meg's mantra

pluralsight joins the .net rocks road trip tour with on-demand!

meagon-marshall — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:09:24 GMT

Carl and Richard have loaded up the DotNetMobile (a 30 foot RV) and they are driving to your town to show off their favorite bits of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0! Richard talks about Web load testing and Carl talks about Silverlight 4.0 and multimedia. Along the way they will be giving away some great prizes (including Pluralsight training), showing off some awesome technology and having a ton of laughs.

Track the Road Trip with the #dnr_roadtrip hash and receive 7 days of FREE access to the Pluralsight On-Demand! library by following @pluralsight on Twitter. Simply DM us for an activation code!

You don’t have to physically be present at the .NET Rocks Road Trip event stops to take advantage of the Pluralsight On-Demand! trial offer, but just in case they go to a city near you, here is a list of the planned stops:

4/19/2010

4/20/2010

4/21/2010

4/22/2010

4/23/2010

4/26/2010

4/27/2010

4/28/2010

4/29/2010

5/1/2010

5/3/2010

5/4/2010

5/5/2010

5/6/2010

5/7/2010

Check out the .NET Rocks Road Trip and learn a few things along the way about web load testing, Silverlight 4 and start training with Pluralsight!

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight launches regional on-demand! pricing for india customers, new site features, and course releases for the visual studio 2010 global launch

meagon-marshall — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:17:00 GMT

We’re excited to make several new announcements for the Visual Studio 2010 Global Launch. It’s an exciting product time for Microsoft, Pluralsight and many of our partners – all with the end goal of enriching the Microsoft developer community.

Aaron is heading to TechEd India in Bangalore where he will be announcing some exciting On-Demand! regional pricing for our India customers. Attendees at the show should check the attendee bag for a free month of Pluralsight On-Demand! training. Note: the key must be activated before April 18 to receive the full month. I’ll be heading to DevConnections Launch in Las Vegas to showcase our new site features, course releases and the Pluralsight .NET training offerings. You can follow both of us during the week on Twitter at @skonnard and @81megs. Also, be sure to follow @pluralsight as this is the account where we’ll be giving away several full 1-year subscriptions during the week.

Below is a sneak preview of the press release to be released on Monday, April 12, 2010. Enjoy!

Regional On-Demand! Pricing for India Customers

Pluralsight is pleased to announce a regional delivery model and pricing option for On-Demand! training in the India market. This exclusive offer gives India-based developers a more cost-effective option to use Pluralsight On-Demand! within the India region. We are launching the beta program for this regional offer during the Visual Studio 2010 Global Launch event in Bangalore, India. “We have been working very hard for the past several months to create a regional model that makes sense for our customers in the India market,” says Aaron Skonnard, CEO of Pluralsight, “and we are ecstatic to announce this as part of the Global Launch at Tech·Ed India in Bangalore.” As part of the beta program, we are offering all Tech·Ed India attendees a free 1-month subscription to Pluralsight On-Demand! training if activated prior to April 18, 2010. All activations after April 18, 2010 will receive a free 1-week trial. Additionally, India residents will now be able to take advantage of the regional India pricing effective immediately.

Edge-Caching Cloud Services

Pluralsight On-Demand! now takes advantage of edge-caching cloud services to help our customers receive the best possible performance when watching videos from our library. When accessing a video through the Pluralsight website, the request is routed to the nearest edge-caching server. If that cache location doesn't yet have a copy of that particular video, it requests it from the central server and immediately begins streaming it to you, caching the video as it goes. If your local cache location already has the video, you'll get it served from the cache location, which is typically closer than our central server, depending on where you are located. What this means is that as Pluralsight On-Demand! usage grows, subscribers will continue to see the best possible performance when accessing the videos from our library. This new feature will provide a much better user experience for our regional users throughout the world, including those located in the India region.

Our 14 edge caching servers are located all around the world in the following major cities; Ashburn, VA, Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, Los Angeles, CA, Miami, FL, Newark, NJ, Palo Alto, CA, Seattle, WA, St. Louis, MO, Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Exciting New Pluralsight Courses

Certified Professional Scrum Developer

Pluralsight technical instructor and course author David Starr, covers the following topics; Scrum fundamentals, Mapping Scrum to Visual Studio 2010, hotfixes such as Visual Studio Architecture tools, emergent architecture, test driven development, overcoming common dysfunctions, and so much more. This intense, hands-on course enables teams to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software.

To view course details, visit http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/ilt/Course.aspx?id=AP45.

Agile Team Practices with Scrum
Pluralsight technical instructor and course author David Starr, provides an immersive course in effective agile techniques with a focus on introducing Scrum into your organization. Appropriate for anyone in the organization, this course introduces pragmatic and effective agile practices used by world class teams. Add a 3^rd day of facilitated planning with your team, and be poised to begin Scrum in your team. Together, we’ll get your product backlog ready and plan out your first project.

To view course details, visit http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/ilt/Course.aspx?id=AP32.

