Sorry for the lack of recent updates on this blog.

As the Australian Academic year came to an end last November 2009, all 3 of your UWA MSPs have actually graduated!

Today is actually my first day in the office at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington as a Software Design Engineer (SDE)  working on Visual Studio Team System.

I wanted to say thanks, it’s been a great 2 years.

My How to get a Winter Internship has by far been the most popular post accounting for about 5% of all traffic to this blog ever.

New UWA MSPs should continue along with the other WA MSPs with this blog in the coming 2010 year and beyond.

Thanks again,

Luke
Former-UWA MSP, now Microsoft SDE

As posted often on WA MSP, Microsoft Internships are an awesome way to get a headstart in your career, while learning a bunch and having heaps of fun.

A Real World Experience like No Other.  As an intern at Microsoft, you’ll have real responsibility, real work, and real opportunities to jumpstart your career. (You’ll get paid, too!) It’s an experience you’ll never find in a classroom. You’ll be given manageable assignments that you can complete while you’re here, and your efforts will likely take shape in Microsoft products—or be used by Microsoft teams—long after you return to school. And imagine millions of customers, not to mention your classmates, seeing your work! Some interns even parlay their experience into a job offer.

An Opportunity to Shine. Our interns make a real difference. Not by filing paperwork or running errands, but by developing real products. Here, you’ll run your own projects and put your skills to work. This is why our internship program is one of the most successful in the industry. You’ll learn more in 12 weeks than you would in a whole school year. It’s the kind of work that gets noticed by millions of people all over the world. Kind of redefines the whole concept of internships, don’t you think?

More information and full details can be downloaded at AU Internship 2009

If interested, please send your resume by July 22 to: ausrec@microsoft.com

For a heads up on the Internship process you may also like to read my earlier post at http://www.wamsp.com.au/2008/09/how-to-get-a-microsoft-winter-internship-for-australian-students/

The Power of Students to Change the World

Posted by Anthony Salcito
General Manager, U.S. Education

This week I traveled to Cambridge, Mass. for the U.S. finals of the Imagine Cup, a student competition sponsored by Microsoft that encourages students to apply  technology in creative ways to tackle real-world problems. This year’s competition specifically challenged students to use technology to achieve the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, which include fighting hunger and poverty, eradicating AIDS, improving education and advancing environmental sustainability.

The winners were announced today, and Team MultiPoint Web took the top software prize. Jimmy, Mark and Luke Dickinson, three brothers from Oregon currently attending Georgia State University, Portland Community College and Tigard High School, respectively, developed an innovative application that helps advance the goal of universal primary education. The brothers built upon existing education programs to create a set of low- to no-cost, Web-based learning applications that allow multiple students to simultaneously use a single computer. Such an innovation can help cash-strapped schools get the most out of their computer hardware and software investments.

Team MangoBunnies, the first all-women team to reach the U.S. finals in the seven-year history of the U.S. Imagine Cup, was named first-runner-up for their invention of computer-assisted medication regimen adherence (CAMRA) application, which supports HIV and AIDS patients by providing medication reminders to their personal mobile devices. The second-runner-up was Team Special Child from the University of Arkansas Little Rock, for their application which seeks to streamline the adoption process and increase the number of children placed into adoptive families each year.

For me, one of the most compelling aspects of the Imagine Cup is that it sets lofty goals for the students that participate. I have learned that when you raise expectations for students and bet on their ability to meet a challenge, most of the time they will achieve it.

The growth of the program shows that students really respond to the challenges posed by the Imagine Cup. In 2003, we had roughly 1,000 competitors from 11 countries (our first winner now has his own company with 27 employees). This year, the Imagine Cup has attracted over 300,000 students from more than 100 countries.

Now more than ever, encouraging interest in computer science in our young people is critical. Our goal with Imagine Cup is to help inspire the next generation of technology and business leaders to drive innovation and job creation in the United States and around the world. Now, schools and educators need to continue to fuel this innovation by investing in computer science and technology education, and our children. 

For more information about Microsoft’s education efforts please visit my blog.

http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2009/05/05/the-power-of-students-to-change-the-world.aspx

I thought I might as well work on my MCPD as .NET is one of my primary tools I use to write software.

I got myself a copy of Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Developer Foundation which is part of the self-paced training kit for the MCTS Exam 70-536.

At 794 pages this book is pretty huge. I was kind of overwhelmed at first. However when I started self-studying I found each chapter is broken down into bite-sized lessons. Each lesson is generally specified for about 40 mins, but I found I could read the lesson, and do the included exercise in about half that time. This was great for me, where often I’d only have 20-30 mins here and there to spend on this, and I could easily start a lesson knowing I could finish it off in the time I had free between other stuff I was doing.

The book itself has 16 chapters (listed below) on the fundamentals of the Microsoft .NET Framework. Although it says it expects the reader to have some experience, I found it explained well enough for even newer developers to understand.

Every lesson is followed by both a summary and a small multi-choice lesson review, which is great as we know the key to learning is repetition. Additionally each chapter also gives a summary and a review, along with case scenarios and suggested practices.

Like most Microsoft Press books, this book also comes with a companion CD. This includes practice tests and exam questions from each chapter. One thing I found on the CD was an included PDF of the entire book! This was great for downloading to my phone and notebook and being able to read a lesson when I had a spare 10 mins.

