This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Today, as part of our EnergizeIT cross-Canada tour, Christian Beauclair, Rick Claus and Pierre Roman are heading out to Halifax. As part of their visit, they’ll be hosting a Coffee and Code event today from 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Just Us Cafe at 1678 Barrington Street.

Coffee and Code is your chance to have a nice up-close-and-personal get-together with people from Microsoft, ask questions, let us know what you think and get to know us better. As an added bonus, it’s your chance to install the Windows 7 beta on your laptop: Christian, Rick and Pierre will be bringing installer discs and helping people get the new operating system (which we’ve been using on our production machines since January) installed.

For more details about today’s Coffee and Code and mini-installfest, see this earlier article.

Last night, EnergizeIT – that’s the cross-Canada tour where we talk to developers, IT Pros, students and faculty about Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Software+Services, cloud computing, architecture and a whole raft of other things that are coming soon from Microsoft – hit downtown Toronto with the “Future of the Platform” presentation aimed at IT Pros and systems administration types. IT Pro Evangelist Rick Claus flew in to do the heavy lifitng by presenting solo; I was there for support and to answer developer-specific questions.

In Canada, the phrase “I’m going to the ballet” tonight is sometimes used as a euphemism for “I’m going to the strip club”. So it was with great amusement when we found out that the venue for the presentation was Canada’s National Ballet School. I’m pretty sure I said “Well, I’m off to the ballet!” a dozen times before making my way to EnergizeIT.

The presentation went quite well, with many people asking all sorts of questions about the new features in both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. As with all the other EnergizeIT shows I have attended, many attendees either couldn’t wait to get their hands on the Windows 7 beta DVDs we were handing out or couldn’t stop singing its praises.

I’ll close with this shot of Rick, whom I caught in a perfect moment – it looks like he’s doing the “Head Crusher” routine from The Kids in the Hall:

This article originally appeared in Canadian Developer Connection.

We held a Windows 7 Installfest yesterday as part of the cross-Canada EnergizeIT tour. The idea is pretty simple: invite developers, IT pros and early adopters of all stripes to the Microsoft Canada Headquarters in Mississauga, provide them with DVDs of the Windows 7 beta, walk them through the installation process and show them what the upcoming operating system can do!

We held two sessions on Saturday, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Both sessions were hosted by IT Pro Evangelist extraordinare Rick Claus, who with his signature Tilley hat and friendly delivery style ran them with great fanfare and high praise from many participants. Rick gave a quick presentation walking the crowd through the basics of the installation process, demonstrated a number of Windows 7 features and covered other topics such as creating a bootable USB stick with a Windows 7 installer.

The event wouldn’t have been possible without the able assistance of our proctors. They were volunteers from the local IT community who believed in Windows 7 so much that they were willing to spend a Saturday morning and afternoon helping people install a beta version on their computers. Thanks, guys – without your help, we would’ve been swamped!

I was also there for both sessions, helping Rick out as well as doing my own demonstrations showing all kinds of software than ran “right out of the box” on Windows 7, from Visual Studio 2008 and XNA (I showed them my incredibly simple and incredibly dumb prototype for a game based on the move Zardoz), to Far Cry 2 to the music synthesizer/production app FL Studio, which I used to build a hip-hop backbeat on the fly.

Also present was IT Pro Evangelist Damir Bersinic, who along with Anne Murakami and Cristina Ferreira from our partner company Maritz Canada, made sure that everything ran smoothly, from making sure that the room was set up to signing in the attendees to getting not just enough mini-burgers to feed the crowd, but also enough to haunt Rick’s dreams for the next week.

Most of the people who came brought laptop computers. A couple brought netbooks. Some people who really wanted Windows 7 brought desktop systems, and they weren’t tiny ones, either! Here’s one that got brought in, complete with a decent-sized monitor and webcam! The system was so new that it still had all the feature stickers on it.

