Community developer blogs

David Gristwood

Recent Posts

• Out & About with my camera – Architects Council

  Posted: 25 Jun 2009 at 10:33 by David Gristwood

  A couple of months ago I was out and about wit my fellow Microsoft colleagues at Weston Manor, in Oxford, for a ‘Cloud’ related conference. The content for the event, along with the videos I made, are now up on the architects portal. Click here  to visit the site and see the videos Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Architect,Azure,Cloud Computing,UK

• FOWA Tour 2009 – Edinburgh and Leeds

  Posted: 29 May 2009 at 14:21 by David Gristwood

  I’ve put a little over 1,000 miles on my car with a drive up to Edinburgh and Leeds to deliver a session on Azure as part of the fowa tour 2009. The tour is going really well, lots of interesting folk at the events, lots of discussion around cloud computing, web design, and some really great speakers. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how many people were already using .NET, and there is a lot of interest in Azure, ASP.NET and more recently, BizSpark.

• David Gristwood’s Bio

  Posted: 15 May 2009 at 09:20 by David Gristwood

  I have been asked by the powers that be to update my biography, and supply some new photos. As I always loose this sort of thing, I thought I’d post it here, where I can find it again, and point people to it:   Ever since David programmed his first ‘10 ? “hello world” : goto 10‘ program on a PET computer in the late 70s he has been hooked, and has worked with computers ever since.

• Microsoft at the Future Of Web Design (FOWD) show in London

  Posted: 05 May 2009 at 14:59 by David Gristwood

  I was one of a number of folks from Microsoft at Carsonified’s Future of Web Design event in London last week.  Microsoft were one of the events sponsors, and I have to say we had a really cool stand:   The Microsoft Surface device was one of the most popular items on the stand and I spent some time doing demos   Mark Quirk did a demo of “Watchmen”  . . . . . .  . using a Microsoft Surface . . .  and my official Microsoft outfit for the event: The r

• My First Visit to MiniBar London

  Posted: 27 Apr 2009 at 10:52 by David Gristwood

  On Friday night I attended my first ever London MiniBar meeting. It was great fun, I met lots of interesting folk, and had some very great pro and anti Microsoft conversations after my presentation about Windows Azure. The website sums up the event nicely: Your Monthly Face To Face. You think about creating the next Last.fm, flickr, or Web 2.0 start up? You think London lacks opportunities to meet up and discuss those ideas? Then come to MiniBar. MiniBar is a social evening in Shoreditch, w

• I Love My Zune

  Posted: 19 Feb 2009 at 09:29 by David Gristwood

  Although I think Family Guy is great, I don’t get this little dig they had the Zune – I love my Zune!

• Fun at the TechCrunchTalk and ChristmasCrunch Party in London

  Posted: 17 Dec 2008 at 15:18

  I had great fun last night at the TechCrunchTalk and ChristmasCrunch Party in London. It’s always interesting to spend time with start ups, and the line up of speakers and panel discussions and beer was a winning combination. I’m now trying out Qype, and have a revised view of PR and lawyers :-) And

• 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