Wrox

Link to purchase on Computer Manuals : http://www.compman.co.uk/scripts/browse.asp?ref=852426

Good Morning All,  I am very pleased to announce that I have now migrated my package with Discount ASP.Net to a Windows Server 2008 and IIS7 Hosting Platform.  This blog is now running in integrated mode as will all of my future deployments.   I'm very pleased with the service I've received from Discount ASP.Net.  I put in the request for migration about 21:30 (GMT) last night and by the time I awoke this morning I had a mail telling me everything had been migrated.  A couple of tweaks with configuration later and here we are my Blog running on IIS7 - Cool!!

For more information on Windows 2008 and IIS7 Hosting see the Discount ASP.Net Website for more details.