The judges (subject to change) are:

David Armano, VP and Creative Director of Critical Mass, creating of blog Logic + Emotion

www.criticalmass.com/ and http://darmano.typepad.com/

As VP, Experience Design for Critical Mass, David has the privilege of leading talented interdisciplinary teams across a variety of clients while leveraging his background as a creative problem solver and strategic thinker. David has over 14 years experience in the creative field with the majority of his time spent in digital marketing and experience design. An active thought leader in the industry, David authors the popular Logic + Emotion blog currently ranked in the top 20 media + marketing blogs according to Advertising Age. David’s writing and visual thinking has been cited by Forrester, The Boston Globe and landed him in BusinessWeek on several occasions including their “Best of 2006”.

Prior to Critical Mass, David spent time as a creative lead at notable firms such as Digitas and Agency.com—putting in a combined tenure of 8 years in the large digital agency environment. He led multiple initiatives for clients such as HP, Allstate, Fifth Third Bank, Miller Brewing, Grainger, and Bally Total Fitness. Previously, David earned his interactive stripes working with The Chicago Tribune on their site initiatives. David helped launch and upgrade site features, functionality and content for the Tribune’s flagship site. David also accumulated broadcast and direct marketing experience while working for companies such as Fox and Columbia House.

David holds a BFA cum laude in Computer Graphics from Pratt Institute. He minored in Visual Communications and was fortunate enough to study under some of the most creative minds in the industry. He currently resides in a near-northern suburb of Chicago, not far from Lake Michigan. When David isn't working, surfing the net, or riding his motorbike—he can be found spending quality time with his wife and two boys.

Blagica Bottigliero, Founder of Bsolutions

www.bsolutions.com

Blagica (blah-gee-tsa) Bottigliero is an Emmy award winning online marketing consultant, blogger and web entrepreneur.

Blagica worked in some of Chicago's most established interactive companies. She started her career at Giant Step (now ARC Worldwide), where she assisted Maytag and Purina with their initial Internet strategies. Blagica moved to the marketing side of the Internet when she joined Orbitz.com. At Orbitz, Blagica negotiated and managed multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, in addition to launching the Orbitz Affiliate Program. After a 'dot com' break in France and sailing home across the Atlantic, she returned to Chicago and managed Q Interactive's search and affiliate marketing efforts.

In the fall of 2005, Blagica formed her Internet marketing consulting company, Bsolutions where she and her network continue to assist small to large sized businesses navigate the Internet.  She also launched  CondoPerks.com, a loyalty program for condominium associations.

Blagica holds a BBA degree from Western Michigan University and is passionate about mentoring young women through her blog, Gals' Guide.  Blagica sits on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association, is also a member of the NBC5 Street Team and is the Managing Editor of the Chicago 2016 Channel.

Bill Bulman, User Experience Director at Ogilvy One

www.ogilvy.com and www.twitter.com/bbulman

As User Experience Director at OgilvyOne, Bill leads Ogilvy's user experience team of User Experience Architects and Content Strategists for a variety of clients, including Chicago2016, American Medical Association, Oscar Mayer, and Allstate, among others.  With over 13 years experience in the interactive field and a focus on usability, user research and most recently social media, Bill has lead user experience teams at several interactive agencies and boutique research and design firms, including imc2. Most recently, he was a partner at Messagefirst, a boutique research firm in Philadelphia.

During his career, Bill has had the pleasure of working with some of the world's leading brands, including  Comcast, Polo/Ralph Lauren, Palm, La Times, Timberland, PBS, Eli Lilly, Kmart, Reebok, MLB, NASCAR, Pepsi, GlaxoSmithKline, Ace Hardware, Adidas, and General Mills.

Bill is active in the user experience community,  including serving as vice chair within the PhiChi organization, Philadelphia's chapter of ACM's Computer Human Interaction special interest group.  Bill has spoken at various events, on user experience, information architecture and social media including The Chicago Convergence Summit, UPA2007, and CHI2002, among others. 

Kevin Flatt, Executive Creative Director of Tribal DDB

www.tribalddb.com/

Kevin’s mission is to harness powerful, creative thinkubg form the diverse talent at Tribal DDB to create the most compelling brand experiences through digital media. Collaborating with brand strategists, art directors, writers, designers and producers, Kevin products ideas that integrate the innovative with industry standards.

Over his career, Kevin has created work for clients such as Alamo Car Rental, Amazon.com, Archipelago, BMW of North America, The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, EDS, Gatorade, JCPenney, Miller Brewing Company, Nike, Nordstrom, International Trucks, Lee Jeans, Propel, McDonalds, Radio Shack, RJReynolds, Microsoft, Office Max, Sony, State Farm, Timberland, TIME Magazine, United Airlines, and Virgin Mobil.

His work has received recognition from may respected competitions and publications, including Communication Arts, Graphic, TIME Magazine, Adweek, The Type Directors Club, the Super Reggie, The Art Directions Cub, Clio, the Show Best of Show, Cannes Grand Prix and first ever Titanium Cyber Lion, Kevin is actively involved in the interactive community, speaking at industry conferences and judging notable industry competitions, including The one show, The Art Directors Club and Cannes.

Prior to joining Tribal DDB, Kevin was the Executive Creative Director of Interactive at Fallon in Minneapolis. He was responsible for building an integrating digital creative offering that resulting in a number of notable solutions such as BMW Films. Before focusing on the digital side of communications, Kevin was a Senior Designer with Duffy and worked for Nike.

