The word is starting to spread about the concurrency skills we are all going to need sooner rather than later. And work is underway at dev-tool-makers to offload some of that work to the "system" -- maybe the language, the compiler, a library, the framework, the operating system -- anything other than the programmer because most of us are even worse at threads-and-locks than we were at malloc-and-free or new-and-delete or any other kind of memory management.

If you were wondering about Microsoft's committment to this (and the PDC talks on the topic weren't enough to convince you) then read Kang Su's latest blog entry about the new Bay Area Office they are establishing for this sort of progress... and wait till you see who's going to be working there...

Kate

Code Camp was a blast! Some pictures are starting to show up on the web site. I had a jam-packed room, I think word must have got out there was no C++ in my talk . But I had some time at the end so I am going to adapt this talk a bit for DevTeach and put some C++ into it

Chris and Jean-Luc did a fantastic job getting volunteers and running the event - and they both spoke, too! It was also fun to reconnect with Val Matison who first got me up in front of an audience doing a technical presentation... more years ago than I care to figure out right now. I couldn't stay all day but the energy was great, the logistics were working well and I think everyone involved deserves a big round of applause!

Kate

I'm so looking forward to tomorrow's Code Camp! Bright and early on Saturday morning I'll be down at Yonge and Bloor with hundreds of other geeky people. Many will be attending their first ever technical event, and many of the speakers will be on stage for the first time too. It promises to be a real rush.

Seems like as good a place as any to thank the contributors who are making it possible:

I put links around the logos, so if there's a company there you're not familiar with, get familiar! These are the leading lights of developer community effort in the Toronto area.

Kate

The December lull is past, for sure. Here's where I'm headed in the next month or so:

• January 11th, CNY .NET Users Group, Syracuse NY, Windows Forms: Deploying Applications with ClickOnce: Advanced Topics
• January 14th, Toronto Code Camp, Yonge and Bloor, The Future is Concurrent
• January 17th, Regina .NET Users Group, Regina Saskatchewan, Managing the Software Lifecycle with Visual Studio 2005 Team System
• January 18th, Saskatoon .NET Users Group, Saskatoon Saskatchewan, Managing the Software Lifecycle with Visual Studio 2005 Team System
• February 7th, SouthColorado .NET, Colorado Springs CO, TBD but probably the ClickOnce talk
• February 8th, TRINUG, Cary NC, TBD but probably the ClickOnce talk 

That should keep me from being bored, eh?

Kate

As we flip calendar years I am delighted (even if I'm not really surprised) to learn that I am being renewed as both a Regional Director and an MVP (for C++.) These two programs are both a big part of my professional life. (The RD program is more exclusive, with only 120-140 RDs around the world compared to thousands of MVPs, but the two programs serve different needs, of course.) They each provide me with amazing information and access to the product teams. They open doors for me throughout the Microsoft-oriented world. Most of all, they introduce me to other RDs and MVPs around the world... an amazing team to feel part of. I am also still a user group leader, a member of the INETA North America and MSDN Canada speaker bureaus, and of course I have a business to run with clients throughout North America.

In not-unrelated news, I qualified for Elite on Air Canada and almost halfway to Super Elite. The previous year I just squeaked to Elite... wonder how much flying 2006 holds for me?

Kate

Actually, my fellow RDs make headlines in industry mags often, especially when they write the article. But this was a bit of a surprise to me: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1904532,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594. Not the announcement (Clemens let some of us know before the papers) but the attention it garnered. Though really, I shouldn't have been surprised. It is an important hire for Microsoft and Clemens, I wish you a happy time "building stuff" at the mother ship.

Kate

Chris has uploaded the deck and a zip file of code for my "Moving C++ Applications to the .NET Framework" talk to the East of Toronto .NET User Group. If you're still thinking about C++/CLI maybe seeing what it does will help your thought processes.

http://gtaeast.torontoug.net/Downloads/1307.aspx

Kate

December for me has been, well, challenging. And though it seems that everyone around me is shutting down for the year, I still have miles to go before I sleep. So I was pleased to notice that the standards process is marching on: ECMA reports that the 90th General Assembly held in Nice, December 9, 2005, approved Standard ECMA-372 (C++/CLI Language Specification).

Back to way too much of everything,
Kate