I previously mentioned the series of Windows Developer Camps - free, full-day events to help you learn about building Metro-style apps for Windows 8. They feature a mix of developer sessions plus a series of hands-on labs to help reinforce what you’ve learned.
Well, it turns out they’re popular. So popular, in fact, that all of the Camps I listed earlier are full.
However, more are on the way! Coming soon to these cities:
Register soon, bring a PC with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Visual Studio 11 Beta installed, and enjoy Camp!
The Windows Developer Camps are a great first step toward developing for Windows 8, but whether you’re just starting or are well on your way with your own app, check out the Metro Accelerator Labs.
While the Windows Developer Camps focus on education via sessions and hands-on labs, the Metro Accelerator Labs are focused on your apps, featuring an environment to let you code with experts on hand to help you with any questions (and plenty of food, too.)
Then, as you ready your app for prime time, look toward the Application Excellence Labs. These are your chance have your app reviewed and potentially earn a token to allow you to submit it early to the Windows Store – an opportunity you really shouldn’t miss!
Happy Windows 8 coding!
-Chris
Some colleagues and I have just started a new series of one-hour MSDN webcasts focused on many aspects of developing Metro style apps for Windows 8.
The series launched yesterday, but all sessions will be made available as on-demand recordings. (I’ll update this post as they are.) Thanks to Jaime Rodriguez for the original post.
Update – The webcasts have been recorded and there is a series home page on Channel 9.
Click on the session titles below to watch. You can also download Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 Express Beta to help follow along.
Enjoy the series!
[Last Update: 7/6/2012]
Introduction to the Windows 8 platform and the Windows Store Jennifer Marsman Windows 8 is Windows re-imagined! Join this session to learn about the new platform for building Metro-style applications. Get an understanding of the platform design tenets, the programming language choices, and the integration points with the operating system and across Metro-style apps. We will also discuss the enormous opportunity for developers to make crazy money with the Windows Store. You will walk away with the resources to begin writing Metro applications for Windows 8.
Designing apps with Metro style principles and the Windows personality Chris Bernard Metro style design has a set of five guiding principles to help you make the best choices when designing your app. These principles are the foundation for building great Metro style apps. Consider these principles as you plan your app, and always ensure your design and development choices live up to these principles.
Building Metro style apps with XAML: What .NET developers need to know John Wiese If you are experienced with .NET or Silverlight and are already familiar with XAML, this session will teach you everything you need to know to create a Metro style app for Windows 8. This session will cover updates to familiar features and explore concepts that are new for Windows 8. We’ll talk about building reusable Windows Runtime Components in C#, Async programming in Windows 8 and both the Visual Studio and Expression designers. This session will show you how to turn your XAML skills into money-making Metro style apps.
What HTML developers need to know about coding Windows 8 Metro style apps Michael Palermo This session is perfect for any web developer wanting to leverage his/her skillset to develop Windows 8 Metro style apps. The session begins by proving how much web developers already know about building apps for Windows 8. The focus then turns to how to write JavaScript code with WinJS. Key points for Metro style app development will be highlighted by implementing popular feature requests using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
Win as One: How Contracts in Windows 8 Help You Build a Killer Metro App G. Andrew Duthie Contracts are agreements between Windows and your Metro style app that allow you to integrate Windows 8 features into your app. For example, Windows 8 lets users share content from one application to another by using the Share contract. In this session, you'll learn how contracts work and how to implement the built-in contracts such as Search, Share, Settings, and More. With Contracts, you can help users get more out of your app, and in a way that is consistent and intuitive, and they will reward you by coming back to your app again and again.
Bring Your Windows 8 Metro Style Apps to Life with Tiles and Notifications Chris Bowen Tiles and Notifications are important ways to draw attention to your app and improve your users' experiences. Tiles can draw users back into your app when your tile comes to life on Start screen. They can also let users personalize their Start screen by creating deep links to specific places within your app. Notifications, delivered through the Windows Push Notification Service, can inform and draw your users back into your app even when it's not running. In this session, you will learn how to effectively implement Tiles and Notifications to help your apps shine.
Building Windows 8 Metro style casual games using HTML 5 David Isbitski The intent of this session is to help HTML5/JavaScript developers with writing their first Metro Style App in a fun, immersive way. We will cover the basics of HTML5 Canvas gaming and how we can easily bring it to Windows 8. We will then add additional game functionality as we introduce HTML5 Audio, CSS3 styling and web fonts, implementing a game loop with JavaScript, 3rd party frameworks, touch, camera, accelerometer, and WinJS controls.
Do you have a Windows 8 or Windows Phone app idea? Maybe you’re already working on an app and would like some guidance for getting it across the finish line? Then come to one of the upcoming Metro Accelerator Labs!
These are three-day opportunities to develop your app with experts on hand to help you with any questions:
Please join us for a special event that you simply don't want to miss – the Metro Accelerator Lab. This is your chance to dig deeper into Windows 8 and Windows Phone and gain all the knowledge you need to immediately start (or finish) building beautiful, fluid and immersive Metro style Windows and Windows Phone applications. In this FREE, three-day developer event, you’ll get expert help building, testing and deploying your Metro style apps. Experience step-by-step advice from Microsoft and community experts and one-on-one technical assistance. Come for an hour, or all three days. Bring that app you've been tinkering with, or a new idea that you're eager to build and we’ll help you get well on your way to releasing that killer app to the world. We'll also help you understand the steps needed to get your Windows 8 Metro style app into the Windows Store. We’ll have Windows Slate and Windows Phone devices available on site so you can see exactly how your app will run. And of course, there’s always a chance we’ll have a few to give away during the course of the event. Agenda (subject to change) Day 1 8:30 – Arrival & Breakfast 9:00 – Kickoff & Logistics 9:15 – Session: “Designing Metro style: principles and personality” 10:00 – Hackathon, expert one-on-one guidance, lightning talks on demand, and plenty of sustenance, snacks & caffeine 5:00 – Wrap Up Day 2 8:30 – Arrival & Breakfast 9:00 – Kickoff & Logistics 9:15 – Session: “Effective Metro Style Applications: User Experience (UX)” – To help you focus on making your Metro style apps great, we’ll review the essential features, design, and behavior of effective Metro style apps 10:00 – Hackathon, expert one-on-one guidance, lightning talks on demand, and plenty of sustenance, snacks & caffeine 5:00 – Wrap Up Day 3 8:30 – Arrival & Breakfast 9:00 – Kickoff & Logistics 9:15 – Session: “Effective Metro Style Applications: UX (continued), Store, Performance” – Part two of our dive into the essential features, design, and behavior of effective Metro style apps 10:00 – Hackathon, expert one-on-one guidance, lightning talks on demand, and plenty of sustenance, snacks & caffeine 3:00 – “appX” – Your chance to show off your app and win prizes! 4:30 – Wrap Up & Giveaways Seating is limited and registration is not guaranteed. Secure your spot today! Prerequisites You must bring a laptop/notebook computer. To develop Windows 8 Metro style apps, please install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8. To develop for Windows Phone, install the Windows Phone SDK.
Please join us for a special event that you simply don't want to miss – the Metro Accelerator Lab. This is your chance to dig deeper into Windows 8 and Windows Phone and gain all the knowledge you need to immediately start (or finish) building beautiful, fluid and immersive Metro style Windows and Windows Phone applications.
In this FREE, three-day developer event, you’ll get expert help building, testing and deploying your Metro style apps. Experience step-by-step advice from Microsoft and community experts and one-on-one technical assistance. Come for an hour, or all three days. Bring that app you've been tinkering with, or a new idea that you're eager to build and we’ll help you get well on your way to releasing that killer app to the world.
We'll also help you understand the steps needed to get your Windows 8 Metro style app into the Windows Store.
We’ll have Windows Slate and Windows Phone devices available on site so you can see exactly how your app will run. And of course, there’s always a chance we’ll have a few to give away during the course of the event.
Agenda (subject to change)
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Seating is limited and registration is not guaranteed. Secure your spot today!
Prerequisites
You must bring a laptop/notebook computer. To develop Windows 8 Metro style apps, please install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8. To develop for Windows Phone, install the Windows Phone SDK.
The focus is on your app, and while this isn’t a day of training (like our Windows Developer Camps), we will have a brief session every morning to give you ideas that you can turn into reality as you code.
Here in the eastern US, there are four Metro Accelerator Labs on the way:
So register today, bring your PCs and apps/ideas, and get ready to accelerate!
