My colleagues in Redmond, Brian Keller and his crew, have launched a new video podcast called 10-4. This is a weekly video/screencast featuring what's new in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework v4.0. If you're interested in what we've got in store for you when VS2010 ships, or if you're just plain curious about what we're cooking up, this new video podcast is for you.

Episode 1: Downloading and Using the Visual Studio 2010 September CTP
For this first episode of 10-4, we’ll look at how to download and use the Virtual PC image of the Visual Studio 2010 September CTP. We’ll give you tips on how to download this massive (7GB+ compressed) VPC, show you how to get past some pesky expiration issues, and get you started with the CTP walkthroughs. Lastly we’ll cover where to get assistance and provide your feedback about this release.

In future episodes we’ll dive more deeply into the technical underpinnings of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, but for this first episode we wanted to make sure everybody could get the CTP and follow along at home.

Visual Studio 2010
If you'd like to learn more about Visual Studio 2010, check out our MSDN Developer Conference events (they're coming to a city near you in January), the PDC videos on Channel 9, and the Visual Studio 2010 developer center on MSDN (note: like updated) as well as the Visual Studio 2010 product feedback center.

Are you curious about Windows 7? Would you like to get your hands on the beta? On physical media? Without having to download a 1+GB image?

MSDN Developer Conference Attendees to Receive Windows 7 Beta DVD
Register to attend the MSDN Developer Conference, and you will receive the Windows 7 Beta on DVD. Attendees at early events, especially those happening in December and possibly in early January, will have DVDs shipped to them after the event. Attendees at later events will get the DVD at the event.

Agenda
There is a great set of topics planned for the MSDN Developer Conference events, plus a load of prizes. So check out the conference site and join us!

My colleagues are running a survey on cloud computing and they are interested in your thoughts. If you have some opinions on cloud computing, please consider taking this survey. We value your input and welcome your feedback!

As we are close to wrapping up our latest round of MSDN Unleashed and ArcReady events — and rounding the bend on the first of our MSDN Developer Conference events — the team and I are starting to for the next quarter's events. We're targeting late February or potentially sometime in early- or mid-March.

I thought I would open our planning process up, to a small degree, to you, the developers and software architects in our geography (the exhaustive list of states including Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minneapolis, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin). If there is a topic that interests you, and you live in one of the 18 states my team and I cover, please feel free to drop me a note via a comment on my blog. If you feel motivated, please don't hesitate to drop me an email at BriMoore at Microsoft dot com.

The team and I definitely appreciate your feedback. We'll listen to it and do our level best to adapt our plans to your feedback.

Details keep coming together on the MSDN Developer Conference, a local delivery of highlights from the PDC made possible by Microsoft, our partners, and local community leaders (you fine folks!). Join local Microsoft Evangelists and local community luminaries for a recap of Windows Azure, Visual Studio 2010, and our language and platform roadmap. Not only will you have the opportunity to mix and mingle with your peers and colleagues and discuss the events' topics with your local Evangelist, we've got a pretty solid lineup of prizes to raffle off at each event.

Prizes Galore!
First and foremost, we'll be raffling off four Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 with MSDN Premium Subscriptions at each event. That's right, four lucky people will win a MSDN Premium Subscription. This level of MSDN Subscription includes Expression Studio as well as a host of server products, like SQL Server 2008, BizTalk Server, Exchange Server, operating systems, and more — all to help you with the development and testing of robust applications.

Attendees at each event will also be in the running to win one of three Lego NXT Robotics Kits and the WROX Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio book. Other giveaways include a "Gamer Backpack" filled with a handful of Xbox games (Mass Effect, Gears of War 2, Fable II... I hope we have a great spread of great games, many of which I am currently playing myself... in my not-so-copious free time) as well as a "Gadget Backpack" laden with interesting hardware and gadgets that geeks (usually) love, like cutting edge mice or web cams.

Harnessing the Power of the Community (or Vote with your Feet)
We'll also be hosting the Community Courtyard, where attendees can mix, mingle, and talk about whatever they want to talk about. Running in parallel with the sessions, this is an open discussion area where you and your fellow attendees are in charge: you choose the subjects, the participants, and the speakers. Whether you just want to mingle with the presenters, talk about a session, or gab about any other topic, you have the opportunity to do so. Borrowing from the wildly successful Open Space formats, this area is yours.

Event Calendar — Complete with Handy Registration Links

PDC was, for me, a bit too short. I wasn't originally going to attend and had booked travel accordingly. I stumbled into a pass from one of my colleagues; he had a conflict, so lucky me. I feel guilty for taking his pass... but not too much.

Many things were covered at PDC: Azure, Windows 7, Live Services, Visual Studio 2010 and a much, much more. Here are some of my favorite highlights from PDC.

Extreme Makeover: Logo Edition
Remember Year 2000? Not 'cause of the y2k bug, but because Microsoft unveiled Next Generation Windows Services. Shortly after that, Microsoft announced the Microsoft .NET Framework and revealed a logo that captured the colors of Windows, Office, and our Enterprise Server Products. It nicely captured the idea of the .NET-ification of Microsoft products, servers, technologies, and services. In fact, when I started with Microsoft in October 2000, I often joked that I spent as much time telling people what .NET _was_ as I spent telling them what it _wasn't_.

But, as in all things, the .NET logo grow a bit old and stale. New logos and product came (and, in some cases, went), and the old logo started looking a little tarnished. I felt this was especially the case when we unveiled Silverlight. What a sharp logo! And when you put both the aging .NET Logo and the new, engaging Silverlight logo on a slide together, the difference was stark. At least in my mind. Don't get me wrong, it was a great time, very exciting. I loved that old .NET logo, I loved talking about .NET (and still do).