A couple of things I found useful were:

• The small lesson sizes
• “Real World” examples and best practices
• The integration of lessons and exam objectives
• Mini labs

Microsoft also provides resources for universities to teach Microsoft Certification through the IT Academy program. This would allow you to learn through some structured program at your university.

For the rest of us, the self-study training kits are a more cost-effective approach than a third party institution, which for me as a student is not really a feasible choice. But the book provided everything I need to pass the exam.

You can get a copy of this book at www.mspress.com.au.

I also have a copy of Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Developer Foundation to give away to a UWA Student, along with a second-shot exam voucher. To enter, please leave any comment below, and I will randomly draw a winner within the next week. Please use your @student.uwa.edu.au E-mail address in the comment.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

1. DreamSpark – any university student has access to this, technology wise or otherwise
2. MSDN-AA – each university specifically signs up for this. Generally this is available only for Computing & Engineering students. The university can sign up for MSDN-AA on its own or to IT Academy with includes MSDN-AA.

The good news is both Curtin and UWA both have signed up for MSDN-AA.

MSDN-AA primarily works by allowing students to borrow DVDs of the software and installing it on their machine. For Curtin students you can get the media from ComSSA, and UWA students should ask at the CSSE reception desk.

ELMS for MSDN-AA is an addon for MSDN-AA which allows the students to download the software online, not just install off pre-burned media. UWA has signed up for this and if you are a Computer Science student you should have received an invite for you to register. Once you have registered you can download the software at http://msdn70.e-academy.com/au_37792

For more information, please contact ComSAA at comssa@lists.curtin.edu.au for Curtin students or go to http://web.csse.uwa.edu.au/school_and_systems_information/school_systems_information/downloads for UWA students.

A couple of students noted why bother if they can just pirate the software? I would say just for the easy of use. No worrying about keygens or serials, updates all work and any genuine advantage addons just work.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

We were treated to two awesome days of presentations, workshops, gaming, food, prizes and plenty of free stuff.

Day 1 kicked off with some intros to awesome programs available to students such as DreamSpark, Imagine Cup, Students 2 Business, Microsoft Student Partners, MSDN-AA, Student Tech Clubs, Channel8 and more. Microsoft provided lunch with a chance to checkout some cool technologies in the cafeteria. The afternoon continued with presentations from Microsoft staff on Microsoft programs such as It’s Not Piracy, Microsoft Learning, MSPress, IT Academy, Imagine Cup and technologies such as Windows Live and Windows Mobile.

After a big first day, we all jumped into the bus and headed to the Great Northern Hotel for dinner and drinks.

Around 9pm we made it back to Microsoft Australia and went straight to the Xbox room. We were lucky to be able to play Halo Wars before its release along with other great games. Gears of War 2, Call of Duty and Forza seemed popular!

At the end of the night the MSPs were shocked to hear they would all be given Xbox 360s along with 4 games and an extra controller! Microsoft has gone out of their way to ensure when MSPs share their love of technology with the community, they can actually share it!

After a quick refresh on the previous days content, Day 2 started with a presentation from GP on where MSPs fit into the big picture at Microsoft. Michael Kordahi followed with an awesome presentation on the future of technology. Andrew Coates demonstrated Live Meeting and Nick Hodge presented on Microsoft’s Open Source program. Lunch was provided by the guys from Atomic Magazine who asked us to give away their magazines at our events… awesome for students all-round!

But one of the highlights for me, was each MSP getting up to present a 5 minute demo on stuff they are passionate about.

Of course there were prizes throughout the event, for the best questions and the most involvement from MSPs.

After  2 full days, MSPs headed back to their homes, Xbox under one arm, and various other loot under the other and heads full of ideas on how they can share their passion, excitement and love of technology with their fellow students.

In fact, some already have, such as Sean’s O-Week Presentation along with his post on new stuff added to DreamSpark.

All Aussie MSPs are fired up and equipped, so join us for an awesome 2009!

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

MSPs from over Australia are here for the event to get the resources to help students to reach their potential over 2009.

Luke
Australian MSP Lead

Microsoft has now announced some great new features for this service, and is renaming it Outlook Live.

Some major new features are:

• Multiple browser support (IE, Firefox, Safari)
• Instant Messaging within Outlook Live
• Threaded conversations in Conversation View

All the Microsoft Student Partners in Australia are currently on Outlook Live so you should be hearing a lot more about it in the near future.

Checkout the official press release at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/feb09/02-1220MLiveEduPR.mspx

Checkout awesome video demo at http://edge.technet.com/Media/Introducing-Outlook-Live/

Luke
WA MSP

User accounts can be accessed through Powershell, APIs and using Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007, integrating with current directory services.

Students can access their E-mail through Outlook and online via Outlook Web Access. They gain access to all the advantages of having an Exchange backend, including 10GB storage, distribution lists, calendar, global contacts list and push E-mail.

Microsoft LIVE@edu works with whatever domain name you choose and is fully brand-able and customisable.

For institutions would want to streamline their management of E-mail and associated services, Microsoft LIVE@edu should definitely be included in the list of options to consider.

Luke
UWA MSP