Today (25th September 2007) saw the opening of Building 5 at the Microsoft Campus in Thames Valley Park, Reading. Building 5 is state of the art with all kinds of environmental features (recycling rain water, solar panels etc.), restaurants, office space, cafes and a gym. I added to my list of Claims To Fame by being the first person ever to have a personalised stir-fry in the restaurant. As Claims To Fame go I admit that it is a bit lacking but I’m counting it all the same. I suspect that Colin Angus Mackay (the current champion of Claim To Fame) isn’t going to lose any sleep over this one.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Building 5, Colin Angus Mackay

Back at DDD5 in June 2007 a bunch of user group leaders and community people took part in a video to raise the awareness of the thriving community in the UK. Dave McMahon (the one from the Dave McMahon Is A Hero fame) recorded and mixed everything and produced the video. You can see it at http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=e1291874-84ee-4d9f-bc14-7d2d04c009ea. The video was shown by Bill Gates at MGX (Microsoft Global Experience in Orlando in July 2007, MGX is an internal conference for sales and business people). The video itself probably doesn’t tell you anything about our community that you don’t already know but it is fun to watch, has been edited really well and is a good statement of the fact that our community in the UK is alive and well. I believe that Dave is also available for user groups, weddings and bahmitzvahs.

Technorati Tags: UK Community, MGX, Microsoft Global Experience, Dave McMahon

Congratulations to Andy Westgarth and Tim Leung who have just been elected as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively of VBUG for the next two years. Well done, guys, you will do an excellent job. I look forward to seeing the effect you have on VBUG.

Technorati Tags: VBUG, Andy Westgarth, Tim Leung

I recently had the chance to look at the "I Wasn’t Prepared For That" training aid from Video Arts. This is a DVD/booklet package that is designed to help people give better presentations so as I have an interest in this I thought I would take a look. The package includes a DVD, an 57 page A4 booklet and a CD containing all of the pages in the booklet as PDF or Word DOC files. The DVD is a ~30 minute sketch of characters played by Dawn French and Robert Lindsey. The sketch is about a presentation novice who is required to give two presentations and how Robert Lindsey helps her on her way to better presentations.

On the plus side Dawn French and Robert Lindsey are quite watchable. That’s it. Here endeth the plus side. It’s all minus-side from here, I’m afraid. The sketch is clearly designed for the hard of thinking and is almost wholly insulting to the intelligence. The information content is minimal and can be summed up in the following advice: prepare properly, tell’em, tell’em and tell’em again, make your points with bullet points, talk to the audience (and not to the carpet) and use humour. The sketch itself ends on the worst final line of a production since King Kong and I defy anyone not to groan out loud at it.

The booklet is designed to allow a group leader to allow a group to watch the video and discuss each chapter and it highlights relevant points in the video. Given that the video content is almost devoid of any actual information it is a feat of genious that the booklet extends to 57 pages.

Perhaps the funiest part of "I Wasn’t Prepared For That" is the extortionate (and I am tempted to say that I am using this word literally) price. I have seen the price range from $850 (USD) to £1299 (UK pounds). Maybe this is where the product name comes from but if I paid £8.50 for this I would feel I’d been ripped off. Do yourself a favour and find much better information than this for free on the ’net.

For the record I give it 0 stars out of 5.

Technorati tags: Presentations, Presentation Skills, Video Arts, I Wasn’t Prepared For That

If you’re a member of VBUG it’s time to cast your vote. VBUG are holding elections for the new Chair and Vice-Chair of VBUG. The post will be held for the next 2 years. You can vote once for the Chair and once for the Vice-Chair and given that there are only two candidates for each that shouldn’t be too difficult:-

• Andy Westgarth - Chairman


• George Gallagher - Chairman


• Phil Pursglove - Vice Chair


• Tim Leung - Vice Chair

Send an email to Christian Mitchell at VBUG before Tuesday 31st July and you will be able to influence the next two years of VBUG.

Technorati Tags: VBUG, Andy Westgarth, George Gallagher, Phil Pursglove, Tim Leung

Last month Microsoft tried an experiment with MSN and Office Live: they turned the MSN site into Microsoft Office Word 2007 and let everyone try Live Preview for a day. They’re doing it again. Tuesday 17th July 2007. Only. Until next time.

Technorati Tags: MSN, Office, Word, Live, Live Preview

The thing about Top Tips is that everyone who has one to give away always thinks that everyone knows them so they don’t bother giving them. However, it is true that not everyone knows everything so someone somewhere will find the Top Tip useful so they must always be told. Here’s one that is probably obvious to many people but I hope it is still useful to someone...

There are loads of presentations that are available either as part of a conference DVD (like TechEd) or are just available online for free downloads (like DDD and MIX). The problem is that there just isn’t time to watch all of these presentations. So often what I do is convert the WMV files to WMA (I use Digital Media Converter but you could use anything) and listen to them in the car or on an MP3 player. Yes, obviously you don’t get to see the pictures and that’s a bit of a loss but from experience I can tell you that it is quite interesting how much of a presentation you can pick up just by listening to the audio track. And let’s face it after you’ve finished listening to NxtGen, Craig Murphy, .NET Rocks, Hansel Minutes, Mark Kermode and everything else what else are you going to listen to ?

Technorati Tags: Podcasts, TechEd, MIX, Digital Media Converter, NxtGen, Craig Murphy, .NET Rocks, Hansel Minutes, Mark Kermode

Craig Murphy (DDD founder and organiser, Scottish Developers founder and organiser, long standing Delphi Magazine columnist, MVP and colleague since the Delphi days) has started podcasting. He has been interviewing people in the community and you can download a chat Craig and I had about The .NET Developer Network whilst we were coming back from the pub at the Community Leaders Day. I learnt two things from this: don’t do interviews in cars because the sound quality is rough and don’t do interviews after you’ve been drinking because try as you might to sound professional you really just sound like you’ve had enough to drink. Still, I enjoyed it anyway and thanks go to Craig for starting another UK community podcast that will cover areas and aspects of our community hitherto untouched. Well done, mate.

You can also listen to interviews with Dave McMahon (The One With The Hero), Ravi Nar (The Vista Squad) and Barry Carr, Gary Short and Hamish Hughson.

Technorati Tags: Craig Murphy, The .NET Developer Network

Dave and Rich presented a session on "How To Podcast" at the Community Leaders Day last week and have released it as a podcast here.

A lot of people worked hard to make DDD5 what is was. Notably Clare Parr of Microsoft (without whom DDD would not have been possible), Craig Murphy, Ian Cooper, the rest of the DDD committee and all of the speakers. However, Dave McMahon deserves a special mention. Dave did a session on XSLT Extreme which sounds like it was very well received but you might not be aware of the podcasting and videoing that Dave did all day Friday at the Community Leaders Day and all day Saturday at DDD. And of course after DDD there is Dave doing all of the post-production on the video and podcasts until 2:23am. It has been said that "Carl never sleeps". All evidence seems to confirm this. However, I think it can also be said that "Dave doesn’t sleep much either" (it’s a bit lacking in the snappy and pithy department though). It is also true to say that "Dave and Rich don’t sleep much either" but sadly Rich couldn’t make it to DDD this time so the "Richard Costall And Dave McMahon Are Heroes" post will have to wait for another day.

Well done, Dave. I hope your wife, kids and boss understand that their loss is our gain.

Technorati Tags: DDD5, Dave McMahon, Richard Costall, Clare Parr, Craig Murphy, Ian Cooper