From another session Breeze jointly did with Kenetics whom supplied the hardware for the entire TechEd 08.

It was a great session Scotty & myself did around demo-ing the bits that were used to build the system.

Hi folks,

Have I got a deal for you.... no seriously we’ve got a great night planned leading up into TechEd. I’m really looking forward to it.
(ok let me get my dates right)

On August 27^th Wednesday night (Wednesday week from now) we’re lucky enough to get....

Angelo Laris from Decillion(seasoned member of our user group) lined up to talk to us about A4SWIFT (which is basically what Angelo and Decillion roll out). Decillion are formally recognised by Microsoft as being experts in this area and are also a member of the Microsoft BizTalk Virtual Technology Specialist Program.
(I’ve also got a couple of house keeping tasks to mention…..first the great stuff…)

Angelo sent me through his outline:

1. Introduction to SWIFT                                                                                                                    5min

2. What is a SWIFT Message.                                                                                                           5min

3. The Schema Definitions.                                                                                                               10-20 min

4. The HTML Form Generator (Young Youn will present or help me out here)           20min

5. The Business Rules Engine – HOW to validate a SWIFT Message.                                30-60min

6. The Message Repair using Infopath and BAS.30-60min                                                   30-60min

Looks fantastic – what you are going to see is how BizTalk can be extended, Angelo is talking about a mature product base and it’s great to see just how others are using and extending BizTalk while adhering to industry standards.

One of the main questions I get is “What can I use the BizTalk Rules Engine for?”…..ask no further.

What is in store for our Aug 27th Session

Where:
Microsoft, North Ryde
1 Epping Road

When:
6pm - Beer + Pizza
6.30pm - Kick off

Aug 27^th -

Feel free to forward this to any of your colleagues/friends I may have missed (tell them to register on the Sydbiz.org site to be included)

Other Business:
* TechEd 2008 – We’ve finally got RFID end-to-end at the conference (See my blog post here – had the media interested and lots of interviews, Breeze got the green light 40 days out from TechEd......no pressure)
Some quick stats:

1. Over 70 RFID Readers (fixed + windows mobile based) with 118 Antennas.

2. Lots of Intelligent information surfacing.

3. BizTalk Server, BizTalk RFID, BizTalk RFID V1.1, MOSS + good old Silverlight 2 b2 is pretty much running the show.

4. We’re ‘printing’ (or encoding is the tech term) over 5500 tags – the hardest part was to actually print a corresponding barcode so other systems can handle the badge.

5. I’m due for a holiday at the end of this.....(this is why I couldn’t squeeze a meeting in last month)

So A BIG THANK YOU for those that helped out with the testing of the system (fingers crossed on show day) at previous user group meetings.

* Call for Speakers/Other People to take Tyre Kicking Sessions
If you’ve got any aspect of BizTalk (& related) that you want to share with us....let me know, love to hear what you’ve got to say.
* Don’t forget – we’ve launched an email forum group ‘oztalk@groups.yahoo.com’
Great to see a lot of you already joined – it’s a *private* group open to BizTalk User Group members (we currently have Brisbane, Auckland and Sydney on)
Invite only – send me an email if you want to join and I’ll send you out an invite. (Thanks to all the guys on it so far)

Love to see you there – and reply to this email to let me know for catering.
Cheers,

Mick Badran (MVP - BizTalk) | Microsoft Readiness Instructor
Collaboration and Integration Specialist

Breeze Training Pty Ltd | m: +61 404842 833

http://blogs.breezetraining.com.au/mickb

 Register - here

Folks I hope you're heading to TechEd this year - it's a brand new breed! Why....????

Because myself and my team are covering the entire event with RFID tags, we'll give you tags - enabling you the delegate to 'live' the technology!!! (seen Tron lately) we'll set up some great RFID interactive capabilities.

Sample card TechEd tag

It all started when... I went to MS and said..."I've got an idea...." and the teched committee(s) saw the plan and loved it (there were some sleepless nights there as well :).

