Rain this morning. 🙁  I hope this clears up before the concert at Fenway tonight.  I’m jazzed about seeing Train perform.

Yesterday afternoon was increadably productive.  I attended a session on Developing Custom Process Templates, Work Item Types and Policies by Kevin Kelly.  This session was similar to the presentation by Dennis Minium at Tech Ed 05, but Kevin had some new content when he got the the demos.

Next, I attended a BOF called “Enhance Your Business and Professional Life By Getting The Most Out of the Local Developer Community”.  This session totally exceeded my expectations.  The facilitators did an excellent job of correcting my thinking about my user group.  The take-away quote was “running a user group has nothing to do with coding.”  The moderators had plenty of tips about how to get people involved in the group, how to vary the agenda, and how to focus on the community building aspects first with technology placing a far second.

My final session of the day was the best so far, and that is saying a lot.  I have found my guru for deploying Team Foundation Server and his name is Sam Guckenheimer.  Sam refers to himself as a coach, but I will be following his sage nuggets of wisdom like a devotee to his master. 😉

Sam gave me a copy of his book, and I read the first 20 pages last night.  This is the guide I intend to use for our road ahead.  The key piece of wisdom he gave me at the end of his session on “Using Metrics to Manage and Troubleshoot Your Projects” was this:  “The heart of CMMi is process improvement.”  Sam totally understood the dissonance between developers trying to implement functionality in an iterative manner, and auditors focused on building to spec.

One of the biggest additions to my understanding of TFS at this conference has been the clarifying the difference between the map and the territory.  The spec is a map.  The MS Project file is a map.  These are maps of where we want to go, but the model needs to reflect reality.  With all the rich access to metrics provided by TFS, we can get a clear picture of the territory and adjust our maps to reflect reality.

++Alan

[Update]  The rain has cleared off, so the concert should be lots of fun. 

My first session today was with Rocky Lhotka.  Rocky was actually very kind to datasets, and didn’t harp on the lack of encapsulation.  He showed the advantages of isolating code in partial classes in .NET 2.0.  Of course, this being a Rocky Lhotka session, the ultimate solution was shown to be CSLA.NET.  I asked Rocky if his objects implemented the correct behavior when the user presses the escape key, and he responded that they do.  When he pressed the escape key, the expected behavior didn’t happen.  I’m glad to know that these situations still happen to someone of Rocky’s stature and experience.

I ate lunch with members of the MOM team, and asked them many questions about connecting MOM and TFS.  They pointed me to AVIcode.  I found the AVIcode booth, and talked with them.  I’ll be exploring the resources on their website more upon my return.

I have been haunting the PowerShell booth trying to catch up with /\/\o\/\/.  I went to talk to members of the Visual Studio team about the possiblity of a PowerShell add-in for VS.  They’ve never heard of PowerShell!  They gave me some good tips on how to follow up through the forums and the feedback site.

While I was talking to a member of the VS team, I asked him about the future of Windows Forms, and he introduced me to CrossBow.  This is exactly the kind of solution I like to see Microsoft producing.  My existing code is not made obsolute by a new presentation technology.  Windows Forms lives!

Probably my last session for today was “Visual Studio 2005 Team System and Microsoft Solution Framework: Implementing an Agile or CMMI Process” with Randy Miller.  This was one of my “must attend” sessions.  My challenges in deploying TFS at this point all revolve around how to make use of the MSF guidance and templates.  Randy gave us the model behind MSF, and offered to email chapters of his MSF book as he writes them.  This was an important session for me.

Upon returning to the Technical Learning Center, I made another stab at talking to someone on the Visual Studio team about PowerShell.  I spoke to Kit George, a Program Manager on the CLR Team, and he had never heard of PowerShell!  He gave me his card, and told me he would follow up on this if I eamil him.

The capstone of the day (so far) was some quality time with Sam Guckenheimer.  I sat down with Sam and reviewed a workflow diagram I made after gathering requirements from my QA department.  Sam had some excellent feedback, and thought through the problem fully.  I made notes to share with my team upon my return.  Sam rocks!

I would be remiss if I did not mention the embarassing situation I went through trying to demo problems I was having with notifications to a member of the VSTS team.  He let me use his laptop to remote into my work desktop and demonstrate the problem.  The real problem turned out to be that the problem no longer exists!  I apparantly had not tried the subscription feature since Beta 3.  When it didn’t work, I filed it as an issue in need of further investigation.  The Microsoftie (I didn’t get his name) was very gracious, and I was very red faced.  In the end, I’m just happy it works.

