System.Web.Services.Protocols.BrainException

32 years!

Mark Willems — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:16:00 GMT

Today I reached the age of 32. My lovely girlfriend and my friends bought me a Nintendo Wii for my birthday! I'm very pleased with it. And I also received a wellness threatment during Christmas this year, after we moved into our new house.

Silverlight designer for Microsoft Sharepoint

Mark Willems — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:10:00 GMT

The Beta 2 release of K2 Blackpoint will contain a silverlight designer. Tomorrow and on the 10th of October an event will be hosted by K2 to demonstrate the functionality.

The 1st of October: https://www.clicktoattend.com/global/EventDescription.aspx?eventid=13065

10 October: https://www.clicktoattend.com/global/EventDescription.aspx?eventid=13066

Business Application Automation with Sharepoint and K2 webcast

Mark Willems — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:11:00 GMT

Learn more about how K2 extends SharePoint to allow users to quickly assemble and automate critical business applications. The K2 platform provides rich business process management capabilities to equip users with tools to design, execute, optimize, monitor and report upon process-driven applications.

A use case demonstration of an HR Employee On boarding Application will showcase the deep integration between K2, MOSS and InfoPath.

K2 and Qortex, a SharePoint Premier Systems Integrator, will cover SharePoint deployment best practices and strategies for SharePoint adoption within your enterprise.

The event will be held Wednesday 24th of September between 6pm and 7pm Dutch time

Click here to register!

Changes to the Dutch .NET magazine

Mark Willems — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:33:00 GMT

Yesterday I attended an authors meeting at Microsoft Netherlands about the changes to the Dutch Microsoft.NET magazine that are upcoming. Currently Microsoft distributes around 30.000 items of the magazine every quarter. Microsoft is going to change a couple of things.

The most important change is that every edition will be about a certain subject(e.g. SQL Server 2008, Rosario, etc.). The item will contain at least 5 articles around that subject.

They won't take on the role of publisher anymore; Array Publications will be responsible for that. For the readers of the magazine there won't be a lot of changes except for 2 things: The layout of the magazine will change a lot. And from what I've seen of it I must say it is an improvement.

The other thing that is changing for the users, is the fact that you need to tell Microsoft that you still want to receive the .NET magazine. That way Microsoft knows exactly who is reading the magazine and who not. You can register for the .NET magazine at www.microsoft.nl/netjesgeregeld

Good thing is that it will continue to be FREE of charge!

Happy reading in the future!

Not 007 but 807 is here

Mark Willems — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:43:00 GMT

Yesterday K2 announced the public availability of the latest Blackpearl release 0807. It's currently in Beta and downloadable for customers and partners. The beta cycle is planned to run for 2 to 3 weeks.

K2 fixed around 280 problems in this release and also added some new functionality. Sergio displays a good list of what the new release is all about: http://delpiccolo.com/2008/09/04/k2blackpearl-0807-beta-released/

A double 4th anniversary and the beginning of a 'new' year

Mark Willems — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:05:00 GMT

It's the time of the year that everybody gets back from holiday and starts with a fresh spirit. For me personally yesterday was a bit of a special day. I celebrated two 4th anniversaries!

The first one was the anniversary of Amber, the daughter of my girlfriend. It was an exciting day for her, because it also was her first day at school.

The second anniversary I celebrated yesterday was the beginning of my 5th year @ Avanade. It was again a good year at Avanade, our headcount increased by 36%! We started 4 years ago with about 15 people and now we really have a nice footprint in the Dutch market and also globally.

The 1st of September was also the kick-off of the new fiscal year 2009. Which means that a lot of plans are presented for the coming year(3). September and Oktober are always months in which you have a lot of meetings and kick-offs. Everybody has new ideas after the vacation break:)

Two interesting meetings in the month September are the following:

The first one is a meeting on the 4th of September around 'project Velocity' presented by Dennis van der Stelt(the owner of bloggingabout.net). Unfortunately I cannot attend this meeting while our general manager for Europe will visit Avanade Netherlands. But you can register here.