I've been to over 10+ yrs of TechEd (sometimes 3 a yr, US, Oz + NZ) and I figured it should be a chance to play with the technology! Hands on - get dirty. Build, break, play + learn...all that stuff.

As a MS Ptr Readiness trainer/Regular teched speaker - I appreciate the value of sessions but as a delegate I would be looking for the show me/talk to me/let *me* see how it's done.... a bit like plasticine to mould and meld the way that I (as a delegate) would need it!!!!!

So in light of this - Breeze is providing a (huge) BizTalk RFID based RFID Event System that you guys can interact with/we'll walk you through the making of, setup & how the system is put together. We're getting some posters made up and myself as a trainer, would want to share the knowledge around this system.

Let's see what the system does.....(as of 5pm today...nothing like moving targets... :)

The vision we have is:

1. You walk into a room and the welcome screen will say "Hi Paul" (and you'll fade out, do something special...we've got a couple of ideas here). This component actually is a 'real-time visual display' of out in the field events. In our case it's people walking past readers...or it could be boxes, trucks, palettes etc. Built in Silverlight 2 harnessing the WCF Eventing Services in real time. (We've been able to crank our code up to 150 people walking past *exactly* the same spot)
   
   Fellow Breezer.... Scotty (a member of the BizTalk Virtual TS team) has a blurb on some of the details on the initial RFID/Silverlight nuts 'n bolts
   
   (we've also got a webcast on how this is created)
   
2. So you guys as an interactive experience as you walk in the room with various graphs (developers in the room, it pros...) and charts - some DRAFT IDEAs
   All done in Silverlight
   
   
   We've actually got MS Shane Morris on the case here - he never gives up a chance to get down and dirty with Silverlight.
   Check out his thoughts at the moment - big thanks Shane :)
   
   So there may be an 'Avatar' thingy that gets displayed up on the screen (as Shane mentions).....a quiet secret .....you want to 'pimp your avatar'???? Come and see the Breeze room and we'll make it happen...only those who rock up - I've got a Windows Mobile App that will do it for you.....
   
   
3. Some other areas that may/may not make the final show are having things like:
   1. 'Information Points' - areas that you could simply be standing near, talking to someone and a screen may show where your collegues are, or what you may have in common with the person you're talking to. e.g. belong to community User Groups; where the next sessions of interest are for you.
      These may be distributed throughout the conference.
      
   2. As you go to a session - if you stay longer than 15 mins (for e.g.) the system contacts Commnet and makes a session eval available for you to fill out (could be done while you're sitting in the session
      
   3. Breeze will have a room that will be driving all this - be sure to come and see us. Our guys will be more than happy to take you through 'the bunker'
      
   4. No more hold ups at the doors (hopefully :) with people individually reading your barcodes, you can just walk straight in (imagine if skiing chairlift lines were like that :)
      
4. The other major component to the system is an Exhibitor System which is run on a PDA equipped with a Kenetics RFID Reader built on BizTalk RFID 1.1 Mobile (still in beta - nervous who me?). The Kenetics crew have been very helpful and when I embarked on this application I was given the H/W and a C++ DLL....."What..you don't know C++?" - not since uni folks....developed the RFID component in 4 days!!!
   1. The application is for when exhibitors on the floor, they scan your RFID Tag and you can continue the conversation. The scan range is around 2-10cms.
   2. There is also local SqlCe storage, with store/fwd capabilities. I'm using SqlCe merge replication to keep the data safe centrally - which proved to be interesting.
   3. Currently - the MS Stand and the HP stand will have the devices, the RFID Reader + this mobile App (the other exhibitors are still reading barcodes)
      
5. TechEd Event information is to be made available through Analysis Cubes so you guys can pull up a pivot table (looks impressive to your boss) and play with the event data. Things like attendance in sessions, audience breakdown by interest or by technology etc. - it would be great to do something like an 'Amazon' - such as if you're a .NET developer having.... "Other people who are also .NET developers went to these other sessions...."
   
   So as a delegate I can get a 'group feel' for what sessions I should be seeing next - sometimes there's a time where non of the sessions are on my immediate agenda, it would be great to have this information available to help me make my decision on what session I should see in that time slot.
   (e.g. 85% of SQL developers chose this session....)
   
