Johnny Halife’s Blog

Today Lito came from Tech Ed 08′ that was held on Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. The stuff shown there was amazing and I had the chance to attend many chat talks and conversations about technology that is something that I personally love.

I haven’t been posting since Wednesday because things went busy on Tech Ed, here is a brief summary of what happened since then till I got home.

Thursday, preparing the demo. I got up early in the morning and head out to OCCC to help Liam and Moe to setup the demo for their breakout session. They showed the Microsoft Sync Toy vNext that we help to build at Southworks. Then after relaxing a little bit and meet some folks around I had a Ask the experts session with Moe where we discussed things like Sync with Services and Devices (including non-windows based). The talk was great and after that we went to have a nap since Thursday night was the Attendee Party at Universal Studios.

Sync Toy in action live from Liam’s and Moe’s  (MSFT Sync Framework) presentation.

Friday, the day to say good bye. We went to OCCC in the morning, where people were saying good bye to Tech Ed. I caught up with everybody I saw at Tech Ed to say good bye. After that everything was about shopping, taking Tim and Anthony to the airport and prepare our stuff.

Last picture at the boot. Lito, Tim and me.

Saturday, it never ends until it ends. We were ready to leave to the airport but since we where in Orlando, FL. where the dreams come true,  Lito and I went to have a quick trip around the Disney Hollywood Studios theme park and then yes we went to the airport to come back home.

That’s how a shopping session ends, more if Lito is on his spree

Summary

Tech Ed 08′ - North America was a great experience from my personal perspective and I guess with Southworks as a whole we had chance to put out some demos we help to built (syncToy, SQL Data Platform Keynote, and so on). As you can see Lito, Tim and I were the visible faces of a whole team working towards a single objective become better every time and be ready to take the opportunities as they show up.

I’d like to thank too much people, the list is endless but here are the one that I can recall of:

• Ale Jack and Matias, for trusting me and let me be part of this experience and Southworks.
• Eze B and Seba D, whose extremely hard efforts made the Sync Toy an amazing and attractive piece of software to be displayed, I sure we wouldn’t make it for Tech Ed without you help and involvement. You really hit a homer
• Juan Pablo Garcia and Ezequiel Morito (Engineering Excellence), for demonstrating that excellence is easy, and that you can keep it up no matter what. I’m really prod of the work done while I was out and for the most because beside my team you’re my friends :).
• Maxi Déboli, Edgard, Paulo and Leandro, for keeping the quality, for doing the great Keynote demo and staying up late, working hard in behalf of everybody who make Southworks.
• Tim, the one that makes all these things to happens.
• BillG Keynote Demo Team, the list of names would be endless, so to simplify everybody who makes SQL because of the trust and the great moments we had together down in Florida.

And one big special thanks to my travel mate, my friend Lito.

Lito and me at Downtown Disney.

That’s it, I’ll be posting more and more from now on about what are we doing as Southworks Engineering Excellence and my technology affairs.

thanks,
~johnny

Fellows, we’re here live from Tech Ed North America - 2008, things have been busy and seems that they will still this way. Let’s do a quick pass over what happened during these two days.

Tuesday.We left our Holiday Inn Room at 5:00 am., since we helped on development of Data Platform Demo (SQL) for BillG’s last keynote we had to be there early. After a bunch of sanity checks of the application we were ready to go.

Demo back-stage Crew. Lito, Zack and me ensuring that everything is in place for the keynote.

Personally, I missed the keynote since Lito and I were behind the scene with Zack controlling the demo and doing all the checks that needed to be done. The demo actually went great, even Bill’s feedback was the demo was he was thankful for doing a demo the highest quality.

 
BillG Keynote SQL Demo Team. Right after the keynote ended.Top: Anthony Carrabino, Dave Campbell (SQL - Tech Fellow), Moe Khosravy and Tim. Bottom: me , Lito and  Zack Owens.

Once the demo was completed and the keynote closed we went to hang around Tech Ed, I had chance to take a couple of pictures with the products mascots.

Johnny & the Microsoft Mascots.

After lunch, I took my booth duties [Did I mentioned that I'm at the Sync Framework booth on the Green DAT area?] I had time to answer some questions and setup the demos on the booth. Finally after the booth duties we went to have a nap and then hang out around Orlando.

During booth duties. It’s me giving a presentation about Microsoft Sync Framework over the SQL Server & Sync Framework booth.