Here’s the latest roundup of tech- and developer-focused events here in the northeast. Most are free, but the exceptions are noted with [$].
As always, if you know of other free or nearly free developer-focused events, please let me know.
[Last updated 5/4/2012]
May 1 Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT
May 3 Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT “MoCloud: Useful Cloud Patterns for Mobile Developers” – Dani Diaz
May 8 Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT “Windows 8 Development” – Chris Bowen
May 9 Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT
May 14 Hartford Area Build Guild – Farmington, CT “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
May 23 Windows 8 Developer Camp – Farmington, CT A free, full day for developers to learn about Windows 8, including sessions and hands-on labs Chris Bowen & Rachel Appel
June 7 Hartford Tech Meetup – Hartford, CT
June 23 Fifth Annual Hartford Code Camp – Farmington, CT
Schedule TBA Connecticut DotNetNuke User Group - Bethany, CT Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT Connecticut Web Innovators – Hartford, CT Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT
May 10 Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME “Advanced JavaScript Techniques” – Fritz Onion
May 22 Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
June 26 Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
Schedule TBA Agile User Group – Portland, ME Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME SharePoint Maine User Group – Portland, ME Usability / User Experience User Group – Portland, ME Web Designers User Group – Portland, ME
May 1 Boston Business Intelligence – Waltham, MA “Introduction to BI Semantic Model” – Slava Kokaev
May 1 Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA
May 2 Code Mastery – Waltham, MA A free, full-day tech event by Magenic. Features two tracks: “Future of Development” and “Developing a BI System Using SQL Server 2012”.
May 2 The Road to Windows 8! – Waltham, MA “A free, unbiased look at the current and future development with Windows 8 and .NET.” - Markus Egger
May 2 Boston Tech Meetup - Cambridge, MA “Did WordPress Do That?” – Jon Bishop
May 2 Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Show ‘n Tell Night”
May 3 New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA “An Introduction to Windows 8” – Chris Bowen
May 3 (first of 4 classes) [$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA ”Wrangling HTML/CSS”
May 4-6 New England GiveCamp – Cambridge, MA A weekend for tech professionals to donate time and talent to support local charities and non-profit organizations.
May 5 Boston Innovation Challenge – Allston, MA
May 7 New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA TBD – Keith Battocchi
May 7 New England Artificial Intelligence – TBD “AI, Pizza, & Beer”
May 8 DotNetNuke Boston Meetup – Cambridge, MA
May 8 Build Guild – Salem and Cape Cod “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
May 9 Drinks on Tap – Allston, MA ”Demos, drinks and discussions about mobile development'”
May 9 Emerging Business Tech – Cambridge, MA “NoSQL in the Real World”
May 9 Breakfast at Telerik: Agile – Waltham, MA
May 9 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
May 9 (first of 2 classes) [$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA ”Photoshop: Designing for the Web”
May 10 Microsoft Web Camp – Waltham, MA A free, full-day event focused on web development topics including HTML5, ASP.NET 4.5, WebMatrix, jQuery, Internet Explorer 9 & 10, and more.
May 10 Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA “Developing Software for Windows 8” – Chris Bowen
May 10 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “Agile Testing”
May 10 Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Boston, MA “Nanotechnology | Small Scale Software Engineering”
May 10 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “How Not to Be a Cranky DBA” – Mike Hillwig
May 14 Boston Software Craftsmanship – Cambridge, MA Lightning Talks
May 14 [$] Tech Cocktail Sessions Boston – Cambridge, MA ”Startup Inspiration: Turning Ideas Into Action”
May 14 Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
May 15 Hacks / Hackers Boston – Boston, MA ”Using mapping to inform the world”
May 16 Boston New Technology Meetup – Cambridge, MA Tech products and startup community
May 16 Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA
May 16 Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
May 17 Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA “Taking the Plunge” – Mike Kivikoski
May 19 SQL Saturday Boston – Waltham, MA A free full day of sessions for anyone looking to learn more about SQL Server.
May 22 Windows 8 Developer Camp – Waltham, MA A free, full day for developers to learn about Windows 8, including sessions and hands-on labs Chris Bowen & Rachel Appel
May 23 Boston Orchard CMS User Group – Cambridge, MA “Orchard CMS Boston Feature Development for v1.4”
May 23 jQuery Boston Meetup – Boston, MA “Five minute lightning talks!”
May 23 Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA
May 23 Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA
May 24 Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA “Windows 8” – Chris Bowen
May 24 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
May 29 Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Robotics | AI | Big Data”
May 30 Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA “Hands-On with the Windows Azure SDK (Bring Your Own Laptop!)” – Jason Haley
May 30 Boston Tech Meetup - Cambridge, MA “Jobspring and Workbridge Career Fair” & ”Start-up Panel Discussion”
May 30 HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA
June 4 Cloudy Mondays – Cambridge, MA “Control in the Cloud”
June 6 Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA
June 7 Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA
June 7 New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA “RavenDB” – Igor Moochnick
June 7 Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA
June 11 Boston Software Craftsmanship – Cambridge, MA
June 14 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “Reducing Data Integration TCO – Best Practices for SQL Server 2012” – Larry Barnes
June 14 Boston Software Engineering Meetup – TBD “3D Printing Hackday and Party”
June 18 New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA ”Bumblebee” - Mathias Brandewinder
June 20 Boston Orchard CMS User Group – Cambridge, MA “Orchard CMS Themes Styling and Design Walk Through” – Rebecca Pleshaw
June 20 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
June 20 Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
June 21 Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA “Infragistics Presentation”
June 21 [$] Tech Cocktail Sessions Boston – Cambridge, MA
June 22-23 Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA “Boston Azure Bootcamp (hands-on)”
June 25 Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
June 27 HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA
June 27 Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA
June 28 Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA TBD – Michael S. Collier
July 5 New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA “The Other Stack: HTML5 and CSS” – Doug Domeny
July 10 Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA
July 17 [$] Tech Cocktail Sessions Boston – Cambridge, MA
July 18 Boston Orchard CMS User Group – Cambridge, MA “Deploying Orchard to Windows Azure”
July 26 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “Build a Python/Django/jQuery web app within an hour” – Marc Hughes
July 26 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
Schedule TBA
Beantown ALT.NET Group – Cambridge, MA Boston Arduino Users Group – Cambridge, MA Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA Boston Artists + Coders – Boston, MA Boston BizSpark Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston Cloud Services – Waltham, MA Boston Front End Developers – Cambridge, MA Boston JavaScript Meetup – Boston, MA Boston Node.js Meetup – Boston, MA Boston Web Design Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston WebsiteSpark Group – Cambridge, MA HTML5 Boston – Boston, MA Kinect Boston Users Group – Cambridge, MA Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA New England Windows Phone User and Developer Group - Waltham, MA North Shore .NET User Group - Ipswich, MA North Shore Web Geeks – Newburyport, MA OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Waltham, MA UX Book Club, Boston – Cambridge, MA Western Mass Developers’ Group – Hadley, MA
May 3 eBrew – Portsmouth, NH
May 8 NH Database Meetup – Manchester, NH First meeting. Topic: MongoDB
May 9 Portsmouth Startup Meetup – Portsmouth, NH Jeffrey Vocell
May 10 Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH Derek Cash-Peterson
May 10 Joomla NH User Group – Durham, NH
May 11 [$] eCoast Cloud Summit – Portsmouth, NH
May 17 Digital Portsmouth – Portsmouth, NH “The Art of Code”
May 17 Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH “Hadoop, Big Data & SQL – TripAdvisor’s Story” – Don O’Neill
June 14 Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH Glenn Gnabasik
July 12 Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH “SharePoint Maturity” - Sadalit Van Buren
Schedule TBA Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH Systems Engineering and Administration Technical User Group – Portsmouth, NH Web Dev Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
May 1 AppRochester – Rochester, NY
May 2 Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
May 3 OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY
May 8 Tech Valley .NET Users Group – Albany, NY Open Q&A Session
May 12 SQL Saturday Rochester – Rochester, NY A free full day of sessions for anyone looking to learn more about SQL Server.
May 15 Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY “PowerShell Basics: Pipeline Tactics”
May 21 Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY ”Star and Snowflake Schema, SSAS and Multidimensional Tables”
May 29 Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY ”Windows Phone Development” – Dani Diaz
May 30 AppRochester – Rochester, NY “Windows Phone” - Dani Diaz
May 31 Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY “Windows Phone” – Dani Diaz
June 6 Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
July 11 Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
Schedule TBA Build Guild – Troy, NY Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY
May 9 Southern New England SQL Server Users Group – East Greenwich, RI “On beyond Zebra AdventureWorks OR where did I go wrong?” – Steve Simon
May 10 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
June 14 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
July 12 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
August 1 Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI ”Inaugural Meeting!”
