I know, I know. I haven't blogged in weeks. It's that time of year where we at Microsoft perform our career development discussions. With a team of 16 evangelists, I have a lot of discussions to prepare for. In addition, I'm partnering with some colleagues in our US headquarters on the USDPE side session at the MVP Summit. (Side note: MVPs, if you are going to the Summit this year, be sure to attend our side session on Tuesday.)

But I have a very good – and timely – reason to post to the dusty, old blog today. Visual Studio 2010 RC became available last night. You can now download the Release Candidate and continue to provide valuable feedback on the latest revision of the product.

Once you have a change to kick the tires and share feedback, be on the lookout for our Launch events. They'll start taking place in late April and run throughout the month of May. We're looking at five *big* launch events in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, and Minneapolis. We'll also run at least ten or more "best of"-style events in other cities, like Cincinnati, Nashville, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Tulsa and Austin. As we won't stop there – we'll keep adding more cities until our event budget runs out.

So, download the RC today and keep and eye on my event site for the latest news on our national launch event tour.