After keynote dinner. Moe, Lito and me after the keynote dinner.

If you missed the keynote, you can see it online from http://www.microsoft.com/techedonline/. BTW, Zack has a great post explaining the architectural side from the Trey Research Demo we did for the keynote.

Wednesday. Today was all about the booth during the work hours, I was around Tech Ed a little bit too, but mostly all my time was at booth duties demonstrating the Microsoft Sync Framework - Sync Toy, that was actually fun. After duties I went to BOF (Birds of the Feather) sessions were I attend to DLR and Dynamic Languages and later an interesting discussion about Code Quality and Standards. It was really fun, and some interesting conversations show up during the BOF Talks (Also there were some beers to make a relaxed discussion).

Booth duties day 2. Lito and me during showing the Sync Toy.

Tomorrow (Thursday). Tomorrow I’ll be around Tech Ed, during the morning and at 5:00 pm. I’ll be helping Moe Khosravy on the Ask The Expert session for Microsoft Sync Framework. I hope, you can make it, come and clarify all your doubts. Also Liam will be holding a session at 1:00 pm introducing Microsoft Sync Framework.

My profile. This is what shows up on the DAT Area introducing the Microsoft SQL Server speakers. I was really shocked when I first saw it.

That’s all the news live from Tech Ed North America - 2008 , Orlando, Florida.

thanks,
~johnny

Hi everybody, I’ve been away hard working on some stuff in the latest months. But now I’m wrapping up my stuff in order to travel to Orlando, FL, USA. Lito, Tim and I will be attending Tech Ed North America 08′.

Most our time will be spent on the Microsoft SQL Server Booth, below you will find our time table for the whole conference. So if you are attending, let’s meet there :).

If you wanna come and visit, you can add it to your outlook:

• By clicking on the calendar icon the left of the shift
• When prompted, click open
• Then click save and the shift will be saved to your Outlook calendar

Item		Day	Start	Finish
Staffing Commitments
	TLC/Green/DAT- SQL Server Upgrade & SQL Server Data Services	June 03	11:45 AM	2:45 PM
	TLC/Green/DAT- SQL Server Upgrade & SQL Server Data Services	June 04	8:15 AM	11:45 AM
	TLC/Green/DAT- SQL Server Upgrade & SQL Server Data Services	June 05	8:15 AM	11:45 AM
	TLC/Green/DAT- SQL Server Upgrade & SQL Server Data Services	June 06	8:15 AM	11:45 AM

thanks,
~johnny

On February 16th, Matías and I participated as speakers on the Microsoft Agile Architecture Forum 2008, held at Microsoft Argentina. The conference covered lots of interesting agile stuff: TDD, FDD/Crystal, the MoQ Framework and Continuous Integration/Build Automation among others.

Continuous Integration was the topic selected by us, here you can find the deck we’ve used.

In this photo: Juan Gabardini, Martin Salias, Matias Woloski, Gabriel Paradelo, Juan E. Ladetto, Johnny G. Halife, Nicolas Paez, Matias Bonaventura

Useful links about Continuous Integration

• http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CruiseControl.NET
• Rob Conery » Source Control and Continuous Integration On The Cheap
• How To- Set Up a Continuous Integration Build in Visual Studio
• MSBuild with Cruise Control .NET
• Being Mark Cohen » Cruise Control .net with Subversion

Thanks to Martín Salías and Ezequiel Glinsky for letting us participate in this event.

thanks,
~johnny

Hi Everybody, after the Code Camp @ Buenos Aires, I’ve packaged my stuff and came to Santiago del Estero. Here the Santiago del Estero National University (UNSE) is holding a technology conference for 3 days (29, 30, and 31 of October). This conference is called JUITECE (Jornadas Universitarias de Informática, Tecnologia, Electronica y Ciencias de la Educación).

I started my day at the Buenos Aires airport where I spent 3 hours more than expected since my flight was delayed. At 12:30pm I flew to Santiago del Estereo and I’ve arrived at 2:30pm.

Once I was completed settled, I went to the university where I was anxious to see the conference about Virtualization my friend, Mario Montalvetti, was presenting. The conference was great, he started from the history of Virtualization and then moved across all the types of virtualization that exist and also the upcoming products (like Microsoft Softgrid).

After Mario’s track, it was time for me to present Microsoft PopFly. The conference went very good, I started describing the Web 2.0 Ecosystem and then the mashups that you can create using Microsoft PopFly.

