I will be presenting "An Introduction To Windows Workflow Foundation" at the VBUG meeting on 31st January 2007 at the Bristol Golf Club. Doors open at 18:00 for a start at 19:00. Come along and have a chat beforehand or bring a problem you need an answer to or a top tip. Here’s the abstract for the evening:-

The worst thing about Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is that it is not immediately obvious how clever and really useful this technology is. Here’s why you should care: Consider a flow diagram that you draw in Visio. The diagram represents some program flow or work flow but it is static - it’s just a dumb drawing with no real intelligence. What if the diagram were a living diagram, each element on the diagram being represented by an equivalent .NET class. Better yet you could take the entire diagram and "run" it. Better yet you had a diagramming tool that could be used to create living flow diagrams in the same way that the Visual Studio 2005 Class Designer creates living class diagrams. Better yet you could package up the designer and ship it in your application for your users to use in the same way that the Visual Studio PropertyGrid can be shipped in your application. This is Windows Workflow Foundation and it makes a real difference to the way we engineer software.

At TechEd Developers Europe last month Channel 9 host and interviewer Charles Torre caught up with Sarah Blow, Richard Costall, Dave McMahon, fellow 4 Chaps From Blighty chap Brian Long and myself to chat about the UK developer community. The video is up on Channel 9 at http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?PostID=266248#266248.

At DDD4 recently I saw Ben Lamb using a presentation aid called NLarge by Rob Burke. (You can download the binary here). NLarge is almost identical to ZoomIt by Mark Russinovich that I blogged about earlier this year. It is a tool for zooming and drawing on any screen. NLarge even uses the same activation keystrokes as ZoomIt. There are a few minor differences though. NLarge requires the .NET Framework 3.0 to be installed. NLarge’s magnify option is much smoother than ZoomIt’s and the speed of magnification is configurable (very useful). ZoomIt, however, has a Break option that NLarge lacks. On the whole both tools are very useful. I suspect that NLarge just pips ZoomIt for me because of the configurable magnification speed and the fact that I already have the .NET Framework 3.0 installed. If you don’t have the .NET Framework 3.0 installed then ZoomIt is probably a better option.

TechEds everywhere are exciting events full of great speakers wanting to give their best and deliver presentations that everyone will talk about. I recently spoke at TechEd Developers 2006 in Barcelona and the quality of presenters was excellent. The top speaker (based on "overall quality of the session") was Anders Hejlsberg with one of his LINQ presentations. To say that this was a big surprise would be very misleading. Anders is a great speaker and obviously has some great subjects to deliver information on. The surprise is that Rafal Lukawiecki didn’t win. Rafal is a phenominal speaker. Really. If you ever get the chance to see him speak you should leap at it if only to see just how good a speaker can be. I feel priviledged that I have witnessed 3 of what I would consider "perfect" presentations (and bear in mind that before I saw my first "perfect" presentation I didn’t think it was possible to be "perfect") - Rafal’s was one of them. Instead Rafal came second. By 0.01. He did, however, beat Anders on "Speaker’s knowledge of the subject"! Anders also got the third and fourth best sessions with Rafal getting the sixth followed by Kate Gregory, Kimberly Tripp and Jeff Prosise.

It was my first TechEd so my "better than average" position of 88 out of 190 is ok but "must try harder". I hope to come back next year older and wiser. Or maybe just wiser.

On Monday 4th December 2006 British Telecom launched BT Vision (http://www.btvision.bt.com), its next generation television service. Why am I blogging about British Telecom and television on a blog aimed primarily at .NET Developers ? The answer is because BT Vision is based on Microsoft’s television software MSTV. MSTV is an IPTV solution that is akin to a client/server version of Media Center and Media Center is written in .NET and runs add-ons written using the .NET Framework. If you want a compelling reason why user interfaces built using technologies like WPF are relevant and more than just flashy animations look at Media Center and BT Vision.

Getting back to the product itself, what do you get ? Well, firstly it is a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) with a hard disk that records "up to 80 hours" of TV. It offers over 40 freeview channels, an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and videos on demand (most are chargeable). BT have signed up lots of content providers to provide channels and video on demand (including music videos) and are offering Premiership matches near-live from the beginning of the 2007/2008 season. The box itself runs various additional applications that let you take advantage of the fact that your set top box (STB) is a fully fledged computer attached to your television and internet connection.

And the best part of all ? It’s free. The STB is free. You have to pay £60 for installation (a BT engineer comes to your house to install the box, connect it to the TV and broadband line) and £30 for connection but the box is free and if you never use video on demand then you’ll only ever pay for the broadband connection (and you probably already pay for that).

The only requirement is that you have (or can get) a 2Mb broadband line. BT won’t install it if your line is less than this and you can’t install the box yourself.

Personally I think this is an exciting step forwards in the television world in the UK and it is an excellent example of what can be achieved with the next wave of user interfaces.

The updated copy of the slides for the Automating Builds Using MSBuild presentation are here. Sincere thanks to everyone in the audience who gave their consent for me to post this picture. It was gratifying to know that by the end of the session everyone had finally consented.

See you at DDD5.