Schedule TBA MoDevRI (Mobile Developers & Entrepreneurs) – Providence, RI Providence Geeks – Providence, RI Rhode Island .NET User Group - Bristol, RI WordPress Providence Meetup – Providence, RI
May 2 Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT ”What’s New in SSIS Denali” – Christian Cote
May 14 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT Chris Fradenberg
June 11 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT
July 16 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT Ward Bell
Schedule TBA Burlington PHP Users Group – Burlington, VT Northern Vermont SharePoint Users Group – Essex Junction, VT
There’s certainly a lot of interest in Windows 8 and the developer opportunity around it, so here’s an update and summary of various events that can help you learn more.
The series of Windows 8 Developer Camps on the east coast that I mentioned in an earlier post are now underway and very popular (those that aren’t full yet are very nearly so).
Here are the events we’re running in in the east:
The great news is this list is only a small part of the large number of events being run around the world, so head over to the Microsoft DevCamps site to see them all.
Along with those Developer Camps, there is also a special Windows Developer Event coming to New York City next week (and filling up quickly as well):
Windows reimagined. Learn everything you need to start building Metro-style apps for Windows today at our free, full-day Windows Developer Event. We'll show you how to use Visual Studio to code fast, fluid, immersive and beautiful Metro-style applications in HTML5/JavaScript, XAML/C# and C/C++. Your investments in these languages carry forward, making Windows a no-compromise platform for developers. Whatever language you choose, your app gets deep integration with the Windows shell, including notifications, live tiles, deep links, and contracts with other apps. And now you can build once and support all Windows customers, no matter what type of PC they have—from tablets to laptops to convertibles to desktops. Seating is limited and registration is not guaranteed. Secure your spot today!
Windows reimagined.
Learn everything you need to start building Metro-style apps for Windows today at our free, full-day Windows Developer Event.
We'll show you how to use Visual Studio to code fast, fluid, immersive and beautiful Metro-style applications in HTML5/JavaScript, XAML/C# and C/C++. Your investments in these languages carry forward, making Windows a no-compromise platform for developers.
Whatever language you choose, your app gets deep integration with the Windows shell, including notifications, live tiles, deep links, and contracts with other apps. And now you can build once and support all Windows customers, no matter what type of PC they have—from tablets to laptops to convertibles to desktops.
Registration
The event runs from 9 AM to 5 PM on April 19th at Center 548 in New York City.
For those of you in the northeastern U.S., here are some other (free) ways to hear about Windows 8: (Yes, I’ll be on the road a bit...)
I hope you’re able to join in one of these events! To get ready, you can download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and developer tools.
As time continues to march quickly onward, here’s the latest roundup of tech- and developer-focused events here in the northeast. Most are free, but the exceptions are noted with [$]. Based on the length of these event posts lately, the tech community here in the northeast is doing extremely well!
As always, if you know of other (free or nearly free) developer-focused events, please let me know.
[Last updated 3/16/2012]
April 9 Hartford Area Build Guild – Farmington, CT “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
April 10 Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT “ASP.NET MVC 4 and the ASP.NET Web API” – Nate Dudek
Schedule TBA Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT Connecticut DotNetNuke User Group - Bethany, CT Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT Connecticut Web Innovators – Hartford, CT Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT
March 27 Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME “Getting Started with Node.js” – Greg Howe
April 12 Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME “Windows 8 for Developers” – Chris Bowen
March 15 Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA ”Service Design Patterns & Solutions” – Robert Daigneau
March 15 Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA “Apache Web Performance” – Devon Hillard
March 17 [$] Geek Girl Cape Cod Conference 2012 – Barnstable, MA
March 19 Music 2.0 – Cambridge, MA ”Tools + Tech for Musicians, Marketers + Managers: The 2012 Edition”
March 19 Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Boston, MA “Boston Tech Job Fair”
March 20 Boston New Technology Meetup – Cambridge, MA Tech products and startup community
March 21 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
March 21 Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Learn Git and GitHub” – Ajay Reddy
March 21 New England Windows Phone User and Developer Group - Waltham, MA
March 21 Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
March 22 Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA Ian Drake
March 22 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “Build a Web Application in 5 Minutes with Spring Roo” – Chris Pinto
March 24 Hacks / Hackers Boston – Dorchester, MA ”Boston Baseball Hack Day”
March 26 Drinks on Tap – Cambridge, MA ”Demos, drinks and discussions about mobile development'”
March 26 HTML5 Boston – Boston, MA ”How to Properly Structure an HTML5 Web Page”
March 26 Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA “What Would Core Do? Extending Consistency & Classiness” – Jake Goldman “Design, UX, Content Strategy and SEO” – Annie Smidt
March 27 Beantown ALT.NET Group – Cambridge, MA “Introduction to NoSQL with Couchbase Server” – Raghavan Srinivas
March 27 Boston Tech Meetup - Cambridge, MA “Learn About NoSQL!” – John Zablocki
March 28 Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA
March 28 Boston Node.js Meetup – Boston, MA “Intro to Node” – Le Zhang “Network Programming for Games” - Geoff Pitsch
March 28 Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA Jeremy Kriegel on Agile Requirements and Personas
March 29 Ignite Boston 9 – Cambridge, MA 5-minute presentations on a variety of interesting topics!
March 29 Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA “Introduction to the Windows Azure SDK” – Jason Haley
March 29 Boston JavaScript Meetup – Boston, MA “Choosing CoffeeScript” – Adam Buggia
March 29 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Lean UX” – Josh Seiden
March 31 New England Code Camp 17 – Waltham, MA The Code Camp that started them all convenes one last time in Waltham before moving to Cambridge in the fall. Join hundreds of fellow developers for a free day of great stuff by the developer community, for the developer community.
April 2 New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
April 3 Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA “What’s Next for Responsive Web Design?” – Mat Marquis
April 4 Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business” – Jeff Gothelf
April 7 & 8 BarCamp Boston 7 – Cambridge, MA Free and open two-day geek unconference (schedule determined and organized by attendees at the event!)
April 10 Build Guild – Salem and Cape Cod “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
April 11 Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA
April 11 Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA
April 11 OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Waltham, MA “Gray, the New Black: Gray-Box Vulnerability Testing” – David Eoff
April 12 Kinect Boston Users Group – Cambridge, MA “Kinect Boston Demos and PAX Debrief”
April 12 New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA “Monetize Your Windows Phone App!” – Lance McCarthy
April 12 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “Common Backup Problems and How to Deal with Them” – Grant Fritchey
April 18 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
April 18 Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
April 19 Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA “LINQ” – Jeff Roy
April 19 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “Git/Github in an Agile/Collaborative Environment”
April 21-22 Rethink Music: Hacker’s Weekend – Cambridge, MA “This will be a weekend for developers, designers, programers, industry insiders and musicians to come together to create new and unique applications across many different platforms.”
