This week I was in Berlin presenting four sessions at TechEd Europe. This is a beautiful city and it was a great event.

We were very fortunate to be here for the 20th anniversary celebration of the falling of the Berlin Wall and I thought I’d share some pics. Don Smith got a bunch more using his much better camera and we also got some video of it actually coming down, but these are all I have here with me tonight.

As you may be able to tell it was pouring down rain for the 2+ hours we waited for it all to happen, but the people were fun, there was music and speeches (in German) and best of all... Glühwein!

I never thought I'd see the day, but my good friend AaronX has finally started blogging. He and used to have a blog-like site that was just cool links that we found, little or no commentary and this this his new take on that idea.

http://denversurfreport.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

I was recently exposed to twitter.com by my good friend Brad Wilson (aka The .NET Guy). This is like a blog, but simpler and more targeted at answering the question: What are you doing? You can use it from your phone, via the web or from your IM client. Here's some info from the twitter FAQ:

What is Twitter?

Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.

How does Twitter work?

When you send in a mobile text (SMS), Twitter sends it out to your group of friends and posts it to your Twitter page. Your friends might not have phone alerts turned on so they may check your web page instead. Likewise, you receive your friends mobile updates on your phone.

Since I'm here at TechEd and people might want to know the answer to that question, I figured it would be a good time to start "twittering". My twitter name is pprovost.

I just wanted to share links to a few people who blogged the patterns & practices Summit earlier this month. The conference was lot of fun, I met a lot of interesting customers and had a blast giving my presentations.

• Steven St. Jean - Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4
• David Boss - Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, More Day 4
• The Server Side .NET - Mini Review, Interview w/ Me, Frameworks Review
• Michael Wood - Lots of notes here

Thanks to everyone who came out to Redmond for this. I think it was our biggest p&p Summit yet and I certainly enjoyed it. Hopefully the attendees did too.

I've decided to disable comments for now. The comment spam was just getting out of hand and our CAPTCHA solution just wasn't cutting it.

Hopefully I can turn them back on someday soon...

Don Smith, one of our Product Managers, has put up a few blog posts looking for feedback about how we engage with you. He is asking questions about things like:

• How do you feel about the written part of our guidance?
• How do you feel about having to join a site to access our stuff?
• Do you want live source code access or just periodic releases?
• Do you want access to the work queue and bug list? Would you submit bugs and feature suggestions?
• Do you prefer web forums, mailing lists, or RSS feeds to stay informed and to talk to other people about p&p deliverable?
• How do you feel about wikis as a way of providing and managing documentation content?
• What can we do better to communicate more effectively with you, our customers?

Anyway, instead of posting a reply here, please go over to these two posts on Don’s blog and give him feeback on his questions.

• Post #1 – It’s all about community
• Post #2 – Written guidance neccessary?

Thanks for taking the time to help us out on this. It makes a difference.

At Tecd-Ed this year, Ed Jezierski and I sat down with Ron Jacobs and babbled on about p&p, agile development and other fun, random topics. The interview was recently posted to Channel 9.

Link: Catching up with patterns & practices

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by the DDJ/Dr.Dobbs guys to talk about CAB, the Smart Client Software Factory and Agile Software Development.

Now, the first of those interviews is live on ddj.com.

Enjoy!

I love it when one of our communities starts taking on a life of its own as has the Composite User Interface Application Block (aka CAB) community.

Now a few of them have gone even further and started a site on GotDotNet dedicated to integrating CAB and the Developer Express control suite.

Congrats guys!