Also this journey was another great opportunity to spend some time with those guys passionate about technology and help them on User Groups creation. I’m very happy with the commitment, and passion these people have on their personal/group development.

After visiting the university I had time to sightsee Santiago del Estero city which is getting nicer day by day. I took some pictures, and have a cool dinner with the people here. We had problem, an unexpected storm left the city without lights for a while and the streets underwater. I almost had to swim to back get to the hotel.

Now it’s time to go back, I’m preparing my stuff to fly back to Buenos Aires. My plane is leaving in a couple of hours. Hope to come back soon.

Thanks,
~johnny

Finally I’m at home, the trip was amazing. Such kind of experiences are the ones that you’ll remember for your life time. I really enjoyed my time there at Santiago del Estero.

Today, I’m getting to back to office to keep working on Building Automation so stay tuned on this same channel cause a post about it is comming soon….

thanks a lot,
~johnny

Today was our second day at Santiago del Estero, where we're doing a couple of conferences about latest technologies DinnerNow.net , Windows Server 2008 (formerly code-named “Windows Longohorn Server”) and Windows Vista.

My conference was about DinnerNow.net, the sample application I've been working on last months. Ale Ponicke showed Windows Vista and a couple of cool technologies (Photosynth, Windows Live Maps).

Also I'd chance to see other local User Groups that are starting up on development topics. I'd a great time with this guys, when I'm back in the future I'm sure I'll see results and great things from them when I'm back again.

The conference was great, was the last one of this tour at Santiago del Estero. Again I want to say thank you!, to everyboday who made this trip possible. Starting with the GENTI & .netSgo user groups and their teachers (Mario and Aldo).

This has been cool, now it's time to head back, going home will be great. Before going back I'll have lunch with people of UCSE (Catholic University of Santiago del Estero) at Rio Hondo.

Then we will be travelling to Tucumán where Alejandro and I will be taking the airplane to Buenos Aires.

This has been another amazing experience, we came here to teach about technology but we learnt lot of things about the people here and their lifes. So personally I'm really happy with this kind of experiences.

see you on the next post,
~johnny

Hi I’m currently at Santiago del Estero, an argentinean province were Ale Ponicke and I will be doing a couple of conferences about Windows Server 2008 (formerly code-named “Longhorn Server”), Windows Vista and Office 2007. I’ll be presenting the DinnerNow.net sample application.

I arrived yesterday’s afternoon, Mario picked me up at the airport, and we had lunch at his house with his family. It was great. Then after lunch I checked-in in my hotel, and then played a soccer match with the local user groups members. We had too much fun.

Today’s morning, I presented DinnerNow.net in the UNSE (Santiago del Estero, National, University). It was great, then Ale Ponicke showed Windows Server 2008, and also the hot new code-name “viridian” to be released after Windows 2008.

Once again, this University treated us really great, we appreciate effort while where’re here, and also this time I had the chance to see the user groups I’ve been mentoring since last year.

Also I’m catching up with potencial user groups, one of the things that I really like is the passion invested by this guys, and I’m having the challenge of mentoring an UG completly formed by girls!

Tomorrow morning I’ll be presenting DinnerNow at UCSE (Catholic University of Santiago del Estero).

See you in the next post,
~johnny

The last two weeks Mike and I were presenting at “La Feria del Libro” one of the DinnerNow labs as a workshop for Teachers and IT People that assisted to the event.

About the event

Feria del Libro (Book fair) is the most popular intellectual event in Argentina. It lasts almost 4 weeks and 1.200.000 attendees through the event. The central thing is the book, but a huge other things happen around it, the most important for us is education. We had a stand of 200 m2 there, with a lab with 40 PC with latest technology.

The experience

It was really cool, was my first time in an event like this with different types of attendees on the same track. It's a massive event, and people were really interested in it. We held the conference with more than 120 attendees for both tracks. I wish we had more PC so more people could get involved but space was limited by our 200m2 of stand.

The material

For the attendees, the material will be posted on Mike's blog soon. The main difference between the material that you'll get from us and the official one at www.dinnernow.net is the language. Our presentation was in spanish and we've translated the material but if you feel comfortable with english don't wait get the material from here, otherwise visit Mike's blog for more info.

Memories from the fair

A video

The following video is an extract of the Demo we've made about LINQ. The video: http://www.youtube.com/v/X9mHbRNma2E

thanks,
~johnny