As of this week, I am no longer with Microsoft. It's been a fantastic 9 years though, and I am grateful for all the friends I made, the knowledge I gained, and all the adventures along the way. All of this has paved the way for me to begin the next phase of my life and career.

I am still gathering my ideas for what I want to do next, as my true passion lies with helping others learn and be successful. I'll be checking out a few opportunities that I have heard of so far, but if you know of anything exciting, don't hesitate to toss it my way!

Soon I'll have my new blog set up at https://glengordon.name and you can always reach me through twitter as @glengordon

And, away we go!!! As a famous scientist once said "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!"

The Windows Azure community is doing just that on November 14 with the Windows AzureConf, a free online event. With a keynote by Scott Guthrie and sessions by Azure experts in the community, this promises to be an excellent event. Learn to master the cloud from the best and the brightest sharing their own ideas and experiences.

Sign up today at https://www.windowsazureconf.net/

And remember you can get started with your own free 90 day trial of Windows Azure.

This weekend marathon is a fantastic place to pitch an idea for a company, rally some teammates, build a business plan and a prototype, and pitch your nascent company to a board of judges who will pick the most viable ones to win prizes.

With Windows 8 gaining tremendous traction in the marketplace, it makes sense to create a Windows Store app as the premier experience for customers of your new business.

Because of this, we are running a free Windows 8 bootcamp on the morning before Startup Weekend. That way you can get the technology under your belt, and then spend the rest of the weekend building the business and your app.

Register for the bootcamp and Startup Weekend separately.

The Windows 8 “Wednesday” will be Thursday this week, I’ll be there from 11 AM until 2 pm.

Here’s an amazing opportunity to get started. A few enterprising folks in the Birmingham developer community have organized a Windows 8 hackathon. After a few hour of training, roll up your sleeves and start building an app onsite! By the time dinner rolls around, you’ll have an opportunity to show of your app to other hackers as well as a special meeting of the Birmingham .NET Users Group!

The winners will receive hundreds of dollars in gift cards, and event a Windows Tablet PC!

To prepare for the event, make sure you have Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 installed. If you want to get a head start on learning Windows 8 development, check out our GenerationApp program.

Join me in the Alpharetta Microsoft office between 11 AM and 2 PM on Wednesday, October 31. And since it’s Halloween, if you come in wearing a costume and get your picture taken with a Windows 8 machine (with hopefully your app running) I’ve got a special gift for you!

Sign up for the sessions here! https://www.msdnevents.com/workshops/

Please join me between 11 AM and 2 PM at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta to chat about Windows 8 apps, get your in-development app running on a slate so you can test out multi touch and accelerometer support, or talk about porting an app.

There’s still time to sign up for THE designer and developer conference in the Southeast – ReMIX! Lots of fantastic sessions, great tutorials, opportunities to network and meet experts in various areas.

I’ll be at the conference on Saturday giving one-on-one help to folks who want to learn about Windows 8 development and design.