The “Get me MSDN Premium and Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite” competition

What’s this post about?
Microsoft gave me two licenses for the MSDN Premium and Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite. These are full subscriptions, not a kind of half baked something and each one is worth nearly $ 11,000.

I’m allowed to give them to people in the community and therefore thought to create a small competition where you can win them as grand prizes.

How to win?
Create one or more screencasts and post them as comments (a link to them and a short description) of this post. The submitted screencast should be around 15-20 minutes (it can also be longer) and cover one or more Microsoft technologies. The language of the screencast needs to be English (because that’s the language that all the judges understand).

The idea is not to advertise one of the technologies but rather to create a screencast that allows people to learn something about that technology. Examples would be: “How to create a game in XNA”, “How to use Visual Studio 2008″, “How to build a website in ASP.NET”, “How to create and style a control in Expression Blend”, or even “How to start with Visual C++”.

You can use tools like Camtasia, Community Clips or even Microsoft Media Encoder to record the screencast and upload it to YouTube or any other platform that you want. I’m mentioning YouTube because they offer the new High Quality videos. Please make sure that the screencast is of a decent quality (also after being uploaded to the web): it’s no fun to watch them if you can barely see what it’s going on!

For examples on how the final screencast could look like check out my screencast section.

Who is allowed to participate?
Everybody around the world who is a human being (and doesn’t work for Microsoft because they obviously already have the subscription) can participate at the competition. ;)

When does the competition take place?
It starts on the 1st of July 2008 and goes until the 31st of July 2008. Entries submitted within that period are taken into consideration; entries submitted outside this period are not taken into consideration!

How is the winner selected?
After the competition is over the judges (Alex Duggleby, Sven Groot and me) are going to watch the different screencasts and they are going to choose the two winners. The two people who created the best screencasts (speaking of how well they are done and how valuable they are for people who want to learn the technology that is shown in the screencast) are going to be selected as winners. The two winners get a notification and will receive the prizes.

Attention: please make sure to post your real e-mail address and name so that I can contact you if you win the prize. Please include also the country in which you life.

Submitting screencasts means that you agree with the terms and conditions mentioned in this post.

Published on Jun 28th, 2008 — Tags: , ,
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49 Comments ( Comments RSS TrackBack )

  1. How about, how to use Vista :P

    Comment by Brandon — June 28, 2008 @ 6:12 pm

  2. Well, it depends. If it’s something, like how to use some features of Vista that aren’t the basic things than it might be interesting. For example a compiliation of hidden features and tweaks for Vista.

    Comment by Christian Liensberger — June 28, 2008 @ 7:30 pm

  3. [...] http://www.liensberger.it/web/blog/?p=324 Posted: Jun 28 2008, 06:56 von mario_mh | mit no comments Abgelegt unter: Student Program, C# [...]

    Pingback by 2 MSDN Premium Abos zu gewinnen - Mario Meir-Huber — June 28, 2008 @ 8:03 pm

  4. Hey Christian.

    Really great stuff. Hope as an outcome we’ll have a chance to see lot of new and great screencasts.

    What a great prizes!

    Greets
    Mariusz

    Comment by aristo — June 29, 2008 @ 2:51 am

  5. Wow! This is amazing Christian! I am on the job. I will create a screencast soon and buzz you about it! I hope I make it! This is a great initiative! Go Microsoft!

    Comment by Nagarjun — June 29, 2008 @ 9:25 am

  6. [...] Of course you do. [...]

    Pingback by Lloyd Humphreys » Fancy Free Stuff? — June 29, 2008 @ 11:30 pm

  7. I think I’ll pick up on your Blend control styling one ;)

    Comment by Lloyd — June 29, 2008 @ 11:32 pm

  8. [...] Untuk lebih jelasnya dapat dilihat di blogsnya : http://www.liensberger.it/web/blog/?p=324? [...]

    Pingback by Arif Firmansyah | Lomba Pembuatan “Screencast” Produk Microsoft berhadiah Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite — July 1, 2008 @ 5:43 am

  9. Since I was asked by a few people on how many screencast each one can submit I want to clearify that. It’s really simple: you can submit as much as you want (the sky is the limit); but make sure to focus also on the quality of the content. We will judge based on that.

