Entries tagged with niners - Channel 9

Niners on 9: Sven Groot - Past, Present and Future

Charles — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:25:00 GMT

Sven Groot is a long time Niner and one of the more active contributors to the C9 forums (you'll note that Sven answers technical questions when he can and has always been respectful in the way he interacts with his fellow Niners). Sven is also a PhD student at Tokyo University where he is working on and thinking about large scale distributed clustered computing (now we know why he was so keen on my producing a Dryad piece for Going Deep - Sven is a clever guy...).

Sven was in town recently on vacation in Seattle (why not Maui or one of the Tahitian islands, man?), so we had to interview him. Also, I brought Sven to a randomly generated team meeting of one of the most innovative teams at Microsoft (and filmed it). So you will see more of Sven and learn more about some very interesting technologies, but here we learn all about Sven, the man, the legend.

We cover a lot in this impromptu conversation and Sven has many interesting things to say about cloudy computation and the future of distributed computation somewhere up there. It's great to have you as a vocal member of Channel 9, Sven. Thank you for the feedback on C9 (some of which is shared in this conversation) and for being helpful to your fellow Niners. See, Niners, when you come to Seattle, you never know if you will sit down in front of a camera, rolling 9.

Enjoy and thank you again, Sven!

Jeff Sandquist: Channel 9 Through the Years

Charles — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:06:00 GMT

When we launched Channel 9 five years ago we weren't sure what to expect from the community and from Microsoft. What would developers think of this non-corporate, free wheeling website designed by and for geeks and developers (and one great designer, David Shadle - designer of the 9 Guy and first iteration of Channel 9)? Did we do the right thing? Will Channel 9 be taken seriously? Are we crazy? Well, history has answered these questions and the next five years will be very interesting indeed. I thought I'd pay a visit to my friend, fellow Niner and co-conspirator Jeff Sandquist. I don't think I've ever really interviewed him. 5 years!!! Wow.

Happy Birthday, Niners!!! Here's to another 5 great years!!

Brian Beckman: On the General Theory of Channel 9 and Life in the Universe

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:42:00 GMT

Brian Beckman, software architect and astrophysicist, discusses his General Theory of Channel 9, what Channel 9 means to him personally, his love for the Niner nation, the power of humanized corporate communication and life in the universe. :)

Happy Birthday, Niners!!!

Cheers!!

Bill Hill: On Channel 9, Niners and Homo Sapiens 2.0

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:41:00 GMT

Long time Niner, typography master, ClearType co-inventor and more-than-avid reader Bill Hill reflects on Channel 9, the state of the economy, Homo Sapiens 2.0 and the next version of, well, Bill Hill (Bill Hill 4.0?). :)

Bill was the focus of one of the very early interviews on Channel 9 and it was where we captured the raw human quality that makes Channel 9 special. Of course, Bill Hill is great to listen to and learn from. We were lucky to get him early on in our development as it really helped us grow and plot a content course for C9. Thank you, Bill. You are a legendary Niner. Much love!

Happy Birthday, Niners!!!

Cheers!!

Larry Osterman: Happy Birthday Channel 9!

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:31:00 GMT

Larry Osterman, Software Engineer extraordinaire and long time Niner, reflects on Channel 9, Niners, Birthdays and his almost 25 years at Microsoft (wow, Larry, that's impressive!!!!). Larry loves birthdays! We love you, Larry!!!

Happy Birthday, Niners!!!!

Cheers!!

Scott Guthrie: Happy Birthday Channel 9!

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:24:00 GMT

Scott Guthrie, VP of all things .NET (and IIS), wishes Channel 9 and the Niner nation a very happy 5th birthday!!! Thanks for spending time on Channel 9, Scott! You're a rock star. :)

Happy Birthday, Niners!!!

Cheers!!

Erik Meijer: Happy Birthday Channel 9!

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:17:00 GMT

High Priest of the Lamda Calculus Erik Meijer, wearing celebration lights around his neck, reflects on Channel 9, Niners and the importance of showcasing the humans behind technology. Erik is the star of our Expert to Expert series and will continue to provide incredible conversations for Channel 9 for a long time to come. Thank you, Erik!! You rock, man!

