MSDN Mobility UG Tour - The Maritimes...

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Well, just heading back from the Maritimes after having the pleasure of presenting to user groups in Halifax, Fredericton, and St. John's .  The groups in Halifax and Fredericton were their first meetings, and we had a great turnout. I always love coming hore and seeing family, so I went over to PEI for a family wedding Friday night. Long days and Long nights, but a lot of fun, and bringing back 8 two pound lobsters for a good cooking tonight.

 

We discussed Mobile Development and SQL Server CE. Interesting talk, I thought.

 

While in St. John's, the Grand Princess was in harbour... MASSIVE. It must have been a tight squeeze to get in throught he narrows:

 

 

I was also lucky to have a tour of the new provincial archives building on the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. This new facility contains the complete historical record of the province. The archive is maintained with exactly 10 degrees celcius, 30% relative humidity, and the air is purified. The document shelves reach what I think was just about 100 feet high. Quite an impressive facility. Dana King explained that the archives management application that he built is built 100% with .NET, and he is in the process of planning his second version.  The system currently integrates barcode scanners, however, it seems like the perfect place for an RFID pilot, specifically due to the sensitive nature of the documents.

 

The presentation covered an overview of VS\.NET 2005 Team System,  .NET Compact Framework, SQL CE, Automatic Updating CF applications, and P/Invoke on the device, as well as .NET CF 2.0, and a "Longhorn" project update. We stepped through the  source code of for all of this. It was a lot of fun, and you could see some of the attendees had immediate use for these technologies.

 

This was the first leg of our User Group Quarterly Tour, with Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, and a couple of the Toronto groups to come in the east. The MSDN Canada team is planning user group tours every three months this year, as well as more deep dives.

 

Also cool is Anthony Vranic will be delivering an academic tour on Game Development. He'll be showcasing "My Cheesy Space Game", a Direct3D space chase game through an asteroid field, built with Managed DirectX. Should be a great talk.