Bryan Jones, Technology Director at Ogilvy One

www.ogilvy.com/

Bryan has over ten years of technology experience leading cross-disciplinary teams, working with clients to define business/marketing objectives and managing the execution of development strategies for clients such as BP, Chicago 2016, CBOE, AMA, Unilever, Allstate, CDW and Kraft.

His experience ranges from large-scale website development to on-line advertising management and campaign optimization. He has extensive knowledge of web development processes, rich media and emerging technologies and consults clients on web implementation best practices across multiple platforms, applications and programming languages.

Jeff Smith, CEO of Clarity Consulting

www.claritycon.com/

With over ten years experience in information technology and sciences, Jeff sets Clarity's long-range business goals, and works with the executive team to ensure the goals are met. During his career at Clarity, Jeff has used technology to solve the business problems of corporations in dozens of industries, including construction, financial services, food services, healthcare, insurance, management consulting, nuclear power, retail, software and telecommunications. He serves as Engagement Director on many client projects, playing an active role in the design and implementation of Clarity's software solutions.

Jeff speaks regularly at professional developer conferences throughout the world. He has spoken at VBITS, VSLive, TechEd and Microsoft's Developer Days, and several Chicago-area user group conferences. He has co-authored several books on n-tier client-server application design, and written several articles and white papers on topics ranging from ASP.NET to cryptographic security.

Prior to becoming Clarity's second employee in 1995, Jeff was employed with Lante Corporation where he worked on software projects for dozens of Fortune 500 clients across a wide range of markets, including computer software, healthcare, manufacturing and telecommunications. Jeff also held technology positions with Ottosensors, Inc. where he and a team of ten biologists worked on the development of the world's first real-time blood-gas monitoring system.

Jeff holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. Upon graduating from college, Jeff also co-founded a real estate redevelopment firm in Cleveland, Ohio.

Jaclyn Valrose, Communications Manager, Chicago 2016

www.chicago2016.org

Jaclyn Valrose is a communications manager at Chicago 2016 responsible for educating the community on Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games through media relations and communications activities.

Prior to Chicago 2016, Jaclyn worked at Edelman and was responsible for strategic public relations activities on behalf of international, national and local clients, including Expedia Corporate Travel and CEMUSA, Inc. In addition to media relations, she managed speakers’ bureaus, award submissions, social media programs and tradeshow activities for client programs.

Jaclyn joined Edelman from TravelCLICK, Inc., where she worked in marketing and communications. Jaclyn was responsible for internal and external communications, including media relations materials, company marketing materials and employee communications. She was also responsible for global customer relations and the implementation of product promotions and launches. Jaclyn earned a bachelors degree in speech communication from Miami University in Oxford, OH.

First teams need to pick three dedicated team members that can go through three-days of intensive training. Then teams need to dedicate 3 to 5 days to solving the challenge. Finally, these teams must prepare and give their presentations to a panel of 7 judges and in front of hundreds of spectators.

This is a big personal investment to team members and their employers that can’t use these talented resources for billable work.

Every team realizes this before they get involved in a design challenge and it’s special for us in Chicago because our challenge is focused on Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid.

Come watch what these teams come up with by registering to attend the PhizzPop Design Challenge at www.phizzpop.com and cheer on Manifest Digital, Quilogy, Roundarch and Tanagram.

Who are these guys? Learn about them below.

Competing Agencies

Agencies competing in 2008 PhizzPop Design Challenge in Chicago represent some of the most capable and powerful collections of designers and developers in the region. Each participant makes a huge investment in time and talent to compete in the challenge and showcase how design and innovation can have a profound effect at the intersection of design, business and technology. 2008 firms competing include:

Manifest Digital

www.manifestdigital.com/

Manifest Digital is a uniquely integrated next-generation agency. Founded in the principles of customer-centered design, we have evolved our heritage to incorporate the right mix of strategy, creativity, delivery, and accountability. We communicate with each other and our clients in a build-to-think process that ties these disciplines together, applying user-centered methods in new ways.

The result is innovative--from evolutionary to revolutionary--depending on your market need.

Build a better website, create vibrant online communities, or tightly integrate multi-channel marketing. Use our custom content management and marketing platform, uxCast, or the technical foundations you already have.

Regardless of the tactics, Manifest Digital applies its proven approach to close the distance between you and your customer.

Quilogy

www.quilogy.com/

Quilogy’s Interactive National Practice, a member of the prestigious Microsoft Metro Early Adopter Program, is a full service digital marketing agency that combines high impact creative designs with robust technologies to deliver compelling and cost-effective online marketing solutions.

Quilogy’s award-winning team of creative designers, writers, usability experts, multi-media specialists and technologists mix and match digital marketing techniques such as web site design and strategy, search engine optimization, e-mail campaigns, banner advertising, streaming video, e-learning and more to help clients win and keep customers, launch new products, penetrate new markets and educate sales teams.

Clients of all industries and sizes engage Quilogy to assist with complete marketing campaign development including out-of-the-box strategy, planning, creative concepts, content, production and deployment along with performance analytics to achieve desired results.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Quilogy operates offices in 17 cities across the United States and is a leading Microsoft National Managed Partner providing solutions for Business Intelligence, Custom .NET, SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics, Web Design and Interactive Marketing.