Happy Birthday, Niners!!! Here's to 5 more years!!!

Cheers!!

Mark Russinovich: Happy Birthday Channel 9!

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:13:00 GMT

Mark Russinovich, long time Niner, SysInternals co-creator, Microsoft Technical Fellow and Windows Kernel Jedi Master, reflects on C9 through the years and explains what Channel 9 means to him. Mark's Channel 9 interview, Inside Windows 7, is the most viewed technical conversational piece on Channel 9. Over 500,000 views. Incredible!

Happy Birthday Channel 9!!!!

Cheers!!!

Anders Heljsberg: Happy Birthday Channel 9!

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:45:00 GMT

Anders Hejlsberg, Microsoft Technical Fellow and C# Creator, reflects on Channel 9 at 5, Channel 9's birth, Niners, and to the future of Channel 9. Happy Birthday, Niners!!!

Cheers!!

Soma: Happy Birthday Channel 9!

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:50:00 GMT

Senior VP of the Developer Divison, S. Somasegar (Soma), is one of the biggest fans of Channel 9 and the Niner nation. Here, Soma reflects on Channel 9, the importance of customer engagement and, of course, Niners. Happy Birthday!!!! 5 Years!!!

Cheers!!

Eric Lippert: Happy Birthday Channel 9!

Charles — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Five years ago, Eric Lippert played the esteemed role of C9 interview guinea pig. He was the first engineer we interviewed and it was his interview that showed us that we might just be on to something. For those of you who are sticklers for detail, yes, Eric's interview did not ship first on the site, but it was the very first interview conducted.

I remember all of us (Bryn, Jeff, Lenn, Scoble, Charles) huddled around my office watching the conversation with Eric, at that point in time an engineer on the Trinity team. We looked at each other and smiled. This is so cool, we thought. C9.Iterate( 5 );

What a great five years it's been since then and a great big THANK YOU to Eric for letting us into his office with a camera five years ago. Here, Eric reflects on Channel 9, his current role as C# compiler developer and of course Niners.

Happy Birthday, Niners!!!

Cheers!!

Windows Home Server: PDC 08, New Features, Meet some of the Team

Charles — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:36:00 GMT

Windows Home Server is evolving. To learn about how to take advantage of the new capabilities of Windows Home Server, we sit down with Program Manager MCJ Saretto, Product Manager Mark Pendergrast and Software Developer Brendan Grant, aka dahat on Channel 9. Yes! Another Niner joins the ranks of Microsoft! Brendan is well known for the great add-ins he's written for Windows Home Server and, equally as important, for the full size Channel 9 Guy costume he created a few years back. Welcome aboard, dahat! It's great to have another excellent developer join the Happy Death Star.

Tune in the learn a bit about the next release of Windows Home Server, what devs will get to program against and meet some of the people who passionately drive Windows Home Server evolution. As always, the conversation is non-linear with a splash of fun and an extra helping of humanity. Windows Home Server is a great product and these folks are part of the reason why.

Enjoy!

Links galore:

Channel 10 Interview (with a first look at new Windows Home Server hardware)

Windows Home Server team blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/

Windows Home Server dev center on MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb981194.aspx

SDK:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb425866.aspx

Product website:
www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver

Community forums:
http://forums.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/default.aspx?siteid=50

Our top Windows Home Server ‘enthusiast’ site:
www.wegotserved.co.uk (not affiliated with MSFT)

This Week on Channel 9: Feb 15 with Scott Hanselman!

