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2 years and 266 posts later...

Laurent Bugnion — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:05:21 GMT

2 years ago, on a Sunday, I posted my first blog post. Since then so many amazing things happened, partly due to this blog: I got the MVP status, I got a better recognition in my firm for my expert knowledge on some topics (such as WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET and C#), I started speaking in conferences... One year later, I got a book deal (more on this soon). I met amazing people, and made a lot of new friends in the industry. I went to Redmond a few times and had the chance to talk to some really amazing talents in the software field. More importantly, I really had the feeling that my contributions were acknowledged, and valued. It's really been 2 amazing years.

To all of you reading these lines, thank you. You make my life as a software engineer better, more interesting, and you really help become a better developer.

A short break

Laurent Bugnion — Sat, 31 May 2008 11:34:38 GMT

I am going to take a short break of blogging for a couple of months. The reason is simple: I have been working on a book about Silverlight 2 since September last year, and we are in a phase now where I need to concentrate on that exclusively, and put other activities aside. I might post the occasional article from time to time, but until mid-Summer, it's going to be write write write.

Stay posted for news about the book coming up, and don't delete me from your feeds, it's really only temporary :)

New GalaSoft stickers

Laurent Bugnion — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:27:10 GMT

On a whim, I made a GalaSoft sticker and ordered 48 of them at CafePress.com. The stickers just arrived yesterday, and they look pretty cool. I plan to keep some on me, so next time you cross my path, make sure you get a GalaSoft sticker for your laptop

My resume is now online

Laurent Bugnion — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:28:08 GMT

I finally did something I wanted to do for a loooooong time: I cleaned up and put my resume online on my website. Note for Beat (my boss), if you read this, don't panic, I am not leaving just right now :) Anyway. For those of you who like to know my (professional) self better, feel free to take a look. If you want a username and password to check my certificates and awards, contact me. And if you have any comment, give me feedback!!

More US centric discrimination: Amazon.com MP3 download

Laurent Bugnion — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:01:53 GMT

This kind of things pisses me up so much. What's your problem Amazon? My money is not good enough for you? I call it discrimination.

Oh yeah, also something else. Could you tell me that *before* you make me install your downloader? Kthxbai.

I am now a Microsoft Certified Professional

Laurent Bugnion — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:29:57 GMT

What a crazy week that is. I am currently in Seattle for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional summit, which ended yesterday. I took an additional day in Seattle to meet a few friends and Siemens colleagues, and this morning got an email notifying me that I passed the MCTS exam about WPF that I took back then in December.

Because the exam was in beta stage when I took it, Microsoft needed a veeeeeeeery long time to evaluate the replies and check if I met the requirement. Apparently, they also had issues finding volunteers to try the beta exam, so it took even longer than planned. But hey, everything happens when you wait long enough, and as of today I am a Microsoft Certified Professional.

Now I want to point again what I wrote in December: I am not quite sure about the value of the MCTS exams. You are not a good developer just because you learn answers by heart. Testing one's knowledge with multiple choice questions is really absurd, especially when it comes to programming. Additionally, in Europe, most firms I know of really don't care if you have a cert or not, and rather look to your credentials, experience and education, as well as things like involvement in the community, etc...

But hey, the exam was free, it was fun learning for it, and I got the title, so what am I complaining about? :)

#mvp08: Day 1 and 2 are over, more to come

Laurent Bugnion — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:06:13 GMT

Today was day 2 of the Global MVP Summit. We spent it in Redmond, on the Microsoft Campus. For my part I spent the whole day in the RIA (pronounced "reee-ya") track, focussed on Silverlight (mostly) and WPF (a little). I won't say much about it for two reasons:

Either the code we saw was very similar to the one shown in Vegas one month ago, or
I don't have the right to talk about it because of NDA

Generally speaking, it's safe to say that really great things are going to be built on top of Silverlight. The basis is stable enough that they can use the bits to realize new concepts. That will be really interesting to follow.

My comment to all the DevDiv people I could talk to was always the same: Do whatever you want with Silverlight, I am OK with it. Add triggers or not, honestly I am not too concerned about that. But please oh please, keep WPF a superset of Silverlight. Only by doing so will you be credible for WPF developers, who don't want to learn a whole new set of skills just for the sake of Silverlight, and to SIlverlight developers who want to reuse their newly acquired skills to move their expertise to the desktop.

Think about it: Why is ASP.NET so successful, so much more than ASP ever was? Because ASP.NET builds on the same skills as .NET for the desktop. A C# developer is a C# developer. The libraries are, for many of them at least, the same. Parsing XML for the desktop is the same as parsing XML for ASP.NET. Obviously, some libraries are specific to ASP.NET, but you get my point (I hope).

By following the same concept, and sharing as much code as possible between Silverlight and WPF, you can boost the adoption and cancel most of the criticisms I heard so far. So please, continue to pursue it as a goal (and by the way, if you could do it soon, it would be great :)

Networking

As I thought, the major value for me in the summit is networking. Amazing discussions, with people (from Microsoft or not) whom I have been following sometimes for years, and finally have an occasion to meet face to face, so many great talks that I don't even want to start enumerating, because I am really tired and I want to sleep, sometimes.

Retrospect

Yesterday, the summit organizers tried something they called Open Spaces. This concept is not new, but trying to apply it to the summit was new. Honestly, I am not convinced. I see the value of an open discussion, but the one I attended ("So you want to be a writer", about people writing and why they do it) was barely convincing. Honestly, I was really disappointed to hear why full time writers do that job: Money and nothing else. To me, writing (in a book, magazines or in my blog) is about much more than money. It's about sharing my passion for software, very much in the same spirit than an artist writes to share his ideas with the world. Pretending that people write only to make money doesn't make sense. If it was true, noone would do it, because it's too long and too painful a job. Simply not worth it. That's for the content of the session. As for the format, given the time constraints (which a true open space wouldn't have, since it's open, but I understand the issue), I would prefer a panel discussion with Q&A like there is at MIX. In yesterday's session, we ended up hearing always the same people talking over and over again. So let's be honest about it, put those guys on a stage and give them a mike.