Developing for Windows 7
The recent release of Windows 7 brings with it myriad new features and APIs, including Multitouch, Sensors/Location, the new Task Bar, and Libraries. Learn how to make your applications light up on the new platform. Pluralsight technical instructor and course author Eric Burke; covers the following topics; migration of existing applications, Windows shell features, application restart and recovery, task dialogs, writing a custom indexer, common controls, Windows forms, and WPF support and more.

To view course details, visit http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/ilt/Course.aspx?id=AP42

For additional information on the India-based program and pricing, new site features or information on the new course releases, contact us or visit http://www.pluralsight.com.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

devdays in the hague, techdays in antwerp and pluralsight

meagon-marshall — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:41:50 GMT

Next up in the Pluralsight European tour is Microsoft® DevDays in The Hague and Microsoft® TechDays in Antwerp. Pluralsight is exhibiting at DevDays, so if you’re attending, be sure to stop by our booth for a chance to win a 1-year Standard subscription to Pluralsight On-Demand! – we’re giving away 2 full Standard subscriptions, double your chances to win ($499 SRP). We are also giving away a Zune HD at GeekNight – you have to swing by and grab a ticket for a chance to win.

DevDays guarantees a high number of top speakers (ahem, Pluralsight techies) and interesting topics. This year’s edition will not be an exception as this DevDays will also be the official launch of Visual Studio 2010. Pluralsight is following the official launch of Visual Studio 2010 in other cities around the world such as Vegas (DevConnections) and Bangalore (TechEd). It’s an exciting time for product launches at Microsoft® and also an equally exciting time for Pluralsight to showcase our superior .NET developer training solutions and our new India-facing website and pricing.

In your delegate bags, you will also find a 1-week Standard trial to the Pluralsight On-Demand! library. It’s a small white business card sized offering, and it’s valuable – so find it and hang on to it and activate it when you have a few days to jump in the library!

Microsoft® DevDays in The Hague

Attendees can check out these sessions given by the world-renowned Pluralsight instructors at DevDays in the schedule below.

Tuesday, 30 March

Speaker: Aaron Skonnard
Title: Windows Azure Applications: Running Applications in the Cloud
Start time: March 30, 11:05 End time: March 30, 12:20

Speaker: Scott Allen
Title: Inside Modern JavaScript
Start time: March 30, 11:05 End time: March 30, 12:20

Speaker: Fritz Onion
Title: Moving from ASP.NET WebForms to MVC
Start time: March 30, 13:30 End time: March 30, 14:45

Speaker: Aaron Skonnard
Title: Introducing AppFabric: Moving .NET to the Cloud
Start time: March 30, 15:05 End time: March 30, 16:20

Speaker: Scott Allen
Title: jQuery for the ASP.NET Developer
Start time: March 30, 15:05 End time: March 31, 12:05

Wednesday, 31 March

Speaker: Keith Brown
Title: The Identity Landscape in 2010
Start time: March 31, 9:15 End time: March 31, 10:30

Speaker: Aaron Skonnard
Title: Why REST?
Start time: March 31, 10:50 End time: March 31, 12:05

Speaker: Scott Allen
Title: LINQ - Tips, Tricks, and Optimizations
Start time: March 31, 10:50 End time: March 31, 12:05

Speaker: Matt Milner
Title: Why Everyone Should Learn WF4
Start time: March 31, 13:15 End time: March 31, 14:30

Speaker: Fritz Onion
Title: ASP.NET Ajax 4.0
Start time: March 31, 13:15 End time: March 31, 14:30

Speaker: Keith Brown
Title: Get a whiff of WIF!
Start time: March 31, 14:50 Start time: March 31, 14:50

Speaker: Scott Allen
Title: LINQ – Beyond Queries
Start time: March 31, 16:15 End time: March 31, 17:30

Speaker: Matt Milner
Title: Building Activities in Windows Workflow 4.0
Start time: March 31, 16:15 End time: March 31, 17:30

Speaker: Aaron Skonnard
Title: Windows Azure Storage: Storing Data in the Cloud
Start time: March 31, 16:15 End time: March 31, 17:30

And last but certainly not least, you can come to the Pluralsight booth and visit me for a chance to win Pluralsight On-Demand! Standard subscription or the Zune HD loaded with Pluralsight training.

We’re located in the basement –1 floor position #25 next to the food. You can’t miss us!

Microsoft® TechDays in Antwerp

Tech•Days is the learning conference on both current technologies and new products like Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and much more…

Attendees can check out these sessions given by the world-renowned Pluralsight instructors at DevDays in the schedule below.

Monday, 30 March

Speaker: Matt Milner
Title: What’s new in .NET Framework 4.0
Title: What’s new in ASP.NET 4.0
Title: What’s new in Workflow Foundation 4
Title: Entity Framework / Data Services in .NET 4.0
Title: What’s new in WCF 4

Thursday, 1 April

Speaker: Fritz Onion
Title: What’s new in ASP.NET 4.0
Title: ASP.NET Ajax 4.0

All attendees from Microsoft® TechDays in Antwerp are eligible to receive a free 1-week Standard trial by emailing marketing@pluralsight.com and requesting an activation code to access the Pluralsight On-Demand! library.

