October 2009 - Posts

• Getting Into the Groove: Microsoft TechEd Europe 2009

  We might not have Mark Miller and John Lennon rocking out with us in Berlin for TechEd Europe 2009, but we do have your favourite Framework Duo and a whole heap of swag! The event is drawing ever closer, and with only 3 weeks to go I wanted to tell you a little bit about what the “Terrible Two-some” and I will be up to during our week in Germany’s capital city. The Berlin Wall TechEd Europe is going to be pretty exciting for a couple of great reasons this year. Firstly, it’s the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall so the city is going to be positively hopping. I am keeping my fingers crossed that Microsoft have some sort of evening entertainment in place that will allow us all to get involved with the festivities. I might not have a very good story about where I was when I found out that the wall had fallen (I was watching it on the TV with my dad after getting home from school … I seem to remember asking him to switch the channel so that I could watch Danger Mouse because the news was “boring”), but I’ll have a great story to tell about where I was when people were celebrating its 20th anniversary. All the Fun of the Fair on the DevExpress Booth Secondly, we will have a boatload of swag to give away on the DevExpress booth as always. Keep your eyes peeled for details of our in-booth contests, that’s right, I said contests. All I will say for now is make sure you bring every DevExpress t-shirt you own. Be they vintage or current you will need them, so make space in your luggage. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Introducing a DevExpress TechEd Speaker Lastly, but by no means least, our very own Gary Short has been selected to speak. Gary will be presenting on the Architecture track on technical debt. Look out for his session titled “Credit Crunch Code: Time to Pay Back the Technical Debt”. He’ll be covering what it is, how to spot it, how to quantify it and how to try to avoid it. This is Gary’s first time speaking at TechEd, and though we’d like for him to be asked to return again next year TechEd is supposed to be a chance for you to get answers to questions that you have. So with that in mind, consider this your open invitation to heckle ask Gary as many questions as you like.  Our flights are booked and we’re ready to get going. Will we see you there? Posted Oct 19 2009, 07:18 PM by Rachel Hawley (DevExpress) with 2 comment(s)

• Winners of the DX Press “Complete the Tweet” Contest

  You may remember that 2 weeks ago we launched the first “Complete the Tweet” contest as part of the DevExpress newsletter, DX Press. As Dancing With the Stars hosts Tom Bergeron and Samantha Harris would say (or Bruce Forsythe and Tess Daly if you are a Strictly Come Dancing viewer like me)  “The votes have been counted and verified…and we can now reveal the results”. Our DX Squad have deliberated over the entries that were received, and have chosen to award the following tweets with iTunes vouchers: @aussiealf - XPO is my fav app cause I can pretend to be a RDMS Guru and state I support 16 databases in my app, best of all finished by lunch @brendankowitz – Refactor Pro! is my favourite DX product because it allows even 1-fingered typists to refactor code @centrasoft - All of DevExpress products are my favorite because they make me look like a genius when in fact I'm just redonkulous! @TravisCherry - ASPxGridView is my favourite DX product because it allows you to sort, group, re-order columns, and display a plethora of data! @kiwipiet - CodeRush is my favourite DX product because now I look like I know what I'm doing. ;) @dhwebb - XPO is my favorite DX product because it taught me that getting a project finished is what makes clients happy, not super sweet SPs. @GingaNinjaFu - XtraPivotGrid is my favourite DX product because it makes people think I made Excel @j3rm - XPO is my favorite DX product because I can forget all the boring SQL Stuff that took me a Microsoft Certification to remember. @surveyrunners - XAF is my fav #devexpress prod: like hiring a guru to handle both UI and database, letting me concentrate on customer benefits Although there was no overall winner, I wanted to highlight the post that came out with the most votes from our DX Squad, not just because it was one of my favourites, but because behind all of your favourite DevExpress products there has to be a great support network, and this post sums it up just about perfectly: @mudnug - I love DX Support. It's such great service that I don't care where they are located or whether they spell favorite the same way I do Thanks to everyone that entered our contest. It’s always enlightening to see which products really float our customers’ boats. Keep your eyes on DX Press, the DevExpress newsletter, for our next contest. Posted Oct 06 2009, 11:59 AM by Rachel Hawley (DevExpress) with no comments