Roundarch

www.roundarch.com/

At Roundarch, we believe it is better to do a few things very well rather than try to be everything to everyone. We focus exclusively on the Web channel for the world's largest organizations. Doing so requires three key elements:

· Deep expertise in the channel to translate a company's overall goals into a compelling online strategy

· Strong design skills to translate user needs into a Web experience that is both intuitive and a joy to use

· Deep architecture and implementation expertise in Web technologies to assure that Web-based systems are both highly scalable and flexible

Roundarch has spent the past six years honing our skills in each of these disciplines and optimizing the synergy between them. The result is a company that has the depth to take on some of the channel's most complex problems for some of the world's largest organizations.

Tanagram

www.tanagrampartners.com/

Tanagram Partners designs human computer interactions with products you use at home, at the office, or mobile. This includes web and software applications ranging from interfaces for a single interaction to complex product ecologies. We are a hybrid company that is comfortable to be on the edges of traditional categories. We look at all opportunities through four lenses:

Business - Business goals and models drive client decisions. Tanagram understands and has experience with many different types of business models and processes.

Markets - Companies tap into markets, or an aggregated group of users that are defined by certain characteristics and attributes. Tanagram is user focused.

Brand – We live in a world of brands and markets that expect unified branded experiences to create greater affinities with products and services. Tanagram has deep experience in brand strategy and brand building.

Technology – The enabler for experiences and transactions of all types. Developing compelling digital experiences is what drives Tanagram to innovate and create solutions that people want to use.

Our inspired approach is rooted in creativity. By architecting engaging and relevant user experiences, we create measurable solutions that bridge our client’s need for transforming their business, market, and brand futures.

Chicago 2016 Olympics Bid Awareness

Overview

You’ve been selected by the Chicago 2016 Committee to help provide digital strategies to help Chicago be selected at the site of the 2016 Olympics. Chicago 2016 has less than a year before the International Olympic Committee votes on which of the four competing cities wins the bid. The four competing cities are Chicago, Madrid, Rio, and Tokyo.

One of the key elements to winning the bid for Chicago is getting the city’s youth behind the bid. Teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 will be in their late 20’s to early 30’s if/when the Olympic come to Chicago in 2016. This is the audience that in 2016 will be going to events, and taking their kids to cheer on the next Shawn Johnson or Michael Phelps.

The committee is looking for ways to actively engage and ultimately generate support with the city’s youth in a demonstrable way. It is very important to not just get the youth involved but somehow show their impact/support in a visual/meaningful way. It is also important to somehow find ways to activate those that influence youth, like teachers, coaches, and parents.

Assignment

Your challenge is to determine how and what the mechanisms are used to engage and create interest in the bid with Chicago’s youth (ages 13-18). We are looking for unique, out of the box experiences that can empower the youth to feel this is their bid.

How can next generation devices, games, social media, mobility and new technologies for sharing and collaboration position Chicago in a genuine, relevant and engaging fashion to youth?

While we have not exhaustively discussed all the possibilities, a few of the following ideas have been discussed, and may give you some food for thought for your projects focus:

• Is there a way to leverage casual gaming to bring kids closer to sport? Games like Line Rider and Desktop Tower Defense have become viral and are very successful across demographics. Is there a way Chicago2016 can leverage casual gaming around sports to raise youth awareness in the Olympics? Are there collaborative and competitive components to the solutions?

• Is there a way to connect the youth with local sports groups? How can we leverage the web to help create/enhance local group activities?

• How do we utilize the concept of becoming a “celebrity” to help drive awareness and interest in the bid. In a time where all it takes is a video with thousands of hits to because a “Web Celebrity”, are there ways to allow the youth to promote the bid that also promotes themselves, through the use of cyber status and popularity?

This is not the end all list of possibilities, so feel free to design something completely different as long as it meets the requirements listed below and also focuses on engaging the city’s youth.

Requirements

• A focus on getting youth audiences is involved in the bid.

• The primary interface for this effort will be Web based and use/leverage services to provide maximum reach and utility for visitors to engage at chicago2016.org or some related URL.

• Variations or parts of the experience can be delivered to desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile device, Surface, etc…

• There are multiple audiences for this interface with different degrees of importance. Youth and awareness around the importance of sports is our primary audience. Secondary audiences include potential donors and visitors to the site that are curious about Chicago’s ambition and enthusiasm for the 2016 Olympic bid and have a desire to know why Chicago is a great venue to host the 2016 games.

• Solutions should make use of technologies and services that provide rich, interactive, unique and collaborative experiences that leverage the best of Web 2.0 and social media, but it should also extend the capabilities and effectiveness of these services. (Including use of audio, video, etc.).

• A safe and controlled environment where students (13-18) will feel safe in collaborating. Consider reviewing COPPA rules at www.coppa.org.

• Abilities to close or manage the network to prevent commercial, distracting or offensive content.

• The ability to provide standardization and interoperability of data and content to other networks and platforms to amplify the impact of the Chicago 2016 committee’s efforts at chicago2016.org.

• Interface(s) must be delivered as Microsoft WPF and/or Silverlight 1 or 2 experience as a core enabling feature.

Considerations

The following are considerations, not guidelines that should be evaluated when designing a solution:

• Extending the experience outside of the Chicago 2016 site to other services or properties (including but not limited to Windows Live Services).

• Use of data visualization for both site visitors and Chicago2016 stakeholders to dynamically represent the enthusiasm of Chicago for hosting the Chicago 2016 Olympics.

