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My .NET Profile (2000-2006)

My first introduction to .NET was in 2000 at a conference in Reading, UK. It was then that I realised COM was out and a new platform was in. After brief experimentations/demos with Web Services and other cool technologies, management were convinced and authorised my project.

In 2001 I embarked on upgrading our suite of COM dlls, out-of-process server and ActiveX controls to the .NET platform. There were 3 ambitious goals:

  1. Existing COM clients should be able to work with the new .NET suite (so COM Interop and a bunch of CCWs were the order of the day)
  2. .NET clients should be written to demonstrate the advantages of moving to the new platform (inc. out-of-proc server implemented with remoting)
  3. The components should run on the .NET Compact Framework so we can take advantage of the Windows CE platform

In 2002 the project was successfully completed!

In 2003 a new project opportunity came along. Deliver a .NET Compact Framework application that takes advantage of the aforementioned component suite, to run on our own Windows CE 4.2-based platform. A display panel that runs 24x7.

In January 2004 we released IQView v1.0 on target, v1.1 was released in April (1.11 in June, 1.12 in September, 1.13 in November) and v1.2 in July 2005. During this same period I started sharing my knowledge with the wider online community and eventually got recognised by Microsoft in January 2005 as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for the .NET Compact Framework.

September 2005 brought a change of jobs (moving from corporate development to a large consultancy). During the 8 months I spent there I worked primarily with SharePoint (writing web parts in C#) and a little with the Word object model (via COM Interop and C#). In the same period I got my Microsoft .NET certifications (MCP, MCAD) and was also recognised as an INETA speaker.

     Above last updated 23 April 2006

In 2006 I joined Microsoft UK and evangelized all kinds of technologies and in 2008 I moved to Microsoft in the USA where I am contributing to Visual Studio scenarios (which are a superset of the .NET scenarios).