We’re looking forward to connecting with all of our European friends this week! Don’t forget, if you’re a Microsoft MVP, you are eligible to receive a free 1-year Standard subscription to the Pluralsight On-Demand! library. We also support INETA User Groups with free subscriptions for leaders, unemployed user group members, giveaways and various other trials associated with events. We’d love to support your group so visit us and let us know how we can help.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight office hours 3/11/2010 with dan sullivan

meagon-marshall — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:09:38 GMT

Dan Sullivan is hosting Office Hours this week. He’ll be doing a demo on SSMS because it’s a tool that any .NET developer who also works with SQL Server should think about having.

When: Thursday, 11am EST (4pm GMT), 03/11/2010
Topic: SQL Server

Premium Subscribers can view login information here.

Office Hours for Premium Pluralsight On-Demand! subscribers this week will feature a giveaway from our friends and partner, Red Gate. One lucky Office Hours attendee will win a SQL Prompt 4 license valued at $295. Red Gate’s SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL.

Features include:

· World-leading SQL Server code-completion

· SQL reformatting to match your preferred style

· Rapid access to your database schema information

· Snippets to cut down repetitive typing

For more information visit www.red-gate.com

Office Hours is a live demo or brief talk + Q & A session allowing Pluralsight Premium subscribers to immediately engage with the Pluralsight technical team. Office Hours provides the platform and opportunity for you to inquire about related courses, labs or project challenges in a recorded, LiveMeeting setting. Office Hours range between 30-60 minutes depending on the topic and number of inquiries.

Office Hours topics and the Pluralsight instructor will rotate on a predetermined basis and can be viewed on the Office Hours page listed here. Check back often for an updated Office Hours schedule and topic listing.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight and InnerWorkings

meagon-marshall — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:40:47 GMT

Pluralsight is pleased to be able to present a custom MVC & LINQ Training Offer from our new partner, InnerWorkings. The InnerWorkings learning platform is 100% practice-based and it integrates tightly with Visual Studio. You learn new skills by writing code and solving real programming problems — so test your mettle against InnerWorkings rules based code judging engine and get instant feedback on your code.

The practice-based training offered by InnerWorkings is a nice complement to the training products Pluralsight provides. We strongly believe our customers and the developer community at large will benefit from our partnership and the custom MVC & LINQ Training Offer.

The MVC & LINQ Training Offer includes these two fast downloads:

ASP.NET MVC Using Visual C# 2008
Learn the key concepts of the ASP.NET MVC framework, and how to create your first MVC Web application. With this sample, you’ll also discover how to enable requests using AJAX in MVC, and how to distinguish between normal and AJAX requests

LINQ to SQL Using Visual C# 2008
Learn to generate strongly typed LINQ to SQL data context and entity classes using the ORM designer, and use them to retrieve data from a database. You’ll also learn to create, retrieve, update, and delete (CRUD) database data through a strongly typed LINQ to SQL data context and its associated entity classes.

Take advantage of this custom training opportunity available through our exclusive partnership and download the MVC & LINQ training today!

About InnerWorkings
InnerWorkings began with a vision of transforming the way software developers learn. Software development is still art as much as science. In spite of decades of effort to create processes and best practices, there is little visibility into why one project is a great success while a similar project fails. It remains extremely difficult to create a successful, efficient and cost-effective software organization and sustain it over multiple projects.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight & the rocky mountain tech tri-fecta

meagon-marshall — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:05:45 GMT

Pluralsight is sponsoring the Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta tomorrow. Every attendee will receive a free 5-day trial to Pluralsight On-Demand!. Additionally, we are raffling off a 1-year Standard subscription to the entire Pluralsight On-Demand! library, a $499 value.

Keith Brown, CTO & Cofounder of Pluralsight will also be giving a session on “Get a Whiff of WIF.” You can find him in room 1207 at the 10:45-12:00 time slot. Here is the session abstract:

The Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) makes it easy for web applications and services to use the modern, claims-based model of identity. This model allows you to factor authentication and many authorization decisions out of your applications and into a central identity service. This model makes it much easier to achieve Internet-friendly single sign on. It also makes it easier for your application to receive richer identity information, and paves the way for identity federation, should you ever need to integrate with another organization or another platform (Java, for example).

Be sure to check Keith’s session out and check your attendee bag for the promotion card and stick around for the raffle! I heard Julie Yack likes to surprise attendees during random sessions too.

If you’d like more information on the Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta, visit their website: http://rmtechtrifecta.pbworks.com/FrontPage.

And, if you need a reason to go to the Tri-Fecta, you can check out Julie Yack’s blog and the 10 ways to convince your boss to give you a comp day to attend the Trifecta.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

are you a geek dad? (applicable to geek moms too)!

meagon-marshall — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:57:58 GMT

You should check out the WIRED GeekDad blog.

Most recent entries:

Enjoy, geek parents!