Oh, BTW, special frown at the idiot woman who found the way to answer her mobile phone in the middle of the session, and explain very loudly that she couldn't talk because she was in a session. Hey, heard about vibrating alert and combox? Some people are just so rude that it's barely conceivable.

OK, rant apart, the summit is great. Can't wait for tomorrow. And if you want to know more about what's going on here, follow me on twitter.com/lbugnion

Good night!

#mvp08: Arrival at Global MVP Summit

Laurent Bugnion — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:01:04 GMT

Day 0

Oh man what a trip.

First I left home at 6:30AM, which on a Sunday (and my birthday) is pretty more a crime against humanity. Additionally, I was woken up a few times during the night: Twice by my elder daughter who came to check if my bags were still there, because she was afraid to miss me to wish me happy birthday in the morning (she opened her door at 2:30AM and 4:30AM, both times waking me up of course :)

Then after taking the train to the airport, I learned that my flight to Frankfurt (there are unfortunately no direct flights from Zurich to Seattle) was delayed for technical reasons. It was a problem because I only had about 1.5 hours in Frankfurt to change plane. Only when we reached Frankfurt did we learn that they hadn't rebooked us automatically (even though they told us they did in Zurich), so the hunt for a flight started... I got to say, overall (and though I have a lot of understanding for technical issues being both an engineer and a former pilot) I was rather disappointed by Lufthansa as a company. The information flow was really not good from Frankfurt to Zurich. Swiss would definitely have handled that much better. That said, the employees did their best to help us and went out of their way sometimes to make the experience not too painful.

So anyway. The only options were:

Overnight in Frankfurt
Go back home and try again on the next day
Overnight in Chicago
Fly to Vancouver

Since I absolutely refused to lose day 1 of the Summit, the only viable alterative was to fly to Vancouver. They put me on waitlist from Vancouver to Seattle, but I decided to find something else on location, because I didn't want to arrive too late in Seattle (not even mentioning that I was not sure to get my seat on the Air Canada plane).

The flight to Vancouver went well, though of course I didn't get my preferred seat (I like to have space for my laptop (and my legs) so I usually take a seat near an exit row or in front of the plane. I had that seat booked on the Seattle plane, but I had to take what was left on the Vancouver plane... So instead of working, I just decided to chill out and watch movies. Not a bad choice after all. I saw National Treasure, the Rocky Horror Picture Show (love that movie) and a german speaking comedy about men and women, really funny and sexy.

In Vancouver, I went to hunt for an earlier flight but was unable to find any. I also tried the coach (2.5 hours drive down to Seattle) but the next one was leaving too late. So instead, I decided what the heck, and I rented a car. It was a good choice: The weather in Canada was great, not too many people on the road and the drive is very scenic. It took me a little under 30 minutes to cross the border, and the personal was really friendly.

I eventually reached the hotel (Grand Hyatt Seattle) at 7PM, which definitely beat any other option I could have chosen. Dropped the car in the hotel (the downtown Avis return place was closed already), took a shower (oh my god the pleasure) and then took a cab to Jillian's, a bar and billiard place where the Palermo party for MVPs was taking place. I have to admit I didn't stay long, but I had a couple of beers and some hot wings (yum) and had the great pleasure of meeting and chatting with Shawn Wildermuth, Tim Heuer, Karl Shifflett, Keith Helder, Sam Gentile and of course Jeff Julian and John Alexander of GeeksWithBlogs. They had prepared a great gift: A T-shirt with the GeeksWithBlogs logo on front, and the URL to my blog on the back. It's a great thought guys, thank you so much!!

Day 1

So today is day 1 of the Summit! I woke up at 4:30AM (not bad, 6.5 hours sleep!!). Later I will go down for breakfast, then go to register for the summit and finally go and return my car to the Avis place downtown. Then the Summit will start and I am really looking forward. I am sure that the day will bring a lot of good times!

#mvp08: On my way to Seattle for the MVP Summit

Laurent Bugnion — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:35:00 GMT

It's my second year as Microsoft MVP but I didn't attend the global MVP summit last year, so I am really excited to attend this year. I am currently on my way to Seattle (via Frankfurt), and will spend next week there getting loads and loads of information about the newest trends and technologies from Microsoft. Like any conference, the summit is also (and before all) a way to network, meet new friends that I know from their blogs or Twitter or any other e-medium, and meet again with friends from earlier occasions. I am really looking forward to this week.

Today is a bit special for me, as it is my 37th birthday. Looking back to the past years shows me how amazing a life I had so far, and I am really looking forward to the 37 years to come (and the following too :) It's going to be a loooong birthday for me because of the time difference with Seattle, but I am not really going to enjoy most of it (I am not enjoying sitting in a plane as much as I used to when I was flying them :)

For the coming week, I will post only on my blog (http://blog.galasoft.ch) and not on my website. Look for updates there and on http://twitter.com/lbugnion. Note however that I cannot post as much as during MIX08, as most of the information we're getting this week is under non disclosure agreement.

Community Credit 6th prize

Laurent Bugnion — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:43:36 GMT

I am humbled and also wondering. Humbled because I learned that I got the 6th prize in March Community Credit. Wondering, because I was at MIX in March, and blogged a lot (by my standards) and I am only 6th :) I will never get first prize I guess! Thanks David Silverlight!! Can't wait to receive my Digital Dog!