6. There's a whole bunch of H/W coming from Kenetics which we'll be giving a session at TechEd on how we built it all!!!
   
7. Lastly I thought I'd just mention a quick blurb on the RFID info.
   - there *may* be some apprehension about a delegate getting a 'tag' and the whole "big brother is watching" thing. Let me dispel a couple of rumours
   1. tags are similar to barcodes - they simply contain a number. read differently but from that respect the same (imagine if you could go into your favourite sporting store, and say "I'll have a new shoes" and they knew your size, your brand, and whether it's in stock instantly - now you could even have a self-serve kiosk around that as well!!!)
      
   2. Your tag can't be read from satellites - lots of physics comes into play here...namely a big one of power. If you think about when TV stations need to broadcast to space, they have a large dish somewhere, 50 guys peddling bikes to generate the power and then they transmit bursts.
      
      So...no. - simply cover the tag with your hand and you can't be read. (water and radio waves don't go that well)
      
   3. My vision is to make this *your* teched - as you can see we're being transparent and open about the system and how it works. Any time drop in and we'll show you through.
      

 

ON ANOTHER NOTE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT - my workflow session I'm delivering - you've got rare oppty....

SOA305
Getting Workflows Running and Talking in Your Applications
04/09/2008 2:00PM-3:15PM

Once you understand the basics of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and can put together a workflow using the built-in activities, you will need to know how to get that workflow running in a variety of hosting environments and communicate between the workflow and the host application or the outside world. This session gives you a solid foundation to get started with these techniques. Gain a better understanding of how workflows exist in a hosting process and how to control the hosting services. Learn about the various forms of communication that can exist between a running workflow and the hosting application as well as with outside Web and WCF Services. Also, learn about the persistence and tracking features of WF.

- I've got a technical session on Workflow Foundation.
- Of course you're planning on seeing my session :) - WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO COVER? WHAT DO *YOU* WANT TO KNOW ABOUT?

(You've got the opportunity to provide feedback and while I'm still 'building' the session - hopefully I can incorporate your needs!)

More later and I'd love to hear your thoughts on above with a comment or two.....be great to see you at TechEd!!!!

Over and out

 

Mick.

There's a great line up this month that are too good to keep secret.

Some fellow CSD experts are lining up for some great topics to give all around Workflow and WCF!!!

Does it get better? Get on and register.

For more, check out the Live Calendar 

Live Webcasts

MSDN Webcast: Transactional Windows Communication Foundation Services with Juval Lowy (Level 200)

Monday, July 7, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:15 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build Services with Jon Flanders (Level 300)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: WCF Extensibility Deep Dive with Jesus Rodriguez (Level 400)

Friday, July 11, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Bringing Enterprise Data to Life with SharePoint Server and Windows Communication Foundation (Level 300)

Friday, July 18, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

If you're thinking about cracking on with Silverlight - then here's the place to start.

This was covered earlier today(yesterday) in MIX08

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2008/03/05/download-links-for-mix08-announcements.aspx

I've now managed to get a moment to share a fantastic experience with you.

What a trip!!! I was away for 2 weeks in total with the first week spent in San Jose at the Office Developer Conference (ODC) 2008 which as good to touch base with some of the Sharepoint folks and see how others solve challenges that drive me up the wall.

Being in a hotel in the middle of 'Silicon Valley' Clayton and I were struggling to find Wireless internet access - the frustrating thing was that everywhere else in the town there were at least 20 networks on offer....except in our hotel room. We found a spot on the window ledge.

Then I flew up to Seattle to meet up with my enthusiastic cousin which resulted in a sneaky trip up to Whistler skiing
The snow was absolutely fantastic!!!!

The second week of my trip turned to the Business end where I had to step up, be prepared and present.
Enter BizTalk RFID Solution Days!!!

The first face I saw when I walked into the Conference was Anush's down in the foyer - Well done Anush for such a great conference!