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight & devweek march 15-19 london

meagon-marshall — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:55:33 GMT

Pluralsight is sponsoring DevWeek 2010, in addition to having a strong technical presence at one of Europe’s leading independent conference for software developers, database professionals and IT architects. Every attendee will receive 1-week of Pluralsight On-Demand! training, be sure to check your bags for the activation card.

Pluralsight will be giving away t-shirts at our booth and we will be raffling several Pluralsight On-Demand! subscriptions in addition the a Zune HD loaded with our training content. Be sure to stop by, meet us and sign up!

You can view the entire session schedule here.

PRE-CON: DevWeek 2010: Monday 15 March

A day of Windows Azure
WORKSHOP REF: M3
Aaron Skonnard
Microsoft has fully engaged in the cloud computing platform with the release of the Windows Azure platform. This new platform promises to simplify the deployment and management of applications on low cost, pay-as-you-go, infrastructure. In this full-day workshop, we’ll discuss these new cloud concepts in detail and we’ll show you how to get started with your first cloud solution. You’ll learn how to use Windows Azure to host web and worker application logic; how to securely connect your applications (on-premise or cloud) using the messaging capabilities in .NET Services; how to store and retrieve data from SQL Azure; and how to connect people using Live Services.

A Day of ASP.NET 4.0
WORKSHOP REF: M5
Fritz Onion
This pre-conference tutorial will cover all of the new features found in ASP.NET 4.0, many of which cannot be listed at this time because of pre-release non-disclosure agreements.
We will look at the new AJAX features including client templates, ADO.NET data services support, DataView and DataContext, as well as live bindings.
We will also cover new features of the core platform including client ID management, CSS support, URL routing, and ViewState improvements.
Finally, we will look at the new dynamic data implementation and the enhanced filtering capabilities added to data source controls.

Building Real-World WPF Applications with Team System
WORKSHOP REF: M8
Brian Randell & Ian Griffiths
In this workshop, Brian and Ian will take you through the end-to-end process of building real world WPF and Silverlight applications with Team System. You’ll learn how to establish a well-defined process that supports collaboration between developers and user experience professionals, so everyone can contribute to the project without tripping over each other.
We’ll explore what Team System can do for everyone involved in creating a rich client application. You’ll see how both developers and designers check-in and checkout files, how to track and manage work, and how to ship your application. You’ll learn how Visual Studio and Expression Blend fit together. And you’ll see what developers need to do to ensure that visual designers and interaction designers are involved as first class contributors to the project.
Once the foundation has been laid for team development, we’ll dig into WPF by first learning about the core WPF architecture and how to create and use WPF controls. You’ll learn about data binding and how to use a Model-View-ViewModel architecture. You’ll see how to design your application to be styled. You’ll learn about how WPF handles text and typography and how you can add printing support.
Finally, we’ll look at how you and use asynchronous processing and background threads to make your application more responsive. All of this will be done while reviewing a sample application which will have all source code provided. This will be a WPF example, but the techniques in this workshop apply equally well to Silverlight.

DAY ONE: DevWeek 2010: Tuesday 16 March

11.30 -- Track 2
Why Cloud computing?
Aaron Skonnard
A new platform is emerging – one that promises to reduce costs and speed up time to market by building on shared data centers that are widely accessible using open Web protocols. This emerging platform is commonly referred to as “the cloud”. In this introductory session, we’ll explore these new concepts and discuss why businesses are becoming more and more interested in today’s cloud computing platforms with a primary focus on the economics.

11.30 -- Track 5
Moving from ASP.NET WebForms to MVC
Fritz Onion
Are you considering moving an ASP.NET WebForms application to MVC? This talk will walk through an example of converting an application from WebForms to MVC, pointing out important decision points along the way. Some pages convert easily, but any pages that use server-side controls heavily will require much more effort. We will go over how to deal with post-backs, user controls, and endpoint naming as you convert these tricky pages. The end result, however, is a more testable, compliant, and maintainable site, and is often worth the effort of conversion.

14.00 --Track 2
Azure Services Platform
Aaron Skonnard
Microsoft has made a powerful entry into the cloud computing market by providing a rich and flexible cloud platform for .NET developers to build on. This cloud platform, also known as the Azure Services Platform, comes with several key offerings today including Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Azure, and Live Services. In this session, we’ll explore the Azure Services Platform, what each offering provides, and what makes this platform different from the rest.

16.00 -- Track 5
ASP.NET Ajax 4.0
Fritz Onion
This talk looks at the next version of ASP.NET Ajax (4.0) and how it improves your client-side development experience. Specifically, it will cover the new client-side template and data binding model, declarative control instantiation, the new DataView control, markup extensions, and bindings.

17.30 -- Drinks Reception in the Exhibition Hall

DAY TWO: DevWeek 2010: Wednesday 17 March

9.30 -- Track 2
Service virtualization
Aaron Skonnard
Service virtualization is the key to managing complexity and change in large, real-world SOA environments. The Managed Services Engine (MSE) is a service virtualization solution built on WCF and the Windows Server Platform developed by Microsoft Services. The MSE provides versioning, management, service enablement, and runtime policy enforcement. Recently, Microsoft made this valuable solution available to customers through CodePlex. This session introduces you to service virtualization, the MSE, and shows you how to get started today.

