I have been using the Microsoft Development Tools since 2002, working with every iteration including the beta versions. However the 2010 edition of Visual Studio 2010, Team Foundation Server 2010 and SharePoint 2010 makes huge improvements to developer productivity and functionality, allowing developers to focus on their core competancy. Writing Code!

I have had the honour of working with the Microsoft MVPs for some time now, and have to admit that they continue to amaze me. The South African MVPs are making waves locally and the international MVPs are just as passionate and driven.

The Visual Studio Ranger team has started the year of extermely busy by publishing quite a few projects to CodePlex. Among them is the Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 VM Factory which I was a proud contributor off.

Microsoft has officially announced the launch date for Visual Studio 2010 and also released the Beta 2 version to MSDN subscribers with Go Live licenses in place. There has been quite a few changes we will look at over the next few days.

Eskhaleni Technologies is a company owned by wife and I recently re-desinged the official website. The new website being planned is being developed in ASP.Net MVC 2 and the new logo is finally been revealed on the website, after being used internally for some time.

Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1 has been available for a while, and as part of the VSTS Rangers projects we have been working with the new builds in virtualized environments. With powerful new features the next edition of TFS looks exciting, and we have a brief look into what's new. Over the next few weeks we will do some indepth looks at TFS 2010 and the new frontier provided by Microsoft.

Hilton Giesenow, the well known South African MVP has launched a new podcast called the MOSS Show, covering the SharePoint platform through hosting interviews with some of the more well known, and lesser know SharePoint experts in the world. I have a look at the first 3 episodes and really recommend everyone involved in SharePoint to subscribe.

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.

I struggled for a while to find a way to remove the WebPart entries orphaned by the deactivation and rectraction process in SharePoint, and found a neat way to this using the SPFeatureReceiver. After some testing I posted an article about it in the SharePoint section.

Another life update this time featuring information about the response to my role change as an evangelist and community lead, my visit to the doctor and our very pregnant Sharpei Cross.

I have been actively involed in the South African technology community for the last 3 years. I have always been a proud and passionate member of the community, involved as a technology evangelist. I have achieved a lot in this time however it hasn't been without a heavy cost. The time has come for me to step back and slowdown, as my family and my body is not the only parts of my life suffering from my current involvement.

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!

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

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.

Microsoft has released new versions of two awesome development tools. FxCop allows for code analysis to be done on already compiled .Net assemblies while StyleCop analysis your code during development with full Visual Studio integration.

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.

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.

The move to IT Intellect prooved to be a big adjustment for me, and I am more and more involved with Microsoft and the community. However it is sometimes draining and I seem to be struggling to the adjustment harder then I expected.

I travelled to JHB to attend some meetings with Microsoft and IT Intellect around business and the community. While I was there I was able to meet with various community leads around events planned for the year.

I am about to do my Microsoft Exams for my MCT and compiled a list of all required exams and references required to complete these exams.

Another life update this time featuring information about the new Microsoft MVP's, some community activity and plans for SA Developer.net.

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.

An introduction into SubVersion and CruiseControl.Net to provide a simple and free source control and continues integration solution for developers on to go.

Being involved in the community has left me drained after being extremely active in the last few months. It is an extensive task to manage the community activities and to keep up to date with the latest technologies.

Along with Ajax comes the Ajax Control Toolkit, a brilliant free tool providing prebuilt controls to use in website adding some awesome client side functionality. This is the future of .Net web development.

A detailed look at ASP.Net AJAX and how it can be used to improve web development experiences as well as provide users with an awesome visiting experience.

Another life update this time featuring information about outstanding projects, SA Developer.net, development technologies and community credit winner announcements.

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.

Small Business Server 2003 is part of the Action Pack subscribtion and provides small businesses with network services out of the box. The installation is straight forward and everything well integrated for small to medium sized companies.

We recently invested in a Microsoft Action Pack subscription and have started to legalize all our software at home. The action pack prooves to be a brilliant value for moment solution for small business.

RDL is part of Microsoft SQL Reporting Services but it is also available for normal reporting without needing the full back-end services support. Some links are provided to brilliant RDL resources.

Another life update this time featuring information about the Bunny Chow movie, TechDays 2007 in Kwazulu-Natal, Windows Vista myths and issues as well as the first SA Developer.Net KZN talk.