I attended BOF (Birds of a Feather) sessions until 10:00 last night.  I accidentally attended one on developing on virtual machines, which was actually informative, if unexpected.  Next was a very useful session on MSF, where the moderator directed me to David Anderson’s Blog for more information.  He also suggested that I Google for “Agile CMMI”. 

The final session was on migrating to Team Foundation Server and was moderated by Jean-Luc David.  It turns out that Jean-Luc spoke at the Atlanta Code Camp also.  It is odd that we missed each other there.  There was some lively discussion about branching procedures in this BOF.  I enjoyed it completely, and was reassured that we are adopting TFS in a recommended manner at my employer.

I made it to the jam session last night, and didn’t get back to my room until 1:30, but I’m feeling fit this morning and ready to take in more tech goodness.

++Alan

[Update] My first session on “Applying Version Control, Work Item Tracking and Team Build to Your Software Development Project” with Brian Harry, was a big disappointment.  I was expecting some prescriptive guidance for integrating these tools into an existing project.  Instead, I sat through the same presentation I saw last year at Tech Ed.  This introductory/marketing style session are tiresome.  The companion session this afternoon promises to dig into customizing the system.  We shall see, I suppose.

At lunch I finally hooked up with Randy Miller.  We had tried to get together yesterday, but he had a conference call run way late.  Randy was very interested in the issues my company is having in resolving the impedence mismatch between the CMMI KPAs and the MSF process guidance.  He took careful notes, and thanked me frequently for providing detailed feedback.  He promised to put me in touch with David Anderson, who owns the CMMI template in TFS.  Randy assured me that David would be interested in following our progress and assisting us with any problems.  This is why I came to Tech Ed!

The first session I tried to attend was full!  I can usually walk into a session late and sit on the front row.   Apparantly, LINQ is a popular topic.  I’ll catch the replay on the DVD.

I did attend a session on “Evolving to Patterns” which was actually refactoring to patterns.  I discovered that something I’ve been doing for years is called Dependency Injection.  It’s nice to be assured I’m on the right track. 

The speaker recommended Working Effectively with Legacy Code, which looks like a useful text for my current job.  He also liked Refactoring to Patterns.  I plan to check them both out.

++Alan

[Update] I met Josh Holmes at breakfast this morning.  I also got the skinny from Steve about a cool cigar bar here in Boston. 😉  Steve is actually blogging again, so check it out.

I had a good, long talk with two members of the SQL Everywhere team this morning.  They were very interested in my concerns about FoxPro interoperability.  I had to take some time to explain the VFP development model, but they listened carefully.  The biggest roadblock I see at this point, is the lack of ODBC connections in SQL Everywhere.  They do support OLEDB connections, but the native SQLCONNNECT() function uses ODBC.  I will download the CTP and play with it when I get home.  I promised to post my feedback to the forum for their benefit.

The BCEC is enourmous and attractive, but it is difficult to navigate.  It is sometimes impossible to get from A to B.  Furthermore, the bathrooms are totally inadequate.  This is a modern building, and I expect an abundance of facilities!

[Update2] I got some time in with Ken Levy, and I was blown away.  It turns out that Live is another case of lousy branding by Microsoft.  Live is actually a collection of Web APIs that the team is attempting to normalize.  They will all eventually have common programming models.  In addition, they are implementing javascript libraries with similar programming models, so that a developer can program against a client side javascript object and allow that to converse with the web services.  I was very excited by this demo.

During lunch, I attended a session on managing requirements with Team Foundation Server and MindManager.  Michael Scherotter put together a tool that provides bi-directional interaction with TFS work item tracking.  This is very exciting for visualizing requirement/task dependencies at various levels in the task hierarchy.

[Update3] I just spoke with Steve Lasker about SQL Everywhere and Visual FoxPro.  He is a former VFP developer, and understood my concerns.  He mentioned that he is in regular contact with Calvin Hsia, which put my mind at ease.  Steve also pointed me to this recent blog entry where Calvin demonstrates working with SQL Everywhere.

[Update4] I just finished the first Birds of a Feather session this evening.  Joel Semeniuk led an informative discussion about project management with Team Foundation Server.  I picked up some tricks about configuring MS Project to work properly with TFS.  I’ll share the details once I have tried them out.  More BOF sessions to come.

Today was the first “real” day of the conference.  I planned to do too much, and now I’m exhausted. 

Initial impressions: 

Travel:  Boston’s airport is bigger than any airport has a right to be. 

The Silver Line is freaking cool!  The articulated bus runs by the airport, then stops at a station where it connects to overhead cables, and the engine shuts off.  Next the bus/trolley travels into its own tunnel.  

Lodging:  Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge is as cool as it looks on the website.  I have no regrets about choosing this funky establishment. 

