Mariano Szklanny’s Blog

After we shipped the May 2007 release of the Smart Client Software Factory, I moved to the Web Client Software Factory team to work in the next version (in case you missed it, the second weekly drop is already available). Since then, I've been working on the Hands On Labs for both factories. I cannot give too much details about them yet, but I can give you some hints:

• The WCSF Hands On Labs will be based on the ones that we presented in the workshop held in Redmond on March (which you can download from here). We've been working really hard to improve them taking into account the valuable feedback that we received from the attendees. The main complains I've heard are that the procedures were not detailed enough and that there was a lack of content in some parts (I remember an attendee saying “Please tell me what I just did!” :), thus we are spending a considerable amount of time on adding details and content to help users understand what they are doing, and why.
• The SCSF Hands On Labs will be built upon the existing ones. They will be updated to work with the latest release of the factory, and we are planning to cover the new features such as the ability to host WPF smartparts and the offline capabilities provided by the Disconnected Service Agent / Connection Monitor / Endpoint Catalog application blocks.

Stay tuned, I'll be publishing more details as we go on with the labs.

Have you heard about “Under-promise, over-deliver”? That’s one of our top mindsets here at Southworks. Ariel, another southy, came up with a new interesting couple of words… “Other-deliver”.

Don’t miss his interesting post Under-promise, Over-deliver and….”Other-deliver”.

A time ago I blogged about DinnerNow.net, a new initiative from Microsoft that provides guidance on how to combine lots of new technologies (Windows Vista Gadgets, IIS 7, WCF, LINQ, CardSpace, and more).

During the last month we have been working on the Hands On Labs for it, and a couple of labs have just been published with the 1.2 version of DinnerNow.net.

Get them from Codeplex!

For more information about DinnerNow.net, visit the official Web site and this  blog entry from Johnny Halife.

During the next month we will be offering a workshop for those of you willing to learn about the Web Client Software Factory and to meet the crazy guys who developed it

The Client Team at patterns & practices will be hosting a 2 days, instructor-led training event covering the recently released Web Client Software Factory.

When? Monday, March 12^th – Tuesday, March 13^th

Where? Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington, USA.

Who should attend? Anyone interested in jumpstarting their adoption of the Factory as the underlying architecture for web applications; and in using automation to streamline the development of applications of this type.

…

More details in Eugenio's blog:

Announcement: Web Client Software Factory Workshop

Hope to see you there!

A time ago, when the factory was released, I promised that I would post some pictures of the great team I had the pleasure of being part of. Here you have some of them in the workspace. Enjoy!

From left to right: Dragos Manolescu (Architect), Alan Ridlehoover (Developer), Edward Jezierski (Architect), Johnny Halife (Developer), me (Developer + Documentation), Matias Woloski (Developer) and Terrence Cyril Joseph Anthuvan (Testing)

From left to right: Dragos Manolescu (Architect), Michael Puleio (Developer Lead), Blaine Wastell (Program Manager), Matias Woloski (Developer), Johnny Halife (Developer), me (Developer + Documentation), Tim Osborn (Documentation, UX, and more) and Prasad Paluri (Testing)

Tim Osborn (top) and me (bottom), reviewing the documentation outline (yes, we take pictures of the whiteboard-walls to remember what we wrote before the whiteboard was erased).

(via Johnny) DinnerNow.net, a Microsoft initiative that puts together a lot of new technologies and products like IIS7, WCF, LINQ, Windows Vista Gadgets, PowerShell, and ASP.NET AJAX in a sample application, has been released.

I’ve been playing with the bits and found a bunch of interesting things. In fact, I’m working on a deliverable that will be shipped soon by the DinnerNow team (I can’t give more details now, sorry :-)), so stay tunned.

Get it from www.dinnernow.net.

I just want to point you to this excellent site I use to colorize the code in my posts:

http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/

Tom Hollander, product manager at patterns & practices, has posted about this new factory that will be included in Enterprise Library v3: the Application Block Software Factory.

Don't miss his post: Block Building Made Easy

I had the pleasure of assisting to the Strategic Architect Forum (aka SAF) that took place in Microsoft Campus at Redmond last week. Here are some pictures:

From left to right: Matias Woloski (Southworks), Bill Gates, Eric Rudder (Senior VP of Microsoft Technical Strategy, in the back) and me.

Eric Rudder and Bill Gates on the Q&A session they gave on Friday.

Me at the "Software Factories in the Real World" session where Wojtek Kozaczynski presented the Smart Client Software Factory.

Johnny Halife (Southworks) @ SAF

Some time ago I was forced to disable comments due to the big amount of spam. Now thanks to our IT expert, Beto Ortega, we have Community Server 2.0 running and CAPTCHA enabled for comments, so I enabled anonymous comments again.

Hope to get your feedback! [:D]