• Systems and tools that capture and engage audiences consistently between Olympic events versus just during Olympics events. Ideas and strategies that make Chicago2016 a permanent destination for people.

• Looking at how advances in imaging, casual gaming, advocate networks, offline applications or academic engagement can be utilized for this effort.

• Integration of Microsoft Live Services

User Personas

Persona 1: Junior High Student

Name: Alex

Age: 13

Alex lives in Barlett, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. If asked to describe himself he would most likely state that he is ‘normal’ compared to his peers, he’s not the most popular guy in school but he’s got his own group of friends and in his words “Gets along with everyone more or less”. He’s played football since third-grade but due to his diminutive size he’s thinking of giving it up for something else, but he’s not even sure if he really wants to engage in sports much anymore. He spend quite a bit of time with friends play ingvideo games (mostly Xbox) at their respective houses (He recently received an X-Box Live account and uses the online handle ‘Iron Monk’ when he plays games with his friends online, although he’s anxiously awaiting Gears of War II he spends most of time simply handing out online in Halo 3 with his friends or playing Rock Band II with his band called ‘DeathEater.’

Alex has an older brother, David, who is a Junior in Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Recently David has gotten Alex into casual computing games and into DJing, something David has started doing part time. Increasing Alex is spending time online playing games like Line Rider (www.linerider.com). He’s recently set up a My Space page by has only just started using it and plays with his brother’s electronic keyboard which is hooked up to a Sony VAIO running Virtual DJ Pro.

Alex has been lobbying his parents for some time for an iPhone saying it’s essential he has a cell phone for ‘safety’. Finally his parents relent, but to his disappointment he is given his Father’s old Motorola Razor handset after his Father upgrades to a new Motorola phone. “You just need a phone for emergencies, an iPhone is too expensive,” says his Father. Alex grumbles a bit but is using the phone often for text messaging.

Persona 2: College Student

Name: Jocelyn

Age: 17

Jocelyn lives in Hyde Park, IL. She’s just started taking classes at Loyola University in downtown Chicago, majoring in pre-med. Jocelyn takes her college life very seriously, with the exception of her older cousin she is the first in extended family to be going to college. Between work and school she doesn’t have time for much else.

Currently Jocelyn’s life revolves around three groups of friends, those people she works with at the East Bank Club, where she’s got a job greeting and checking in guests that are members of the club and with many of her new friends she’s made at Loyola. Finally, Jocelyn has a very tight group of friends she’s known since she’s been a small child, although still close to all of them she finds less and less time to interact with them, one of them has moved to Lexington to take a job in a family business, one has joined the Army, and one has moved to Iowa on a track scholarship at Iowa State University.

Jocelyn spends a great deal of time keeping in touch with her groups of friends using her Sidekick mobile phone, mostly through SMS and twitter but more recently she has started using Facebook and Friendfeed to keep in touch as well. She’s not quite sure how she could live without her Sidekick or Macbook that she bought this summer with money earned from part-time jobs.

Sharing student housing with three other roommates and being so immersed in school and her new job still has Jocelyn excited but she wonders if she’s missing something and losing perspective. In high-school she volunteered for many activities and ran cross-country and she’s starting to feel a bit guilty that she no longer makes time for those activities. She’s also become a bit more aware and sensitive about how women are treating in the workplace and, most concerning to her, in the medical workplace, after doing a summer internship. Jocelyn wonders if there are some things she should start thinking about in terms of empowerment but she’s not sure where to start.

Persona 3: Youth

Name: Darryl

Age: 19

Darryl graduated 18 months ago from high-school. An outstanding athlete, he eventually went to play basketball for a Division III school in Texas with an interest in studying criminal science. As is true with many students Darryl found that this initial independence and being far away from home proved to be a bit too much. After his first year in School he returned home, in considerable debt.

Over the Summer Darryl has been working a variety of jobs to pay down some of his student debt. His parents have been letting him live at home and recently he just got a job driving a delivery truck for a shipping company. It’s a job Darryl appreciates for the pay and that fact that they offer college reimbursement. He’s committed to giving college another go again after he pays down his debts. His biggest passion outside of work is playing basketball whenever he can with his high-school friends. He lives for the pick-up game.

Darryl has never been a huge fan of technology or even video games. He recently picked up a new mobile phone and got a Windows smart phone because his employer was able to get him a great deal on it and he thought it might be a good substitute for buying a computer. He’s using it mostly for texting with his friends and new girlfriend but has recently been turning to Web sites like Yelp.com that help him determine what to do socially during his free time.

Persona 4: The Suburban Dad

Name: Ben

Age: 44

Ben is a working father of two (Jim, 12 and Jennifer, 14), and lives in Arlington Heights, but commutes into the Loop every weekday for work on Metra. He tries to make the most of his time on the train to and from work, so he has time at home with the family. On Tuesday nights he coaches Jim’s soccer team and on Thursdays he helps coach Jennifer’s softball teams. Sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the entire goings on with each of the kid’s teams, but he makes it a priority.

Since he commutes into the city, his time during the week with them is short, so he spends some of his time on his commute looking for things for the family to do the next weekend. Sometimes he finds things in the The Chicago Tribune, but a lot of time he uses his laptop with a wi-max card to scour the local websites like Metromix, Citysearch and others to find things the family can do on the weekend.

Last weekend he and his wife took the kids to see the new Earth Revealed exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. He was amazed on how interactive it was and how engaging it was to the entire family. The kids loved it and he felt it was an educational experience for them and that’s what he looks for.

