Hi, I’m Craig Bailey and this is my personal blog where I write about technology, business systems, HubSpot and general life experiences. You can read my posts here.

(If you are looking for the Content is King post by Bill Gates it is here)

I’m involved with three agencies in Sydney:

  • The first is XEN Systems. We help government departments and mid-large B2B technology companies with their sales and marketing strategy, including implementation and training in HubSpot 
  • The second is XEN Create. We provide premium graphic design services to companies, with a focus on using the latest AI tools, including Midjourney
  • The third is XEN Solar, where we help high quality solar companies (dealers, installers) with their sales and marketing processes.

I also co-host HubShots, the podcast and YouTube show focussed on getting the most out of HubSpot. We are the creators of the HubShots Framework.

Craig Bailey presenting

Latest stories

Office 14 for the web

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One of the announcements at PDC was about Microsoft’s foray into the web based Office space. This was met with initial excitement, and seems to be answer to the (small I suspect) group of people wondering how Microsoft can compete with Google Docs, Zoho and other online offerings. The demo here, with Antoine Leblond and Chris Bryant is a nice indication of how it will operate. I’ve been a...

VSTO for VBA developers

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Last weekend I presented at Office DevCon on the topic of VSTO for VBA developers. This is an interesting use case because you essentially have a group of very experienced, highly productive developers, all extremely familiar with their technology. So my aim was to look at how Microsoft is supporting this community (as opposed to say pushing them into a new technology). I chatted about this...

VSTO on stackoverflow

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I don’t know if you’ve been spending much time on stackoverflow lately, but if you are you’ll know it’s a kind of addictive experience. There’s all types of developer questions on there. The tagging structure is neat and allows you to easily keep track of certain topics. There’s a growing list of VSTO related questions there, so along with the MSDN VSTO forums you are pretty likely to...

Office Development with VS Dev Center – the home of VSTO

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Thanks to Beth Massi for alerting us to this – the Office Development with Visual Studio Developer Center has been launched. This is where the URL will now take you to. [This isn’t to be confused with the Office Developer Center (another excellent resource by the way), since that is open to all office development (not just Visual Studio based).] The Office Development with Visual Studio...

Wish item: PDC viewer

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One thing I’d like is a special PDC videos viewer. Currently I’m watching most of the videos via Channel 9, and the experience is quite nice. I also have a number of sessions downloaded (and a big thanks to Justin King for saving me tons of bandwidth by burning me a DVD of all his downloads). But in general the experience is so… Web 1.0, and here’s the user experience I’d really like:...

Live Services Jumpstart – Sydney – Dec 8 and 9

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There’s only a few spots left for the Live Services Jumpstart in Sydney. It’s an intensive technical training session on Microsoft’s consumer web platform technologies. It’s being run by James McCutcheon and Dr Neil Roodyn (two of my new work colleagues at nsquared) and covers more than 20 technical sessions, hands-on labs and the opportunity to chat with numerous Live Services dudes...

Melbourne Silverlight Designer and Developer Network

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I’ve seen a few posts about this lately (eg Kordsi, Coatsy, Jordsy, sorry couldn’t resistsy), and with good reason – it looks like a really exciting new user group (or ‘network’ to be more correct). Here’s the Silverlight Designer and Developer Network (SDDN) website, which tells you their first meeting is next Thursday 27 Nov (held at Microsoft in Melbourne) kicking off around 5:30pm...

PERSONAL: Two weeks ago… and a new job

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In a micro kind of way I feel my life has been ‘on hold’ for the last month. Two weeks ago I had urgent surgery for something that turned up unexpectedly, and I’m pleased to say things seem OK now. I’m feeling pretty good, and even started back at the gym tonight. I was able to go for a long walk earlier in the week and so far so good. I’m back at the specialist again in another week or...

SBTUG: Next Wed 26 Nov 2008 – Steve Herzberg, Craig Bailey, EOY Party!

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Quick details: When: Wed 26 November 2008 Time: 6pm (until approx 8:30pm) Where: Microsoft, North Ryde Contact: Craig Bailey : 0413 489 388 Cost: Free (Pizza + Drinkies + Nibblies all provided) More details: www.sbtug.com   Yes, that’s right it’s almost Christmas (only 34 days till the consumer frenzy dies down… and then resumes with New Year sales :-). How time flies. Whilst I’d...

Software Craftsmanship

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My good friend and colleague at Elcom, Angus McDonald (aka Falkayn), and I have been chatting about ways to improve the software processes at work. He’s taking over many of the responsibilities I’ve held – now that I’m moving on – and is a considered thinker. Angus is much more Agile focussed than me, and recently lead a very useful retrospective for us at Elcom. In a recent...

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