My buddy Dan Fernandez filmed me on Channel 9 showing Ranking and Windowing and Common Table Expressions from my TSQL talk this week at TechEd. Apparently our discussion of our partying together in Istanbul, Cairo and Las Vegas was censored by the Channel 9 staff. I guess you will have to just use your imagination on that one. :)

My lunch with Bill Gates yesterday at Tech*Ed in Orlando was very cool. His first word to us was "super" as was his second.

After snapping a few photos, we got right down to it. There were about 12 of us from the community who were invited and and we were eager to chat. First question: "Hey Bill, what are you going to do with your free time?" Bill indicated that he is going to be "super" busy and will be working full time on his foundation.

We then got into talking about schools and how he envisions most schools around the world to be textbook free and just use computers. Then about how university level learning will be done via the Internet for lectures. In poor countries "best of breed" lectures can be put on DVD and repeated. Bill was blown away  by the organic chemistry distance learning made available by MIT and wants to bring this model to everyone. He said that the traditional lecture will die at the university level. He was extremely passionate about teachers, schools, and education in general.

Andrew Brust asked about the UN, and Bill complained that there were too many agencies with more TLAs than Microsoft. (WHO, WFP, etc..)

I got to finally get a word in edgewise. :) I had lots of questions sent to me by readers of this blog ranging from "What's next" to "Why not just buy the Mets, that is charity at this point."

I asked about Microfinancing. The answer surprised me. While Bill's foundation gave $300 million in total to microfinance, Bill said the micro-financing had too high of interest rates and the opportunities to make loans were not as abundant as you would think. Bill had a passion for micro-savings.

He said that too many poor people have no access to banks due to distance and bank fees. So banks become something only the rich can have access to in many countries. (Including the US in many regards too, witness check-cashing shops in the inner city.) Bill went on to say how most poor will stash their currency somewhere or buy jewelry, only to get stolen or inflated away. Or some will buy livestock as a way to store their wealth and save only to be stolen or come down with disease. Bill described a system that he worked on that will allow poor people in remote areas to make microdeposits in the bank via a local retailer. Then they can view their balance via that retailer or on their cell phone if they have one. Then can spend the money via local retailers or via an ATM. He also spoke about the need for a quality interest rate for the microsavings. This was really amazing, all you hear about these days is micro-loans, but Bill turned the tables on everyone wants to combine micro-loans with micro-bank accounts. Makes complete sense.

The last question by Kate Gregory, was on how does Bill deal with the public sector/volunteer sector's non type A personality. Bill basically indicated that he was results oriented and brings the same passion and project management skills to his non-profit work.

I can't say that I had lunch with Bill Gates since he did not really eat, we just kept asking him questions and he never really got to eat his lunch. All in all he spent about 1.5 hours with us and it was great. I have to say that it was really inspirational to talk the whole time with him about non-technical issues (not a single techie question was asked). Here is a man who is one of the greatest technical minds (still!) around, the chairman of a Fortune 500 company, and we talked about his passion for his foundation. I am looking forward to what his foundation will do with him working there full time.

Ever since the new ASP.NET MVC framework was announced in October, posts about it have spread about it like wildfire through the .NET blogosphere.  There's usually at least 2-3 MVC stories a day that show up on DotNetKicks.

At the last Philly.NET code camp in January, there was standing room only for the ASP.NET MVC talk (see photo to the right).  Similar crowds have shown up at the HLS DevCon in Atlantic City, Central Jersey .NET & Fairfield/Westchester .NET user groups to hear about it.

With all the buzz going on about the new ASP.NET MVC Framework, I'm happy to announce a one day Firestarter event in NYC covering it on Saturday, June 7th!  Join us for a day in New York City to learn more about the ASP.NET MVC framework and see what everyone is all excited about.

At the ASP.NET MVC Firestarter, we’ll give you a quick tour of the framework, then peel back the layers and dive deeper into how it works.   As part of that, we’ll spend time discussing the design and development practices that lead to the creation of the MVC framework.  By the time you leave, you’ll have enough knowledge to get fired up and start building web applications with it.

More Info

When it comes to design patterns, the MVC is the granddaddy of them all.  First described in the late 70s, the MVC pattern remains very popular in the world of web applications today.  

ASP.NET MVC provides a framework that enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display.
ASP.NET MVC is not a replacement for Webforms. It provides an alternative choice when designing a Web application. Using ASP.NET MVC offers the following advantages:

• It enables you to achieve and maintain a clear separation of concerns
• It facilitates test driven development (TDD)
• It provides more control over the URLs you publish in the application and over the HTML that is emitted by the application

Registration is now open. Don't wait as this will likely fill to capacity quickly:

Register Here!

Lunch will be provided.

Agenda: 

·        Intro to ASP.NET MVC & .NET 3.0/3.5   9:00-10:30

·        Intro to MVC/MVP patterns   10:30-11:30

Lunch 11:30-12

·        Intro to Test Driven Development 12:00-1:00

·        Routing  1:00-1:30

·        Controllers  1:30-2:30

·        Break 2:30-2:45

·        Views  2:45-4:00

o   Strongly- vs. Weakly-Typed

§  What’s the difference?

§  Why would you choose one over the other

§  Ways to effectively use Weakly-typed

o   UI Helpers

§  Overview of framework helpers

§  Rolling your own

o   View Engines

§  Overview of WebForms ViewEngine

·        File location/mappings

·        Using “standard” ASP.NET stuff:  ASPX, ASCX, Master

·        REST & AJAX – WCF, Dynamic Data, MVC AJAX  4:00-5:00

On a panel today about when you should and how you should upsize old Access apps to SQL Server.

Session Title: Are we there yet? Successfully navigating the bumpy road from Access to SQL Server

· Date: 6/3/2008

· Time: 1-2pm

· Location: The Tech·Ed Online stage is on the main show floor, off of the main aisle near the south escalators and in front of the partner expo area <see map below>

www.microsft.com/teched

Back in September, two classmates convinced me to join them on a crazy quest. Merrill Lynch and our Business School, the City University of New York at Baruch College, sponsors an annual business plan entrepreneurship contest. For a small team, write a business plan and then show how you can execute. The contest started with an elevator pitch and an abstract way back in September and 140 teams entered. Over the months you have to write a business plan and then sell it to judges who act like investors. The judges cutoff more teams as the months progressed and eventually there were 10 left for a final pitch two weeks ago.

By some miracle, my team won! Our concept is all about on-line advertising using a behavioral approach on top of demographic slicing. It is easy to implement and we are going to do so (Watch out Google!) We won a $10,000 cash prize (wow!) as well as $20,000 start-up investment for our business. In today's day and age, with technology so cheap, the Internet so ubiquitous, and overseas resources readily available, we can get to a prototype phase with the $20,000. That is the power of Web 2.5.

The best part of winning was being given the "big check" like when you win the Lotto. We took the big check to the bar with us to celebrate, however, the bartender would not cash it.

I have two breakout sessions on Wednesday. One on SQL and one on SCRUM. I also have a panel (more on that later.)

Wednesday 8:30am (sorry!)

T-SQL Querying: Tips and Techniques for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008

Take your queries to the next level! This highly technical (no slides), yet entertaining session focuses solely on advanced querying techniques to get the most out of your SQL Server 2005 and SQL 2008 database. See a series of real-world examples to extract data from your databases in ways you've never seen before. Techniques demonstrated include an ultra-fast way to do crosstab queries in SQL Server, running totals,XQuery and ranking. Along the way, get some insight into how SQL Server works.

Wednesday 2:45:

Tech·Ed Daily Scrum!

One of the most popular Agile project management and development methods, Scrum is starting to be adopted at major corporations and on very large projects. After an introduction to the basics of Scrum like: the Scrum Master, team, product owner, and burn down, and of course the daily Scrum, Stephen shows many real-world applications of the methodology drawn from his own experience as a Scrum Master. Negotiating with the business, estimation, and team dynamics are all discussed as well as how to use Scrum in small organizations, large enterprise environments, and consulting environments. Stephen also discusses using Scrum with virtual teams and even an offshoring environment. The session finishes with a large Q&A on best practices.

God bless the lawyers. (I never thought I would start a blog post that way.)

The way we buy cell phones in the United States is different than in almost all other major markets. The carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, etc) control the market. You can only buy a phone through them and with a service plan attached to it. Not only that but the phone manufactures (Nokia, Motorola, etc) have little control as to what features they can put on the carrier's "version" of their phone. For example let's say that Nokia releases the sexy new Nokia 123456 phone. This phone has integrated bluetooth and a cool wifi feature. AT&T will sell you the 123456 phone without the wifi and Sprint may sell it to you without the bluetooth feature. You can't buy the "normal" Nokia 123456 anywhere in the United States, you have to check eBay or travel to Asia or Europe and buy an "unlocked" version (more on that in a minute.)

Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world does it differently. You can buy the Nokia 123456 at a Nokia outlet, a retail shop like Radio Shack or Circuit City, or online. It is unlocked, meaning that you can put in any GSM chip from any service provider. (By contrast US phones are locked, my AT&T phone will only work with my AT&T chip. But I can buy an unlocked European phone and put in my AT&T chip, but AT&T won't support the phone, and they get mad at me when I do this.)

So the rest of the world is free and unlocked. This leads to major consumer choice. Consumers change phones all the time and also change carriers quite often. This forces the carriers to compete on coverage, price, service, network reliability, and features (exclusive MP3 downloads, cheap wall papers, etc.) In Europe there is major innovation both at the phone level (unlocked phones have to compete with other unlocked phones) and on the carrier level. This leads to innovation and more consumer choice.

In the United States, we have no such competition. We have an oligopoly. We have expensive plans, crippled phones, and we are tied to our carrier forever. (I have been with AT&T since 1995 and I hate them!) This also explains why at 16,000' on Mt. Kilimanjaro I had service but can't get coverage on 3rd Avenue and 86th Street in Manhattan, a "dead zone" for AT&T, which is funny since an AT&T store is one block away.

In November 2007, this was promised to change. You were suppose to  be allowed to unlock your phone (funny it was illegal up until then to unlock your phone since it violated an intellectual property law).

So what did the carriers do? Take it all to court.

Good news. People started to sue. (Thank God for lawyers! Wow, I said it again.) Under threat of the lawyers, Verizon and Sprint, have agreed to unlock hones after customers have completed their original contract. (Not perfect, but a start.) AT&T and T-Mobile decided to fight on. They took their case all the way to the California Supreme Court and lost. So they appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Good news. The US Supreme Court yesterday sided with consumers. (All those Reagan and Bush arch-conservatives are good for something!) The court declined to review an October decision by the California Supreme Court that  basically cleared the way for a class action lawsuit that will allow millions of California customers to sue the carriers. (The suits also prompted all the carriers to reduce the fees charged to costumers who terminate a contract before it expires. Thank God for lawyers a third time!)

This does not unlock the phones automatically and change the US market to behave just like the rest of the world. But it is a start. We are free from the control of the carriers. Let freedom ring. Bring on the innovation!

PS iPhone users, you can finally get an unlocked iPhone!

As Bill Gates heads to retirement, he is making one last hurrah as the keynote speaker at TechEd next week in Orlando. I am lucky enough to be invited with 12 of my closest friends to have lunch with Bill after the keynote.

I was told not to ask anything controversial or not to monopolize the conversation (those who know me well will appreciate that one) but since I will be also in attendance with Richard Campbell and Andrew Brust, I will be lucky to even ask Bill how his golf handicap is going. So I have to be strategic. In an hour and a half lunch with 12 people, I can possibly get one good question with a follow up.

What would you ask Bill Gates if you could? Here is what I am thinking, leave in the comments or via email what you think is a better/worse question.

You recently said in Davos that a new style of capitalism may be needed in order to solve the world's problems. You make the case for more corporate social responsibility (CSR), so what is one major problem in the world today that you think is severe (AIDS, global warming, etc) and how can the "creative capitalism" you outlined at Davos solve it. Also would a Microsoft of say, 1980 with revenues of just over $1 million and just hired the first MBA "manager" type (Steve Ballmer) react to this positively (what is in it for MSFT '80)? Isn't "the business of business is business" and wouldn't Steve and Bill in 1980 agree? How do you motivate 1980 Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to "creative capitalism".

Let me know if you have something better. :)

Napster just launched a digital music store that is DRM free and has 6 million MP3s to download for $ 0.99. It will not have the proprietary DRM from Apple or Microsoft on it.

"Music fans have spoken and it's clear they need the convenience, ease of use and broad interoperability of the DRM-free MP3 format," said Napster CEO Chris Gorog, "and they want to be able to find both major label artists and independent music all in one place.  Napster is delighted to deliver all of this and more with the world’s largest MP3 catalog."

This is bad news for Apple.  Apple got strong in this business because the record labels wanted DRM on the songs and Steve Jobs gave them one, one that will only work on the iPod. Jobs argued to the labels that in order to make Apple's DRM software, FairPlay, effective, it had to be proprietary. The labels agreed and the iPod was released in October 2001 along with iTunes as the first legal digital music download store. Jobs won't license FairPlay, so all music sold on iTunes can be played only on iPods. This lack of interoperability, combined with the iPod's overwhelming dominance, gives Apple a stranglehold on the digital music marketplace. How big is this stranglehold? 22% of all music sold in 2007 was sold on iTunes.

So the empire strikes back. In July 2007, Universal said it would selectively choose which songs (or albums or artists) were sold on iTunes, rather than granting iTune blanket access to the entire catalog. (This was a major blow to Apple.) In August 2007, Universal announced the plan to offer DRM-free tracks through non-Apple retailers. Amazon and Napster are now selling DRM free music in an attempt to break the stranglehold Apple has with its proprietary system.

Is this the beginning of the end of the iPod? Time for Apple to respond. It would be nice if they licensed FairPlay. Something has to change. it will be fun to see what does.