Persona 5: Undergraduate Media Studies Teacher

Name: James

Age: 29

James is an associate professor at a four year college located in Chicago. He’s new to the school and the job and was hired with a mandate to ‘break some eggs’. James’ first teaching assignment is in a class focused on video production and distribution. Rather than go the traditional approach of teaching just the concepts and aspects of script writing, production and editing James wants to teach his students about using the medium and social media to make connections with audiences.

He’s particularly inspired by work that Nike has done in this space and the concept of ‘fan media’ that pervades You Tube. He’s even been mildly impressed by some of the online ‘I’m a PC campaigns.’ He’s looking for a subject and social platform that he can use to inspire his students and engage the messiness of user generated video and online media.

James is a bit of social media nut and he’s currently addicted to his favorite tool, Friendfeed. Recently he purchased an iPhone solely because he liked how FriendFeed displayed on his phone and the access it offered to his large music collection.

Although many of his students have Macs the lab he teaches in is a hybrid where Macs are used for editing and PCs are used for Web and online media design and encoding.

Without a doubt, most of us are experiencing the most serious economic recession in our lifetimes.  There's an awful lot of uncertainty that goes with that; everything from our retirement savings, disposable income and job security. 

IT as an industry is certainly not immune to these worries and as professionals in this space, I'm sure the concerns I have are similar to those that you are facing.  So, in stressful times like these, what are some of the things you can do to be successful and how can Microsoft help you achieve that success?

Well, to answer that question, let's take a look at it from a few different angles.  First, there's the personal angle (i.e.:  how do you make yourself more marketable and valuable in recession economy?).  Second there's established business angle (i.e.:  how can I make the business more efficient with IT?).  Third, there's the start-up angle (i.e.:  how can I launch a new business and make it successful?).  Let's take a look at each of these angles separately through 3 separate yet connected blog posts.  In this third and final post in the series, I will focus on Launching a Start-Up Business in a Recession.

Launching a Start-Up Business in a Recession

Yesterday a conference for Start-Ups called Startup Empire was held in Toronto.  Microsoft was one of the sponsors of the event and my colleague David Crow, a bit of a rockstar in the Canadian startup community, was one of the organizers.

The tone of this conference was a bit different than your typical startup event, mainly because of the shape our global economy is in.  That being said, it's interesting to note that the speakers at this conference see great opportunities for startups to thrive in a situation like this, but you need to be ready to fail, too..

My boss, Mark Relph, also notes some wise learnings for startups that are especially relevant in tough times like this.  Things like:

• learn how to pitch an idea effectively
• find a good niche to grow in
• you can't go it alone
• an unusable solution is useless
• a smaller market can actually be better

I'd also add that finding the right industry vertical is important.  For example, while anything is possible, I'd argue as of today that a startup focusing on the retail industry is gambling in dangerous territory.  Launching a start-up in a more recession-resistant industry like healthcare or education (regardless of the economy, people will always need medical services and schools will always be open) may make more sense.  Something to keep in mind.

From a Microsoft perspective, there's some exciting things that we provide to start-ups to help them build their dream solution.  The first is BizSpark.

BizSpark is Microsoft's premier initiatives to help get start-ups off the ground.  The details about BizSpark can be found in this document, but in a nutshell, it provides Microsoft software to build the solution, gives start-ups access to partners and other global support resources and visibility on Microsoft sites like StartupZone and the BizSparkDB which potential customers can use to view solutions that might fit their needs (i.e.:  it will help you drum up customers).

Another resource, one that is not strictly for start-ups is the Microsoft Partner Programme (MSPP).  The partner programme offers a great deal of support to companies building solutions on the Microsoft platform, including deeply discounted software in order to build your solution, free training only for partners, co-marketing opportunities and the ability to profile your solutions in the Partner Solution Profiler which customers can search to find solutions that fit their needs, among other things.

-Paul

Technorati Tags:  Recession, Recession and IT, Developer, Microsoft

Without a doubt, most of us are experiencing the most serious economic recession in our lifetimes.  There's an awful lot of uncertainty that goes with that; everything from our retirement savings, disposable income and job security. 

IT as an industry is certainly not immune to these worries and as professionals in this space, I'm sure the concerns I have are similar to those that you are facing.  So, in stressful times like these, what are some of the things you can do to be successful and how can Microsoft help you achieve that success?

Well, to answer that question, let's take a look at it from a few different angles.  First, there's the personal angle (i.e.:  how do you make yourself more marketable and valuable in recession economy?).  Second there's established business angle (i.e.:  how can I make the business more efficient with IT?).  Third, there's the start-up angle (i.e.:  how can I launch a new business and make it successful?).  Let's take a look at each of these angles separately through 3 separate yet connected blog posts.  This post, the second in the series, will focus on Retaining Momentum for Established Business in a Recession.

Retaining Momentum for an Established Business in a Recession

Staying ahead of the curve as a business in this economy is really tough.  Cost cutting is a common theme and finding ways of doing more with less is becoming more and more a way of life.

Development Tools

Microsoft's tools and platform are built to streamline the process of building great solutions.  Visual Studio 2008, for example, allows development teams (including application developers, architects, testers and DBAs) to collaborate on projects as well as deliver the solution more quickly. 