April 23 Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA The Mobile Pitch Challenge
April 24 Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA “Building Games with Windows Azure Services” – Michael Cummings
April 25 Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA
April 26 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
April 28 SharePoint Saturday Boston 5 – Waltham, MA
April 30 HTML5 Boston – Boston, MA ”How to Properly Structure an HTML5 Web Page”
April 30 Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
May 16 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
Schedule TBA Boston Arduino Users Group – Cambridge, MA Boston Artists + Coders – Boston, MA Boston BizSpark Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston Business Intelligence – Waltham, MA Boston Cloud Services – Waltham, MA Boston Front End Developers – Cambridge, MA Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA Boston Web Design Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston WebsiteSpark Group – Cambridge, MA Cape Cod .NET User Group – Plymouth, MA Cloudy Mondays – Cambridge, MA Emerging Business Tech – Newton Center, MA HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA jQuery Boston Meetup – Boston, MA New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA New England Artificial Intelligence – TBD North Shore .NET User Group - Ipswich, MA North Shore Web Geeks – Newburyport, MA UX Book Club, Boston – Cambridge, MA Western Mass Developers’ Group – Hadley, MA
March 21 NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH “Extreme Performance” – Lance Farquhar
March 21 NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH ”A View from the Summit” – Pat Tormey & Ed Bouras
March 21 Systems Engineering and Administration Technical User Group – Portsmouth, NH ”Implementing and Managing a BYOD Policy in Your Organization”
March 22 Digital Portsmouth – Portsmouth, NH NH TweetUp & The Music Hall
March 28 Web Dev Meetup – Portsmouth, NH Tim Armstrong on Security for web and mobile development
April 5 eBrew – Portsmouth, NH
April 12 Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH Gail Shlansky
Schedule TBA Joomla NH User Group – Durham, NH Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH Portsmouth Startup Meetup – Portsmouth, NH Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
March 15 VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY “Continuous Integration with Subversion and CruiseControl.NET” – David Stevenson
March 19 Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY International PowerShell User Group Day
March 19 Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY
March 21 Build Guild – Troy, NY “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
March 24 CloudCamp Rochester – Rochester, NY
April 3 Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY “Playing Games in the Cloud” – Jim O’Neil
April 3 AppRochester – Rochester, NY
April 4 VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY “Playing Games in the Cloud” – Jim O’Neil
April 5 Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY “Playing Games in the Cloud” – Jim O’Neil
April 4 Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
April 10 Tech Valley .NET Users Group – Albany, NY “Playing Games in the Cloud” – Jim O’Neil
April 16 Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY
April 27-29 [$] Startup Weekend Rochester – Rochester, NY
May 12 SQL Saturday Rochester – Rochester, NY
Schedule TBA OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY
March 21 MoDevRI (Mobile Developers & Entrepreneurs) – Providence, RI “Prototyping Your Next Mobile App” + Networking
April 11 Southern New England SQL Server Users Group – East Greenwich, RI
April 12 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
April 18 Providence Geeks – Providence, RI
Schedule TBA Rhode Island .NET User Group - Bristol, RI WordPress Providence Meetup – Providence, RI
March 19 Northern Vermont SharePoint Users Group – Essex Junction, VT SharePoint with Suzanne Shushereba and Amy Coutu
April 9 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT Kathleen Dollard
Schedule TBA Burlington PHP Users Group – Burlington, VT Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT
Ready to dive in and learn more about Windows 8 and the developer opportunity it represents? Then get ready for the upcoming series of Windows Developer Camps! These are free, full-day, developer-focused events featuring a combination of sessions and hands-on labs, and we’ll have 10 of them right here in the east:
Windows 8 changes everything. Combining the broad reach of Windows, best-in-class developer tools, a reimagined user experience, support for new chipsets, and a built-in Store with industry-leading business terms — Windows 8 is the largest developer opportunity, ever. Join us for this free, full-day event designed to share all the knowledge you need to start building Metro-style applications for Windows 8 – today. We’ll begin by showing you how to use Visual Studio to code fast, fluid, immersive and beautiful Metro-style applications in HTML5/JavaScript, XAML/C# and C/C++. Your existing investments in these languages carry forward, making Windows a no-compromise platform for developers. Whatever language you choose, your app gets deep integration with the Windows shell, including notifications, live tiles, deep links, and contracts with other apps. And now you can build once and support all Windows customers, no matter what type of PC they have – from tablets to laptops to convertibles to desktops. We’ll cap the day off with an open, hands-on lab session. It’s the perfect opportunity to get your dream application underway, or finish that app you’ve already started – with Windows 8 experts available to guide you through every step. Bring your laptop to join in the fun and show off your killer app. Get started now!
Join us in one of these cities:
Windows Developer Camps
Register today and start thinking about the possibilities and what you’ll create!
New England Code Camp, the major community-driven day for developers, returns for its 17th event in Waltham, MA on March 31st!
Registration (it’s free) is already open! Also open are the Calls for Speakers and Contributors (details below).
New England Code Camp 17: “Where it all began…” Saturday, March 31, 2012 8:30 AM – 6:40 PM + post-event gathering Microsoft, 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA http://necodecamp17.eventbrite.com
Code Camps have spread worldwide and are free events, held outside of regular work hours, organized by and for the developer community, offering a chance to learn, share, and network.
What kind of stuff might you see? Anything for tech pros and developers is fair game, and specific topics vary camp to camp, but take a look at the previous camp’s schedule to get an idea of how things work.
It’s hard to believe, but after hosting the first Code Camp in 2004, and all New England Code Camps since then, this will be the last one held at the Jones Road Microsoft offices in Waltham. Look for this fall’s CC18 to be at the Microsoft New England Research & Development (aka NERD) Center in Cambridge, MA.
Thanks to Thom Robbins for bringing the idea to life and to everyone who has been part of the Camps at Jones Road over the years. Be part of the fun and join hundreds of fellow developers at CC17 to bid bon voyage on its eastward journey toward Boston!
From first-time presenters to veterans of national conferences, Code Camps are made great because we hear from many perspectives – including yours. Have something to share? The community wants to hear from you!
How? Just register as a speaker first, then (with the same email address), use the session proposal form to submit as many session abstracts as you like. Proposals can be for any technology topic and sessions will likely be 75 minutes long.
The Call for Speakers will close on March 24th.
Contributors are a critical part of each Code Camp, relied upon to provide the essentials for the Code Camp experience, such as:
You’ll have a highly-targeted audience thanking your company for its support of the developer community, so send me a note and I’ll put you in touch with the Contributor Coordinator to help make CC17 a success!
Thanks to Patrick Hynds, Robert Goodearl, John Zablocki, and Chris Pels for the care and feeding of this event, to the contributing companies, and of course to the many speakers who volunteer their time and expertise!
Special thanks to Bryan Phillips for again creating an awesome logo (the one at the top of this post) for New England Code Camp!
See you all at New England Code Camp 17!
Welcome to February. It’s time for a new roundup of developer-focused events that you may find interesting. Most are free, but the exceptions are noted with [$].
Interested in other local user groups? Boston User Groups lists New England area tech groups of all kinds.
[Last updated 2/22/12]
February 2 Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT “Azure, Azure, Azure: Windows Azure Update” – Peter Laudati
February 8 Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT
February 9 [$] Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT
February 13 Hartford Area Build Guild – Farmington, CT “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
February 14 Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT “Building Custom Workflows in SharePoint 2010 Using Visual Studio 2010” – Reddy Kadasani
Schedule TBA Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT Connecticut DotNetNuke User Group - Bethany, CT Connecticut Web Innovators – Hartford, CT Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT Hartford SQL Server Users Group – Farmington, CT
February 16 Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME “Get Kinected” – Angelo Castigliola
February 28 Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME “WebSockets & WebWorkers – Getting plugged in, powered up and getting things done” – Corey Gray
February 28 SharePoint Maine User Group – Portland, ME “SharePoint Governance with Axceler ControlPoint”
Schedule TBA Agile User Group – Portland, ME Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME Usability / User Experience User Group – Portland, ME Web Designers User Group – Portland, ME
February 2 New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA “Async Programming in .NET 4.5” – John Bowen
February 2 Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA Patrick Haney
February 2 Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Boston, MA #WeAreTech Icebreaker Networking Event
February 2 HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA
February 2 Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA
February 3 New England Database Summit 2012 – Cambridge, MA
February 3 Kinect Boston Users Group – Cambridge, MA ”Kinect Accelerator Info Session!”
February 6 HTML5 Boston – Boston, MA ”Mobile Website Development” – Tunde Ashafa & Jeff Boulay
February 6 Drinks on Tap – Boston, MA ”Demos, drinks and discussions about mobile development'”
February 7 Microsoft DevBoston & Boston Azure Cloud User Group Joint Meeting – Cambridge, MA “Architecting for Failure: Why Cloud Architecture is Different” – Michael Stiefel
February 9 New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA “Windows 8” – Chris Bowen
February 9 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “Big Data with Hadoop and SQL Server”
February 10-12 [$] Startup Scramble – Cambridge, MA
February 13 Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA Rob Windsor on Visual Studio LightSwitch applications (using data from SharePoint 2010)
February 13 Kinect Boston Users Group – Cambridge, MA ”Demos and Kinect for Windows!”
