This week, EnergizeIT heads out to New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Quebec.

This Week in New Brunswick

Creative Commons photo by Stu Pendousmat. Click here for the original.

On Tuesday, Damir and I fly to Moncton for EnergizeIT, where we’ll be doing the EnergizeIT Community Connection presentation. It’s a non-stop no-slides-till-the-very-end demo in which we build the applications and IT infrastructure of a business right in front of you, giving you a grand tour of Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Office 2010 along the way. We’ll be presenting at the Mapleton Rotary Pavilion on 600 Mapleton Road at 6:00 p.m.; if you’d like to catch this free presentation, you can sign up on the registration page.

Creative Commons photo by Stu Pendousmat. Click here for the original.

On Wednesday, Damir and I will drive from Moncton to Fredericton, where we’ll do the same presentation, this time at University of New Brunswick’s Gillin Hall (540 Windsor Street), once again at 6:00 p.m.. As with Moncton’s event, registration is free; you can sign up here.

This Week in Saskatchewan

These aren’t the only places with EnergizeIT Community Connection presentations. In Saskatchewan, we’ve got John Bristowe and Rodney Buike doing these presentations:

• Regina: Tuesday, April 20th at Casino Regina (1880 Saskatchewan Drive)
  in the Telegraph Room (2nd floor mezzanine)
• Saskatoon: Thursday, April 22nd at University of Saskatchewan’s Arts and Science Building
  (9 Campus Drive), room 143

This Week in Quebec

Meanwhile, in Quebec, Christian Beauclair and Rick Claus will be doing the French edition of the presentations in these cities:

• Quebec City: Tuesday, April 20th at École Nationale d’Administration Publique (555 boulevard Charest E) in the amphitheatre
• Trois-Rivières: Wednesday, April 21st at Musee Quebecois de Culture Populaire (200 rue Laviolette) in the Cogeco Room

Next Week in Mississauga

Creative Commons photo by Ian Muttoo. Click here for the original. 

And the final city of the EnergizeIT Community Connection tour is Mississauga, where Damir and I will do the presentation in the MPR room of Microsoft Canada’s headquarters (1950 Meadowvale Boulevard). It takes place at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 27th.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Ah, student life. While waiting to do a presentation at Fanshawe College in London, I had a quick student lunch, pictured below:

Damir and I have been touring all over the country over the past couple of weeks for EnergizeIT. Two weeks ago, we were in Kelowna and Victoria, last week we were in London and Kitchener/Waterloo and this week, we’ll be in Fredericton and Moncton. We’re “Team Rover”, one of three teams visiting 20 cities, large and small, across Canada, with John Bristowe and Rodney Buike making up “Team West” and Christian Beauclair and Rick Claus comprising “Team East”.

EnergizeIT’s main presentations are about what’s possible with the Microsoft platform, with a focus on those parts that lots of people use to help them get work done and make their businesses go: Visual Studio 2010, Azure, SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. In those presentations, we’re demoing these tools and technologies in action with live code and live data, and yes, we’re promoting Microsoft stuff.

In addition to the main presentations, we’ve been doing academic visits, which are quite different. They’re about helping students make the transition from school to the working world. In these presentations, I make very little mention of Microsoft, leaving it just to:

• Hey, I work for Microsoft!
• A quick story about how I landed my job at Microsoft
• At the very end, I point them to a couple of sites:
  • DreamSpark, where Microsoft offers a lot of free developer software to students
  • Imagine Cup, Microsoft’s international student programming competition
  • Our blogs, Canadian Developer Connection and IT Pro Connection

The academic presentation focuses on the sorts of things that one should do to have a career in technology that’s rewarding in every sense of the word. The core message is that you, the student about to enter the working world, are in charge of your own future, and that in this industry and time, there’s a lot you can do to shape it.

Each of the teams has been working from a presentation created by Qixing Zheng, who used to be with the Microsoft Canada Developer Evangelism team and has since gone on to join the Windows User Experience group, but we’ve been pretty free to add our own twists to it. Our team’s version features a lot of interesting stuff, including:

• The story of my first client meeting, which was a disaster
• The importance of an online presence of some sort
• How to get experience when you’re not yet in the working world
• The value of “soft skills”
• Why operating on just your “left brain” isn’t going cut it anymore
• Ideas from a number of books, including:
  • The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler
  • The Tipping Point and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Negotiating for Dummies by Michael and Mimi Donaldson
  • Celebrating Failure by Ralph Heath

So far, Damir and I have done presentations at:

• Camosun College in Victoria
• Douglas College in Vancouver
• Fanshawe College in London
• Conestoga College in Waterloo

and we’re going to present next week here in Toronto at:

• Humber College
• Centennial College

I’d love to do these visits to universities as well as colleges, but the EnergizeIT tour takes place just as universities are going into final exams. I hope that TechDays, which happens from September through December (fall semester in universities) gives us a chance to present at universities across Canada, including my beloved alma mater, Queen’s.