Collaboration and Line of Business

Our server software allows you to potentially save costs that are traditionally associated with day-to-day business.  A great example of this would be our Unified Communications platform.  Business travel is something that will never go away, but our Unified Communications solution with technologies such as LiveMeeting and Office Communicator, can reduce the need for employees to travel.  You can also manage your telephony infrastructure with Unified Communications as it is VoIP-enabled.

Another platform that may surprise you with respect to increasing the productivity of employees is the Office 2007 platform.  There are two aspects of this - desktop and server. 

The server components include Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (with the unfortunate acronym of MOSS) and Microsoft Exchange.  Sharepoint provides an enterprise-ready content management and collaboration platform that allows your employees to access the most up-to-date information and share ideas with others.  Microsoft Exchange gives employees access to email literally anywhere and anytime.  Regardless of location, employees have access to email on their desktop (using a mail client such as Outlook 2007), securely over the internet (through Outlook Web Access or OWA) and through mobile devices such as smartphones.  The agility that these two server products offer allows employees to be agile and respond to business opportunities quickly.

The desktop component includes Microsoft Office 2007.  Microsoft offers a number of versions of the Office 2007 suite to fit your business needs.  That way you are not required to pay for functionality you don't necessarily require.  It also is extremely customizable.  With the introduction of Office Business Applications (OBA for short), you can now seamlessly integrate backoffice data into Microsoft Office.  This is extremely valuable as it allows employees to access and manipulate data using familiar tools (such as Excel), reducing training requirements and potentially reducing complexity in data transfer processes by eliminating some third party applications for things like reporting.

Manageability

Virtualization is a concept that is continuing to pick up steam.  Microsoft's virtualization strategy focuses on five areas:  server/hardware virtualization, application virtualization, storage virtualization, desktop virtualization and presentation virtualization. Microsoft's solutions in each of these areas is focused on allowing businesses to reduce bottom-line costs through a number of ways, including:

• rationalizing the amount of hardware required to run line of business applications
• lowering the number of installed software products on desktops
• increasing the manageability of servers and desktops from a central location

Microsoft System Center is another administrative tool that can help manage adminstrative costs associated to IT.  While associated to our virtualization strategy, it offers a number of benefits to IT departments including:

• Configuration Management:  Allows IT departments to centrally manage the configuration and provisioning of software to the company in a controlled manner
• Compliance:  Central management of all servers with respect to ensuring compliance to policies driven by the business (such as security policies) as well as other compliance pressures such as regulatory compliance (e.g.:  SOX, HIPAA, FISMA, etc.)
• Monitoring:  Ability to monitor the health of servers from a centralized location and alert administrators when an issue arises
• Data Protection:  manage the backup and recovery processes for multiple servers in a systematic fashion, both for physical and virtualized environments

Windows Vista

I'll admit it - Windows Vista has been getting hit hard with FUD around its value as a desktop operating system.  The interesting thing is that there is much evidence to the contrary that states that businesses that use Windows Vista actually have a lower TCO than those that use other desktop operating systems (including Windows XP).  For example, a whitepaper published by Wipro and GCR Custom Research titled Reducing the TCO with Windows Vista states that the average cost savings vs. Windows XP for mobile notebooks deployed within an organization is $251 per notebook.

It's also the most secure operating system Microsoft has produced.  Loss of data through theft, subversion or even accidental data loss is expensive and also poses potential costs associated with it including fines (in the case of privacy breaches) as well as loss of reputation.  The Windows Vista One-Year Vulnerability Report shows "that researchers found and disclosed significantly fewer vulnerabilities in Windows Vista than either it predecessor product, Windows XP, or other operating systems such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and Apple Mac OS X 10.4" (page 19 of the report). 

Finally, with increasing costs associated to energy (and even if energy prices may be relaxing somewhat from all-time highs), technologies that reduce their energy footprint are certainly useful in reducing costs associated with IT.  To that end, many people don't realize that Windows Vista's enhanced sleep mode features and smart use of power can save a surprising amount of money in the form of energy savings.  A white paper from Microsoft outlines some of the potential savings and on page 6 of the report states that a typical Pentium IV running Windows Vista with a 17" LCD monitor can save $55.63 per year compared to the same PC running Windows XP.

-Paul

Technorati Tags:  Recession, Recession and IT, Developer, Microsoft

IT as an industry is certainly not immune to these worries and as professionals in this space, I'm sure the concerns I have are similar to those that you are facing.  So, in stressful times like these, what are some of the things you can do to be successful and how can Microsoft help you achieve that success?

Well, to answer that question, let's take a look at it from a few different angles.  First, there's the personal angle (i.e.:  how do you make yourself more marketable and valuable in recession economy?).  Second there's established business angle (i.e.:  how can I make the business more efficient with IT?).  Third, there's the start-up angle (i.e.:  how can I launch a new business and make it successful?).  Let's take a look at each of these angles separately through 3 separate yet connected blog post.  This post, the first in the series, will focus on Personal Success in a Recession.

Personal Success in a Recession

Everyone in IT knows that it's tough to keep up to speed with all the new technologies that are being released.  Once you've learned one technology, another always seems to hit the market and gain buzz.

The trick is to really embrace the idea that learning is a lifelong activity.  The reason why this is so important (especially in times such as these) is because with these new skills you are more marketable.  When there is momentum behind a new technology, you may be better positioned to hit the ground running with the new technology.  A great example of this from the Microsoft perspective is Silverlight.  We are seeing a lot of excitement in the marketplace for it and businesses are really seeing value in it for building interactive visualizations.  This presents great opportunities to you if you are a developer or a designer to expand your skillset and have knowledge of a new, in-demand technology in your toolbox.