February 15 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
February 15 Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA “An Expert’s Guide to Making a Website Slow! Anti-Patterns” – Bob Buffone
February 15 Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior”
February 16 Boston Orchard CMS User Group – Cambridge, MA “Website Development”
February 21 Tech Tuesday – Cambridge, MA ”Developers Wanted”
February 21 Hacks / Hackers Boston – Dorchester, MA ”The Boston Globe’s digital strategy: A peek behind the (pay) wall” – Jeff Moriarty
February 21 Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA ”How far away from me is Kevin Bacon? (Social Media & Network Analysis)”
February 22 Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA
February 22 Boston Tech Meetup - Cambridge, MA “SharePoint Performance: Best Practices from the Field” – Jason Himmelstein
February 22 Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA “Telerik Product Presentation”
February 22 Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA “A Culture of Agility” – Pete Behrens
February 23 Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA ”Solving Access Control in the Cloud – from WIF to ACS” – Brock Allen
February 23 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “Practicing Agile/Scrum”
February 23 Boston New Technology Meetup – Boston, MA Multiple presentations on what’s new in the startup scene
February 23 Boston JavaScript Meetup – Boston, MA “The Promises Pattern in JavaScript” – Eric Strathmeyer
February 23 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
February 27 Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
February 28 New England Artificial Intelligence – TBD ”AI, Pizza, and Beer”
February 29 Emerging Business Tech – Newton Center, MA ”Native and HTML5-based mobile: Strategies for mobile app development”
February 29 Boston Front End Developers – Cambridge, MA
March 1 HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA
March 5 Joint meeting: Beantown ALT.NET Group & New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA “Introduction to F#” – Talbott Crowell & Scott Theleman
March 5 Web Innovators Group 33 – Cambridge, MA
March 5 Cloudy Mondays – Cambridge, MA ”Battle of the Public Clouds”
March 8 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “T-SQL Bad Habits to Kick” – Aaron Bertrand
March 10 Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA “Big Data Workshop: Session 1”
March 12 New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA “Push Notification Services on Windows Phone” – Michael Cummings
March 13 Build Guild – Salem and Cape Cod “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
March 13 DotNetNuke Boston Meetup – Cambridge, MA
March 14 [$] Xconomy Forum: Mobile Madness 2012 – Total Mobility – Cambridge, MA
March 22 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “SpringRoo”
March 22 Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA TBD – Ian Drake
March 26 Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
March 26 Drinks on Tap – Boston, MA ”Demos, drinks and discussions about mobile development'”
March 29 Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA ”Introduction to Windows Azure SDK” – Jason Haley
March 29 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
Schedule TBA Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA Boston Arduino Users Group – Cambridge, MA Boston Artists + Coders – Boston, MA Boston BizSpark Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston Business Intelligence – Waltham, MA Boston Cloud Services – Waltham, MA Boston Node.js Meetup – Boston, MA Boston Web Design Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston WebsiteSpark Group – Cambridge, MA Cape Cod .NET User Group – Plymouth, MA jQuery Boston Meetup – Boston, MA Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA New England ASP.NET Professionals – Waltham, MA North Shore .NET User Group - Ipswich, MA North Shore Web Geeks – Newburyport, MA OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Cambridge, MA UX Book Club, Boston – Cambridge, MA Western Mass Developers’ Group – Hadley, MA
February 2 eBrew – Portsmouth, NH
February 8 Joomla NH User Group – Durham, NH
February 15 NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH “Windows 8” – Chris Bowen
February 15 Web Dev Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
February 28 Systems Engineering and Administration Technical User Group – Portsmouth, NH ”Big Data: What it is and What it’s Good For” – Geoff Noel
Schedule TBA Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
February 1 Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY “Design and Usability” – Gary Davis
February 1 Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
February 8 Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY ”What’s New in SQL Server 2012” – Erik Harman
February 15 Tech Valley .NET Users Group - Latham, NY “ASP.NET MVC 3” – Joseph Payette, Jr.
February 15 Build Guild – Troy, NY “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
February 20 Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY
February 21 Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY
February 29 Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY ”Introduction to Dynamics CRM” – Michael Reynolds
March 8 Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY “Driving SharePoint Adoption” - Chris Bortlik
Schedule TBA AppRochester – Rochester, NY OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY
February 8 Southern New England SQL Server Users Group – East Greenwich, RI ”Policy based management with SQL Server 2008 R2” – Scott Abrants
February 9 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
February 15 Providence Geeks – Providence, RI
March 8 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
Schedule TBA MoDevRI (Mobile Developers & Entrepreneurs) – Providence, RI Rhode Island .NET User Group - Bristol, RI WordPress Providence Meetup – Providence, RI
February 13 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT 10th Anniversary Celebration!
March 12 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT Jon Hoguet
The first series of HTML5 Game Camps concluded yesterday, helping attendees to learn HTML5 by diving in and writing games. Here’s a summary of links and resources for anyone who would like to get started.
The events featured introductions to the underlying technologies (HTML5, JavaScript, graphics) then a look at engines that can make game development easier. The second half was hacking time followed by a chance for everyone to demo their creations. It was great to see what could be made in just a few hours!
Thanks to everyone who participated, and let me know if you’ve continued working on your creations after the events!
This session focuses on a brief introduction to HTML5, CSS3, standards, and browser support.
Learning HTML5
Implementing HTML5
Internet Explorer & HTML5
The focus is on a few resources for learning JavaScript, libraries to make things easier, and support in developer tools.
General JavaScript
JavaScript Frameworks & Tools
Internet Explorer Developer Tools (built in to IE 8+) – See also Firebug for Firefox and the Chrome Dev Tools
WebMatrix 2 Beta
Visual Studio 2010 Extensions
Expression Web 4 HTML5 Support
Focused on 2D graphics with SVG and Canvas and choosing between them.
SVG
Canvas
SVG & Canvas
At this point, the survey of the moving parts (HTML5, JavaScript, graphics, etc.) is done, so it’s time to pull it all together and make games! So many choices, but to keep things simple the focus was on leveraging game engine libraries already out there.
JavaScript Game Engines
Audio
3D in 2D
Game Dev Resources
Much of the time was spent in code and demos, but the slides we did use are up in a presentations folder on SkyDrive. The relevant files are:
Missed the in person events? Fortunately, it isn’t game over! The content is being brought to you online via these webcasts:
Enjoy creating those games!
As the Learn Windows Azure event rolls along today (keep an eye on the site for recordings of the content if you missed it), here are some other great ways to dive into cloud computing. Update: the session recordings are now available.
Entertain your competitive side, improve your cloud development skills, and have a chance to win prizes! Enter your bot in the Rock Paper Azure Challenge by this Friday evening (12/16, 6PM EST), battle the competition, and see if you emerge victorious:
Play Rock, Paper Scissors in the cloud for your chance to win a trip to Cancun, an Acer Aspire S3 Laptop, a Windows Phone, or an XBOX 360/Kinect bundle! Entering is simple – create a player bot (sample code provided) and enter it before December 16th. Winners will be chosen at random from all bots submitted. Want to test your strategic coding skills as well? Build a killer bot to crush the competition and see how you stack up against other players on the Leaderboard. Each Friday the top 5 players will receive a $50.00 Best Buy Gift Card.
Play Rock, Paper Scissors in the cloud for your chance to win a trip to Cancun, an Acer Aspire S3 Laptop, a Windows Phone, or an XBOX 360/Kinect bundle! Entering is simple – create a player bot (sample code provided) and enter it before December 16th. Winners will be chosen at random from all bots submitted.
Want to test your strategic coding skills as well? Build a killer bot to crush the competition and see how you stack up against other players on the Leaderboard. Each Friday the top 5 players will receive a $50.00 Best Buy Gift Card.
Think you don’t have the time to ramp up and create a winning bot? You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can take the starter code and turn it into a fierce competitor!
For a great way to get some in-person instruction on Windows Azure, check out the Windows Azure Dev Camps series, now touring all over the place.
Don’t see one in your area? The Windows Azure Training Kit has the content and labs, and recordings are available for some of the past events.
(While you’re visiting, take a look at the Windows Phone Camps and Web Camps!)
Looking for more? Here are some resources to help you to the cloud:
Scott Guthrie has announced a Learn Windows Azure event on December 13th (12 – 8PM EST). It’s free and will be streamed live via Channel 9, featuring sessions with Mark Russinovich, Dave Campbell, Scott Guthrie, and others:
Register for the online event, or, because there’s an real event with real people on the other end of the connection, you can attend in person if you’re in the Redmond area.
If you’d like to have the tools to work with as they’re mentioned during the event, you can head to the Windows Azure site to learn more, download the SDK, and get a head start with some code samples and tutorials.
As you might know from my list of podcasts for .NET devs, I’m a big fan of podcasts to help make travel time less… [annoying | mind-numbing | wasteful].
As my recent work has focused more on game development, I’ve been keeping an eye out for relevant podcasts. Here are the ones I know of that focus primarily on game development and the gaming industry.
