Ali B's Nugget

What would you do if your Managing Director said he was spending a day in your department to better understand what you do? Several late nights preparing slides, maybe? Polish up your CV? Take a sickie? Well how about firing up VS and getting him to write some code?

Alistair Baker is the Managing Director of Microsoft here in the UK and recently he asked to understand a bit more about what we do in DPE group. So presented with a couple of hours of his time I felt the best way (and the most fun :)) would be to put him to work writing code to explore State & Notification Broker in Windows Mobile 5.0 to produce a Nugget - Nuggets are short technical video explanations of particular areas of technology, designed to get at the heart of an issue with code rather than a lot of slide ware and waffle. The main site for nuggets is here: https://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/events/nuggets.aspx.

Well he obediently rolled up his sleeves and took the challenge head on!

The finished nugget has just been published here .

It was a pretty enlightening experience all round. Alistair, by his own admission, has never used Visual Studio before and it’s a real testament to the usability of Visual Studio 2005 that he was able to build the Windows Mobile application and record the nugget with only a few minutes tutoring ... and all done in less than an hour! Alistair seemed to enjoy himself even though there was a distinct look of fear in his eyes when I explained what we wanted him to do, and he rose to the challenge admirably.

I challenge you to try the same thing with your MD J

We also captured the whole experience on video and I'm hoping to get it up on C9 in the near future. I will post a link in the new year.

Anyway, I'm signing off now for the Christmas break. Hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas. More in the new year.

Marcus