9.30 -- Track 5
Introduction to SharePoint 2010 for ASP.NET developers
Fritz Onion & Jon Fancey
SharePoint has emerged as one of the most common platforms for deploying Web applications, and for a good reason – it provides many higher-level building blocks for constructing web applications that would take literally years to develop by hand. The latest release, SharePoint 2010, comes with even more features, and is even friendlier to developers. However, ASP.NET developers coming to SharePoint for the first time are often frustrated by the fact that many development techniques they are accustomed to no longer apply, even though SharePoint is built on top of ASP.NET. This talk will introduce the practising ASP.NET developer to the SharePoint development environment and answer common questions like: How are requests routed? How do I customize a page layout? Where do I put resource files to make them accessible? Should I use Profile? How do I incorporate Ajax/jQuery into my pages?

11.30 –- Track 6
Why REST?
Aaron Skonnard
As REST continues to grow in popularity, it’s important to stop and ask yourself why REST? REST is by no means a silver bullet, but it does offer some advantages over traditional SOAP and WS-* architectures when it fits well into your scenario. There are also times when SOAP makes more sense because it offers features and capabilities that REST cannot provide. In the end, REST and SOAP are different architectural styles, each with their own pros and cons. Come and learn when to choose one over the other and why REST makes sense for many web services.

14.00 -- Track 5
Building RESTful services with ASP.NET MVC
Aaron Skonnard
The ASP.NET MVC framework provides an elegant model for building RESTful applications and services. This session will show you how you can use ASP.NET MVC to build sophisticated RESTful services that integrate with your ASP.NET applications.

16.00 –- Track 4
Building RESTful services with WCF
Aaron Skonnard
WCF provides first-class support for building “Web” services that embrace REST design principles using standard Web protocols and data formats. This session illustrates how to build WCF services that support the HTTP uniform interface and different resource representations like XML, JSON, and Atom/AtomPub to enhance your Web 2.0 mash-up solutions. Throughout the session we’ll specifically look at some of the new features in WCF, the WCF REST Starter Kit and ADO.NET Data Services, and we’ll show you how to integrate them into your Web 2.0 solutions.

DAY THREE: DevWeek 2010: Thursday 18 March

11.30 Track 5
Attack and defence: securing ASP.NET applications
Keith Brown
Building secure ASP.NET applications involves much more than calling security APIs. It takes careful design that considers threats and applies countermeasures that solve real problems. It takes a development team that knows how to write bulletproof code, with the foresight and funding to review that code and eradicate security flaws before they can be exploited. Ultimately, it takes education and a good process. This talk will introduce you to many resources: guidelines for threat modeling ASP.NET applications, how-tos for eliminating common security vulnerabilities, and many others. You’ll find that even a small shop can afford to build security into the software development lifecycle.

16.00 Track 3
Get a whiff of WIF!
Keith Brown
The Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) makes it easy for web applications and services to use the modern, claims-based model of identity. This model allows you to factor authentication and many authorization decisions out of your applications and into a central identity service. This model makes it much easier to achieve Internet-friendly single sign on. It also makes it easier for your application to receive richer identity information, and paves the way for identity federation, should you ever need to integrate with another organization or another platform (Java, for example).

POST-CON: DevWeek 2010: Friday 19 March

Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) Workshop
WORKSHOP REF: F3
Keith Brown
Are you building web applications using ASP.NET or web services using WCF? Do you want your applications to have seamless single sign on (SSO)? Do you care about user authentication, authorization, auditing, and personalization? Do you want the ability to delegate credentials across multiple network hops without the pain of setting up Kerberos delegation in Active Directory? Are you interested in learning how to federate identity across organizational boundaries as well as security realms? If so, then this workshop is for you.
In this workshop, you’ll learn about the modern approach to modeling identity: the claims-based approach, and the Windows Identity Foundation which makes it easy. You’ll learn how building claims-aware applications can allow you to centralize logic for discovering user identity attributes. Identity is tricky these days – user attributes are stored in lots of places, from LDAP directories to SQL databases. Using a claims-based identity model allows you to factor out the knowledge and code that collects these user attributes and centralize it into an application called an identity provider. This also centralizes authentication and allows you to implement SSO with very little hassle. Over time, as you add more applications to the system, they all benefit from the features in your identity provider, which you’ll probably want to improve over time, from stronger authentication methods to something as simple as an additional attribute for users. Most importantly, your application developers will never feel the need to build custom user account databases or perform their own authentication, because it’ll be so much easier to simply rely on the identity provider for these services. Because the claims-based identity model is built on standard protocols like SAML, WS-Trust and WS-Federation, you can buy an identity provider off the shelf if you don’t want to build it yourself. Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) v2 is an example of this that comes free with your Windows Server license. And of course federation also becomes much easier because of these standards: federation across organizational or security realm boundaries (if you’re not sure what “federation” means, you’ll learn all about it in this workshop).

