Can't go to Mix07 but still want to hear the annoucements about (beep), (beep) and (beep)?  Just head to the Mix07 Website for all the latest, up to the minute news.
http://www.visitmix.com/

I'd check this page also:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass

Maybe This:
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

And this:
http://www.silverlight.net/

Maybe also:
http://msdn.microsoft.com

Well, you get the idea  

Packing my bag, the Elvis suit and heading to Vegas to attend Mix07.  See ya there!

VSTO for Mere Mortals: A VBA Developer's Guide to Microsoft Office Development Using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office

Authors: Kathleen McGrath, Paul Stubbs
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN-10: 0321426711
ISBN-13: 978-0321426710
Retail Price: $44.99 US, $55.99 CDN
Publication Date: December 2006
Softcover: 689 pages
Online information: Table of Contents, Sample chapter, Source code
URL: http://www.awprofessional.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321426711&rl=1

Traditionally, developing on the Office platform meant that you would use VBA but Microsoft released Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) a few years ago to let .NET developers use their skills to develop managed Office applications. Moving from VBA to .NET is not easy because you need to learn so much new stuff especially if you never touched .NET in any way. “VSTO for Mere Mortals” is a book targeted at VBA developers who never used .NET before.

In the first chapters, the authors explain what is VSTO and what features are available for developers. Chapter 2 and 3 introduce the Visual Studio development environment and managed code. Seasoned .NET developers will skip these chapters but they are essential for people who never used Visual Studio before. The next chapters cover everything VSTO from Word, Excel and Outlook development to Smart Tags and database development. A full chapter is devoted to new features of VSTO 2005 SE and Office 2007.

If you’re a VBA developer that wants to jump into .NET development using VSTO, look no further, this is the book for you. Experienced .NET will also find this book interesting but will skip a couple of .NET introduction chapters.

My name is on the cover of a book!

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-System-Business-Solutions/dp/0789736675/ref=sr_11_1/104-4372557-7074357?ie=UTF8&qid=1177797351&sr=11-1

Here's what I say:
“VBA for the 2007 Microsoft Office System is jam-packed with code samples that you’ll be able to reuse right away in your VBA projects.”
—Guy Barrette, Microsoft MVP & Regional Director, .NET Expertise

Dave Remmer and Mohammad Akif from Microsoft would be conducting a series of Webcasts focused on aspiring architects in May and June.

Architecture 101 (Mohammad, May 24)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338971&culture=en-CA

Architecture is the balance between art and engineering, it requires a certain mindset and approach to solving problems. Architects often function as a bridge between the business users and development groups and are increasingly being recognized as a critical community within organizations. Becoming an Architect can often translate in  to an elevated status from a career stage perspective but it is hard to find prescriptive guidance around how to become an architect. Join Mohammad Akif for the first of a four part series focused on aspiring architects. During the Architecture 101 session we will discuss some key ideas around Architecture and define attributes of an architect.

Software development lifecycle and methodologies (Dave, May 31)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338974&culture=en-CA

Over the years the various approaches teams have used to develop software have evolved. Join Dave Remmer in the second of a series focused on aspiring architects where we will discuss the various stages projects go through and sample some of the methodologies used by teams developing software. In this session we will compare and contrast the waterfall, agile, RUP, Scrum and MSF methodologies and how they are used within software projects.

Services orientation and other architectural paradigms  (Dave, June 7)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338978&culture=en-CA

One of the hottest topics in software architecture is the services oriented approach to building solutions and how this can provide agility, flexibility and reuse. Join Dave Remmer in the third of a series focused on aspiring architects where we will be looking at approaches to architecting software. This session will give an overall description of service orientation and how it differs from object oriented and component based architectures as well as a discussion of some of the organizational challenges teams experience when using a services oriented architecture.

Transitioning from a developer to an architect  (Mohammad, June 14)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338980&culture=en-CA

Are you a developer who would like to learn more about becoming an architect? Or how to get formally recognized as one (since you already wear the design and architecture hat along with the developer one)?. Join Mohammad Akif for the fourth and last part of the series focused on aspiring architects, during this session we will discuss how you can attain the skill set required to be an architect and sell yourself as an architect within your organization and industry. We will also provide a list of resources that you can use to continue the transition from a developer to an architect role.

Erik Renaud: Bases de données multidimensionnelles

Nous discutons avec Erik Renaud des bases de données multidimensionnelles avec "Analysis Services" de SQL Server 2005. En plus de présenter les concepts pour créer un DataWarehouse ou un DataMart avec un cube OLAP, nous discutons des outils pour programmeurs tel que SQL Reporting Services 2005, ADOMD, Excel (Pivot Tables) et OWC (Office Web Components).

