Keyvan Nayyeri

Visual Studio Extensibility community is getting ready for the VSX Developer conference 2008 in Redmond, WA on 15th and 16th September, a big event for VSX after several years of its existence.

So far I frequently have stated that 2008 is the year of Visual Studio Extensibility and Microsoft has had great programs to refine this advanced technology in 2008. VSX Developer conference would be a wrap up on what is already done and an arrangement for what is going to be done.

Ken Levy, the former VSX Community Program Manager at Microsoft, has outlined ten reasons to attend VSX Developer conference 2008 varying from its low cost of registration and free offers to the cool stuff that is going to be introduced or discussed in the sessions.

As a Microsoft VSX insider and author of a dedicated book to this topic and of course a passionate guy about VSX, I had to attend this conference to meet some friends and catch up on the most recent updates around the VSX but as I noted before, I’m unable to leave the country until the end of October when I clean my hands from this military service! I received some emails from friends asking me about attending to this conference and I really wished I could be there but for now things don’t turn as I’d like them to!

Albeit I won’t be there but I’m happy that there is a good symbol of me at the conference that is my book. Interestingly, a free copy of my Professional Visual Studio Extensibility book along a copy of the first edition of VSX CoDe Focus magazine will be given to all attendees in the conference.

Although Ken Levy has left the company but VSX community owes him for all his invaluable efforts because he (and his coworkers) did a great job on activating the community and this conference was initiated when he had the role of the leader of the community.

All in all, I hope that VSX team holds a rich conference and it can help growing the community among developers. One good aspect of this conference is the level of knowledge that you will find among attendees because being a skilled developer is a tacit requirement of every VSX developer. So I’m sure this conference is a fascinating event to attend.

Speaking of my book, it’s worthwhile to point to a recent review by Chris Franz that positively walks through the structure of the book and outlines the main topics of the book with his perspectives.