But at PDC2008 I stumbled across something interesting, a card at the .NET Framework kiosk in the Microsoft Pavilion in the Expo Center. A nifty new .NET Logo, one that looks a little bit like the Silverlight logo, sleek and engaging. It was the first of many micro-WOW! moments for me.

Some Windows 7 Highlights
Admittedly the overview in the keynote was brief. And admittedly I chose to go to other breakout sessions (WPF Roadmap was a highlight for me, personally). But what I saw was fairly engaging, some of it especially for folks that write code, demo or present a lot, or who use a laptop.

• Multi-touch support (engaging new way to interact with your computer, using your fingers, a mouse, or what-not)
• VHD Support in Disk Management Utility
• Win+P Monitor Support (built-in support to toggle monitors)
• Default printer switching (set different default printers for different networks; your "work" default and your "home" default)
• Slider control for UAC (level of sensitiveness)

Some Visual Studio 2010 Highlights
I must admit I had to step out briefly for part of this session, but I did pick up a few nuggets that really interested me...

• Enhanced extensibility (ScottGu did a great demo extending XML comments with formatting — and integrating text from Team Foundation Server Work Items)
• IDE shell rebuilt with WPF
• Multi-monitor support

Numerous Other Highlights
There were too many highlights to count, or for me to remember. My colleagues have all blogged extensively about PDC (see the blogroll to the right). A few highlights...

	— a cloud services operating system that provides development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform
	— makes developing loosely coupled cloud-based applications easier
	— a set of building blocks within the Azure Services Platform for handling user data and application resources

Next Steps
PDC, for me, was short (and this post almost too far removed from the event to be relevant; perhaps my wife _is_ right, and I'm too busy), but there are load of videos on Channel 9 for you to watch.

We also have our MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) events coming up in December and January, bringing PDC (and a dozen outstanding local speakers and Microsoft Evangelists) to a city near you. Houston, TX is first up...

Attend a MDC event and you'll have a chance to win a fabulous prize, such as a LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit or a Visual Studio Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription. Yup, four lucky people from each event will have a chance to win the big daddy of Microsoft developer tools: Team Suite with MSDN. More details on the SWAG and prizes for MDC coming in a post, soon. I promise.

Can you tell I'm behind on posting to my blog? Two post in one day is a bit of a shock, even to me. Both posts are short, of course, so that might explain the sudden prolific posting.

Microsoft just recently — earlier this week, in fact — launched BizSpark, a program for software develop startups designed to help them get off the ground quickly and equip them with the tools and technology to help them do so. The goal of BizSpark is simple: accelerate a startup's success by providing access to Microsoft tools and technologies, including production licensing for hosted solutions.

The program includes software, like Visual Studio 2008, Team Foundation Server, Windows Server, SQL Server, Office SharePoint Server, Systems Center, and BizTalk Server, as well as access to support resources _and_ potential visibility to investors, customers, and business partners.

If you are a recently formed startup, or are thinking about forming a startup, check out BizSpark or read the program guide.

I am thrilled to share the news that the St. Louis .NET community has banded together to host the St. Louis Day of .NET on Saturday, December 13 at the Center for the Application of Information Technology at Washington University in St. Louis (here are the directions). Several people from around St. Louis and the surrounding areas will be speaking, including a couple of the folks on my team as well as my peers in Developer & Platform Evangelism.

Topics include:

• Microsoft Windows 7
• Windows Azure and Microsoft's "Cloud Computing" Initiative
• Silverlight
• SharePoint
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Distributed Caching using Microsoft "Velocity"
• The future of C#
• SQL Server 2008

Join the crew for an amazing event. I'll be there, and so should you!

Loads and loads of things happened this week at PDC. I'll try to blog a bit more about what I personally saw and I liked, but one thing has been brought to my attention that I'd like to share with the 8 or 9 of you that follow me.

We made Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework v4.0 available at PDC 2008 this past week. In addition to making it available to attendees, a VPC is also available; download it here (as of this writing, the download is currently unavailable and will be restored soon).

The quick note part of this very short blog entry is that when you use the VPC you will encounter some software activation messages. You should largely be able to ignore the messages and still be able to use the VPC. If you'd like to read more about the activation messages, Brian Keller wrote a post on dealing with the activation messages, which is how I became aware of them.

Updated November 3, 2008 — Use RSVP code MDCEXTB when registering for the conference.

Here I sit on a Sunday evening, delaying packing for PDC2008 (if you're there, see you in LA!) and scouring through my email backlog, when I noticed that we've finally gone live with the MSDN Developer Conference. The site is up, the agenda is listed, and registration is live (register with RSVP code MDCEXTB)!

The Sovereign Republic of Texas
First up, in Central Region's own backyard, is Houston, TX on Tuesday, December 9th at the Westin Galleria Houston. If you couldn't make it to PDC, be sure to attend the MDC near _your_ backyard. Featured topics include:

• Experience Microsoft's Cloud Computing Platform — Create applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone
• Be among the first to see Windows 7 — See the latest advances in Multi-Touch Application Development
• Take your .NET skills to the next level — See sessions on WPF 4.0, Silverlight 2, ASP.NET 4.0, Parallel Programming, Live Mesh and more

The Rest of the Central Region Schedule
Following Houston in early 2009 we're hosting events in the following cities:

• Chicago, IL — January 13, 2009, Hyatt Regency Chicago
• Minneapolis, MN — January 13, 2009, Hilton Minneapolis
• Detroit, MI — January 22, 2009, Marriott Renaissance 
• Dallas, TX — January 26, 2009, Westin Galleria Dallas

Join Us!
So, head over to the MSDN Developer Conference site, take a look around, and if you'd like to hear more about Cloud Computing, Windows 7, the future of Visual Studio, and much more, register and join us.