[Last updated – 9/18/2012]
Another Castle Charles J. Pratt Interviews with game developers, especially with a focus on game development in New York. gamedesignadvance.com/?page_id=1616
Armless Octopus Dave Voyles, Taylor Bliss, Mike Wall Focused on the indie game dev community. http://www.armlessoctopus.com/category/podcast/
The Brainy Gamer Podcast Michael Abbott Interviews with game developers and a focus on the video game community. www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/podcast/
Core Elements Wes Wilson & Spencer Williams Each episode features an interview with a game developer plus gaming industry news. http://coreelementspodcast.blogspot.com/
Experimental Game Dev Podcast About independent (indie) games and development. www.indiegamepod.com
The Game Developer’s Radio Joseph Burchett & Devin Becker Focused on game development and design. www.gamedevradio.net
The Game Engine Podcast Andrew Bittman, Paul Sztajer, Saul Alexander, and Dan Graf Focused on game developers and topics around game development. www.gameenginepodcast.com
IndieGames.com Podcast Interviews with indie game developers. indiegames.com (and indiegames.buzzsprout.com)
Irrational Interviews Ken Levine & Shawn Elliott Irrational’s Ken Levine and Shawn Elliott conduct interviews around the industry. irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-interviews
LostCast Geoff Blair & Matt Hackett A brand new HTML5 game development podcast by Lost Decade Games (creators of the HTML5 “Onslaught!” game). www.lostdecadegames.com
One of Swords Dan Amrich Activision’s Dan Amrich hosts industry interviews and provides insights into what’s happening at Activision. OneOfSwords.com
Each of these podcasts has had activity in the past few months. If you know of any other active ones, please comment below (and thank you!)
It’s pretty amazing that this list already has events that bring us to the end of the year. Every year does seem to go more quickly than the last! Anyhow, here’s the latest list of developer-focused events you may find interesting as the remaining weeks of 2011 breeze by.
Most are free, and the exceptions are noted with [$].
November 14 Hartford Area Build Guild – Farmington, CT “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
December 7 Windows Azure DevCamp – Farmington, CT Free afternoon to evening event to help you learn about Windows Azure. Sessions in the afternoon, and hands-on hackathon in the evening.
December 14 Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT
December 14 Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT
Schedule TBA Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT Connecticut DotNetNuke User Group - Bethany, CT Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT Hartford SQL Server Users Group – Farmington, CT New England Silverlight Guild – Hartford, CT
November 15 Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME Windows Azure (w/RockPaperAzure) - Jim O’Neil
November 16 Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME Windows Azure (w/RockPaperAzure) - Jim O’Neil
Schedule TBA Agile User Group – Portland, ME Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME Usability / User Experience User Group – Portland, ME Web Designers User Group – Portland, ME (on Summer break)
November 14 Windows Phone Inner Circle – Cambridge, MA “Enjoy free appetizers and cocktails, be one of the first people to get your hands on incredible new Windows Phones, and meet the team that brought them to life.”
November 15 Boston New Technology Meetup – Boston, MA 6 presentations on what’s new in the startup scene
November 15 Harvard Tech Meetup – Boston, MA
November 15 Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA ”Big Data” .. Applications from Enterprises to Individuals
November 16 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA “Enchant.js” - Ubiquitous Entertainment “Internet Explorer 9 & 10 and HTML5” – Chris Bowen
November 16 New England Windows Phone User and Developer Group - Waltham, MA “Developing Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS) Applications”
November 16 Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
November 17 HTML5 Game Camp – Cambridge, MA Free event w/ morning sessions on HTML5 & game dev, then the afternoon is a hands-on game dev hackathon!
November 17 Boston Azure User Group – Cambridge, MA “Back to the Basics: What is Cloud, What is Azure, and Intro to Windows Azure”
November 17 Boston JavaScript Meetup – Boston, MA “JavaScript Style, Code Conventions & Quality” – Joe Morgan
November 17 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
November 17 North Shore Web Geeks – Newburyport, MA
November 17 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “Rackspace Tutorial” – Chris Johnson
November 17 Western Mass Developers’ Group – Hadley, MA
November 17 [$] EFactor Presents: Mobile App Accelerant – Boston, MA
November 18 Social Mobile Cloud Event – Boston, MA
November 19 AT&T Mobile App Hackathon – Boston, MA
November 19-20 Fall 2011 Boston Game Jam – Cambridge, MA
November 22 Cape Cod .NET User Group – Plymouth, MA “HTML5 – A Practical First Look” – Chris Bowen
November 22 New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA Microsoft’s Jesse Liberty
November 22 Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA [$] “Give Thanks for SCRUM” – Honoring Jeff Sutherland & Ken Schwaber
November 23 Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA
November 28 Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA “WordPress, HTML5 Adoption, and Internet Explorer 9 & 10” – Chris Bowen “Caching, Scaling, and What I’ve Learned Programming for WordPress.com VIP” – Erick Hitter
November 28 Beantown ALT.NET Group – Cambridge, MA “Exploring Domain Driven Design Implementation Patterns in .NET” – Steve Bohlen
November 29 Web Innovators Group (webinno) – Cambridge, MA
November 29 Tech Tuesday: Meet the Rockstar Developers of Massachusetts – Cambridge, MA
November 30 Boston Front End Developers – Cambridge, MA “Implementing the New BostonGlobe.com” – Adam Salsman
December 1 Microsoft DevBoston (formerly Boston .NET & Beantown .NET) - Cambridge, MA “How to be a C# Ninja in 10 Easy Steps” – Ben Day
December 1 New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA “XBox/Kinect Using the .NET Framework” – Phil Denoncourt
December 1 HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA
December 1 Boston Tech Meetup - Cambridge, MA
December 3-4 Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) – Cambridge, MA
December 5 New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
December 6 Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA “Testing in the Cloud” – Dan Bartow
December 7 Boston Artists + Coders – Boston, MA “Playing with Music” – Echno Nest co-founder Tristan Jehan
December 8 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “Enterprise Information Management” – Chad Gronbach
December 12 Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA
December 13 Boston Azure User Group – Cambridge, MA
December 13 Build Guild – Salem, MA “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
December 13 Build Guild in Cape Cod – Sandwich, MA “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
December 14 Microsoft DevBoston (formerly Boston .NET & Beantown .NET) - Cambridge, MA “Using Windows Azure to Build Cloud Enabled Windows Phone Apps” – John Garland
December 14 Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA
December 14 North Shore .NET User Group - Ipswich, MA “Cloud Architecture Patterns” – Bill Wilder
December 14 Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Paper Prototyping: Sketching and Evaluating Your Design Concepts” – Christine Perfetti
New Group! December 15 Boston Orchard CMS Group – Cambridge, MA Kickoff Meeting
December 20 New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA
December 21 Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
December 27 Beantown ALT.NET Group – Cambridge, MA “Introduction to MonoTouch” – Michael Bluestein
Schedule TBA Boston Arduino Users Group – Cambridge, MA Boston BizSpark Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston Business Intelligence – Waltham, MA Boston Cloud Services – Waltham, MA Boston Node.js Meetup – Boston, MA Boston Web Design Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston WebsiteSpark Group – Cambridge, MA DotNetNuke Boston Meetup – Cambridge, MA jQuery Boston Meetup – Boston, MA Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA New England ASP.NET Professionals – Waltham, MA New England Silverlight Guild – Cambridge, MA OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Cambridge, MA Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA UX Book Club, Boston – Cambridge, MA Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA
November 16 NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH “Developing Cloud-Enabled Windows Phone Applications with Windows Azure” – John Garland
November 16 NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH “XBOX / Kinect Using .NET Framework SDK” – Phil Denoncourt III
November 16 NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH “Real Projects with Entity Framework 4.1”
December 8 Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH “SharePoint Loggins & Debugging: The Troubleshooter’s Best Friend” – Cornelius J. van Dyk & Jason Himmelstein
Schedule TBA Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
November 15 Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group (Rochester chapter) – Rochester, NY
November 15 Windows Phone Camp – Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, NY Free and open to all. Afternoon w/ dev sessions followed by evening hands-on hackathon.
November 16 MS Dev WNY– Hamburg, NY “Introduction to HTML5 Development” – Patrick Lupiani
November 16 Build Guild – Troy, NY “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
November 17 VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY “Windows 8 Metro Development” – Steve Maier
November 21 Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY
December 2-4 RIT Game Camp – Rochester, NY Special free weekend, combining four events! A weekend-long Game Jam, along with “XNA in a Day”, HTML5 Camp, and Windows Phone Game/App Camps on Saturday.