The second meeting I want to put your attention on is the BizTalk UserGroup meeting. It's on the 22nd of September in Utrecht. You can register here.

Two videos on K2

Mark Willems — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:41:00 GMT

There are two videos out on the web on K2.

The first video talks about the K2 products and the pricing model.

Earlier I did post some things around K2 Blackpoint. Well, the second video is even more interesting! It's a demonstration by Seb and Shaun on K2 Blackpoint on channel 9.

I'm now off for a well deserved holiday in Belgium:)

August edition of MSDN magazine

Mark Willems — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:24:00 GMT

HOT of the press the August edition of MSDN Magazine in PDF format

In this issue information on BizTalk EDI, creating animations with Silverlight and how to consume and expose data in a web services world.

Here is the link

Happy reading!

WCF service not displayed(HTTP 404) when using the option Browse in IIS

Mark Willems — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:35:00 GMT

The technical support support people at my current customer deployed our WCF services to an education environment. After that, they weren't able to browse the WCF service from within IIS. The first thing I noticed on the environment was that the .NET framework 3.0 was not installed on that server. So I thought that would solve the issue. But it didn't.:(

Then I came across the posting of Jean Paul Smit (http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/jpsmit/archive/2007/01/17/wcf-http-404-when-hosted-in-iis.aspx) His problem was that he forgot to mark the website in IIS as a .NET 2.0 website. But I had already checked that. That was OK.

Then I read about the CleanIISScriptMaps.exe tool which cleans the IIS metabase from corruptions. From what I read here: http://wcf.netfx3.com/files/folders/product_team/entry5648.aspx the tool was only useful when Beta version of WCF were installed. And that was not the case in our situation.

Nonetheless I tried running the tool, because I didn't have a lot of options anymore. And it worked! So, the CleanIISScriptMaps.exe utility may also work when no Beta versions of WCF are installed. Thanks to Clemens Vasters....author of the tool.

Coolest company

Mark Willems — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:53:00 GMT

Avanade Netherlands is in the race to become the coolest company. A competition started by one of the largest radio stations in The Netherlands, radio 3FM.

If we win the contest a radioshow will be recorded at our office and after lunch we receive a dance party:)

Here is the link to the video we supplied for the competition.

Funny part is that my girlfriend is in the video! She's the girl halfway the video dancing with her sunglasses. Now it will surprise me if we don't win:)

Webcast on K2 Blackpoint tomorrow

Mark Willems — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:07:00 GMT

I published earlier about K2 Blackpoint. Well tomorrrow there will be a webcast on K2 Blackpoint which you are are to join. Here are the details:

June 19th meeting from 6pm – 7pm Central Time. (GMT -06)

Subject: blackpoint Webcast
Start Time: Thursday, Jun 19, 2008 4:00 PM PDT
End Time: Thursday, Jun 19, 2008 5:00 PM PDT
Attendee URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/scna1/join?id=CK67B6&role=attend&pw=w%3B26H9%26Pd
Meeting ID: CK67B6
Attendee Entry Code: w;26H9&Pd
Location: Live Meeting
Toll free: +1 (888) 233-4650
Toll: +1 (719) 234-7876
Participant code: 733479

Avanade Belgium doubles staff in one day.

Mark Willems — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:51:00 GMT

Last Wednesday Avanade aquired Quadreon, a Belgium company specializing in Microsoft Dynamics AX(not really my type of sport). Due to this aquisition Avanade Belgium is doubled in terms of people! Avanade is well on-track to become the worlds nr 1 Business Solutions Partner.

Funny thing to note is that one of the most important customers of Quadreon is Studio 100. This Belgium Entertainment company creates things like K3 and Kabouter Plop, which are really famous among Dutch children and also their parents(including me....Plopper de Plop haha). So know we @ Avanade are doing K2[Blackpearl] and K3 with Dynamics, what's next?... :)

Sharepoint workflows on steriods!