Microsoft provides a number of resources to help you get up to speed more quickly on our platform.  Some are local to Canada and some are worldwide.  Below are some of these resources:

• TechDays:  TechDays is a Microsoft training conference that is held in cities across Canada.  It focuses on providing in-depth sessions on Microsoft technologies that you can use today.  While the Toronto and Montreal stops of the conference have already past, you can still register for the other cities (Ottawa, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver).
• Developer Training:  Through MSDN (Microsoft's primary portal for all things developer on the Microsoft Platform), Microsoft offers a number of Hands-On Labs, webcasts and tutorials for various technologies.
• Technology Portals:  There are a number of specific portals for various Web and Software + Services technologies that are part of the Microsoft development platform.  Good examples of this include the ASP.NET Portal, the Silverlight Portal and the Windows Client and WPF Portal.
• Open Source:  Microsoft is often perceived as anti-open source, which is actually completely wrong.  We have a fundamental interoperability strategy that is core to our work.  This also includes CodePlex, which is our open source repository where developers can grab applications and code that exist under open source license.
• Designers:  Historically, designers were not part of our ecosystem because Microsoft did not have tools that could legitimately support their work.  With the advent of Silverlight and WPF, we introduced Expression Studio 2 years ago to give designers the ability to create truly interactive applications on the web and on Windows.  Accompanying this is our Expression portal which provides great information on the Expression suite of tools as well as tutorials, forums and online training.
• Free Tools:  In addition to training materials and information, we also offer some great free tools that are good to help you learn our platform as well as the ability to create software solutions that are royalty-free from a Microsoft perspective.  These tools, known as the Express set of tools include Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (for building ASP.NET websites and Silverlight applications), Visual C# 2008 Express (for building desktop applications with C# as well as C# class libraries), Visual Basic 2008 Express (for building desktop applications in VB as well as VB class libraries), Visual C++ 2008 Express (for building managed and non-managed desktop applications as well as C++ class libraries) and SQL Server 2008 Express (our free version of the SQL Server 2008 database system)

-Paul

Technorati Tags:  Recession, Recession and IT, Developer, Microsoft

Happy World Usability Day everyone! This year's theme is "Transportation." There are tons of webcasts on the World Usability Day website and a message from Bill Gates. We have the following WUD events in Canada. Listen to a webcast or attending an event near you. Let's celebrate!!

• Conférence Journée mondiale de l'utilisabilité «Transport» / Montréal-Québec (UPA), Montréal & Québec

• Image-Based Card Sorting of Pictographic Road Signs, Toronto

  In keeping with the theme of transportation, the User Experience Practice at Bell | District will be conducting a large-scale online card sort of pictographic road signs used for the identification of tourism sites in Quebec.  ***Participate now at http://websort.net/s/78DFD1/ (English) or http://websort.net/s/C0DCB7/ (French)***Local start: 00:00 Etc/GMT-5 (Thursday 6th of November 2008 12:00:00 AM)

• Draw! Sage's first annual design showdown, Richmond, BC

  Sage's UCD team will host an extreme design showdown on the topic of “Transportation” . Using UCD processes, each team will race against the clock during the lunch hour to develop the most useful, usable and desirable design!  Winners will be announced on Nov 14^that noon. Local start: 12:00 Canada/Pacific (Wednesday 12th of November 2008 03:00:00 PM)

• Designing website nevigation based on top task management, Ottawa

  Come discuss how to apply best-practices in contextual navigation strategies to increase productivity, conversions and engagement. Local start: 19:00 Canada/Eastern (Thursday 13th of November 2008 07:00:00 PM)

• Designing navigation with task management - Free WUD webinar, Ottawa

  Free webinar on the design and use of context-sensitive navigation based on top task management techniques. Local start: 15:00 Etc/GMT (Thursday 13th of November 2008 10:00:00 AM)

• Toronto CHI World Usability Day Evening 2008, Toronto

  Three presentations: Human Factors issues in Driving; Transit Camp Experience, Designing for Seriors' Mobility details at www.torchi.org. Local start: 19:00 Etc/GMT-5 (Thursday 13th of November 2008 07:00:00 PM)

  Technorati Tags: World Usability Day,WUD,Canada

1. What tools do I need for building Silverlight 2 applications?

From the design side, you need  Microsoft Expression Blend 2 and then install Microsoft Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1. Expression Blend 2 along with Service Pack 1 allows designers to graphically create UI's for Silverlight 2 applications. From the development side, you need Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express with SP1 and download the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. For creating Deep Zoom experience, Install Deep Zoom Composer. Also, download Silverlight Toolkit. This Toolkit is a Microsoft project containing Silverlight controls, components and utilities that can be downloaded and used in your Silverlight applications. It includes full source code, samples and tests.

2. How does Silverlight deal with multiple paged applications?

Think about SL applications more like desktop applications in the sense that a new page can be created dynamically in runtime. The implementation is quite simple: you create your different pages as page1 (.xaml and .xaml.cs), page2, page3, … , and then create a Page Switcher (i.e. it`s the initial start page) so that it can load different pages as necessary. This way not all pages need to be created at the beginning, and when a new page replaces an old page in the Page, the old page goes to garbage collection.  Watch a tutorial on Using Multiple Pages.

3. Do I need special servers to host Silverlight applications?

No. SL applications are complied as .xap file which is essentially a zip file and can be hosted on any server.