December 6 AppRochester – Rochester, NY
December 7 Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
December 20 Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group (Rochester chapter) – Rochester, NY
Schedule TBA Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY Tech Valley .NET Users Group - Latham, NY Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group (Syracuse chapter) – Syracuse, NY Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY
November 16 Providence Geeks – Providence, RI
December 8 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
December 13 Tech Club Rhode Island – Providence, RI End of Year Celebration
Schedule TBA Rhode Island .NET User Group - Bristol, RI
November 17 Burlington PHP Users Group – Burlington, VT ”Building Faster Websites”
December 5 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT “WCF RIA Services” – Kathleen MacMahon
Schedule TBA Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT
The schedule has just been posted for this Saturday’s Code Camp 16 (in Waltham, MA):
New England / Boston Code Camp 16 Saturday, October 29th 8:30 AM to 6:40 PM (Doors at 8 AM) Microsoft, 201 Jones Road (6th Floor) Waltham, MA
Schedule and registration at http://codecampboston.eventbrite.com
About 40 sessions spanning many topics - HTML5, cloud computing, Kinect, mobile, JavaScript, Netduino, XNA, SharePoint, SQL/NoSQL, ASP.NET MVC, and more. All by the community, for the community, and free.
Thank you to the speakers, contributing companies, and especially Patrick Hynds, Robert Goodearl, and Chris Pels for organizing the event!
This is going to be a good one, and I hope to see you there! -Chris
P.S. The tag for the event is #boscc
Update: Slides and links from the events are now available.
Ready to learn HTML5? Enjoy games, too?
Join in the HTML5 Game Camps, free events offering a chance to learn about the next wave of web standards including HTML5, CSS3, Canvas, SVG, and more. And while you gain practical knowledge about HTML5 and JavaScript techniques, it’s all joined together by the fun of creating games!
These are part of the Microsoft Web Camps series and feature a half day of sessions followed by hands-on game creation time. Get up to speed with HTML5 and game dev concepts in the sessions, then turn your ideas into reality as we leave the slides behind. Design and develop creations of your own, with plenty of guidance and help for your questions.
Here’s where the HTML5 Game Camps are heading, with links to details and registration:
(Note some of these events are morning through afternoon, and others are afternoon to evening.)
Don’t forget to read the prep steps at the bottom of the event pages. To get ready for coding, consider installing WebMatrix (it’s free) and other tools via the Web Platform Installer. Also, consider attending with a friend and tackling the game creation as a team!
For those of you in the Rochester, NY area, there’s a special RIT Game Camp the weekend of December 2nd-4th. It’s all about game development, and features multiple ways to learn about and create games:
It’s free, hosted on the campus of RIT, and open to everyone. So, choose what you’d like to participate in, and enjoy!
Fall is upon us, and with it comes an uptick in the tempo of developer events in our area. Here’s the latest (and long!) list of developer-focused events you may find interesting. Most are free, and the exceptions are noted with [$].
October 6 Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT “jQuery 101 – Making JavaScript Fun” – Mark Freedman
October 10 Hartford Area Build Guild – Farmington, CT “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
October 11 Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT “Introduction to Metro UI Application Development in Windows 8 Developer Preview” – Michael Gerety
October 12 Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT
October 13 Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT Business Intelligence – Andrew Brust
November 9 Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT
November 10 Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT Zoho Creator – Herb Wexler
Novermber 11-13 [$] Startup Weekend New Haven – New Haven, CT
Schedule TBA Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT Connecticut DotNetNuke User Group - Bethany, CT Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT Hartford SQL Server Users Group – Farmington, CT New England Silverlight Guild – Hartford, CT
October 13 Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME “BUILD Conference Debrief” – Fritz Onion
October 25 Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME “SketchFlow – It’s Like a Big Pile of Napkins” – Charlie Villard
Schedule TBA Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME Agile User Group – Portland, ME Usability / User Experience User Group – Portland, ME Web Designers User Group – Portland, ME (on Summer break)
October 6 Microsoft DevBoston (formerly Beantown .NET) - Cambridge, MA “HTML5 Development” – Chris Bowen
October 6 New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA “Interactive Dashboards with PerformancePoint 2010” – Sunil Kadimdiwan
October 6 HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA ”C++ AMP” – Ken Domino
October 8 OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Cambridge, MA 2011 Boston Application Security Conference (BASC)
October 11 Build Guild – Salem, MA “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
October 11 Build Guild in Cape Cod – Sandwich, MA “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
October 11 DotNetNuke Boston Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Introducing DotNetNuke 6!”
October 12 & 13 MSDN Event: Windows Phone Camp – Cambridge, MA Two free days of the tech to help you develop Windows Phone apps, practical guidance (interested in making money?), and the latest on Windows Phone 7.5 (codename “Mango”).
October 12 Boston Artists + Coders – Boston, MA ”Super Data Vis Skills (Intro to D3.js)” – Pascal Rettig
October 12 Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA “Ruby on Rails” – Chris Johnson
October 12 Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA “Heavy Metal PowerPivot” – Jason Himmelstein & Cornelius J. van Dyk
October 12 Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Introduction to FirePHP 1.0” – Christoph Dorn ”Proof You do not Need SQL Anymore…” – Chhean Saur
October 13 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “Enterprise Information Management” – Chad Gronbach
October 13 Boston Node.js Meetup – Boston, MA ”Node.js and Using nowjs” – Eric Zhang
October 14 Boston JavaScript Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Using CommonJS with PINF JavaScript Loader” – Christoph Dorn
October 14-16 [$] Boston Startup Weekend – Boston, MA
October 15 New England Business Intelligence Code Camp 2 – Waltham, MA Community event for developers and IT professionals, with a focus on building real-world business intelligence solutions.
October 17 Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA ”Building Successful Mobile Web and Native Apps in the Enterprise”
October 18 Boston New Technology Meetup – Cambridge, MA
October 19 New England Windows Phone User and Developer Group - Waltham, MA ”It’s a (Third) Party!: Tools Beyond Just Visual Studio and Blend for Windows Phone 7 Development”
October 19 Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
October 19 HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
October 20 Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA “Using PowerShell to Run SharePoint 2010, and Fill it Full of Data”
October 24 Boston Tech Meetup - Cambridge, MA ”What Can Cloud Do for You?” – Jim O’Neil
New Group! October 26 New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA
New Group! October 26 North Shore .NET User Group - Ipswich, MA
October 26 Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA
October 26 Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA “Teams and Leadership” – Christopher Avery
October 27 Boston Azure User Group – Cambridge, MA “Azure Architecture or Other Topics”
October 27 Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
October 29 New England Code Camp 16! – Waltham, MA A free, full day of technical content, by the community, for the community.
October 29-30 [$] WhereCampBoston – Cambridge, MA An unconference focused on geography and technology.
November 2 jQuery Boston Meetup – Boston, MA “Why Wait for Harmony? Use Asynchronous Modules with jQuery Now!” – John Hann
November 3 Microsoft DevBoston (formerly Beantown .NET) - Cambridge, MA “Geo-Aware Applications for Windows Phone 7” – John Zablocki
November 3 New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA “Scrum Project Management with Team Foundation Server 2010” – Steve Resnick
November 7 New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
November 9 Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA “Google Analytics for Developers” – Justin Cutroni
November 10 Boston Business Intelligence – Waltham, MA “Dimensional Modeling Fundamentals for the SQL Server Platform” – Warren Thornthwaite
November 10 New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA “Denali HA/DR” – Allen Hirt
November 10 World Usability Day – Cambridge, MA
November 22 New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA
Schedule TBA Boston .NET User Group - Waltham, MA Boston Arduino Users Group – Cambridge, MA Boston BizSpark Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston Cloud Services – Waltham, MA Boston Front End Developers – Cambridge, MA Boston Web Design Meetup – Cambridge, MA Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA Boston WebsiteSpark Group – Cambridge, MA Cape Cod .NET User Group – Plymouth, MA New England ASP.NET Professionals – Waltham, MA New England Silverlight Guild – Cambridge, MA North Shore Web Geeks – Newburyport, MA Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA UX Book Club, Boston – Cambridge, MA Western Mass Developers’ Group – Hadley, MA
October 13 Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH “Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010” – Geoff Varosky
October 19 NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH “HTML5 Practices and Adoption” – Chris Bowen
November 10 Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH “Developing in SharePoint’s Middle Tier” – Marc D. Anderson
Schedule TBA Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
October 5 Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY “Windows Phone 7 Ad-Network Manager Development with XNA” – Dan Colasanti
October 12 Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY ”Introduction to PowerShell” – Joel Bennett
New Group! October 17 Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY ”SQL Server Reporting Services Tips & Tricks” – Daniel Bowlin
October 18 Rochester Web Startups Meeting – Rochester, NY ”Legal Entities” – Jennifer Lunsford
October 19 Build Guild – Troy, NY “Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”
October 27 VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY “The Model View ViewModel (MVVM)” – Larry O’Heron
October 29 BarCamp Rochester – RIT, Henrietta, NY
November 2 Rochester JavaScript Meetup – Rochester, NY
November 4-6 [$] Startup Weekend Syracuse – Syracuse, NY
Schedule TBA AppRochester – Rochester, NY OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY Tech Valley .NET Users Group - Latham, NY Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Syracuse, NY Western New York .NET Users Group - Amherst, NY Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY
October 11 Tech Club Rhode Island – Providence, RI ”The Art of the Schmoze” – Robbie Samuels
October 13 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
October 19 Providence Geeks – Providence, RI
November 8 Tech Club Rhode Island – Providence, RI ”Video for Nonprofit Websites”
November 10 Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
Schedule TBA Rhode Island .NET User Group - Bristol, RI Southern New England SQL Server User Group, Warwick, RI
October 10 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT “Making Sense of the Microsoft .NET MicroFramework” – Eric Hall
October 27 MSDN Event: “Windows Phone Camp” – Champlain College, Burlington, VT A free, full day of the tech to help you develop Windows Phone apps, practical guidance (interested in making money?), and the latest on Windows Phone 7.5 (codename “Mango”).