Food:  There’s too damn much of it.  My genetic code tells me to eat when food is available.  Unfortunately, there is always food available.  Breakfast and Lunch were excellent, and the evening reception with free “refreshments” was equally tasty.

People:  I had the opportunity to hang with Eric Sink, Martin Woodward and Don Demask.  I also ran into Matt and Brendan.  I saw Ken Levy, but he was busy pitching Windows Live.  I’ll bend his ear tomorrow.  I also ran into Steve Loethen and Drewby.  Steve is my Developer Evangelist, and Drew is the DE in the district north of me.  I hope to get in on some code camps in Drew’s district in the coming year.

Technology:  SQL Everywhere looks like a great migration path for users of Jet or Visual FoxPro.  My other sessions where about Team System, and my passions there are well documented.   I’m looking forward to a PowerShell session tomorrow.

I’m off to the jam session. 

++Alan

[Update] No jam session for me. 🙁   I went to the hotel to drop off my bag, and the leopard print robe and faux-fur throw looked soooooo comfy.  I was exhausted, and knew that I wouldn’t get the most out of Tuesday if I pushed myself too hard.

I got my feedback from the Atlanta Code Camp today.  I admit, I am terrible about providing feedback at events such as this.  Not until today, did I realize how useful those little forms are to the presenter.  So, as a sign of thanks to the people who took the time to provide this data, I want to share it with the world along with my responses.

My reading of this table is that I need to make sure my demos are bulletproof, and insure visibility for the back rows when showing code.  The most important trend I see here is a need to set clear expectations.

What is fascinating to me, is that I spent a good deal of time at the beginning setting the tone of the presentation, and multiple commenters felt I was wasting time.  My intention was to clearly separate this discussion from a purely technical overview of the tool.  I will be more explicit about this point at my next presentation of this material.

If you attended my session in Atlanta, I would love to hear your comments and suggestions in the comments to this post.  I would also like to hear if anyone thinks I am misreading this data.

This was my first presentation "in the wild."  I’ve given two talks at the local user group, and many inside my corporate mother ship.  I’m sure that my next presentation will be better as a result of these comments.  I’m equally sure that I will take the time to offer feedback to the speakers at Tech Ed next month.

++Alan

Nothing unique happening today. It’s a kid weekend, and if you live your life according to a parenting plan, you know what I mean. For the rest of you, it means the kids are staying at my house this weekend, and I’m loving it.

We live in a terrific neighborhood with a park across the street and lots of playmates as neighbors.  I guess I’m feeling grateful that I can provide this environment for these amazing little humans.  They’re doing great, and I’m doing better than I ever have in every aspect of my life.

++Alan

I finally gave in and purchased hosting.  I hosted this site myself up until yesterday.  I have been intending to secure hosting for months.  This week, I sent a link for one of my posts to a Microsoft employee, and he couldn’t access the site.  That was the motivation I needed.

Yesterday, I migrated everything to BoundGrid Technologies and turned off my web server.  This morning DNS appears to be sorted out.  I didn’t move the DNS hosting, but just updated the A records. 

BoundGrid was recommended as being dasBlog friendly, and they certainly are.  I used their web file management tool to move my directories to their server, renamed index.html, and et voila!  Cave Markings was live.  I’ll post some pictures of my previous "hosting" configuration soon.

++Alan

Last November, I attended the Visual Studio 2005 launch event in Atlanta.  At the event, I spent some quality time discussing issues I was having with Team Foundation Server with Bindia Hallauer, a Senior Product Manager for Visual Studio Team System.  When I expressed my frustration with the limited requirements management in TFS, she counseled patience.  Bindia said that Microsoft would be releasing a starter kit very soon, that would allow me to manage requirements linked to workitems.

Yesterday, 167 days after my conversation with Ms. Hallauer, Microsoft announced the release of the Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Starter Kit: Requirements Authoring Starter Kit.  This looks like an interesting solution.  I like the architecture of the solution, and  I’m sure Softagon did an excellent job developing this tool. 

My problems began with step 2 of the download instructions:

Double-click the RASK.msi program file on your hard disk to start the setup program.

There is no rask.msi, but there is a VSTO2005RASK.exe file.  Double click it, accept the license and you get the following very confusing dialog: 

Don’t even try to decipher it.  I’ve tried both options.  I can’t figure out what the first option does, or if it does anything.  The second option at least creates some files for me to play with.  It also completely dispenses with the folder hierarchy of the original projects and solutions, so nothing compiles. 

I had hoped to demo this solution tomorrow at a requirements workflow meeting, but I have given up.  Didn’t anybody at Microsoft even try to install this mess before posting it to the web?  After waiting 167 days for this junk, I’m more than a little disappointed.

There is a video showing how it is supposed to work here.

++Alan

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