One of the first things I wanted to get online was a post about an exciting event which I attended recently.

I was one of the lucky developers to be chosen to attend a Microsoft “Jump in Camp” in the beautiful surroundings of Lake Zurich, I was promised interesting discussions and a good time, and I have to admit both were provided in ample measure.

Over the 4 days a number of topics were presented and discussed, these involved

• Windows Azure

• Web Platform Installer

• Windows Azure Storage platform

• Azure SDK for PHP

• SQL Server

• Silverlight

• Microsoft Live Labs Pivot

• SQL Server Reporting Services for PHP

But the camp wasn’t just a talking shop, we also had time to get down to the serious business of coding some of these things into our respective projects, I will post more details on each of these things separately in the coming weeks.

I would like to thank everyone who organised and attended the camp, over the 4 days I met talented people, undertook some strange challenges and learnt more about the steps Microsoft are taking to work towards interoperability between differing technologies than I could ever of imagined.

I hope they do something like this again as I believe its a very important and productive way to get face-to-face time with the key open-source projects and people within Microsoft for the benefit of the most important people for us all “the users”.