The way the week was to play out:

• First two days was the conference with sessions and presentations
• The second two days was the training where I had 102 students and fortunately we planned that I was co-presenting with Venkatesh who was the BizTalk RFID Product Architect (he's moved on now and started S3Edge.com). He is a wealth of knowledge and a great person to ask all the 'Why' questions to.
  (he's also related to a great friend of mine here in Australia which was a total surprise!!!)

From the conference (2 days prior to training) I caught up with a buddy of mine Scott Allen (Microsoft App Plat TS - BI, BTS, SQL guru) who has just successfully completed building a 'RFID Lab' within Microsoft NZ. I've got to check it out sooner rather than later - sounded fantastic.

Scotty inspired me with his take on BizTalk RFID - he said "If you tell clients we've got a show on BizTalk RFID, they think they need to have supply chains and infrastructure - it becomes very specialised they feel. If you pitch BizTalk RFID at something around How to reduce the carbon footprint of your production line or increasing production efficiencies then the whole world comes running"

That said - he was getting huge amounts of CEOs from the big end of town to these sessions with a tour of the BizTalk RFID Lab. Well done Scotty!

So Anush grabbed center stage at the beginning of the conference and there were some great messages coming out of the speakers. One of the most noticeable messages for me was "Everyone is waiting for the Wallmart mandates to drive the RFID space, that may have been the case 2 yrs ago. Now we have reached enough critical mass in the industry to really see the explosion in RFID that is occurring"

Australia has been using RFID for years in cattle, lifestock, shipping and now wheat. What Microsoft BizTalk RFID has done is to 'domesticate' the whole process of getting connected and responsive. I was talking to a local CEO of a International Meat exporting business on the weekend - he was very interested in the BizTalk RFID story as his main concern facing his company is traceability. Everyone involved in the supply chain wants traceability - by the time the consumer sits down and uses the product, they want to know everything about it. In this case the meat.

Onward to the Training Arena (held on the MS campus) - training 102 people on Microsoft BizTalk RFID I needed to be prepared the best I could which involved a couple of trips to the MS Technical Services Group (TSG) to get things 'just right' for classroom setup.

Firstly - I want to say "WELL DONE TO ALL THE CREW who sat the course". In 12+yrs of teaching, I was amazed at your ability and enthusiasm!!!
(We actually created the RFID course from scratch and it's amazing to see what's in your head play out better than you expect)

I made a pledge to the class from the outset - From 102 students, I was going endeavor to help get 102 students across the line so they all had working BizTalk RFID Solutions in front of them.

What a great class - I enjoyed it as much as what they did. Out of 102 students I fully expected some students to come up to me by lunch time on the first day and say "Mick, you know this course - it's not what I envisaged etc etc" - 102 completed the course!!!

Let me share some interesting facts:

1. 102 students started.... 102 students completed a working BizTalk RFID end-to-end solution.
2. Some students had 1+yrs experience in BizTalk RFID.....others were seeing it for the first time.
3. One lady hadn't cut a line of code in 15yrs and was very excited.
4. Many different industries were represented in the room, from medical foundations to services to agricultural.....
5. I had to run around with a USB key only once - fortunately I had help.
6. One the first day students were still doing labs at 7pm.
7. Two days is not long enough :)
8. It was absolutely fantastic to have the major players from the BizTalk RFID Product group there in the room and on hand. Anush, Sudhir, Rama and of course Venkatesh (who has a great needed sense of humour for a trainer) - big thank you guys. Wouldn't have been the same without you.
9. Reporting Services reports worked really well.....note - getting the right connection string is key.
10. Mick - please connect power to your laptop when presenting and running VPCs off it.....otherwise we all get an early coffee break

Fantastic and a big thank you to all that were responsible for much making it better than I imagined!!!

The conference is going well and it's good to catch up with some familiar faces such as Angus Logan and Andrew Connell.