The “Flashy Chassis” award goes to this guy, whose pimped-out enclosure got a lot of oohs and ahhs. Speaking as a guy who walks around town and tech conferences with an accordion on his back, I applaud personal expression of all kinds and salute this gentleman with a filet mignon on a flaming sword! I plan to build a gamer/music studio PC rig at some point, and you’d better believe it’s going to be at least this decked out:

Ages ago, a full two years before The Empire hired me, they sent me an Acer Ferrari 1000 as part of program to get prominent Canadian bloggers interested in Vista. I still have it…

…but it no longer has Vista. Under Windows 7, it feels a little snappier. I plan to use the machine, which is now a couple of years old and whose specs are a bit lower than than developer-grade laptops that The Empire provides me, as a “reality check” device, where I’ll test applications that both Microsoft and I develop.

I never thought I’d see the day when people would get jazzed about an upcoming Windows operating system, never mind sign up in droves to get their hands on a pre-release version, but that’s just what happened. The room was filled with geek love and techno-lust for Windows 7.

It was also great to meet new people and make new connections with the tech community at large, and they in turned seemed quite happy to meet some of the actual human faces that make up Microsoft. When we asked the audience if they’d like to see more Saturday events like this, they responded with a resounding “YES!”, and we’re keeping that in mind as we plan events for 2009 and beyond.

All in all, the Toronto Area Windows 7 Installfest was a lot of fun, and from where I stand, it was a great success! Thanks to everyone who attended and helped out!

This article originally appeared in the Coffee and Code blog.

Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team is hosting a Coffee and Code in Ottawa next week! They’ll be there for the EnergizeIT cross-Canada tour and they’re holding a Coffee and Code on Tuesday, April 7th from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Bridgehead at 109 Bank Street (at the corner of Bank and Albert).

“Les Bons Gars”, Christian Beauclair, Rick Claus and Pierre Roman will be hosting this event, where he’ll talk about EnergizeIT, the future of Windows from the client to the cloud, the industry in general and anything else!

This article was originally published in Canadian Developer Connection.

I’m currently in London, Ontario at the Delta Armouries London hotel, where my coworkers Rodney Buike and Qixing Zheng will be doing a presentation for EnergizeIT later tonight. We’re spending the day polishing our presentations and getting the usual administrivial stuff done.

We didn’t want to spend our day cooped up in our hotel rooms, so we asked one of the hotel staff where the business center was. I didn’t relish the thought of hanging out in a business center all day; although they usually have more table space than your typical hotel room, they’re usually some small windowless cave.

We were told that the business center, which used to be located in the basement had since closed. “We got a lot of complaints from women who didn’t feel safe going to get some work done in a basement room late at night,” he said, “so we set up a computer with a printer in the lobby, and another one up in the lounge, where you can work.”

He pointed in the direction of lounge, where we saw this:

Well, that’s several steps up from a business center!

(In case you wondering about the architecture of the hotel, it used to be an actual armoury where soldiers were trained during the two World Wars.)

Here’s what the lounge looks like. There’s a bar in the corner, which isn’t open as I write this (around noon). Qixing and I are the only ones here at the moment; I suppose it gets a little busier in the late afternoon:

Here’s something most business centers don’t offer – but should! I may have to sample some of their wares later tonight. It’s business research, you know:

And instead of the windowless caves that most business centers are, we have this view:

Qixing and I have set up office in one of the big round booths in the lounge. Here’s Qixing and our “road warrior” office setup:

In case you’re wondering where the accordion is, it’s in my room. I’m bringing it out later tonight, when we’ll be speaking in the presentation room, whose entrance is pictured below:

If you’re coming out to tonight’s EnergizeIT event in London (in the hotel’s ballroom named “The Gunnery”, it’s free and isn’t completely booked yet), we’ll see you there!

This article originally appeared in the Coffee and Code blog.

Montreal is the home to some amazing cafe culture, so it’s only fitting that we hold a Coffee and Code there. As part of Microsoft’s cross-Canada EnergizeIT tour,  we’ll be holding the first Montreal Coffee and Code at the Cafe Depot at 550 Sherbrooke on Monday, March 16th from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m..