    But if you create more than one screencasts with good content you might have higher chances to win…

    Comment by Christian Liensberger — July 1, 2008 @ 6:45 pm

  10. A short video on how to use .NET settings with WPF and data binding, including how to handle the “Cancel” problem.

    http://compilewith.net/2008/06/wpf-settings-dialog-movie.html

    The screencast can been seen directly in the page, linked above, or the WMV can be downloaded directly at the end of the same post.

    Comment by Paul Jackson — July 2, 2008 @ 7:55 am

  11. No one wants the subscription ?

    Comment by Yassir — July 8, 2008 @ 2:17 am

  12. I do, that’s why I posted a video :-)
    (Comment #10)

    Comment by Paul Jackson — July 8, 2008 @ 8:21 am

  13. Hey Christian!

    I just completed one screencast! However, I need your help. I made the screencast using a freeware called CamStudio and I recorded it in 8 different AVI files. I tried combining them in Movie Maker but the clarity is TERRIBLE. Any suggestions on what I can do? I use Windows XP. I do not have any professional video editing software.

    How do I combine them? Or, can I just send you these 8 files in a rar or zip archive?

    This is just one of my screencast. I will be submitting more. I really want this MSDN subscription.

    Waiting for your reply.

    Comment by Nagarjun — July 8, 2008 @ 10:02 am

  14. can we see the videos ?

    Comment by Yassir — July 9, 2008 @ 4:14 am

  15. @Yassir: I had to approve the comment. The video link is now available. I don’t know why that happened…

    @Nagarjun: You can use VirtualDub or similar tools to concat. You could also use the Divx Encoder (the trial is free) to combine a set of videos.

    Comment by Christian Liensberger — July 11, 2008 @ 8:08 am

  16. Thanks for your response!! Will send ‘em your way soon! ;-) Hope you’ll like it!

    Comment by Nagarjun — July 11, 2008 @ 2:29 pm

  17. Thank you for this competition, i think it will help the community very much .
    i will start on my screen cast write away.

    Comment by Ahmed Moussa — July 12, 2008 @ 9:21 am

  18. Hey Chrisitan!

    Looks like im having a problem. The avi file isnt playing properly and even divx isnt able to convert it. I even purchased DivX and DivX author so that I can send you the video. Is it ok if I send it to you the way it is now?

    The problem is caused by my screen recording program.

    Waiting for your reply.

    Regards,
    Nag

    Comment by Nagarjun — July 13, 2008 @ 6:32 pm

  19. Hmmm… have you tried to upload the different parts to YouTube? Or VirtualDub to convert it. The video should be uploaded to a public location so that others can watch it to learn something from it!

    Comment by Christian Liensberger — July 14, 2008 @ 10:18 am

  20. Hi Christian,

    I had done a screencast on Repository Factory long back. Hope that can help me get a subscription :)

    Here is the link - http://chakkaradeep.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/screencast-on-repository-factory/

    Cheers,
    Chaks

    Comment by Chakkaradeep — July 15, 2008 @ 10:02 am

  21. Hey Christian!

    I finally managed to get the video onto youtube! My screencasting software had some problems with the recording so I had to upload it onto YouTube. Luckily, YouTube displayed it clearly. Here is the link to the playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DB07E72BEB3E0C34

    The videos are from bottom to top. Hope you like it and hope I win! I really could use this subscription as I am a JAVA developer and web developer. I have some great projects in mind and these tools would help me greatly!

    Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience on the videos.

    Regards,
    Nagarjun

    Comment by Nagarjun — July 19, 2008 @ 9:42 am

  22. Hey Christian!

    Just wondering, have you seen my video? I dont see any activity on this post. Have you been busy? Have you thought about it? This means a lot to me!

    I hope you like my video.