Dan Fernandez — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:51:16 GMT

We had lots of laughs in the studio with Scott this week! Here's the show recap:

- We have a new logo (courtesy of Lincoln Anderson at 352 Media) and Scott Hanselman joins us in-studio (0 - 1:45)
- Microsoft Entertainment and Devices acquires Danger Inc for consumer mobile phones (1:35 - 3:38)
- Microsoft Virtual Earth acquires Caligari for 3D rendering (3:38 - 5:32)
- Dan - Charles Torre's Wayne Kelly's post after Lang.NET on moving Ruby.NET efforts to IronRuby and the DLR. (9:04 - 11:57)
- - Movie Trailer and Star Wars trivia (14:20 - 16:00)
- Brian's Pick of the week: Fixing SLN files that don't open (16 - 18:13)
- Dan's Pick of the week: Geek proves LifeHacker's story on Felonspy.com is a scam (18:31 - 20:15)
- Scott's Pick of the week: ASP.NET MVC is source changeable (20:15 - 22:39)
- Scott pulls a "BillG" and bails early on us (24:10)
- Scott does some *not to be missed* hilarious imitations of what it would be like if celebrities were coders Bill Cosby, Jimmy Stewart, Johnny Carson, Ross Perot, and more (24:55 - End)

Welcome Dan Fernandez to the Channel 9 Team!

Charles — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:47:17 GMT

Dan Fernandez has joined the Channel 9 team!!! We are very lucky to have Dan as a.... Tune in and find out.

Wandering Around London's Science Museum with Some Niners

Charles — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:29:25 GMT

While in London not too long ago I met up with some friendly neighborhood Niners to check out London's awesome Science Museum. Two of the usual suspects, blowdart and sabot are on the scene and somebody you've never met before (at least in video context).

Some interesting trivia here: We learn that Dave Oliver's (Sabot) mother was a software developer back in the day when there was more gender parity in the field. Very cool! We also look at some brains...

Enjoy!

Niners on 9: Littleguru, Zeus and JasonOlson

Charles — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:37:59 GMT

Who are the people behind the C9 handles and avatars? Why did they join Channel 9? What do they do on Channel 9? What do they like and dislike about C9?

These are some of the questions that I got a chance ask at TechED 2007 Developer where I ran into a few Niners attending the event in Barcelona. We talked a bit about V4 and their favorite features in V3 (that will also be in V4). The dev team is working really, really hard to build a high quality next version of C9 that does not reuse any of the current code base, yet maintains the current featureset. It's a very hard problem, but our great dev team (Duncan Mackenzie, Erik Porter, Mike Sampson, David Shadle and Grace Francisco) are making great progress!

Tune in. Meet Zeus and here).

The C# Disco Floor Guy - Clint Rutkas

Rory — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:41:59 GMT

I first learned about Clint Rutkas when I read a Coding4Fun article in which he described what it took to build a C#-driven disco floor for his apartment (Clint has since become the Coding4Fun blog home page author - congrats on that).

I figured I'd meet him at a conference someday or something, but otherwise tucked the information into the back of my head.

Then, last week, Mel Sampat, a guy who works on Windows Mobile stuff, sent me an email saying that he had a visitor with him who really wanted to meet me.

This happens every once in a while, and, yes, my ego inflates a bit each time. But this was different.

When Mel showed up with Clint, I still didn't know who Clint was. I thought he was another person stopping by to say "Hi" and get a tour of the Channel 9 offices.

About three minutes into meeting him, though, Mel told me who he was - The Disco Floor Guy!

I went a little nuts. Now, instead of Mel bringing someone by who wanted to meet me, it turned into Mel bringing someone by who I wanted to meet.

Many of us have been through something similar to this. You find out who someone is online - usually through articles, a blog, or whatever - but you have no idea what that someone looks like, so, the first time you meet in person, you talk for anywhere from three minutes to three hours before realizing who it is you're talking to.

That's what happened here, and it was neat.

I gave Clint a tour around the offices, and then asked if he'd like to be in a C9 video.

He did :)

The Best XNA Movie in the UNIVERSE

Rory — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:06:13 GMT

On behalf of all of us at Channel 9, sorry about not having any content on Friday, but 2/3 of our city shut down because of a little bit of wind. Most of us woke up Friday morning to discover that, without heat, it's very easy for your house/apartment/condo to turn into a freezer over night in the Pacific Northwest during winter. Even worse, you can't play your Xbox. Seriously. It sucked.

But, on the bright side of things, power's back, and I can finally post the video I was going to post on Friday before nature had its way with Seattle.