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During the Visual Studio Talk Show, we recently draw a pass for DevTeach 2007.  The lucky winner is Dominic Jobin.

From left to right: Mario Cardinal, Jean-René Roy, Dominic Jobin and myself.

I'll be speaking at the Groupe d'usagers Visual Studio Montréal next Monday (April 23rd) about SubSonic along with Martin Lapierre who is on the SubSonic team.  BTW, we have a DevTeach pass to raffle.

Conférencier: Guy Barrette et Martin Lapierre
Sujet: SubSonic - Un DAL à zéro code

SubSonic est un DAL (Data Access Layer), un générateur de code et un ORM (object relational mapper) destiné aux applications .NET en C# ne requérant aucun code de votre part car il se construit dynamiquement à la compilation.  Vous avez bien lu, l'utilisation de SubSonic ne requiert aucune ligne de code! De plus, il fonctionne avec SQL Server 2000 et 2005, Enterprise Library et même MySQL. Ah oui, chose importante... il est tout à fait gratuit! Trop beau pour être vrai?

Lors de cette conférence, Guy Barrette examinera SubSonic avec vous afin de valider si l'outil fait vraiment tout ce qu'il prétend faire et si son utilisation fait du sens dans le développement d'applications en entreprise.
En deuxième partie, Martin Lapierre vous expliquera comment utiliser SubSonic dans des applications Windows et comment adapter le code. Il est à noter que Martin fait partie de l'équipe de développement de SubSonic.

Tirage*:

Une inscription à la conférence DevTeach Montréal 2007, une valeur de $1,199.

*Gracieuseté de DevTeach.  Sans aucun engagement du GUVSM.

The Patterns & Practices group has released version 3.0 of the popular Enterprise Library.  Now, if I can find the time to test and use it.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480453.aspx

The Microsoft Regional Directors have a new home on the Net:
http://www.microsoftregionaldirectors.com/

Hey!  That's me!
http://www.microsoftregionaldirectors.com/profile.aspx?rd=1259

Microsoft announced that the new name for WPF/E is now SilverLight.
http://www.microsoft.com/Silverlight/

It even has it's own site:
http://www.silverlight.net/

I'm very happy to say that I passed the Team Foundation Server - Configuration and Development exam.  I can now display that new logo 

If you're experiencing performance issues with Outlook 2007 and you have a large PST file, check this patch that was released recently:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c262bcfd-1e09-49b6-9003-c4c47539df66&displaylang=en&Hash=ERRucejINdXwWJQdpiSXmBojxLEFA8qXpZ%2bukVZJalgjbpMRHtweCXvSfxr64nCEUKOc%2fYVy0730PpB2GVfdsg%3d%3d

Thanks to Laurent Duveau for this pointer...

If you're looking for TFS stuff in French, head to this Website:
www.team-system.fr

New this year at DevTeach, we'll have Birds of a Feather sessions at lunchtime Wednesday.

http://www.devteach.com/BonusSession.aspx

What is a BOF?  Meet people with similar interests and challenges in an open-forum environment that promotes discussion and interaction. Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions allow attendees to enjoy free-flowing dialogues about products, technologies, and solutions without any PowerPoint presentations.

But the real question is what BOF to attend?

Would you prefer to hear this speaker?

Or this one?

I was at BestBuy and saw some kids having fun with Guitar Hero 2 on the Xbox 360 and I finally gave in and bought it  I must say that the whole thing looks silly but it is soooooooooooooooooooooo fun.  Honestly, it's been a while since I had so much fun playing a videogame.  The concept is quite simple: a song is playing and colored notes appear on screen.  You must "play" the notes with the colored buttons on the guitar controller while strumming.  Sounds easy?  It is not.  Sounds silly?  Yeah but it's so fun.

The GUVSM's Team Foundation Workshop was held on March 24th with great success.  70 people showed up on a Saturday to hear superstar Team System expert Etienne Tremblay talk about TFS.

I'd like to thank Etienne who gladly gave his time, Jean-René Roy from DevTeach who helped us with the hotel logistics and also, I'd like to thank our sponsors who helped us.  With their support, we were able to get coffee and juice in the morning, lunch and soft drinks in the afternoon.  Many thanks to all of you.

Here are some pictures of the event:

Microsoft Acquires TeamPlain!