    Regards,
    Nag

    Comment by Nagarjun — July 22, 2008 @ 6:08 pm

  23. All the video links are recorded… we are going to judge on them once the competition is over :)

    Comment by Christian Liensberger — July 23, 2008 @ 6:59 am

  24. Cool! I’ll have to give this a try. I hope I have time before the deadline.

    Comment by MikeC — July 24, 2008 @ 1:00 am

  25. Hey Chris :)

    This is a quater hour video in which you’ll learn exactly how to create a quick and easy music played in C# using Expression Blend to style your own controls and use clever controls to present some information about the song playing. Hope you enjoy it - it’s my first screencast ever so excuse any mistakes :)

    http://lloydhumphreys.com/blog/?p=307
    Lloyd

    Comment by Lloyd Humphreys — July 24, 2008 @ 5:39 pm

  26. Hi Chris, my screencast is about streamtypes of the .Net framework, a short screencast . Hope you enjoy it :)
    Link: http://www.continental-8.com/files/donald/

    Comment by Donald — July 27, 2008 @ 8:46 pm

  27. Hey Christian,
    i have completed my screencast , it is about Spec# . i tried to upload it to youtube but the quality was so poor so i decided to upload it to another site .

    Link : http://www.synergytools.net/files/specsharp.avi

    thanks

    Comment by Ahmed Moussa — July 29, 2008 @ 9:51 pm

  28. Christian,
    It’s too late to ask but anyway. Is “until the 31st” mean that the 30th is the last day?

    Comment by Sergey Yurkov — July 30, 2008 @ 8:10 pm

  29. Christian,

    First of all thank you for the wonderful opportunity!

    Here are some links to a video I put together on how to setup a Network Load Balancing Cluster for use with Terminal Services. It is a bit long, however, I started at the very beginning with installing Windows.

    Here are some points of interest.

    Installing Windows: 2:17
    Installing Terminal Server/Terminal Server Licensing: 22:51
    Setting up NLB Cluster: 34:00

    There are a couple of version that you could choose from:

    Low Quality Download - http://mogaard.ath.cx/videos/Screencast_NEW.wmv

    Medium Quality Download - http://mogaard.ath.cx/videos/Screencast_High_NEW.wmv

    Medium Quality Flash (Takes some time to load) - http://mogaard.ath.cx/videos/Screencast_High_FLASH.wmv

    As you will probably be able to see, I am fairly new to the world of creating screencasts that are of good visual quality while being of a smaller file size; however, I hope the content can make up for that.

    Comment by Bryan Neilson — July 30, 2008 @ 10:22 pm

  30. @Sergey: it means until on the 31st at 23:59:59 :)

    Comment by Christian Liensberger — July 31, 2008 @ 6:24 am

  31. Hi Chris and all they want to learn more about the topics of my screencasts, here are they:

    #1 Creating a calc game for PDAs and Smartphones (smart device application, here for windows mobile 5) with Visual Studio 2008 in C#:
    http://rapidshare.de/files/40124174/mobiledevice.asf.html (16 minutes, 27 MB)

    #2 Creating a dialog based application with Visual Studio 2008 and the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) in Visual C++
    http://rapidshare.de/files/40124175/mfc.asf.html (10 minutes, 15 MB)

    #3 Creating a “Hello World” website with ASP.NET and the Visual Studio 2008 IDE in Visual C#
    http://rapidshare.de/files/40124176/asp.asf.html (5 minutes, 8 MB)

    #4 Create comments in Visual C# and build automatically a website documentation like MSDN with Visual Studio 2008 and NDOC
    http://rapidshare.de/files/40124177/xml.asf.html (6 minutes, 10 MB)

    I hope you enjoy watching and sorry for my english :)

    Comment by H. Maier — July 31, 2008 @ 1:02 pm

  32. My first attempt with video tutorials on Working with Silverlight and WCF. The videos can be found here at http://communityclips.officelabs.com/User.aspx?cid=1082743839742964991.

    I am trying to do a five-part series and will try to upload more and complete the series soon.

