Due to the popularity of the inaugural Dynamics CRM Incubation Week event , Sanjay and his team are at it again with the 2nd installment of this great event.

For those of you out in the blogsphere who are local to the Boston, MA area and has a startup business, or is contemplating building a new business around the delivery of business solutions, a co-worker of mine, Sanjay Jain, recently made an announcement of a great event, called the Dynamics CRM Incubation Week, that's being held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston, MA from 4/20/2009 to 4/24/2009.  The event will cover the following:

• Learning how to build next generation business solutions on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform
• Getting entrepreneurs coaching from an industry panel of experts (to include VC and Angel Investors, Academic, Marketing)
• Generating marketing "buzz" and recognition for various Awards

This event is interesting in that its geared at empowering entrepreneurs to build successful businesses leveraging Microsoft as a key partner.

To get more details about this event, head on over to Sanjay's Blog or e-mail him directly to nominate your team.

To learn more about how Microsoft can help startups, head over to the Microsoft BizSpark website.

Microsoft has recently published the first 9 or 40 Azure Services Platform “How Do I” (HDIs) videos for public consumption.  The intent of the HDI videos are to provide additional training and resources around building cloud-aware applications on the Windows Azure Services Platform.  These HDI videos are freely downloadable and contains a ton of useful information and guidance.  Over time, more HDI videos will be published that addresses many aspects of developing solutions on top of Windows Azure.  Included in the first round of videos are the following:

	Get Started Developing on Windows Azure?	If you’re a developer and you’re new to Windows Azure, start here! You’ll see what you need to download and install, and how to create a simple “Hello World” Windows Azure application.
	Deploy a Windows Azure Application?	You’ll see what it takes to move your application into the cloud – you’ll see how to request and register a token, how to upload your Windows Azure application and how to move it between staging and production in the cloud.
	Store Blobs in Windows Azure Storage?	Learn how to leverage Windows Azure storage to store data as blobs. You’ll learn about blob storage, containers and the API that makes it easy to manage everything from managed code.
	Leverage Queries in Windows Azure?	Learn how to use queues to facilitate communication between Web and Worker roles in Windows Azure.
	Debugging Tips for Windows Azure Applications?	The Windows Azure SDK includes a development fabric that provides a "cloud on your desktop." In this screencast, learn how to debug your Windows Azure applications in this environment.
	Get Started with .NET Services?	.NET Services are a set of highly scalable building blocks for programming in the cloud. In this brief screencast, you'll learn about the registration process, the SDK and the built-in samples - everything you need to know in order to get started.
	Harness the Microsoft .NET Service Bus?	The .NET Service Bus makes it easy to access your Web services no matter where they are. In this brief screencast, you'll see how to take a basic Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service and expose it to the Internet with the .NET Service Bus.
	Get Started with the Live Framework?	If you are looking to get started developing with the Live Framework, this is the place to start! In this screencast you'll learn how to get a Live Services token and what you need to download in order to start writing Live Framework applications.
	Use the Microsoft Live Framework Resource Browser?	The Live Framework Resource Model is a simple, straightforward information model based on entities, collections and relationships. In this brief screencast you'll learn how to navigate the relationships between entities by using the Live Framework Resource Browser, which is a tool that ships with the Live Framework SDK.
	Stay tuned!

To keep abreast of new HDI videos, head over to the overall HDI landing page regularly and sign up for the RSS feeds. 

The February Update of the Azure Services Training Kit has released and is ready for download. Below is a brief overview (taken from the download site) of what's included in the latest release.

Overview
The Azure Services Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform. The February release includes the following updates:

• 19 demo scripts that walkthrough several of the services
• 10 presentations covering the entire Azure Services Platform
• 3 additional hands-on labs for Live Services

This technical content covers services including: Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.

The SharePoint Conference is a great event to attend.  This year's conference will be especially good as we begin to unveil a lot of great information around the next version of SharePoint (codenamed SharePoint "14").  You don't want to miss this one.  Here's an excerpt (below) from an e-mail that's circulating to the SharePoint community.