Mark Willems — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:01:00 GMT

When asked about the high points of his career at Microsoft, Bill Gates answered Windows 95 and Sharepoint Portal Server(MOSS). We all know that MOSS is selling massive! The MOSS platform has some workflow features built into the product, but they are somewhat limited. On the otherhand K2 has Blackpearl, a great full blown Business Process Management suite. A lot of companies have already MOSS or are going to the MOSS platform and in every company there are workflows. But a lot of companies want to start small with implementing workflows. So I think there is..... uhhh, was a gap between MOSS and doing BPM. I guess the guys from K2 recognized this gap and the potential of workflows/BPM within Sharepoint. They released BlackPoint! There is already a demo video on the site.

BlackPoint is a subset of K2 Blackpearl features and tools. SharePoint users now have the ability to build workflows and process-driven applications quickly — without code, without complexity! I'm looking forward to try it out on a real project. With Blackpoint the MOSS platform gets even more powerfull!

BizTalk Hotrod Issue 4

Mark Willems — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:40:00 GMT

From Todd van Nurden:

Hi BizTalk Fans,

Its finally Spring here at BizTalk Hotrod HQ and Issue 4 has finally been put to bed! In this issue you’ll see that we’re continuing our expansion into WF (Windows Work Flow) and WCF (Windows Communications Foundation). Why, you ask, would we do this? Well BizTalk is the future! And we want to bring our .NET friends into the BizTalk fold and as you’ll see BizTalk continues to expands its process server capabilities across the Microsoft platform. We’ve also expanded our coverage to include folks new to BizTalk Server so check out Sal’s “In the Beginning” article

As always we’re looking for new ideas and new authors so if you’re interested please contact us.

Oh we’re also considering a BizTalk Hotrod Resource issue that would include articles by BizTalk software partners as well as links to all the coolest BizTalk Content on the web. So if you have content that we should link to or publish let us know.

As always thanks for the support!

http://cid-b6c859f7a5f75e63.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Q2FY08_biztalk.pdf

Enjoy

-Todd

Recommended sessions DevDays 2008!

Mark Willems — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:54:00 GMT

It's that time of the year again! This Thursday the Microsoft Developer Days 2008 will be held in the RAI in Amsterdam. The annual event for Microsoft developers with national and international speakers. I like the DevDays for mainly 2 things: 1) Networking with other developers, old colleagues, etc 2) Get an overview of the latest and greatest tools and products in one day.

What makes a good session is mainly the speaker and of course the subject. In this blogpost I'll make some recommendations for the sessions on Thursday based on my personal experience with speaker or subject and interests.

First of course the key-note by David Platt. I've never seen David speaking so I can't comment on that. But the subject of his presentation "Why software sucks?" sounds promising:)

Session 1(10.50-12.00 a.m.): I would recommend to go for the presentation of Christian Weyer (Internet Service Bus) or Ingo Rammer (Advanced debugging). Both are great presenters from the same company(Thinktecture), but I like the subject of Christian more.

Session 2(1.30 - 2.40 p.m.): In this timeframe again 2 presenters of the same company(U2U), Patrick Tisseghem and Peter Himschoot. I know both guys only from their active blogging. I think I will go for the presentation of Patrick, building RIA's for WSS and MOSS. I you're more of data dude then I would recommend the presentation on ADO.NET Entity Framework.

Session 3(3.00 - 4.10 p.m.): Again we see the same presenters(Christian and Ingo) in this timeframe. I think Microsoft didn't want to spent too much on different presenters:) But I can live with that, because Ingo and Christian are great guys! The words "in action!" in the title of Christian's presentation in combination with 2 great techniques WCF and WF, make me choose that presentation. May I also recommend the session of my colleague Pieter de Bruin around testing with Visual Studio Team System. Good testing is still a major issue on lots of projects!

Session 4(4.30 - 5.40 p.m.): Guess who we see back in this timeframe?? ....Right! The two presenters from U2U:) I will switch presenters and will choose for Peter Himschoot this time. I would like to know more about REST in combination with WCF.

In between the sessions I'll probably be around the Avanade stand or walking around.

Have fun! See you at the DevDays!