I enjoy doing presentations of all sorts, but I have to admit that there’s a special place in my heart for presenting to students. It’s partly because students are a fun crowd to present to, and partly because there’s the notion of me – of all people, given my checkered academic history – standing at a college or university lectern, presenting ideas to students is rather funny. I love doing the academic visits, and I still have trouble believing that I’m getting paid to do something that’s this much fun.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Victoria, Day 1

The day after Damir and I did our EnergizeIT presentation in Kelowna, it was time to go to our next destination, Victoria, by way of Vancouver.

The Vancouver-to-Victoria flight is so short that you spend almost as much time taxiing as you do in the air. The actual flying time is 15 minutes, while the gate-to-gate time is just under half an hour (if you’ve ever done flown from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, this flight is similar). It’s short enough that it’s done using a Bombardier Dash 8, which is essentially a bus with turboprop engines and wings, right down to the bench-style seat at the back of the plane. If you peek into the seam in the wall behind the last row, you can see the ground crew loading the luggage into the cargo area.

The Dash 8 has tiny overhead bins; they’re so small that my travel accordion won’t fit in them. This required reversing my normal carry-on approach: my laptop bag went overhead, while the accordion went under the seat in front of me:

Victoria’s got a nice airport. I wish more airport waiting areas had trees in them:

The trip from Victoria’s airport to downtown Victoria takes twice as long as the flight in from Vancouver. We were fortunate to get a lift into town from Ron Demedash from the local Microsoft user group. Thanks, Ron!

One of the perks of being a Microsoft employee with a lot of travel in your schedule is that we have a deal with Fairmont hotels. Fairmont buildings are often a nice change from Mies van der Rohe-esque filing-cabinets-in-the-sky, tending to be grand old-school ones like Toronto’s Royal York, Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier, Calgary’s Palliser and Victoria’s Empress, pictured below. Better still, their service is excellent.

We settled into the hotel, and later that evening, Ron picked us up and took us to rabbit-rich University of Victoria. We did our EnergizeIT presentation – two hours and forty-five minutes of pure actual-working-code-and-infrastructure demo with no slides until the very, very end – in the Engineering and Computer Science building. The room was packed; Ron had to bring in extra chairs to seat people at the back.

We handed out the usual raffle prizes at the end of the presentation with a special bonus prize provided by Ron: a budget tablet computer, with four built-in apps. The icons on the tablet are easy to read, and the screen is readable even in bright sunlight. To sweeten the deal, we threw in a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate:

On our way in, we noticed that the elevator featured something that looked like a button labelled “EARTHQUAKE”.

A quick check confirmed that it was not a button that took you to a penthouse club or restaurant named “Earthquake”, nor was it a button that summoned seismic activity:

I assume it lights up in the event of an earthquake, which I also assume is a warning to the elevator’s passengers to get out. Does anyone know if such elevators have other built-in safety features, such as stopping on the nearest floor in the event of a quake?

Victoria, Day 2

Damir flew back to Vancouver to do an academic presentation at Douglas College, while I stayed in Victoria to do an academic presentation at Camosun College’s Interurban campus. I didn’t get a picture of my academic audience, but did get a shot of this ad for Camosun later that night in downtown Victoria:

The academic presentations are part of the EnergizeIT tour – we do them at colleges close to the place where we’re doing the main EnergizeIT sessions. Unlike the main session, where we talk about what’s possible with the Microsoft-based platform, the academic session is all about helping students make the transition to the working world and plan their careers in high-tech. Unlike the main EnergizeIT session, which is a Microsoft-technology-specific “do these things in the right order or the demo doesn’t work” affair for working techies, the academic presentation is conversational, not specific to any tool or technology, and has plenty of room for dialogue with the audience.

The Trip Home

The next day, I went back to Victoria’s airport…

Back on the Dash 8:

Here’s the obligatory “art shot”. Propellers are great photo subjects:

And half an hour later, I was in Vancouver’s airport. (Memo to Toronto’s Pearson airport: would it kill you to offer free wifi?)

…and a few hours later, I landed back at home.

