In early December I had an idea about running a developer event which will run across 3 cities and be available online to bridge the gap between developer communities and speakers. With a little help this event has become a reality and will be called DevRally.

With Tech-Ed 2009 arround the corner I am extremely proud to announce that Dave Coates, the Port Elizabeth community lead has taken on the challenge to run and manage the 2009 Community Lounge. Dave will be managing one of the most exciting parts of the Tech-Ed event.

DevDays has been long and hard and I have been driving the community hard. My wife decided it is time for me to take a sabatical and get some rest.

DevDays 2009 South Africa is happening in March and will be bringing some awesome sessions to the Developer Community, including Silverlight, WPF and even XNA Game Studio. Register Today!

SA Developer.Net KZN is having an event with guest speaker Gail Shaw on the 12th of February 2009. The event will be covering Gail's talk from the PASS Submit 2008. We are extremely honored to host her for the evening and invite anyone interested in development or SQL to attend this talk.

SA Developer.Net KZN is starting the year with a bang. One Development Talk and a Social already on the calendar and DevDays and Tech-Ed 2009 will promise to be existing events for this coming year.

The first post for 2009. Catching up on New Year's day, the changes to the home network and the fun created by Guitar Hero III as a Christmas Present. Happy New Year to all!

Eben De Wit is running the quarterly DevChat event in KZN on the 13th of November 2008 at the Riverside Hotel in Durban.

During Tech-Ed I was interviewed by Ruari Plint about South African Communities, in particular on what it means to be a community lead and also on what challenges communities face. The video has been posted on the Tech-Ed Online website.

After my class got cancelled I decided to take a weeks leave. I spend the week with my wife and we were able to complete some activities and tasks which had been outstanding for some time. We also got the opportunity to take the dogs to the beach.

Tech-Ed Online contains video interviews with key speakers and visitors of Tech-Ed. Currently the South African interviews are available for download from the MSDN site. This year quite a few of the local bloggers and community members featured in these interview.

On Saturday 23 August 2008, Michelle and I had our wedding at Illovo Africa Lodge. The weather turned out great, all the guests arrived on time and the whole day was better then either of us expected. After all the stress and planning, the 6 week lead time we had to prepare everything turned out great.

After being engaged for almost 3 years Michelle and I are finally tying the knot on Saturday, 23 August. She has done and amazing job in planning the wedding in under 8 weeks, and with less then 4 days to go the last minute rush is about to start.

At Tech-Ed 2008 I had the opportunity of presenting a talk on Developing for Windows Mobile targeting the new and extensive feature list in Windows Mobile 6.1. This was my first official talk for Microsoft and I was extremely satisfied with the outcome and thankful for the opportunity.

Hosting Community Lounge at Tech-Ed is no simple task, and a few people from the industry and the community deserves a huge amount of credit with their help and assistance at the lounge this year.

DevDays 2008 was a huge success and I was extremely glad to have the support of so many people at the community lounge. It was a busy 3 days with more people then we ever imagined but the exposure was amazing.

We are in the middle of planning for Tech-Ed 2008 and this year the communities are high on the agenda with the biggest ever community lounge planned. Please join us at the Durban ICC for 3 days of technology and information sharing brought by some of the industries best.

SA Developer.net is hosting another event in Durban, this time to discuss and review SharePoint Server 2007. Come join us for an evening of information sharing on how to use SharePoint Server inside your organisation.

The MVP's and community leads took over Microsoft in JHB to host the first every interoperability day, an event where Linux and Microsoft technologies come together and proof that there is no borders when it comes to technology.

SA Developer.net is having a event featuring two speakers. Dion Beneke will be joining us on behalf of SA Architect.net to discuss LINQ and 3 Tier architecture along with a talk on Ajax.

Overall overview on Tech-Ed 2007 held at Sun City. The event was packed with 2000 attendees and the speakers and sessions where filled with an amazing array of new information from the Microsoft Stable.

SA Developer.net has another busy month ahead with 3 events planned. Please join us for some information sharing around Microsoft technologies and development in general.

Overview of the Microsoft DevDays 2007 event held at Sun Coast Conference Centre. Information regarding Visual Studio, ASP.Net AJAX and Silverlight was provided by the speakers.

SA Developer.net will be having a very busy May and this is a list of all events planned for the month. Attendance is free and everyone in the Durban area is welcome to attend if interested in development.

Another succesfull SA Developer.Net event was held at IT Intellect in Musgrave on 11 April 2007. The topic was Dissecting a Web Application.

The second SA Developer.net social has been planned for the 2nd of March at NewsCage in Musgrave. Hope to see everyone there.

The first social event for SA Developer.Net has been arranged for 2007. Come join us for an evening of drinks and decision around the IT industry, in particular development. A great oppurtinity to meet and greet other players in Kwazulu-Natal.