In this video, I head off to the official XNA launch event and talk to quite a few very interesting people, all of whom had something valuable/interesting to say about XNA.

In this video, you'll see:

- George Clingerman

George runs an XNA site called XNA Development. He was my main guest in this video, and he stuck around to patiently answer question after question on XNA. If I had been in his position, I would have hit me to make me shut up. I couldn't stop asking questions, but I just find this stuff so interesting - game development is a whooooole different kind of coding, you know?

While he doesn't work for Microsoft, he knows his stuff, and it was a great pleasure getting to talk to him.

He also has a personal blog that you can find here.

- Major Nelson

Major Nelson (real name: Larry Hyrb) is something of a phenomenon in the Xbox community. George and I got a chance to talk with the legend as well as get some hugs. We weren't going to let him get away without hugging us. It was just too cool.

- Andy Dunn

Andy is the guy who, after having been a web developer at Microsoft, quit, took a year off, and then came back as a contractor to write the SpaceWar game that's shipping as one of the examples for XNA Game Developer Studio Express.

His story is an interesting one, and it's crazy to think that, someone who previously had no gaming experience whatsoever, was able to put together a game that is one of the main examples of good XNA development.

It was actually pretty much the first game he had ever written.

If you, in your little office/basement/wherever you're reading this, just heard a distant explosion, it was the sound of my head blowing up in response to the thought that someone so inexperienced with game development could do something so cool.

Check out Andy's blog here.

- Other Assorted Characters

There are cameos from many different people in the industry.

Paolo, who hangs out in David Weller assaults me near the end of the video for reasons which will become apparent as the scene unfolds.

And, I got to talk to many others, all of whom had something to say that was, or wasn't, particularly interesting.

Either way, this is currently the world's best XNA documentary.

Given that it's probably also the world's only XNA documentary should not, I feel, in any way detract from this self-appointed title of greatness.

Anyway, enjoy, my friends.

Enjoy...

- Links to Things Referenced in the Video

XNA Game Studio Express - The tool itself - The reason for the hooplah - The thing behind the excitement - Yours to download :)

TorqueX - A simple game development tool being built on top of XNA (yes - it's a tool that takes XNA and makes it, somehow, even easier)

Phrogram - A programming language with a very simple syntax, currently being ported (by Andy Dunn, as a matter of fact) to work with XNA - A DirectX version is already available

Why Community Matters

Charles — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:34:24 GMT

While at TechEd 2006, I caught up with some of the folks who are innovating Community principles and implementation in the UK, from Girly Geek to Next Generation User Group. Here we talk about community, why it matters, what is needed to grow community, etc. The interviewees are also Niners. Tune in and meet some passionate members of the UK developer community who are among those who are taking Community to the next level.

Rory Meets Da Team

Charles — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:43:24 GMT

Today we took Rory around to meet some of the folks that he's already met, but we decided to do it again on camera just for fun (and of course we film him meeting folks he hasn't actually met like our VP Sanjay Parthasarathy...)

As always, this is a very random tour. It starts off slow, has some interesting moments (where you may find yourself asking "uhm, why am I watching this?"), but all and all provides a very humanistic view of our great extended team of evangelists, program managers, developers and an executive or two. And we only scratched the surface. You will meet more of the people who work around here in subsequent videos (which will be very interesting, of course).

Tune in.

London Niners: Tour, Drinks and Debate

Charles — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:52:54 GMT

Charles was in London a few months ago and had the honor of meeting some London Niners: Sabot (and his lovely wife), Blowdart, and Irascian. In this video, Sabot and wife give Charles a brief tour of London including a ride on the world's largest ferris wheel (at least it sure seems like it...) also known as the London Eye. Then, we meet up with Blowdart and Irascian for some beers and good conversation about, among other things, Channel 9 - The Good, Bad and Ugly.

Enjoy! (As always, this is unedited and raw :))

Thanks for the great time, London Niners!

An interview with Jamie

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 18:27:10 GMT

After the release of Channel 9 Patrol, we just had to get Jamie into a C9 interview of his own. So Duncan flew to Toronto... really...