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

repost: 4 things devs can do to prepare for sharepoint 2010

meagon-marshall — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:17:55 GMT

The blog I’m referencing was written/posted by Kirk Allen Evans. He is an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft Corporation’s Communications Sector. He focuses on solutions based on SharePoint that apply to the top advertising agencies, broadcasters, hosters, and telecommunication service providers . Visit Kirk’s blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/kaevans.

The 4th ‘thing’ Kirk mentions in his post for devs to do in preparation for SharePoint 2010 is to Upgrade Your Skills, “SharePoint 2010 integrates many new technologies that you will want to start mastering today, if you haven’t already, including Silverlight and Language-Integrated Query (LINQ). Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-device browser plug-in that helps companies design, develop and deliver applications and experiences on the Web. A free download that installs in seconds, Silverlight enables a new class of rich, secure and scalable cross-platform experiences that will run equally on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari on Windows, Mac and Linux.

SharePoint 2010 natively supports Silverlight development, including a client-side API for development and a Silverlight media web part that developers will want to leverage in their solutions. LINQ is a set of features in Visual Studio 2008 that extends powerful query capabilities to the language syntax of C# and Visual Basic. LINQ introduces standard, easily-learned patterns for querying and updating data, and the technology can be extended to support potentially any kind of data store. SharePoint 2010 includes LINQ to SharePoint, making querying of SharePoint data easier than ever before.

Source: http://www.sharepointproconnections.com/Articles/tabid/149/nodeid/1997/Top-4-Things-Devs-Can-Do-to-Prepare-for-2010.aspx

I’ve reposted this blog to highlight courses within the Pluralsight On-Demand! library that could help devs prepare for 2010:

LINQ Fundamentals
Language Integrated Query (LINQ) introduces fundamental changes to the techniques .NET developers will use to access data. LINQ brings general-purpose query facilities to the .NET framework and allows a developer to query data inside of in-memory objects, data inside of relational databases, and data inside of XML using a uniform API and syntax. This course will cover all these topics, plus the language extensions for LINQ and using LINQ with over the web with ADO.NET Data Services.
Author(s): Scott Allen
10 Modules [10:29:35]

Silverlight 3 Fundamentals
Silverlight is a browser plug-in that runs Rich Internet Applications. It brings a trimmed down version of the .NET Framework to web browser client-side programming. It also provides a user interface framework that is very similar to WPF, enabling developers familiar with WPF to learn Silverlight with ease. This course shows the main aspects of building user interfaces with Silverlight 3.
Author(s): Ian Griffiths
12 Modules [07:47:10]

You can easily begin to master these technologies today, in preparation for 2010, with the Pluralsight On-Demand! library. If you’re not a current subscriber, check out the Pluralsight Guest Pass and view the first few clips in each module of the above full training courses.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight premium on-demand! subscribers can now take advantage of office hours

meagon-marshall — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:48:15 GMT

Hingham, MA – 02/04/10 – Pluralsight, a global leader in Microsoft® .NET training, announces the availability of Office Hours for Premium Pluralsight On-Demand! subscribers. For more information, visit http://www.pluralsight.com/main/olt/officehours.aspx.

Pluralsight Office Hours is a featured benefit of the Pluralsight On-Demand! Premium subscription and is therefore available exclusively to Premium subscribers. Office Hours is a live Q&A session allowing attendees to immediately engage with the Pluralsight technical team. Office Hours provides the platform and opportunity for Premium subscribers to inquire about related courses, labs or project challenges in a recorded, LiveMeeting setting. Office Hours range between 30-60 minutes depending on the topic and number of inquiries. Office Hours topics and Pluralsight instructor will rotate on a predetermined basis and can be viewed on the Office Hours page listed here http://www.pluralsight.com/main/olt/officehours.aspx.

"We feel it's important to connect directly with the developers consuming our courseware, both for course feedback and for the additional perspectives and insights they often offer on technology,” states Fritz Onion, COO and co-founder of Pluralsight. “It's our goal to keep our materials compelling and pragmatic for software developers solving real problems, and office hours are one of the feedback channels that helps us do that."

Pricing & Eligibility

Office Hours is exclusively available to On-Demand! Premium subscribers. Current Pluralsight On-Demand! subscribers have the option to upgrade their subscription at anytime to take advantage of this featured benefit. Access to the Pluralsight On-Demand! library, in general, can now be achieved through a range of new pricing options to accommodate virtually any budget while allowing subscribers to still have the training features they really care about.

standard subscription
Access to the full library including how-to videos, beginner tutorials and full training courses + monthly purchase option.
$99/month - or - $499/year

professional subscription
Access to the full library including how-to videos, beginner tutorials and full training courses +
downloadable videos for iPod & Zune.
$999/year

premium subscription
Access to the full library including how-to videos, beginner tutorials and full training courses +
downloadable videos for iPod & Zune + Hands-On lab exercises + weekly Office Hours.
$1499/year

Subscriptions include access to the entire Pluralsight On-Demand! library including all of the new course materials and content adding during the subscription period at no additional charge. All courses and materials are delivered in the English language.

Pluralsight also offers multi-user and site license plans for corporations. For more information contact us or visit http://www.pluralsight.com.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight announces free on-demand! training for all microsoft mvps

meagon-marshall — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:15:54 GMT

Pluralsight will provide each Microsoft® MVP and every RD with a complimentary 1-Year Standard subscription to the entire Pluralsight On-Demand! training library. We are rolling this campaign out at the upcoming 2010 Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Bellevue on Monday, February 15. MVPs and RDs can get hooked up with the 1-Year Standard subscription at the Party with Palermo - MVP Summit 2010 edition, so make you sure you register to attend here: http://partywithpalermo.eventbrite.com/. We'll also be raffling a Zune HD pre-loaded by yours truly, with Pluralsight On-Demand! content. If you can't make it to the party, be sure to find Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, David Starr, Scott Allen or Jon Fancey at the summit. They'll be able to hook you up with the goods, as well. If you aren’t attending the MVP Summit 2010, email me for details.

The majority of the Pluralsight technical staff are Microsoft MVPs. CEO and co-founder Aaron Skonnard asserts, “We know how they generally tick and the kind of training content they typically need. And frankly, most of the courses found in our Pluralsight On-Demand! library are a perfect fit for them. We've designed this special offer to assist all Microsoft MVPs throughout the world in their ongoing quest to help the Microsoft developer community at large, the very reason they've been given the "MVP" title. It is our hope that Microsoft MVPs will use this resource to dive deeper into other areas of the Microsoft technology landscape, thereby increasing their level of expertise and what they can ultimately offer back to the community. As they take advantage of this offer, we're confident that developers everywhere will see the value we provide through our revolutionary On-Demand! model."

The Standard subscription gives Microsoft® MVPs and RDs access to an in-depth, highly technical training library, enhancing the list of go-to technical resources available to MVPs and RDs in the .NET developer space. The Pluralsight On-Demand! library includes how-to videos, beginner tutorials and full training courses, covering current and emerging Microsoft® technologies such as:

BizTalk Server 2006 R2

BizTalk Server 2009

iPhone ASP.NET

LINQ

Managed Services Engine

Windows Server AppFabric, formerly "Dublin"

Windows Workflow

WPF... and more.

Additionally, Pluralsight will provide MVPs and RDs who participate in the offering activation codes for 5-day Standard trials to distribute to their colleagues and peers upon request.

Eligibility

The Pluralsight Microsoft® MVP Program is available to all current Microsoft® MVPs and RDs.

For more information on how to access the subscription or details about the MVP/RD offering, contact psmarketing@pluralsight.com.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

get your nerd on with pluralsight and the socal code camp

meagon-marshall — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:08:00 GMT

Pluralsight is pleased to sponsor and support the SoCal Code Camp this weekend. We’ll have a table outside of the registration desk, so be sure to say hello to Scott Deadrick and sign-up for a chance to win 1 of 3 FREE 1-year Standard subscriptions to Pluralsight On-Demand!. Each SoCal Code Camp attendee also receives a FREE 5-day Standard trial subscription to check-out the entire On-Demand! library.

**The first 50 people at the Pluralsight table can grab a Pluralsight Cloud Tag t-shirt! **

Additionally, Pluralsight’s own Aaron Skonnard will be speaking. Be sure to check out his sessions on “Why you need some REST” and “What’s New in WCF/WF 4.0”.

Why you need some REST
12:15 PM - Saturday, January 30, 2010
Location: UH 319
REST is quickly becoming the default architectural style for services in the cloud. Come learn what every cloud developer needs to know about REST moving forward, and how you can start building RESTful services using WCF 3.5/4.0 and the evolving WCF REST Starter Kit.

What's New in WCF/WF 4.0
4:00 PM - Saturday, January 30, 2010
Location: UH 248
NET 4.0 brings several improvements in the areas of WCF and WF, including improved REST capabilities, a new workflow model, seamless integration between WF and WCF, and a new visual designer. It also provides the ability to author completely declarative (XAML-based) workflow services that can be more easily deployed, hosted, and managed. This session walks you through the various new 4.0 features and shows you how to write code using them today.

For more information on the SoCal Code Camp, visit their website: http://www.socalcodecamp.com

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

pluralsight launches “pluralcast” the .net podcast series

meagon-marshall — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:52:00 GMT

An audio talk show dedicated to saying something new in the Microsoft community.

Hingham, MA - 12/04/09 – Pluralsight, a global leader in Microsoft .NET training, today announced the launch of the Pluralcast podcast series. Pluralsight launched Pluralcast as another avenue to inform customers and prospects about innovations, developments and thinking in the .NET developer space, and to update customers, prospects and partners on the latest training movements and industry trends from a variety of industry perspectives. For more information, please visit http://www.pluralsight.com/main/pluralcast/default.aspx.