Basically a message that I'm getting out of the conference so far is that to do Development in/for Sharepoint is to grab a collection of 'helper tools' (that each presenter has built or partially built) to do a little bit along the way.
Collectively they do things like:

• Create Feature/Element XML of your current project getting ready for deployment.
• Packaging a VSNET Project into a Sharepoint Solution
• Easy Solution Deployment
• Visual Studio Extensions for Sharepoint 1.1 (should have a VSNET2008 version in June)
  

All in all there's a bunch of little tools needed (some I mentioned in a previous post) in and outside of VSNET. So I'd imagine it's a bit of a 'watch this space' with respect to Microsoft and their 'official toolset' for developers.

Off to catch some more sessions and will report back soon.....

I'm currently off at ODC2008 here in the heart of Silicon Valley with Clayton James and pre-conference sessions have started.

Free WiFi networks are everywhere on the streets and just about everywhere.....except for our Hotel!! Where it seems to be the only place in Silcon Valley where there is no *free* Wi-fi...nearly all the hotels have some kind of free WiFi in their foyers...except ours. Very bizarre.....

I had a session about the BizTalk Adapter Pack (blogs.msdn.com/adapters)

We're in a session where they mentioned a few 'must' have deployment tools:

1. SPDeploy - gives you a new Sharepoint Project Option, psexec commands to remotely execute commands.
2. STSDev - Andrew Connell and co. have come up with their bits and pieces - that go away and 'create' projects in line with what you want to do. So probably a good idea to do run these first.
3. WSPBuilder
4. SharepointInstaller

I'm off on a US Road trip today - landing in San Fran tomorrow and catching a train down to San Jose for the Office Dev Con conference (as an attendee this time :). I'll be meeting up with a great Sharepoint developer/instruction Clayton James (fellow Microsoft Readiness Instructor) who has attacked Sharepoint with such a passion - I swear he studies the APIs at night. He's developed some brilliant solutions in the last couple of years - great knowledge.

With a 'brief' bit of skiing in between I'm off to Redmond for the RFID Solution Days where the focus will be:

• Real-time software solutions for enterprise deployments, across verticals

• Hardware innovation and changes driving mass adoption of RFID with focus on performance and price

• Cross Industry-Priority solution efforts at Microsoft that will utilize RFID and sensor data to deliver efficiencies for a People-Ready business across the value chain

• Microsoft’s platform vision, deliverables, and roadmap for RFID and Sensor based solutions

Breeze is running the two day BizTalk RFID training course 'post-conference' where last count I had 80+ students........worried....hmmm.....love a helper or 10!

Wish me luck folks........if you're attending.....don't be a stranger!

Mick.

Hi you hard working (non-surfing, bbq-ing) MCTs who dedicate a good portion of your life ensuring that your classes run smoothly; no one runs out of the room crying; all labs are do-able with work arounds when needed; notes have your scribble all over them; some courses (of late) you may teach saying one thing on the title, only to have an entirely different course between the covers :)

.... all in all as we all know, people in the class never get to see the work that goes on in the 'background' (unless you're prepping for a first teach each night of the course and your eyelids are being held open by matchsticks :)

So come along and meet the others in MCT land.
Meet:
(a) the dinosaurs... who start off every sentence with "I remember when..."
(b) those that are passionate about the MCT program and have big voices.. (Steve did I say that? :)
(c) other MCTs teaching MODL courses.
(d) and even more MCTs doing 'secret squirrel' stuff in Europe that could be a 'new form of learning'....(Kyle - I swear that was the truth serum working from my current interrogators)
(e) other MCTs who find beds on top of grand pianos in lobbies.......I'm not going there

What ever your reasons - it's Christmas (or a little after), it's holidays and Santa's been and gone.

See you there,

Mick.

Microsoft have announced a MCT summit
(from the Horse's mouth)

..... For the very first time, Australia  will be hosting its very own MCT Community gathering to gain and share knowledge!

This exciting Event is from Jan 29 – 31^st 2008.

For more information, https://www.local.microsoft.com.au/australia/events/register/home.aspx?levent=993019&linvitation

Well what a week.....I've finally put a media interview that I originally started with Steve Sloan and Christine Bishop for Aussie FEN Magazine. I was there representing the local industry topology around RFID and MS RFID Services.

