Blogging, and writing a book chapter

Blogging always seems to take a backseat when things get busy, but worry not I’ve got a pile of postings that I’ll try and get through over the next week or so.

The key reason why I’ve been quiet on the blogging front is that when I was in Seattle a few months back I was asked to contribute a chapter to the upcoming Professional Visual Studio Team System book.

I’ve always toyed with writing or contributing to a book; in fact I considered something in the BizTalk space but couldn’t justify the amount of time required alongside a full working week and a young family! So I’m pleased to say I’ve written a chapter on DSL Tools for the book and I’ve just submitted my final draft.

I’ve done a lot with the DSL Tools SDK over the last 12-18 months, hence I was asked to write the chapter. I stupidly thought knowing the technology quite well would mean writing a chapter would be a straight forward task, but the long evenings are testament to the opposite!

I’m not included on the author list yet but should be soon along with a picture on the cover, now that’s scary! J

The DSL Tools SDK is a fascinating technology and I think it’s going to have a big impact once launched, there isn’t much in the way of “real world” samples yet which makes it hard to explain to customers but hopefully the scenario I’ve picked for the book will help.

Additionally to this it looks like Stuart Kent over in the DSL Tools Product Team and I are also going to author a series of MSDN articles on DSL Tools and introduce my pet Work Item Type designer for Visual Studio System Team System that will let people author and edit Work Item Types. More on that soon!