The Blog of Colin Mackay

A friend of mine, Martin Bell, is going to do a crazy thing for charity to help raise money for Sense Scotland right after Developer Day Scotland. Sense Scotland is a charity that works with children and adults who have communication support needs because of deaf-blindness, sensory impairment, learning and physical disabilities. It is an excellent cause and the money will be put to very good use.

If you want to sponsor him then you can go to his sponsorship page and donate what ever you feel is appropriate. If you are a UK tax payer then you can also “gift aid” it where the Government will gift the tax to the charity too.

Today I discovered quite by accident that I have 9 genuine emails sitting in gmail’s spam trap that were sent to me over the last 24 hours. The genuine emails were from Microsoft, Quest, Redgate and Scottish Developers! I hit the “not spam” button for each of them so hopefully gmail learns and I’ll get them in future, but for the next few days I’ll be watching my spam folder for potential genuine messages disappearing.

As some of you may have been aware, Microsoft recently formally launched Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in their Heroes Happen Here launch event in Birmingham. Well, if you didn’t make it to Birmingham don’t worry about it because we are doing our own community launch in Glasgow. I’m currently getting all the updates from DHL about the progress of the swag (prizes) as it makes its way from Redmond. So there will be lots of giveaways on the night, so if you want a chance of winning some free software then let us know you’re coming. It is the usual venue at Glasgow Caledonian University, but we’re starting a little bit earlier than normal and we’re on a Thursday.

Also, if you have not registered as a delegate for Developer Day Scotland, now is your chance. The delegate registration is now open. There are three tracks in total for this day long event with some excellent presentations lined up.

Visual Studio 2008 Community Launch

Thursday April 3^rd in Glasgow starting at 18:30

Speaker: Mike Ormond

In this session we will explore what’s new for web developers in Visual Studio 2008. Demos will include the new HTML designer, CSS enhancements, improvements when working with scripting and the three new ASP.NET 3.5 data controls. We may even throw a bit of AJAX in there, just for fun!

Scottish SQL Server User Group

Wednesday 23^rd April in Edinburgh starting at 18:30

Speakers: Alistair Board & Satya SK Jayanty

Alistair will be talking about the 6 W’s of SQLDiag. Satya will be talking about SQL Server 2008 – Declarative Management Framework Concepts & Database Problem Solutions with Policy Management.

Developer Day Scotland

Saturday 10^th May in Glasgow starting at 09:00

This is a three track day long event. 2 Developer! Developer! Developer! tracks and 1 SQLBits track. Delegate registration is open.

You may remember me reviewing Gary Short‘s talk on the Web Client Software Factory a while back. I also said I would ask him to present it to Scottish Developers in Glasgow, which hasn’t happened yet (we got him to talk about his favourite design patterns). However, he was voted in to do that talk at Developer Day Scotland which is being held in Glasgow on 10th May 2008. As you can see from the agenda he’ll be on in the morning in room 15/16.

The delegate registration is now open if you want to see the session along with other fantastic sessions.

In related news, Gary is now a Technical Evangelist for Developer Express. Congratulations Gary!

The delegate registration for Developer Day Scotland is open. We have 3 tracks of fantastic content with some of the UK’s best speakers. Don’t believe me? Well, just see for your self what a fantastic agenda we have.

Now, get yourself down to the registration page and sign up for this event.

I’ll be speaking to the Manchester VBUG group on 24th July.

For details see: http://manchester.vbug.net/EventDetails.aspx?id=10

Red Gate Software are an award-winning organisation that provides simple tools for comparing, synchronizing, packaging, backing up and recovering SQL Server databases, as well as a range of tools for developers and testers working with .NET technologies. We supply over 500,000 IT professionals with effective and reliable tools to help get jobs done and done well. To download 14-day, fully-functional trials of any of our products please visit www.red-gate.com for more information.

Red Gate will also be providing a copy of SQL Refactor and SQL Dependency Tracker as prizes.

SQL Bits are an independent co-operative of leading SQL Server professionals in the UK with a strong passion for Community; our goal is to grow the experience and knowledge of those people who participate in the community, be it attending conferences or through blogs or through regional meetings of the UK SQL Server User Group.

SQLBits will be sponsoring the SQL Server Track at Developer Day Scotland.

For my community work in February I won a prize from those great folks at Community Credit.

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