Coming up this week: Damir and I hit the road and drive to our EnergizeIT presentations in London and Kitchener.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

On Tuesday, Damir and I flew into Kelowna to do an EnergizeIT presentation for their software developers and IT Pro types. I must say that the Okanagan Valley, where Kelowna is situated, looks gorgeous from the air:

We landed, checked into our hotel, took a quick peek at the conference room where we’d be doing the presentation and then headed downtown for lunch. We ended up at a barbecue place called Memphis Blues, where we both had the “Big Daddy”, a sandwich combining pulled pork and brisket. It came with coleslaw and some really nice beans on the side, and we washed it down with Boylan’s diet root beer. Had we not had work to do, I would’ve gone for some “Lynchburg Lemonade” (Jack, lemonade and other stuff) and a shot of Bulleit (they have a decent selection of bourbons).

There wasn’t much time for sightseeing – we wouldn’t be in town even 24 hours – but I did manage to snap a couple of shots of the local scenery near the hotel, including the “Sails” fountain:

And a view of the lake:

We went back to the hotel and started setting up for our “From the Client to the Cloud” presentation, a giant demo in which we present a grand tour of what’s possible with Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2010, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Azure. I do developer-y things, Damir does IT Pro-y things and we show you – with actual working code, data and infrastructure – the sort of system you can build to help you get things done. And by “get things done”, I mean a real, working, employ-real-people, provide-real-service kind of business (we like tell-the-world-where-your-cat-is-right-now applications as much as the next person, and you can build that sort of thing on the Microsoft platform too).

Here’s Damir doing the setup for the presentation on his machine (that’s my laptop in the foreground):

And here’s a shot of the room about an hour before the session started:

We played to a full house. And I’m not kidding when I say “play”: unlike many other tech presentations, there’s no PowerPoint in this one until the very end. Instead, the EnergizeIT session has me and Damir telling a story about starting our own online insurance company and building the applications and infrastructure right in front of the audience. It’s all storytelling, live demos, actual working code and data, and of course, jokes (including me telling Damir to “Dance, server monkey, dance!”).

The feedback we got from the audience was great. Many said that they loved watching an all-demo presentation and were blown away by what Visual Studio 2010 could do. A couple of people said that watching the presentation made them want to delve into Visual Studio a little more, as we’d shown them many features and capabilities they didn’t know our IDE had. A number of people were also impressed by the breadth of the Microsoft platform and how easy it was to move applications from on-premises servers to the cloud.

With the presentation done, Damir decided to take it easy, while I went out with some of the attendees for burgers and beer at the nearby Tonics Pub. I had to make it a (relatively) early night, though: we were bound for Victoria the next day.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

In a couple of weeks, Microsoft’s Technical Evangelism Team will embark on the EnergizeIT 2010 Tour, a cross-country set of presentation showing what’s possible with Microsoft tools and technology. If you want to know how Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and other Microsoft tools and tech can cut your costs and help your business and organization, you should catch an EnergizeIT event near you. They’re free, and they’re happening in the next few weeks!

Depending on the city, there will be different “flavours” of EnergizeIT events. I’ve written some descriptions below, and if you want the full set of details, check out the EnergizeIT page.

The “From the Client to the Cloud” Full-Day Events (Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal)

In Canada’s six largest cities, we’ll hold our EnergizeIT From the Client to the Cloud full-day events, where we’ll cover the Microsoft-based platform in detail. And yes, even though it’s full-day, it’ll still be free!

Please note: The Toronto session is currently booked. You can register, but you’ll end up on the first-come, first served waiting list.

In the morning, we’ll talk about the big picture. We’ll show you a scenario featuring the Microsoft-based platform as seen from different points of view: the customer, the information worker, the developer and the IT professional. You’ll see our latest and greatest as well as our up-and-coming developer goodies: Silverlight, .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. We’ll show you Windows 7 and Azure in action, talk about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, and tell you how all of Microsoft’s stuff works together.

Just as the morning session answers the question “What’s the latest technology?”, the afternoon sessions answer the question “How do I get to the latest technology from where I am now?” These sessions, split into two tracks – one on infrastructure management and deployment, one on the development process – will cover what you can do with our tools and technology in a little more depth. They’ll show you what you need to implement what you saw in the morning session and provide a roadmap you can follow to learn more and take action.

For more details about From the Client to the Cloud events or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeIT From the Client to the Cloud page.

The “Community Connection” Evening Events (Many Cities Across Canada)

We’ll also hold Community Connection events in the evening in many cities across Canada,where we’ll do the “big picture” session (the morning session) of our From the Client to the Cloudevents.