This is your chance to meet up with the guys I like to call “les bons gars”: Microsoft Developer Advisor Christian Beauclair and IT Pro Advisor Pierre Roman in a relaxed setting where you can talk to them about Microsoft, EnergizeIT, Windows 7, the tech industry in general or anything else (be sure to ask Christian about the new DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned).

They’re a friendly bunch, speak both official languages – English/French and C#/VB –  and they’ll even offer to buy you some coffee!

It’s been announced on Canadian Developer Connection, but I thought I’d mention it here: we folks at Microsoft Canada are gearing up for the 2009 edition of EnergizeIT, a cross-country tour where we’ll show off our upcoming tools, technology and platforms.

For starters, we’ll be showing off Windows 7. I’ve been running it on both my “developer” and “TPS report-writing” laptops for weeks now, and it’s been nothing but rock-solid: all my XP and Vista-based software, from development apps to games and even my synth software (I run Ableton Live and FL Studio, a.k.a. “FruityLoops”) work like a charm on it. We’ll show off the improved UI, additional capabilities that you can take advantage of as a developer, and even give you a chance to install the beta on your own machine.

EnergizeIT is also an opportunity to check out what we’ve got in the way of server tech, such as the revamped Windows Server 2008 R2 with its Hyper-V virtualization and Windows Azure, our cloud computing platform that scales to meet your needs and saves you maintenance headaches.

We’ll have five different kinds of events at our EnergizeIT stops:

• The Future of the Windows Platform: We’ll talk about Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, all with this question in mind: “How is this going to make my life easier?”
• Energize IT: From the Client to the Cloud: Find out about our “Software + Services” vision, where you can access computing power anywhere, any time and on any device.
• Student Connection: Get Energized About the Future! Get a head start on your journey from academia to “the real world” as we show you some upcoming tech and talk about the opportunities that exist, even in current economic mess.
• Faculty Connection: Supporting Faculty to Support the Future: Find out about our programs to support people who teach technology and let us know what you need.
• Enthusiast Connection: Windows 7 Installfest: Take Windows 7 for a spin and ask us about our experiences with our up-and-coming desktop operating system.

In the past, we’ve only held EnergizeIT in Toronto, but this time, we’re borrowing a page from Aerosmith’s book and coming to your hometown. Starting in mid-March and running through until the end of April, we’ll be hitting these cities:

• Victoria
• Vancouver
• Edmonton
• Calgary
• Regina
• Saskatoon
• Winnipeg
• London
• Kitchener-Waterloo
• Mississauga
• Toronto
• Ottawa
• Montreal
• Halifax
• Moncton
• Fredericton
• St. John’s

As for how much it’ll cost for you to attend our EnergizeIT events: nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Honkis de Konkis, as we say in some circles. Simply put, it’s free of charge.

Want to find out more about EnergizeIT or register? Go hit the EnergizeIT site.

Before I begin, let me show you the official banner for EnergizeIT, the upcoming cross-Canada expo featuring Microsoft’s up-and-coming technologies:

It’s fine and dandy, but I thought that the image below might better illustrate EnergizeIT’s awesomeness:

The Force is strong in this band!
Click the image to see it at full size.

I tried running this suggestion by the legal department, and wouldn’t you know it, they put the kibosh on that idea in no time flat. Leave it to those buzzkills to harsh on my mellow.

But seriously – EnergizeIT is coming soon. It used to be a single-day conference, but we’ve decided, like that awesome band pictured above, to take our show on the road. We, the folks in Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism group, will be going across Canada and showing off up-and-coming Microsoft tools and technologies including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Azure and Visual Studio 2010. Yes, the current state of Windows Mobile has me less than pleased, but I’ve been enjoying these other parts of the Microsoft technology stack.

For more about EnergizeIT, I suggest you take a look at this Canadian Developer Connection article written by my friend and fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe.