For higher ed students in the US, software access just became a lot easier. Microsoft DreamSpark allows students to access professional software for FREE.

The package includes:

For details, check out https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ and watch Max interview Bill Gates.

Looks like Microsoft Research will be calling Cambridge one of its new homes. Great to see more of Microsoft joining me on the east coast. :-)

Looks like Dan Fernandez's move to the Channel 9 team is more than official. He and Brian Keller kicked off their first episode of their Yet-to-be-named show, giving a recap of their favorite things for developers. Awesome. So much less work for the rest of us to find out about the coolest new developer offerings, from blogs to samples!! What do you think? Anything they missed?

Btw, I think <insert.name.here> is a cool name already.

Ok, my videos aren't up yet, since I made a couple promises about uploading others, but I'm now active on Channel8. I uploaded the first video yesterday (Clint interviewing our University of Iowa MSP) and today I'm uploading Jen's Getting Started with XNA series. I have a bunch of things to upload myself, but I promised Max I wouldn't flood the site. I'm Diane on Channel8, so you can check out what I'm uploading or blogging about here. YAY!!

Thinking about competing in ChicTech's Games for Girls or the Imagine Cup Game Development Competition? You might consider checking out Rob Miles' new site Very Silly Games. These are small funny games with source code for XNA. Rob teaches Computer Science in the UK and I had the good fortune to meet him at the 2006 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in India. It seems that he's also writing a book about learning programming through Game Development. Can't wait to check it out!

Alfred pointed me to this cool competition. Registration is VERY soon (Jan 31) but this could be a great opportunity for women working on games. For a broader audience (aka women AND men!), I recommend checking out our Imagine Cup Game Development Competition.

ChicTech's Games for Girls Competition: Enter Now!
by Sonya Harris
January 10, 2008

ChicTech, an outreach program of the University of Illinois' Department of Computer Science, extends an open invitation for college women to participate in the third annual Games for Girls Programming Competition (G4G).

Registration must be submitted by January 31, 2008, at http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/g4g. Completed projects are due by April 9, 2008.

We invite teams of up to five college women to design and implement a computer game for younger girls. The competition is designed to encourage the development of computer games that appeal to middle- and high-school-aged girls, while fostering the development of communities of college women majoring in computer-related disciplines. Projects will be evaluated by approximately thirty high-school girls attending the annual ChicTech retreat weekend on the U of I campus in April. Their evaluation will be based on their overall enjoyment of the games.

G4G is part of an effort to attract and retain women in Computer Science. The creative process of game-building can help female students develop a stronger sense of belonging to the field of Computer Science and seeing the work of college women can help high school girls relate to the potential of CS as a major. The judging of the G4G games has proven to be one of the highlights of the ChicTech retreat weekend.

This year's competition is sponsored by State Farm. G4G will award each member of the winning team $1,000, with cash prizes also going to the second- and third-place teams. An additional $1,000 will go to the first-place-winning team's department to help support programs to attract and retain more women in Computer Science.

Games must be PC-based. Teams may use any development tools they wish, but we encourage them to use the GameMaker platform, which has worked well in previous G4G competitions. Please visit our website for complete competition details.

The competition is open to all college women currently residing in the United States. Each student team must submit an on-line registration by January 31, 2008. Visit the web site to complete an application: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/g4g.

Sonya Harris is the Outreach Coordinator for Undergraduate Recruitment, Retention, and Outreach at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Well, I can't NOT post about CES, so I'll post this link to a funny little video from BillG's keynote. I was amused, as it seems a lot of other people are. This is also intended to ensure people don't need to keep sending it to me! ;-)

Andrew is an MSP in the greater NYC area and has recently started blogging about his Imagine Cup Game Design team.

This blog is going to be devoted to my triumphs and challenges in organizing, motivating, and facilitating an Imagine Cup game development challenge team for the '08 year. You'll get a glimpse of my experiences with the competition, the trials I'll face, and how I've gone about solving problems. The material will lean towards technical; but, will probably remain easy enough to understand for the non-programmer.

Nikita has been an MSP forever and often blogs about developer events in Tampa, as well as his musings on technology. I think he's spending a lot more time on Channel8 than his blog right now. :-)

Max is practically a student. ;-) He's our Channel8 guy and lately has been spending a lot of time perfecting his new bachelor pad in Seattle.

Who should I be reading? What blogs by technology students do you read?

Hilary introduces her Office 2007 top ten favorites. A very interesting screencast for students considering buying Office via the Ultimate Steal. :-) Any bets on whether Erin watches this video just to see if her favorites are there?

http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2007/12/18/give-me-15-mins-i-ll-give-you-15-hrs-office-2007-tips-and-tricks.aspx

Having now comfortably unpacked from the Ohio trip, I can start enjoying my holiday bounty. The 2008 electronics highlights from my holiday season:

• My first Digital SLR. This reminds me of "My first Sony" but a touch more expensive. Hopefully equally as gratifying. I'm only sad that I can't take a picture of my new camera with my new camera.
• New RED 8GB Zune. Awesome. I think I need to make a Channel8 post about it. This is a huge improvement from last year's brown Zune, both in size and color. (Yay for being Buckeye themed!) Clearly my manager was thinking about the national championship game when he sent this. Hopefully the whole ADE team will be carrying around scarlet Zunes to support the football team.
• Blackjack II. This was from the Windows Mobile team. Thanks guys!

What cool new stuff are you playing with?