It was one of those things that as we were all talking, I did have a thought flash across my mind - "Mick if that comment is taken the wrong way, or you say the wrong thing......then you'd better cherish your last MVP year :)"

Coming through the other side and a Podcast later - it's all looking very cool. There's some great news to be released in this space....more on this later.

Anush Kumar Mr RFID Services himself - had a ball at the R2 Launch and we got to once again hang out. All superb!
There's a handful of people who you meet in your travels that are just great guys.....he's one! And I'm overlooking the fact he wants to get out there on the cricket pitch and play for India!
http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalkrfid/archive/2007/09/28/other-biztalk-rfid-ers-in-blogosphere.aspx - it's all true folks :)

Another guy who's making huge leaps and bounds in the RFID space is our very own Scott Scovell. Scott and I are working on some serious RFID stuff at the moment and he also has a wealth of stories/knowledge from right down at the coal face in not only implementing BizTalk RFID Services but a very good head for the whole integration environment. Stay tuned....... I promise we'll share soon :)

Rocking and rolling.....

It’s been a little while since we’ve got together with TechEd, APEC + the launch of R2...but I’m pretty certain we’re all in a great space going forward J

The launch of BizTalk 2006 R2 was a pretty special event. – What’s new in R2 (ms technet article) for more info.

Big thanks to those of you that came along, hope you got alot out of it (not to mention a copy of Vista Ultimate).
What was the best part for you? For me personally was the fact that so much of the BizTalk product team made the trip across and was there. There to talk to and listen. Hope you had an opportunity to make the most of that.

What’s cooking this month for the group?
You may remember before the launch I had lined up a session on Designing and Building a Reusable BizTalk Framework.

I also want to kick some tyres with you guys and hear how things are progressing along your BizTalk (+ related) journey

Main Event on the night:
- Designing and Building a reusable BizTalk Framework(in R2)

BizTalk 2006 R2 is almost upon us, so this month we’re going to cover a couple of important areas:
1. Designing and develop a reusable BizTalk Framework. This approach will allow you to leverage previous investments within your company’s BizTalk implementations. There are huge benefits in being able to re-apply existing BizTalk applications that have been tested and are known quantities within your solution. The solution we will examine together will leverage EDI/AS2 document processing as well as XML Messaging solutions involving various Messaging Patterns (e.g. Request/Response).
This solution is based on a ‘Process Manager’ Pattern and it’s something I’ve refined over the last 2 years of experience on the coal face.

Meeting details:

When: Oct 31, Food at 6pm, kick off 6.30pm. Finish up around 8pm.
Where: Microsoft
1 Epping Road
Riverside Corporate Park
North Ryde NSW 2113 Australia. (parking available)
Speaker: Mick Badran (your trusty User Group Host)

Add to your calendar from HERE

Reusable Framework Focus Details:
Come and see how to ‘dynamically’ wire your BizTalk Solutions based on message content, rules or specific environmental properties. Being able to accept a wide array of message types is another key element in making these solutions successful.

What’s happening in the BizTalk Community:
BrizTalk.Org – the Brisbane BizTalk user group is always full of new ideas – Dan up there is always doing a great job.
MelBiz.Org – the Melbourne BizTalk user group run by Bill Chesnut (fellow BizTalk MVP) is always doing great things down there.
If you’re in their areas you’re always welcome to pop along.

Share the User Group Soap Box:
I always welcome a new voice and ideas at our group – if you want to share your experiences, thoughts, “I wish I can do..... for my solution...”. Then contact me and I’ll be more than happy to slot you in.
Q. Do you need to have presentation skills: No (just look at me) – can you tell a story in the office or at the pub? Or at a 3 yr old b.day party? – then I want you.
Q. Do I need a PowerPoint Slide Deck? – no!!! *death by powerpoint* is a painful way to go......
Q. Can you capture my ‘best’ side? We take you whichever way you are. J

We’re up for a great night – come along and learn how to make your BizTalk solutions go a long way.
(p.s. Warning: If you’re a *consultant* this session may reduce you to tears J)

See you there and let me know your coming
Mick (mb: 0404 842 833)
http://sydbiz.org