This is fantastic.  Now we have a Web client for TFS without paying additional money.

http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2007/03/26/microsoft-acquires-teamplain.aspx

DevTeach Panel

Wednesday May 16th, 2007
In the evening at 18:00
Location:Salle de Bal
Presented by the Visual Studio Talk Show (www.visualstudiotalkshow.com)
Free to all!!!

Panel: Open Source in the Microsoft Community

Moderated By Ted Neward, this panel addresses the distinct opportunities and special challenges of using and contributing to open source software written by software developers in the Microsoft community and shaped by Microsoft culture.

Since the initial broad introduction of .NET open source with NUnit in early 2001, the Microsoft community has overcome its initial reservations with open source products, and open source tools and applications have become an integral part of .NET development and the .NET community.  Microsoft Corp's own unease with open source has transformed into an open embrace and an active effort to foster and support shared source projects with efforts like CodePlex, GotDotNet, Enterprise Library, and Rotor, among others.

With the .NET community's unique character comes a unique perspective on open source software.  This panel discussion takes a look at open source in the Microsoft community from technical, cultural, and business perspectives in a frank discussion with recognizable contributors to and users of open source software for Microsoft platforms.

Panelists will address:

• Successful open source software for Windows and .NET
• Experiences with open source adoption and use (good and bad)
• Contributing to and managing open source projects
• Using open source software in professional service engagements and product development
• Microsoft's role in the open source community (friend, foe, or 800 lb gorilla?)
• Challenges with using open source tools and components (licensing, abandonment, support, credibility)
• The kinds of innovation that happen in open source vs. commercial projects

Moderator:
Ted Neward is an independent software development architect and mentor in the Sacramento, California area. He is the author of a number of books, including "Server-Based Java Programming" (Manning), the forthcoming "Effective Enterprise Java" (Addison-Wesley) and "SSCLI Essentials" (OReilly) and co-author of "C# In a Nutshell" (OReilly) with Peter Drayton and Ben Albahari. He is also an instructor with DevelopMentor, where he teaches and authors both the Java and .NET curriculum and writes technical papers for www.javageeks.com and www.clrgeeks.com.

Panel members:

• Alan Griver. Alan is the architect for the Microsoft.com community properties that include the CodePlex and GotDotNet shared source portals, as well community conversation sites like blogs.msdn.com and forums.msdn.com. Alan was an influential presence in some the earliest cohesive Microsoft developer and shared source communities.
• Oren Eini. Oren has contributed some of the most successful open source projects, including NHibernate, MonoRail, Windsor, DynamicProxy, Boo, and Oren's own family of tools including RhinoMocks.
• Jeremy Miller. Jeremy is the owner and principal contributor to the StructureMap project and the StoryTeller project. He maintains a popular blog at CodeBetter.com focusing on software design and development practices.
• Roy Osherove. Roy is recognized leader in the .NET agile community, assists Microsoft customers with the adoption of software development lifecycle practices and tools. He is equally adapt with open source tools as well as commercial tools.
• François Beauregard. François is a certified Scrum Trainer, founder of the Montreal Agile user group and his company Pyxis Technologies is deeply involved with OSS by contributing GreenPepper's core engine to the community.

Schedule for the night

Speakers Bio

Ted Neward    Ted Neward is an independent software development architect and mentor in the Sacramento, California area. He is the author of a number of books, including "Server-Based Java Programming" (Manning), the forthcoming "Effective Enterprise Java" (Addison-Wesley) and "SSCLI Essentials" (OReilly) and co-author of "C# In a Nutshell" (OReilly) with Peter Drayton and Ben Albahari. He is also an instructor with DevelopMentor, where he teaches and authors both the Java and .NET curriculum. He speaks frequently for technology user groups (most often for the Sacramento Java User's Group), and writes technical papers for www.javageeks.com and www.clrgeeks.com. He currently labors on behalf of the University of California, Davis, architecting a rebuild of the Davis Accounting and Financial Information Services software system. Past clients include companies like Pacific Bell, EdFund, Synergex and Intuit.

Yair Alan Griver, Microsoft Corporation    Yair Alan Griver is the Group Manager for the Visual Studio Data group. As Group Manager, Alan’s teams produce the tools used inside of Visual Studio .NET, Office and SQL Server that surface data capabilities, as well as Visual FoxPro. Alan is focusing on making Microsoft’s products the best data environments for developers. Prior to this position, Alan was a Lead Program Manager and Community Evangelist for Visual Basic .NET, driving community interests into Visual Basic .NET. Before joining Microsoft, Alan was Chief Information Officer at GoAmerica, a publicly traded telecommunications (wireless internet) company, and co-founder and CIO of Flash Creative Management a business strategy and technology consulting company. Alan is the author of five books on Visual FoxPro and Visual Basic, the creator of various development frameworks, and has developed database systems ranging into the thousands of users. He has spoken around the world on databases, object orientation and development team management issues, as well as XML and messaging-based applications.