November 7 Vermont .NET User Group – S. Burlington, VT ”Developing Metro-Style Applications in Windows 8” – John McConnell
Schedule TBD Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT
New England Code Camp 16, a major community event for developers, is coming to Waltham, MA on October 29th!
Registration (free!) is now open, as are the Calls for Speakers, Volunteers, and Contributors (details below).
New England Code Camp 16 Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:30 AM – 6 PM + post-event Geek Gathering Microsoft, 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA http://codecampboston.eventbrite.com #necc16
Code Camps are free events, held outside of regular work hours, organized by and for the developer community, and offer a chance to learn, share, and network. What kind of stuff might you see? It varies significantly camp to camp, but take a look at the previous camp’s schedule to get an idea.
Register today and join hundreds of your fellow developers!
From first-time presenters to veterans of national conferences, Code Camps are made great because we hear from many perspectives – including yours. Have something to share, the community wants to hear from you.
How? Just see the registration page for details (speakers only need to register as a speaker, not as an attendee.) Proposals can be for any technology topic and sessions will be 75 minutes long.
The Call for Speakers will close at the end of Friday, October 21st.
Have a question about speaking? Send a note to codecampspeaker@bostondotnet.org.
Contributors are a critical part of each Code Camp, relied upon to provide the essentials for the Code Camp experience, like:
You’ll have a highly-targeted audience thanking your company for its support of the developer community, so please send a note to codecamp@bostondotnet.org if your company can help make Code Camp 16 a success!
Want to help before or at the event? Great, and thank you! Just drop a line to codecamp@bostondotnet.org.
Special thanks to Patrick Hynds, Chris Pels, and Robert Goodearl for the care and feeding of this event, to the contributing companies, and of course to the many speakers who volunteer their time and expertise!
See you at New England Code Camp 16!
A series of Windows Phone Camps has just kicked off, bringing free, full days of the tech to help you develop Windows Phone apps, practical guidance (interested in making money?), and the latest on Windows Phone 7.5 (codename “Mango”):
Don't miss the new Windows Phone 7.5 (codename "Mango") features as well - with detailed sessions in the afternoon around Fast Application Switching, Multitasking, Live Tiles, Push Notifications, and more. The day will be capped with an open lab hands-on session and prizes for apps completed. This is the perfect opportunity to begin work on your dream application, or finish that app you've already started, with Windows Phone experts there to guide you every step of the way. Bring your own laptop to join in the fun and show off your killer app!
Don't miss the new Windows Phone 7.5 (codename "Mango") features as well - with detailed sessions in the afternoon around Fast Application Switching, Multitasking, Live Tiles, Push Notifications, and more.
The day will be capped with an open lab hands-on session and prizes for apps completed. This is the perfect opportunity to begin work on your dream application, or finish that app you've already started, with Windows Phone experts there to guide you every step of the way. Bring your own laptop to join in the fun and show off your killer app!
Those of us in New England will have two chances to join in, with a visit to Burlington, VT and a special two-day event in Cambridge, MA.
9/22
Atlanta, GA
9/27
Malvern, PA
9/29
Reston, VA
10/12 10/13
Cambridge, MA
Day 1 Registration Day 2 Registration
10/18
Chevy Chase, MD
10/19
New York City, NY
10/25
Tampa, FL
10/27
Champlain College, Burlington, VT
11/2
NCSU, Raleigh, NC
11/4
Fort Lauderdale, FL
11/8
UCF, Orlando, FL
11/10
Univ. of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
SUNY (New Paltz), NY
11/15
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
11/17
Howard University, Washington, DC
11/29
Pittsburg, PA
Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA
12/1
Hofstra, Long Island, NY
Most of the events are featuring the following agenda, including a mix of presentations and hands-on labs:
9:00 AM
Welcome Campers
9:15 AM
How to make money with your Windows Phone app
10:00 AM
Frameworks for fun and profit > Silverlight and XNA
Canteen
1:00 PM
Hands-on lab
3:00 PM
Cool stuff your app can do
4:00 PM
To the Cloud
4:45 PM
Be What's Next > People's Choice Awards
In Cambridge, MA, the event packs an extra punch, spanning two days, October 12th & 13th:
Day 1 will feature inside advice from Windows Phone experts and local MVPs, plus technical sessions on Windows Phone app development. Day 2 goes hands-on with the opportunity to roll up your sleeves and code. Whether you're a student just starting out or a seasoned developer for Windows Phone, Android, Symbian, Web OS or iOS, we'll be sharing tips and tricks and valuable app development know-how throughout the sessions. Check out the agenda and select the day that best fits your needs — or join us for the full event. The choice is yours.
Day 1 will feature inside advice from Windows Phone experts and local MVPs, plus technical sessions on Windows Phone app development. Day 2 goes hands-on with the opportunity to roll up your sleeves and code.
Whether you're a student just starting out or a seasoned developer for Windows Phone, Android, Symbian, Web OS or iOS, we'll be sharing tips and tricks and valuable app development know-how throughout the sessions. Check out the agenda and select the day that best fits your needs — or join us for the full event. The choice is yours.
You can attend either or both days, but there’s separate registration for each day (day 1, day 2).
Day 1 Agenda: October 12th
8:00 AM
Arrival and Registration
Windows Phone Overview
9:45 AM
How to get started building Windows Phone Apps with Visual Studio
10:45 AM
Break
11:00 AM
Frameworks for fun and profit (part 1) – Building apps with Silverlight
12:00 PM
Lunch
Frameworks for fun and profit (part 2) – Building games with XNA
2:00 PM
Live Tiles and Push Notifications
3:15 PM
3:30 PM
Windows Phone 7.5 Fast Application Switching, Tombstoning and Multitasking
4:30 PM
How to make money with your Windows Phone App
5:00 PM
What's Next/Resources
Event Ends
Day 2 Agenda: October 13th
Open Lab Hands-on Sessions
I’ll be at the Cambridge event and hope to see many of you there!
On the heels of the launch of the New England Mobile .NET group, there’s another Boston-area developer group – Beantown ALT.NET! The group is organized by John Zablocki and starts in September.
First of all, what’s “ALT.NET”? The concept has been around quite a while, and there are groups in many other cities. In fact, click through to NY ALT.NET or DC ALT.NET for a good description. John also has a post describing “Why Beantown ALT.NET?”
First meeting’s details:
Beantown ALT.NET September 28th, 6:30 PM Microsoft NERD 1 Memorial Dr., Cambridge, MA Topic: “HTML5 Practices and Adoption” Speaker: Well, me…
John kindly invited me to speak for this meeting. We’ll go beyond the “What is HTML5?” introduction to focus on practical strategies, tools, libraries, etc. for adopting HTML5 technologies today, while accommodating browsers that don’t natively support those features.
On October 26th, John will be covering “.NET and NoSQL: Relaxing with CouchDB”.
I hope to see you there!