Christa points out a great article on MSDN on about hiring for ISVs I think most of this applies to solution providers like the one I work for InterKnowlogy some of the items pointed out in the article really hit home like "Know the Law" we let just about anyone conduct interviews and I have heard some inappropriate questions asked that if the person being interviewed wanted could have gone after us. Any way a good read if you are at all involved with the hiring process.

Just had a chance to read through Eric Sink's latest column, Hazards of Hiring. He gives a really insightful overview of the qualities and experience he looks for when hiring developers for his organization. Having worked in the small ISV space myself in the past, I have to say,”Read and learn.” When your entire company is 10 people or so, having 1 person who can't make a go of it (for whatever reason) is both obvious and painful. Hope those of you who work in similar environments find this useful next time an interview loop is on your schedule.

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[Via Microsoft community blog posts]

Microsoft is once again showing how it sucks (this is on a few beers) but they have locked up the links blow. Now I know more then most that the thinking goes that if you give away the content people will not show up for the MS love fest that is TechEd but I think MS needs to think that free = more eyes.

There were several posts on blogs.msdn.com about this content and since they decided to pull this they need to explain why they pulled free access to the content to this community that they are trying to foster.

All regular sessions that were given at TechEd in San Diego are available in video and power point slides from http://microsoft.sitestream.com/teched2004/. I have watched\listened to a few sessions so far the two are standouts:

• ASP.NET: Best Practices for Managing and Operating IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET Solutions
• .NET Framework: Exploring What's New in the CLR 2.0

I will post any more that I see that are standouts.

[Via Random .NET Ramblings]

I just found a great web site for samples of how to do .NET Crypto work. JavaScience Consulting

OK this is a bit cheesy but the information is good, MS has setup a site with a bunch of avi files of some quick walk throughs of how to do things in VB.NET. topics include Deployment, Web Development and many more. VB at the Movies Have fun.

This is one of the best music videos I have ever seen!

What do you get when Pat Helland is on vocals, Don Box is on guitar and David Chappell is on piano? 

You get a hilarious song direct from TechEd Europe. 

Pat sings his version of Don McClean's American Pie.  The lyrics were written by Pat with inspiration from Nicholas G Carr's book Does IT Matter?

Bye Bye Mr CIO Guy..

Watch the Video

[Via Channel9 Forums]

All regular sessions that were given at TechEd in San Diego are available in video and power point slides from http://microsoft.sitestream.com/teched2004/. I have watched\listened to a few sessions so far the two are standouts:

• ASP.NET: Best Practices for Managing and Operating IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET Solutions
• .NET Framework: Exploring What's New in the CLR 2.0

I will post any more that I see that are standouts.

Better yet Microsoft as announced a whole new line of Express Products.

Microsoft has announced that there will be a version of Visual Studio 2005 targeted at just web development and the beta is now available get it here. As part if this my company created a Guided Tour for it at http://beta.asp.net/guidedtour/. I had nothing to do with the Guided Tour but it is still cool.

It is well know that the next version of Visual Studio will have all types of new tools to do code refactoring. I have used VS 2005 a little and I thought I liked how it worked but then I saw ReSharper and now I don't think I like the new stuff as much. One big thing I liked in VS 05 is the way it will show where a variable is used so instead of the current Go To Deceleration or Go To Reference you see all the places it is use and the place it is declared. Great that is wonderful but the version of this that ReSharper has implemented is much nicer.

This is the VS 2005 Find All References Window:

This is the ReSharper Find Usages Window:

And by the way I found a much better RSS reader called Rss Bandit it's way better looking and much more feature rich then SharpReader and it's all open source c# code.

I recently got interested in RSS feeds as I had bloged about earlier but this has now become a problem. I found that Microsoft has started a blog for MSDN and wow is the material good up there. There is a lot of discussions on features, methodology etc. If you want more knowledge of what is going on in MS start reading but hold on!

OK I will never clam to be a infrastructure guy but I have been having to learn way too much about it. I can't believe that people can't keep up with the technology that they are supposed to be experts of. I great example is this article ISA Firewall Fairy Tales Once I read this (it's a dam long read to) I then did circles around a network "expert" on a conference call.

I know this sounds crazy but the article makes the point extremely well! Ho and by the way I was on the last beta and release cycle of Microsofts Macro Assambler!