Community developer blogs

David Gristwood

Recent Posts

• CSS Zen Garden

  Posted: 25 Nov 2008 at 10:15

  Whilst reading Steve Krug’s excellent “Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” I came across a wonderfully simple and evocative web site – CSS Zen Garden. I’m a developer and engineer, not a designer, so elegant, well designed web sites always impress me, because I know I cou

• I’m On Partner TV talking about Fasttrack

  Posted: 17 Nov 2008 at 16:14

  I had a chat with Tara Hellier about the work we are doing with Fasttrack – if you want to know more about our fastrack reviews, check it out.

• TechEd 2008 EMEA Developer - Keynote

  Posted: 10 Nov 2008 at 14:33

  Jason Zander gives a great keynote and shows off Visual Studio 2010, and what looks like a very large touch screen demo with Windows 7 :-) He also give my PDC track a plug - thanks Jason!

• Fasttrack Sessions – The Magic Of Software – Now Open For Booking

  Posted: 20 Oct 2008 at 14:37

  I’m one of  the UK DE ISV team involved in delivering a new series of technology briefings entitled “Fasttrack– The Magic of Software”, targeted at ISVs, to let them see some of the latest and most exciting software coming out of Microsoft, and explore how that software could be used in

• BBC Midweek quiz: Old computers

  Posted: 15 Oct 2008 at 22:25

  I did the quiz at BBC NEWS | Magazine | Midweek quiz: Old computers and got 7 out of 10 (with no cheating or looking up anything) – what score did you get??

• A Weekend at BarCampLondon5

  Posted: 29 Sep 2008 at 16:00 by David Gristwood

  Microsoft were one of the sponsors of last weekend’s BarCampLondon5, so I spend an very enjoyable time talking to a whole host of technical folk about all sorts of things, not all of them technical, but all very interesting :-) If you have never been to a BarCamp before, which I hadn’t, check out th

• Patrick Tisseghem passed away

  Posted: 25 Sep 2008 at 12:10 by David Gristwood

  I was devastated when I heard that one of my friends and colleagues, Patrick Tisseghem, had passed away recently. Patrick Tisseghem, the beloved husband of Linda Godau and the loving father of their daughters Anahi and Laura, was born in Halle, Belgium on 17 October 1968 and passed away in Goteborg,

• Mashed 2008 Hack Day - The Aftermath . . .

  Posted: 23 Jun 2008 at 10:51 by David Gristwood

  I spent the weekend at Mashed 2008, a "hack day".  Its sponsored by the BBC, Microsoft (through Multimap), the Guardian (sorry, Gruniad :-)). It's basically a 24 hour hack, with team competing to create the best mashup or web site or piece of code. Around 250 or so developers turned up for the

• PDC2008 Professional Developers Conference October 27-30, 2008 - Registration Now Live

  Posted: 30 May 2008 at 15:26 by David Gristwood

  PDC2008 Professional Developers Conference October 27-30, 2008 - registration is now live. This event really is the premier event to "hear details about Microsoft’s services platform, the future of Windows, mobility and our next generation of developer tools", so if you are are involved with the des

• ISV Blogs . . .

  Posted: 22 May 2008 at 16:37 by David Gristwood

  The reason for the recent lack of blogs has been my work on our two new Microsoft partner blogs. I will be blogging here still, but check these two blogs out as well . . . The first is our new general purpose ISV blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/ukisvdev/ - written by our team, with lots of ISV related

• Visual Studio 2008 and Buzzword Bingo

  Posted: 03 Apr 2008 at 09:13 by David Gristwood

  At the recent DevWeek and Microsoft Launch event, I did a VSTO session, and showed off a couple of demos, including a Buzzword Bingo sample, which got a lot of very positive reaction :-). This Word Add-In goes through a document, and adds some random management buzzwords to the end of sentences. Usi

• If You Are Doing Office Development, Then You Should Be Attending The Office Dev Con 2008 . . .

  Posted: 22 Jan 2008 at 15:43 by David Gristwood

  If you are doing Microsoft Office development (which includes SharePoint, Open XML, VSTO, etc), or thinking about it, then you should be going to the Office Developers Conference (ODC) in San Jose next month (Feb 10th - 13th, to be exact). More details from the ODC 2008 web site For me, here are a f

• Season's Greetings from Microsoft UK

  Posted: 19 Dec 2007 at 12:00 by David Gristwood

  A Silverlight Christmas card - Season's Greetings from Microsoft UK

• Your Open XML Solution Could Win You an Xbox™ 360

  Posted: 17 Dec 2007 at 16:49 by David Gristwood

  Over the last year I've hosted a number of events to Microsoft partners about Open XML, so it's great to see that, here in the UK, a number of Microsoft Gold and Certified Partners have already taken the opportunity to profile their great work on the Office System Solution Directory. If, as a Micros

• SharePoint Books

  Posted: 27 Nov 2007 at 17:21 by David Gristwood

  There are two books that I am currently recommending to developers who want to know more about SharePoint, and they are  "Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" by Ted Pattison and Daniel Larson, and "Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007" by Patrick Tisseghem.  I've re

• Virtual Teched 2007

  Posted: 19 Nov 2007 at 10:28 by David Gristwood

  TechEd Developer 2007 in Barcelona may be a distant memory, but we do have Virtual Teched, so if you were there, you can catch up on some of the bits and pieces you may have missed. And if you weren't there, you can get a taste of what went on. Check out the Fish Bowl Interviews for a whole host of

• Only 1 Week To TechEd Developer in Barcelona

  Posted: 30 Oct 2007 at 18:33 by David Gristwood

  Time flies. I have just realised that next week it's that most glamorous and glitzy European developer event of the year - TechEd. I'll be there - I am responsible for the Office and Unified Communications tracks, and I can promise you we have some great sessions and speakers lined up, so I hope to&

• My Recent UK MSDN Flash Newsletter: "Office Business Applications - The Developer Story"

  Posted: 30 Oct 2007 at 18:23 by David Gristwood

  Every now and then I pen a few words for the most excellent fortnightly (=biweekly) UK MSDN Flash Newsletter. Given I have been spending a lot of time recently talking to developers and architects about building on Office as a platform, I thought the MSDN Flash Newsletter would be the way to spread

• A Bit Of Fun With Office Add-Ins

  Posted: 17 Oct 2007 at 19:44 by David Gristwood

  One evening, in a pub, having a well earned pint with Michael McClary after one of our Microsoft events, I had a brilliant idea - why not write a Microsoft Word add-in that randomly added management "buzzword bingo" phrases into a document or email. It would be kind of fun, especially in light of so

• Presenting at the Office Business Applications (OBA) Architects Council

  Posted: 14 Sep 2007 at 18:37 by David Gristwood

  Yesterday I presented a session at the Office Business Applications (OBA) Architects Council on OBA technologies. My session was all about making people aware of the ways in which they could surface information (typically back from back end line of business systems) inside Office and SharePoint, and