The Community Connection evening events will take place in the following cities:

• British Columbia: Vancouver, Kelowna and Victoria
• Alberta: Edmonton and Calgary
• Saskatchewan: Regina and Saskatoon
• Manitoba: Winnipeg
• Ontario: Ottawa, London, Kitchener and Mississauga
• Quebec: Montreal, Quebec City and Trois-Rivières
• Atlantic Canada: Halifax, St. John’s, Moncton and Fredericton

For more details about Community Connection or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeITCommunity Connection page.

Office 2010 Installfests (Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Montreal, Mississauga)

I’ve been using the beta and release candidate versions of Office 2010 in my day-to-day work for the past few months – PowerPoint for my public speaking stuff, Outlook for email, scheduling and get-things-done stuff and OneNote for my copious note-taking. We’d like you to take it for a spin!

Join us at one of our Microsoft Office 2010 Installfests and we’ll hook you up with the latest build of Office, show you some of our favourite features and demonstrate how to get the most out of our productivity suite.

For more details about the Office 2010 Installfests or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeIT Office 2010 Installfest page.

Academic Sessions

We’ll also be passing through a number of colleges across Canada, talking to students about getting ready for the working world and showing them resources that they can use to fire up their careers.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Whenever you do anything where money changes hands, from getting cash from the ATM to buying anything – movie tickets, groceries, a new pair of shoes or a new car to booking a flight and hotel room, chances are that there’s some Microsoft technology involved. It could be an SQL Server database, an app written in Visual Studio, a site living on IIS or Azure or a business process powered by SharePoint, and more likely than not, someone was using Office as well. From devices that fit in your pocket to cavernous data centres, the Microsoft platform helps millions of people across a broad spectrum of industries get real work done every day.

Want to know what’s possible with the Microsoft-based platform? Want to know how it all fits together? That’s what the EnergizeIT 2010 tour is for. In March and April, we’re visiting 20 cities across Canada – as far west as Victoria and as far east as St. John’s – to host free local gatherings where we show you how you can take advantage of our tools and technology to drive your business and your career.

EnergizeIT will comprise different sorts of events in different cities, all of which are listed below.

The “From the Client to the Cloud” Full-Day Events
(Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal)

In Canada’s six largest cities, we’ll hold our EnergizeIT From the Client to the Cloud full-day events, where we’ll cover the Microsoft-based platform in detail. And yes, even though it’s full-day, it’ll still be free!

In the morning, we’ll talk about the big picture. We’ll show you a scenario featuring the Microsoft-based platform as seen from different points of view: the customer, the information worker, the developer and the IT professional. You’ll see our latest and greatest as well as our up-and-coming developer goodies: Silverlight, .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. We’ll show you Windows 7 and Azure in action, talk about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, and tell you how all of Microsoft’s stuff works together.

Just as the morning session answers the question “What’s the latest technology?”, the afternoon sessions answer the question “How do I get to the latest technology from where I am now?” These sessions, split into two tracks – one on infrastructure management and deployment, one on the development process – will cover what you can do with our tools and technology in a little more depth. They’ll show you what you need to implement what you saw in the morning session and provide a roadmap you can follow to learn more and take action.

For more details about From the Client to the Cloud events or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeIT From the Client to the Cloud page.

The “Community Connection” Evening Events
(Many Cities Across Canada)

We’ll also hold Community Connection events in the evening in many cities across Canada, where we’ll do the “big picture” session (the morning session) of our From the Client to the Cloud events.

The Community Connection evening events will take place in the following cities:

• British Columbia: Vancouver, Kelowna and Victoria
• Alberta: Edmonton and Calgary
• Saskatchewan: Regina and Saskatoon
• Manitoba: Winnipeg
• Ontario: Ottawa, London, Kitchener and Mississauga
• Quebec: Montreal, Quebec City and Trois-Rivières
• Atlantic Canada: Halifax, St. John’s, Moncton and Fredericton

For more details about Community Connection or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeIT Community Connection page.

Office 2010 Installfests
(Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Montreal, Mississauga)

I’ve been using the beta and release candidate versions of Office 2010 in my day-to-day work for the past couple of months – PowerPoint for my public speaking stuff, Outlook for email, scheduling and get-things-done stuff and OneNote for my copious note-taking. We’d like you to take it for a spin!

Join us at one of our Microsoft Office 2010 Installfests and we’ll hook you up with the latest build of Office, show you some of our favourite features and demonstrate how to get the most out of our productivity suite.

For more details about the Office 2010 Installfests or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeIT Office 2010 Installfest page.

Academic Sessions

We’ll also be passing through a number of colleges across Canada, talking to students about getting ready for the working world and showing them resources that they can use to fire up their careers.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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.