Ok, technically I've been back in town since Saturday and back at work since Monday, but today was the first day I've felt comfortably back. I spent all of Sunday unpacking Christmas gifts, suitcases from the trip and baby shower proceeds. ;-) And Monday was "stomp on email" morning followed closely by "troubleshoot issues with remote access." All in all an exciting start to the week! Quinn and I spent yesterday watching football. While we rarely want Michigan to win, dislike of Florida and desire to see the Big Ten do well in bowl games made it a hard game to watch. We only made it about 1/8 of the way through the Rose Bowl…

As many of you know, my travel will be restricted this spring. Starting in February, I won't fly and sometime in March I won't travel at all. I'm trying to make the most of my availability and have spent some time today booking short trips. I'm pretty excited about some of them, like our big technology trends event at Stony Brook or the NYC High School Women in Computing Conference. I'm also a little disappointed to have to miss all four greater NYC Digigirlz Day events and a big conference my team has in Seattle each year.

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season!

Hilary just pointed me to some great How-To videos. The How-do-I? series on MSDN covers a bunch of topics and is regularly growing. Right now they cover topics like:

• ASP.NET
• ASP.NET Ajax
• Devices
• Native Coding
• Silverlight
• Visual Basic
• Visual Studio
• Visual Studio Tools for Office
• Visual Studio Team System
• Windows Forms
• Windows Presentation Foundation

Very cool. What other topics would you be interested in seeing a quick How-to screencast on?

Unfortunately I have a conflicting holiday party in Connecticut that night, but I was really excited to hear about this holiday party from our local Developer Evangelist, Peter Laudati.

The party is open to all techies in NYC, you just need to RSVP! Details are below.

Date

December 13th, 2007

Location

Suspenders Bar and Restaurant
111 Broadway at Thames Street
New York, NY

Time

6:30pm - 8:30pm

Cost

Free, including complimentary beverages and hors d'oeuvres.

RSVP required.

My friend and coworker Hilary runs a section of the MSDN flash newsletter specifically for students interested in technology. The newsletter covers various new technologies or resources for technologies that may be interesting to students. Here's a sample issue. And you can easily subscribe here.

One interesting snippet from this email newsletter advertised playing with Facebook with Popfly.

Facebook Fun in Popfly
Want to know how to use the Facebook block and other Facebook-related features in Popfly? Check out this three-part video tutorial series.

I recently went to a leadership training course where we took Myers-Briggs personality tests. I (yet again) tested as an ENTJ. Slight to moderate on the ENT and moderate to strong on the J. Apparently, less than 2% of the US population falls under the type ENTJ… so this is yet another confirmation that I'm weird. Or special. :-P

I thought the test was interesting, but not 100% accurate on my personality as compared to the expected behaviors. I still liked the reinforcement of some faults I might need to look out for. For instance, under stress and short deadlines, ENTJs can be critical and ignore other people's feelings. When work gets crazy, I can definitely see myself default to a mode where I'm executing and expecting others to execute without necessarily considering the impact on other people's emotions. On the other hand, some of the things they pointed out happen less often for me… for instance, ENTJs are at risk of withdrawing and wanting to be alone under extreme stress. Under extreme stress, I definitely fall to my support system and could really only see myself withdraw with just Quinn or another friend.

It looks like there are a ton of Myers-Briggs test online. Unfortunately mine was a closed test so I can't recommend one in particular, but I definitely thought this was an interesting exercise.

People keep joking that me not drinking Starbucks has impacted their bottom line. (I moved to decaf but kept up my schedule starting in May. Actually, I probably drank more, so that I could benefit from the small amount of caffeine in decaf coffee. In July, I stopped going to Starbucks altogether except for the rare iced tea.) Today I read on MSN that Starbucks is "feeling the pinch now." Of course, the article is referring to rising dairy prices and flattened store traffic. They blame the latter on fuel prices and the housing market, but I think we all know I'm no longer helping that number. :-)

I have a flight to Seattle today. That means if you sent email to me at work and I haven't responded yet, I'll likely get back to it from the plane. ;-) I'm in training all day Tuesday-Thursday, with some pretty long days. I'm typically excited about trainings when I schedule them, while I'm in them and after I've taken them. Today is the sweet spot where I'm just scared about the work I'll miss while I'm in training. Let's just hope the coordinators are kind and give us email breaks!

Interested in adding something to your resume? Consider a certification. And to help you pass, we're kicking off a new exam retake offer. Second Shot is a free certification exam retake offer available for students in the US from October 15, 2007 thru June 30, 2008.

FY08's Academic Second Shot offer is improved:

• Students are no longer limited to testing in the Authorized Academic Testing Channel only.  With this promotion, students can now register for and take their Academic exam at any testing center in the US.
• http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/2ndshot/default.mspx
• The offer is valid almost the entire school year!
• School employees are now eligible too.
   

Exams:  072 Academic Certification Exam Series (all entry level exams included)

Offer Details:  Candidates who register for the Academic Second Shot offer between October 15, 2007 and June 30, 2008, can take their first 072 certification exam at the Academic discount of $60, and will receive a free second shot exam if they don't pass on their first try.  This offer has no limit per customer as they will receive one free retake for each paid exam they take and fail.

This would be one of the harder panels to prepare for. Do you cover best practices of being a manager? Anecdotal evidence of things that have worked well for you?

This presentation gave a good overview of some pros/cons of moving to management, some challenges they had and best practices. Overall, I liked it as an overview. I was expecting more examples of "unexpected" things. But many of the things discussed worked whether one is a leader in the organization or a manager. For instance, asking for feedback. Everyone should be asking for feedback from peers/managers. It helps anyone get better! And get a mentor or support system!! Again, I think mentorship is a great best practice for anyone. I was happy they reinforced that.

Diane Curtis Official GHC 2007 Blogger You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum You can find me at http://dianecu.spaces.live.com