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The time has come to reveal where I’m working next. I’ve been cast as the 12th incarnation of Doctor Who (he’s like a time-travelling Dalai Lama!), in which the show takes on a more urban ethnic feel to better reflect the demographics of modern-day Britain:

Oh, I kid. Here’s a better hint at what I’m doing next. I’ll be in Minneapolis from May 6th through 8th to help out with Minnebar, the Minnesota BarCamp event:

More later.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Officially, my last day as a Microsoft employee is tomorrow, Friday, April 22nd, 2011. However, that’s Good Friday, which means that today is effectively my last day on the job. After that, well…I’ll tell that story later.

I’m headed over to the Meadowvale office later this afternoon to meet with my fellow evangelist and Master of all Hardware Damir and drop off my Microsoft-assigned equipment, and wow, is there a lot of it! I’ll make sure to get a photo of it all and post it here for you to see.

I’ve been posting videos of various versions of Europe’s The Final Countdown all week in honour of my departure. Today’s version features a solo performer on the kazookeylele, a Frankenstein instrument that combines a toy piano, ukelele and kazoo. Enjoy!

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

It’s “Hump Day” in my final week at Microsoft, and in honour of these last days, I’m posting a different version of Europe’s classic ‘80s hair-rock hit, The Final Countdown, on each day. Hump Day calls for a hump-tastic cover of the song, and there isn’t a more hump-tastic one than this classic version by Deep Sunshine. You will not be able to un-hear it once heard.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

I may be leaving Microsoft’s Canada’s DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) team at the end of this week, but at the same time, we’ve got a great new addition to the team: Susan Ibach (she’s @HockeyGeekGirl on Twitter)! If you were at the TechDays conference in the past couple of years, you’ve probably seen her speak in one of the developer tracks, and if you were at TechEd New Orleans last year, you might have seen her infamous certification rap performed live.

Her gift is teaching. She’s been a Microsoft certified trainer for about a decade, she’s helped run hands-on labs at various Microsoft conferences, from PDC to the internal TechReady conference, she’s helped been heavily involved with our “Train the Trainer” events, explained the value of getting your Microsoft certification to countless devs and IT Pros and took part in the IT Grand Prix.

You can find out more about her in her inaugural post on Canadian Developer Connection. Welcome to the team, Susan!

This is my final week in my biggest, most influential, broadest-reaching job to date, and in its honour, I’m marking my last days with a different version of Europe’s classic ‘80s hair-rock hit, The Final Countdown. Today’s rendition: an orchestral version led by three cellos performed by an orchestra from Liepaja, Latvia, still with the head-bangin’.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

If you’re curious about NUIs – that’s Natural User Intefaces – and if you’re going to be in the area of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus, you’ll probably going to want to check out this TorCHI session: Best Practices in Interface Design and Applying Them to Microsoft Surface. Here’s the abstract:

See how Natural User Interfaces such as Microsoft Surface and gesture-based UI’s such as Kinect are being applied in the real world.  This session will outline many of the “dos and don’ts” when designing for these new paradigms. More importantly, we will also discuss what techniques and behaviors can be applied to help a good HCI designer become a great one.

The session will be presented by James Horgan, Creative Director, Sales and Strategy at Infusion. James studied industrial design at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, UK and has been an award-winning industrial and interaction designer for many of the world’s premier brands. James has had the good fortune to design everything from hearing aids for children to the world’s first Microsoft Partner Surface application, using a unique combination of visual, functional, and architectural skills.

Here are the details for the session:

• Date: Thursday, April 21, 2011
• Time: Refreshments at 6:45 p.m., session starts at 7:00 p.m.
• Location: Bahen Centre for Information Technology (40 St. George Street, just north of College), University of Toronto campus
• Cost: Free for TorCHI members, and you can join TorCHI now for a mere $20.00 per year.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.