REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 6, 2001 — Today, Yuval Neeman, vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp., kicked off the seventh annual Microsoft® Developer Days, the company’s largest-ever developer event aimed toward providing the latest Microsoft .NET technology and training to its developer community. The two-day event will take place in 34 cities across the United States and Canada this week, providing more than 22,000 developers firsthand experience building applications for the .NET Platform with the Visual Studio® .NET development system. In the weeks that follow, as many as 100,000 developers worldwide will have the chance to attend DevDays as it moves to venues around the globe.
“DevDays 2001 provides a first-rate forum for our developer community to gain experience with Visual Studio .NET and to see how it makes their lives easier by providing a powerful and productive tool to build applications on the .NET Platform,”
Neeman said.
“This event is an ideal opportunity for our MSDN® regional directors to share skills and experience building new applications with Visual Studio .NET.”
Signaling the impending release of Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft provided all conferees with the release candidates of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework. More than 2.5 million copies of beta 2 of these tools have been distributed. Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework are the core development tools and programming model for .NET development and provide developers with powerful tools to build new applications on the .NET platform.
DevDays 2001 Sponsors Gain Growth Opportunities
Sponsors for DevDays 2001 are excited participants in this year’s events. This year’s sponsors, including Intel Corp., Rational Software Corp., Mercury Interactive Corp. and United Training Inc., are taking advantage of DevDays to reach out to Microsoft developers and share the enormous growth, training and investment potential of the .NET Platform.
“Rational views Developer Days 2001 as an ideal opportunity to reach out to the Microsoft developer community,”
said Eric Schurr, senior vice president of marketing for
Rational.
“DevDays offers us a chance to build new relationships and educate developers who will build .NET applications about the complete solution for Microsoft .NET from Rational Software, including best practices and integrated tools across the life cycle and professional services.”
“We’re excited to support Microsoft Developer Days by providing developers who are using the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET tools and Framework with solutions to test, tune and monitor the Web services they develop,”
said Vincent Rerolle, vice president of Business Development at Mercury Interactive.
“Mercury Interactive is committed to supporting .NET developers in their quest to take advantage of Web services and deliver quality applications that integrate seamlessly and perform to enterprise-level demands.”
“We are very excited to be participating in Microsoft Developer Days,”
said Chris Roy, president of United Training, a consortium of independently owned and operated Microsoft training companies located throughout the United States and Canada, providing .NET training through its Get2DotNet.net resource.
“This event provides great exposure to developers on Microsoft’s .NET technology, and Get2DotNet.net is an ideal resource for advanced .NET training.”
More Developer Resources for .NET
In addition to hands-on training at DevDays 2001, momentum for Microsoft’s .NET Platform is growing with as many as 150 .NET-related books on topics including XML Web services, the .NET Framework, Visual Studio .NET and ADO.NET expected to be published by the end of 2001. Currently, 60 titles are in print.
As Visual Studio .NET nears release, Microsoft and key industry partners are aligning to deliver a host of resources to ensure developers are prepared for .NET technologies. The Microsoft .NET Developer Career Skills Roadmap helps developers, training partners and corporate training managers plan their .NET skills development strategy. The road map details the relationship of key .NET technologies to a variety of job roles, and recommends a learning path and training courses for developers wanting to acquire skills associated with these roles.
As an additional training opportunity, developers using Visual Basic may now order the Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET Upgrade Guide, which provides tools and resources to assist their upgrade to Visual Basic .NET. The guide presents five categories, allowing quick navigation to the topics that meet each developer’s needs, including upgrading, building, preparing and integrating applications on the .NET platform.
About DevDays
Microsoft hosts DevDays annually to cultivate shared learning throughout the developer community. In the United States and around the globe, developers will participate in workshops and technical seminars to acquire skills for developing secure, reliable and scalable Web-based applications using the Microsoft .NET platform. Each event is hosted by Microsoft MSDN regional directors, highly regarded third-party experts in their communities, who provide local developers with an opportunity to gain new skills and knowledge with the latest Microsoft technologies.
This year, DevDays 2001 features a two-track format, presenting developers with a choice of two one-day technical overviews of Visual Studio .NET: Visual Studio .NET Developer Tools and Visual Studio .NET Architect Tools. Within each training track, developers have the opportunity to choose from several sessions offering specific skills and experience using Visual Studio .NET. More information on DevDays sessions is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/devdays/default.asp .
About MSDN Regional Directors
Microsoft’s developer network is the envy of the industry. Regional directors act as developers, trainers and consultants, serving as leaders in their community, speaking at conferences, and leading training sessions on writing books, articles and white papers. These directors serve as volunteers with Microsoft’s Developer Division to help the company better respond to developers’ needs. Each city’s DevDays event allows the regional directors to share their experience with community developers to help them gain greater understanding of Microsoft technologies.
About Visual Studio .NET
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is the rapid application development (RAD) tool for building next-generation Web applications and XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET empowers developers to design broad-reach Web applications for any device and any platform. In addition, Visual Studio .NET is fully integrated with the .NET Framework, which provides support for multiple programming languages and automatically handles many common programming tasks, freeing developers to rapidly create Web applications using their language of choice. Visual Studio .NET includes a single integrated development environment (IDE) with RAD features for building Web applications and middle-tier business logic, and RAD XML designers for working with data. More information about Visual Studio .NET can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ .
About MSDN
MSDN, http://msdn.microsoft.com/ , makes it easy to find timely, comprehensive development resources including software subscription programs, technical Web sites, conferences, training, communities and more. MSDN is the easiest, most convenient way to stay current on development trends and Microsoft technology. MSDN also promotes the sharing of ideas among developers by providing opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction, information sharing and direct interaction with Microsoft. MSDN resources include MSDN Online, MSDN Flash e-newsletter, MSDN Subscriptions, MSDN User Group Program and MSDN Magazine.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
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