4. Expression Training for Designers?

Yes. There are quite a few online tutorials for designers. Please see my Expression Resource blog post.

5. How is Silverlight different than Flash?

Using Silverlight, you can created similar experience as Flash on the web. However, there are several areas of experience we demonstrated at this year`s MIX conference that would be very hard to build with Flash.  First is the rich interactive Olympic media experience that was delivered using Silverlight by NBC in August. Flash doesn't have the adaptive streaming capabilities to host that type of experience. Second is the Deep Zoom experience that comes with Silverlight 2, which is very hard to achieve using Flash.

Second, Silverlight is part of our UX platform, which spans from Windows to the Web, and include emerging surfaces such as the media/living room (Xbox360, Media Center PC), as well as mobile devices. Each of these platforms has shared capabilities and development tooling, but greatly different performance and integration characteristics. Similar to developing Windows based desktop application, Silverlight apps can be developed using the same tools - Expression Studio and Visual Studio. Thus, Windows designers and developers can easily transfer their skills to develop Silverlight applications

Third, designers and developers can work together building Silverlight apps more effectively using the integration between Expression and Visual Studio. The "secret sauce" to the process is XAML which provides the ability for both designers and developers to work on assets with the two tools with little to know re-work as the assets are passed back and forth between the two roles.  The most interesting thing about Designers for SL is that your vector based graphics and layout are immediately "ready" for use by the dev's and will look exactly the way they were designed in the final product.

Lastly, the intent of Silverlight is not to replace Flash, but rather provide a choice for designers and developers. Silverlight control can interact with Flash controls with JavaScript. Expression tools can work with adobe tools together to create compelling UX as well. For example, in Expression Design, designers can import Adobe Illustrator files and images files from Photoshop into a workspace and then export as XAML.

6. What about Silverlight and SEO ?

You can use some Search Engine Optimization techniques to expose Silverlight content to search engines. You can read the following links to find out more.
http://blogs.msdn.com/synergist/archive/2007/10/03/simple-silverlight-seo-with-asp-net-and-xslt.aspx
http://www.nikhilk.net/AjaxSEO.aspx

7. Can I use ADO.NET in Silverlight ?

ADO.NET is not available in Silverlight and it makes sense as Silverlight runs in the browser. The way you manage data with Silverlight is by creating a model over your db on the server and expose it with web services. You can look at this ADO.NET Data Services example.
http://wildermuth.com/2008/11/08/New_Silverlight_2_ADO_NET_Data_Service_Example

8. Would you recommend Silverlight for line of business application ?

Silverlight has everything you need to do data driven apps: data controls like DataGrid, rich Networking (WCF, SOAP Web Service, REST, ...), LINQ, Data Binding.
The question is more on who your users are (Win, MAC, Linux ?) and where they are (Internet, Intranet ?).
You can read more on this blog post for more information:
http://wildermuth.com/2008/06/26/Silverlight_and_Line_of_Business_Applications

9. Is ASP.NET dead ???

No!!! Silverlight is not a replacement for ASP.NET and both technologies have different goals. Silverlight is a cross browser, cross platform plug-in for building rich interactive application inside the browser. ASP.NET runs on the server and needs the .NET Framework as well as Microsoft IIS web server. Aspx pages generate html in the browser, you can add richness with AJAX (JavaScript). ASP.NET offers high level services (Membership, Role, Profile) not yet available in Silverlight. In fact ASP.NET can nicely complement Silverlight!

10. Can you set/read cookies in Silverlight ?

Silverlight runs in a sandbox and do not have access to local files on the client. To store app settings, user preferences or small pieces of data you can use Isolated Storage: http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideo.aspx?video=65677

11. Compare Silverlight vs WPF XBAP

XBAP (XAML Browser Application) allows you to run Rich Internet Applications that look and function like WPF desktop applications in browsers (IE and Firefox on Windows). A restriction on XBAP is that it needs .NET framework 3.0 or higher to be installed on the client machine to run.

XBAP:

• Only Targets IE and Firefox on Windows
• All WPF Features/controls are available
• Supports 3D
• Deployment is harder as we need to take care of deploying all .Net Dependencies on client Machines
• Heavy Weight
• Better for Intranet Applciations

Silverlight:

• Cross browser, cross platform
• Subset of WPF features
• Easy deployment (xap packages) and light Weight
• Better for Internet Applications
  

12. Can you store .NET objects in Isolated Storage ?

Yes you can write any .NET object or collection in the local cache and read(cast) them later. However, remember avoid saving sensitive data like passwords or connection strings as user can get access to these files.

13. Is there any reporting control with Silverlight 2 ?
There is no Reporting component in Silverlight but you can use the new charts controls in the Silverlight Toolkit.

Thanks, Qixing

On a related note, a story in the UK Register mentioned that Adobe held a press conference in San Jose to tell the press that Silverlight is unsuccessful and they're not worried about it. Holding a press conference is absolutely the best way to convince people that you're not concerned about something, right? Mission accomplished! Hi fives all around! To be fair, I wasn't there and maybe the point of the conference was about global warming or how great Adobe's cafeterias are (the Macromedia cafeteria in SF was pretty darn good I say). Either way, I don't think we'll be adopting that sort of PR strategy any time soon.

Moving right along, we also have an article here that talks a bit about our recent launch and why developers should care: .NET Out of the Box

More to come soon...