Oren Eini    Oren Eini is a senior developer in We!, a consulting group based in Israel, focusing on architecture, data access and best practices. Most often, he is working on building complex business systems using .Net 2.0, NHibernate and Castle's Frameworks, providing training and guidance for the use of Object Relational Mapping, Inversion of Control, Domain Driven Design and other exciting topics. Oren is an active member in several leading Open Source projects, including (but not limited ) NHibernate, Castle and Rhino Mocks. He had publish an article on MSDN about advance usages of Inversion of Control Containers and done a DNR TV Episode about NHibernate.

Jeremy D. Miller    Jeremy is a Senior Consultant and Agile Mentor in the New York City area with Finetix., the leading Financial Services IT consulting firm specializing in delivering custom solutions to clients trading in Capital Markets. He is helping clients to implement agile practices like Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration with .Net technologies. Jeremy began his IT career writing "Shadow IT" applications to automate his engineering documentation, then wandered into software development because it looked like more fun. Jeremy previously worked as a systems architect building mission critical supply chain software for a Fortune 100 company and learned agile development practices as a .Net consultant at ThoughtWorks, one of the pioneers of agile development. Jeremy is the author of the open source StructureMap (http://structuremap.sourceforge.net) tool for Dependency Injection with .Net and the forthcoming StoryTeller (http://storyteller.tigris.org) tool for supercharged FIT testing in .Net. Jeremy's thoughts on just about everything software related can be found on his weblog "The Shade Tree Developer" at http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller, part of the popular CodeBetter site. Jeremy was recognized this year with an MVP award for C#.

Roy Osherove, Team Agile    Roy has spent the past decade developing and architecting software solutions for various companies in Israel and Europe. He's a Microsoft MVP and writes regularly on .NET, Agile Development Techniques and other geeky stuff on his blog and various other places such as MSDN Magazine. Roy is also a regular presenter at Microsoft Conferences such as TechEd Europe and Israel, DevDays and user groups in Israel and Europe. Roy is one of the leading voices for Agile development in Israel and is the Founder of the Agile Israel user's group - Israel’s First and only Agile-Dedicated User’s group. Roy is the principal of Team Agile: www.TeamAgile.com (i9f), a consultancy located in Israel dealing with Agile development methodologies, .NET Architecture and Design and mentoring developers. Roy’s blog is at www.ISerializable.com(i9g)

François Beauregard, Pyxis Technologies   Mr. Beauregard is president as well as senior consultant at Pyxis Technologies. He acts as coach, facilitator and consultant for organizations wishing to enhance the productivity of their software development teams and wishing to adopt an Agile approach. He is Certified Scrum Trainer since 2005. Mr. Beauregard founded the Montréal Agile Group, an interest group on Agile software development methodologies; he regularly gives presentations during the Group's monthly meeting.

The DevTeach has been announced.  Pablo Castro from the ADO.NET team will talk about the work they're doing on a new yet to be relased technology called Entity Framework.

The ADO.NET Entity Framework

The vast majority of business applications are data-centric applications. A lot of time and effort is put on building these applications, and often companies rely on being able to create, maintain and adapt them to react to environment changes and have proper time to market. The Entity Data Model and its supporting technologies, in particular the ADO.NET Entity Framework, have been designed to tackle the scenario of properly abstracting the data services from the data structure and programming interfaces perspectives. In this session we'll discuss what is the role that the EDM and the Entity Framework play in making data application development more effective and sustainable. We will also spend some time discussing future directions for the Microsoft Data Platform beyond the current "beta" products that have been announced already.

Pablo Castro, Microsoft Corporation   Pablo is ADO.NET Technical Lead at Microsoft. He works in the SQL Server product group at Microsoft, designing the future versions of the programming models for working with data. He has been involved in several releases of large scale projects as Microsoft such as SQL Server 2005 and the .NET Framework. Before joining Microsoft Pablo spent some time running a start-up focused on advanced application frameworks development, and before that he split his time between building collaborative applications and creating infrastructure for inference system creation and distributed execution used in risk analysis applications.