The Pluralcast is designed to provide valuable insight to the growing community of developers as well as those interested to hear something new about life on the Microsoft stack. Episodes will cover a range of technologies, including topics such as thought leadership in the training sphere from Pluralsight, Silverlight in Real World Applications, Caring about Security, Building iPhone Apps, along with insights from a variety of technology implementers, creators, experts, partners and industry analysts.

The Pluralcast .NET Podcast series are short, digestible audio episodes designed to educate and entertain Pluralsight’s growing audience. To date, the Pluralcast features two episodes:

Cast #1: Our First Episode! 12/2/2009
Cast #2: The PDC Show 12/2/2009

The Pluralcast is hosted by David Starr, a Pluralsight instructor with amazing yoyo skills and a passion for agile software development and the tools that support it. David has over 18 years of experience in software development and has held numerous leadership positions in technology teams. He walks the earth in search of compelling stories of software developers and their feats of daring to share with the world.

The Pluralcast can be accessed and enjoyed at the listener’s convenience. To increase accessibility, there are three ways a user may listen to the series when visiting the cast.pluralsight.com website:

1. “Listen to this episode”: The user may click on this and launch an audio player in a separate window. This is a good option if the user wants to move around the Web while listening to the show.
2. Audio MP3 Download: This will play the MP3 file within the users’ browser or the user can download the file to their computer and save the episode to their MP3 player and listen at their convenience.
3. RSS Feed: Site visitors wishing to receive new episodes immediately upon availability may also subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed via podcatching software like iTunes.

The Pluralcast is a subsidiary brand within Pluralsight, a global leader in Microsoft .NET training. Pluralsight is committed to providing innovative training solutions for its’ customers and the developer community at large.

If you are interested in participating in the Pluralcast .NET Podcast series with Pluralsight or for more information contact us or visit http://www.pluralsight.com.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

updated...pluralsight @ pdc09

meagon-marshall — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:38:00 GMT

Pluralsight is exhibiting at PDC09 - booth #411. Stop by, meet the authors & register for our PDC exclusive promotions.

We'll be giving away (3) Zune HDs loaded with Pluralsight On-Demand! content, Pluralsight Cloud tag t-shirts & 1-week subscriptions to Pluralsight On-Demand!. Additionally, we’ll have a limited amount of ‘preview’ copies of the Claims based Authentication & Authorization Guide – intro chapter written by Keith Brown (“zen of federated identity”). We're also launching our new subscription options and new content. Plan on being there? Let us know, we're hosting our first-ever annual Pluralsight Customer Appreciation Party. Invite required for entrance.

Pluralsight Technical Team @ PDC

Ian Griffiths is presenting, "Getting the Most Out of Silverlight 3" at the PDC09 pre-conference workshop on Monday, 11/17.

Fritz Onion is participating in the INETA BOF Community Roundtable during the Exhibitor Reception on Tuesday evening, 11/18 6:00-7:00, Room 309. Join David Chappell, Scott Hanselman, Patrick Hynds, Sara Ford, Miguel de Icaza, and Fritz for an open discussion on anything technology related. Carl Franklin will moderate the discussion and be recording the event as a .NET Rocks show.

UPDATED! Aaron Skonnard is hosting the BOF @Lunch: Will Cloud Computing Change Your Life? on Tuesday 11/17 12:30-1:15 pm. The Cloud Session will focus on how it will affect developers lives going forward.

Keith Brown is hosting the BOF Session: Claims-Based Identity, date/time TBD. Are you interested in or currently building out applications that use claims-based identity? Come join others who are also working on similar systems and discuss your successes and pain points with federated identity.

UPDATED! David Starr is co-hosting the BOF Session: Agile -- Tales of Triumph, Tribulation and Teams, date/time TBD. More and more development teams are turning to agile methodologies like Scrum, Lean, XP, FDD and others to improve their effectiveness. This session encourages learning from each other by sharing experiences.

See you at PDC - Booth #411!

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.

what are you doing october 17th? fritz is ...

meagon-marshall — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:03:00 GMT

Fritz Onion is speaking at the New England Code Camp on Saturday, October 17 - if you'll be in the area definitely register and attend if you can. With many new technologies coming out in the near future like Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 this will be a great opportunity to share your knowledge on these additions or to learn about them. There are many exciting technologies like MVC, Silverlight, jQuery, Mono, and others that will be great topics.

Fritz will be giving two talks:

@10:30 // Introduction to SharePoint for ASP.NET Developers

@1:30 // ASP.NET MVC Introduction

Pluralsight is sponsoring the event providing each attendee with a free 1-week trial to the Pluralsight On-Demand! library. We've also provided a 1-year subscription to Pluralsight On-Demand! for the big raffle - valued at $1499 (SRP). The full library contains over 15 courses. On average, each course contains 12-15 hours of in-depth content. Courses cover current and emerging Microsoft technologies such as: .NET 3.5, Agile Team Practices, ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET, AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, BizTalk 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, "Dublin" Fundamentals, LINQ, Silverlight, SQL Server 2008, VSTS, WCF, Windows Workflow, WPF... and more.

Spreading the Pluralsight .NET training love through writing, speaking, whispering, thinking and uninterrupted inner repetition.