It has been a while I wrote a blog post! The last post was on 12/07/2008; a year ago! The main reason for not posting is unavailability of time J duh!

So what am I up to? Well, I got enrolled in the VCU's part-time MBA program; that means I have to attend the evening classes (from 7:00 pm to 9:40 pm) at the campus. Tons of home work, assignments, projects, and course books to read leave no time for any kind of blogging.

So what triggered me to join the MBA program? I had couple of reasons. One of the most important reasons were 2007-2008's financial crises that made me think about the business in America in particular and overall world economy in general, how the businesses are run and how the Intra-country and Inter-country economy works and affects everyone; while thinking about these issues, I realized that I have no idea about what is going on and I don't have the knowledge that could help me understand the financial chaos around us. Sure, I would have bought a book or two to read about the financial crises but I think an MBA will go a long way in my career.

By the way, thanks to everyone who contacted me in the last couple of months to check if I am still alive J

In case you are interested, following links would provide detail information about VCU.

VCU

VCU Business School

VCU MBA Program

Business Week VCU Page

Business Week VCU Page (2)

Snead Hall (classes are held in this building)

VCU Interactive Tour

I was scheduled to speak @ the Richmond.NET User Group's December meeting on last Thursday. Around 40+ people showed up for the meeting including Kevin Hazzard and Justin Etheredge.

Decent crowd showed up (40+) and I had fun speaking about IIS 7.0 and its integration with ASP.NET. I am making the slides available on this blog; I hope that would help.

IIS 7.0 Architecture and Integration with ASP.NET [ Presentation ]

I just came to know about this. SharePoint Saturday is organizing a daylong conference style event on Saturday, January 10^th, 2009. There will be sessions on SharePoint and its related technologies.

The best part? It's FREE!

The following is what they have to say about it.

Join SharePoint architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for 'SharePoint Saturday', on Saturday, January 10th, 2009 at the ATC in Virgina Beach, VA. SharePoint Saturday will be an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-orientated topics. SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!

I am going there! Are you?

If you live in or around Richmond and have been laid off, then it's your opportunity to mingle with peer developers, recruiters and company representatives. Greater Richmond Technology Council is organizing an event with the help of the local companies.

More information about the event can be found here.

I will be speaking @ the December Richmond .NET User Group meeting which will be on December 4th. The following summarizes what will be covered in the presentation.

Microsoft recently released IIS 7.0, new version of good old IIS. IIS 7.0 bring new concepts and architecture. The aim of this presentation is to discuss the new features of IIS 7.0 and also discuss what it brings to table for the ASP.NET developers. We will discuss IIS 7.0's integration with ASP.NET as well.

We will be meeting @ the Markel Plaza which is located @ 4600 Cox Road, Glen Allen, VA 23060

Hope to see you there!

Check out SQL Server 2008 White Papers. The following white papers are for developers.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Data Platform Development

What's New for XML in SQL Server 2008

Managing Unstructured Data with SQL Server 2008

SQL Server 2008: Delivering Location Intelligence with Spatial Data

Recently Microsoft released couple of guides which basically target IT Professionals who are responsible for installing and managing infrastructure (web servers, Active Directory, Terminal Services, etc). Some of the technologies such as Active Directory, IIS 7.0, Terminal Services, etc are covered in those guides. Check them out @ the following URL Infrastructure Planning and Design.

If you are a Software Architect then I am sure there are times when you are asked for some recommendations, ideas, and suggestions about the hardware and overall system architecture which will run the applications that you architect. Since most of us are developing web applications these days, hence IIS is the backend technology that we should learn, explore and play with whenever we get a chance. One of the guides available @ the above URL is on IIS 7.0 and I think every Architect should read it in order to get some idea about the factors involved while taking decisions about the architecture for IIS 7.0 environment.

Updated technical libraries (in .chm format) for Office Servers (MOSS 2007, Performance Point Server 2007, Project Server 2007) are available from the following links. Please note that these are not the SDKs, rather these are the technical libraries which are located on the Technet Web Site.

MOSS 2007 Technical Library

Performance Point Server 2007 Technical Library

Project Server 2007 Technical Library

If you are like me then you prefer to download videos, pod casts, web casts, etc from such conferences, burn those on DVDs and refer to them time-to-time without referring back to the web site that initially hosted those files. The benefit, you ask? You got all the stuff and you are not dependent on anyone or anything in order to learn from those artifacts in your own time.

I normally use GetRight for my downloading needs and right now I am downloading PDC 2008 sessions using the same tool. So what would you do if you want to download all of the files from PDC 2008? One way is to go to each and every session on the PDC Sessions Web Site, right click on the download link and click Save As. There has to be a better solution.

I am making the GetRight PDC 2008 Sessions List available for you all to download all of the sessions. So no more right clicking on each session's download, no more renaming files from ABC123 to the actual session name, etc. I have also made sure that the file name also specifies if the file is high quality WMV (WMV HQ), or normal quality WMV (WMV), or if the file is for Zune (Zune). Everything is done for you.

Just install GetRight, import the GetRight PDC 2008 Sessions List and you are done!

Do let me know if I am missing any sessions; I will update the file accordingly.

We have just released one more article @ www.techconception.com. Check it out @ http://www.techconception.com/articles/2.aspx