Frederik Lefevre wrote a post on how he could easily create a Response Group Service queue monitoring application using queries on the databases used by Lync .

Register now with extended Early Bird pricing
Discover new technologies and increase your knowledge about current technologies on April 26, 27 and 28 at Metropolis, Antwerp. Do you want to attend at a discounted price? We have good news for you: the Early Bird pricing period has been extended until February 28, 2011. Register now and save up to €125 (actual saving depends on the “package” you order)!

Why you should not miss this year's TechDays
TechDays 2011 delivers more than 80 technical sessions presented by top national and international speakers. The 3-day conference covers overview to very technical sessions on .NET language, framework and tools evolutions including C# and Visual Basic futures, WCF, parallel programming, development practices, OData, VSTS, ...; new web and client development techniques and technologies like ASP.NET MVC 3, HTML5, MVVM, Silverlight 5, Windows Phone 7, XNA, etc; and of course the newest stuff covering the Cloud with the Windows Azure Platform.

Further you can expect how to learn to write PowerShell scripts, how to lockdown your pc infrastructure with Applocker and Group Policies, how to build high available virtualization infrastructure, what VDI is and what the impact will be on your infrastructure. Finally you will also discover the vnext versions of some of the System Center product and the future of SQL Server.

Deep dives
On April 28th we are organizing different deep dives. Deep dives are full day post-conference workshops delivered by industry experts.
This year's Deep Dives are focused on Application Lifecycle Management, the Cloud (Windows Azure Platform), Direct Access and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
For the ALM Deep Dive we can also confirm that some of the speakers are Visual Studio ALM Rangers (check out this site if you don't know what the Rangers are).

Top speakers
Even more top speakers have been confirmed, out of which we can give you a few names including Vittorio Bertocci, Glenn Block, Brian Keller, Rob Miles, Ingo Rammer, Clemens Vasters, Don Jones, Dan Holme, Jeremy Moskowitz, Dandy Weyn, John Craddock and many more…
Keep an eye on the TechDays website as we will continuously announcing confirmed speakers and sessions.

We recently released a set of new freely downloadable Windows 7 themes in the Windows Personalization Gallery. Download:

• Windows 7 Artic theme
• Windows 7 Fireworks theme
• Windows 7 Snow Angels theme
• Windows 7 Winter theme
• A bit late now, but nevertheless: Windows 7 Holiday Lights theme

Following packs are already available for a longer time:

• Avatar theme
• Halo Reach theme
• Porsche theme
• Ferrari theme
• And many more…

Find all available theme packs in the Windows Personalization Gallery.

On January 18 and February 1 the first two MSDN Live Meetings of 2011 will take place, both focusing on the Windows Azure Platform. Every Belgian or Luxembourger attendee of either Live Meeting will get a FREE Cloud Power T-shirt.

Jan. 18, 2011: The Windows Azure Platform: Overview and New Features

Join this MSDN Live Meeting to learn more about the Windows Azure Platform including an overview of the new features announced at PDC. Learn how the Windows Azure Platform can be used as a flexible cloud computing solution. Learn how to avoid upfront investment and usage of expensive infrastructure. Learn how to pay only for what you use, scale up when you need the capacity and reduce it when you don’t need it anymore.

All this along with all new features announced (Virtual Machine (VM) Role, support for Elevated Privileges, full IIS and Remote Desktop) and much more, addressed in this session, will bring you up to speed in developing, deploying and running cloud applications.

Timing: 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker: Kurt Claeys

>> REGISTER HERE

Feb. 1, 2011: Practical Architectural Guidelines in Building Applications on the Windows Azure Platform

In this session we will dive into some more architecture like topics when it comes to using the Windows Azure Platform for building the next generation of cloud computing based solutions. Some of these guidelines, amongst other, handle dynamic usage load and deployment of your application, managing overall health state of your infrastructure, securing your applications using federated best practices, managing the overall lifecycle of your solution and other Windows Azure Platform best practices.

This session shows different scenarios where these guidelines are needed while demonstrating the correct way to implement them with many code samples.

View the upcoming TechNet Belux webcasts in:

• English
• Dutch
• French

01/02 – Sytem Center Essentials 2010: A day out of the life of an IT generalist Join us in this session where Mike, an IT Administrator for a small company, will show you how he manages his day-to-day work better, faster and more acurate with System Center Essentials. In this all-demo session, he will show you the different features of System Center Essentials and how they make his life easier…

Speaker: Mike Resseler - http://scug.be/blogs/