    Comment by Bronk Han — July 31, 2008 @ 1:43 pm

  33. Hi Christian,

    only by coincidence I found this contest just yesterday and thought “YES!!!!” - after I tried to get my hands on a similar and relatively cheap package at eBay 4 times during the last 2 months and every time someone managed to bid exactly 5 Euros more ;-) Actually, I am going to be self employed from October and this package is just what everyone needs in this job… So I decided to take a topic from your suggestion list on how to build a website with ASP.NET. This looked easy on first sight, but the more you think about this, the more complicated it gets… Why? Just watch the video!

    The video was created with Camtasia (at last I know how people zoom into pages). I also provide the ppt mentioned there. Everything can be found here:

    http://udo.winkenjohann.de/index.php?click=800

    Please excuse the poor audio quality from time to time, as my headset is definetely not the newest one. If anyone likes to contact me, please feel free to use the address on the page.

    Greetings from Hamburg / Germany,
    Udo

    Comment by Udo — July 31, 2008 @ 5:11 pm

  34. Hi LittleGuru,
    I made a screencast too. It’s the first and probably the last one because my English accent really sucks. I’ve uploaded the video to MSN but it it’s still getting processed. There is already a smaller video available which demonstrates the technologies I’m going to talk about.

    http://video.msn.com/?user=-4163802377326235964

    Comment by ZippyV — July 31, 2008 @ 9:03 pm

  35. Hi Christian,

    Here is my post on Validation in WPF.

    Comment by Johan J v Rensburg — July 31, 2008 @ 10:34 pm

  36. Hi Christian,

    Sorry didn’t copy the link in.

    http://www.youtube.com/v/AW6T6_CPxR8

    Comment by Johan J v Rensburg — July 31, 2008 @ 10:36 pm

  37. Hi,

    Is it possible to extend the submission deadline to 2 august?

    Comment by Sadek Alaoui — July 31, 2008 @ 11:21 pm

  38. It’s a “How to create simple Battleship game using C# 3.0 and XNA Game Studio 3.0″

    I couldn’t upload such long video on any hosting in time, so I used SkyDrive.

    http://tinyurl.com/6gerqy - redirects to SkyDrive folder. All files in the folder is the screencast. You also need a Camtasia codec to view this videos (sorry).

    Comment by Sergey Yurkov — July 31, 2008 @ 11:56 pm

  39. Here is my screencast about Styling and Templates in WPF:
    http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=ae9f2174-ca5d-49ca-ab85-54895501063b

    And I live in the U.S. since you asked.

    Comment by Samuel McAravey — August 1, 2008 @ 3:19 am

  40. Thank you for participating in the competition. It is closed now.

    What’s going to happen next?
    1) We are going to watch all of the screencasts.
    2) The winners are going to be announced.

    Give us some time until we had the chance to review all the screencasts and announce the winners.

    Comment by Christian Liensberger — August 1, 2008 @ 3:54 pm

  41. [...] Christian Liensberger » Blog » The “Get me MSDN Premium and Visual … [...]

    Pingback by Come and Make a fast bid on a VS7 and win for free | Amazing Cell Phone Deals — May 15, 2009 @ 11:16 am

  42. ??? ?????? ??????!!!!!

    Comment by Babuluk — September 7, 2009 @ 12:58 am

  43. What about new competitions like this one ? I know a lot of about Visual Studio.

    Comment by Aleks — September 26, 2009 @ 8:03 am

  44. I just want to say thanks to the author of this website. This info is very useful for my work. Big thanks 2 uI’ll be waiting for a new posts!

    Comment by Steve — September 26, 2009 @ 10:17 pm

  45. nice site ^)

    Comment by Algotlyneense — December 18, 2009 @ 6:44 am

  46. nice site ^) good gob

    Comment by Algotlyneense — December 19, 2009 @ 3:45 am

  47. ????? ????, ??????? - ?????????? ???????.

    Comment by Breddipitti — February 13, 2010 @ 11:53 pm

  48. ????????? ?? ??????! ????????? ?? ???!

    Comment by works — March 16, 2010 @ 9:27 pm

  49. ? ??????????? ??? ????????? ???????????

    Comment by Waimaxiawag — April 5, 2010 @ 6:41 am

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