September, 2009

As I write this, we’re getting into the final session of TechDays Toronto, which in my track – Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform – features SharePoint guru Reza Alirezaei doing his presentation, Developing and Consuming Services for SharePoint . If you ask me the question “What is SharePoint?”, I’d most likely give you a description that sounds like this: Here’s a more accurate description...

Right now (at the time of this writing) at the Toronto edition of the TechDays cross-Canada conference, in the Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track, is Bruce Johnson – “the speaker so nice, we put him on twice!” – talking to the audience about Building RESTful Applications Using WCF . REST – as in REpresentational State Transfer – while a big thing for a lot of developers, is still only...

This morning’s sessions in TechDays’ Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform focuses on both the ASP.NET MVC web app framework and recommended object-oriented programming practices, namely the Model-View-Controller pattern with Colin Bowern’s presentation earlier this morning and now (at the time of this writing) the SOLID principles in Bruce Johnson’s session, SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC Applications...

It’s Day 2 of TechDays Toronto! and after a hearty breakfast, we’re kicking off the Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track – my track, and thus to my mind the best one – with Colin Bowen doing his presentation, Introducing ASP.NET MVC , which takes a look at the new web development framework, ASP.NET MVC . If you’ve done development with Rails, Django, CakePHP or Catalyst, you should find...

My photos from Anthony Vranic’s session at TechDays , Optimizing Your Application for the Windows 7 User Experience , are a bit dark because I used a different camera; my main camera was on video recording duty. I’m including them anyway, because I’m trying to keep a complete record of TechDays. The original version of this presentation from TechEd North America is somewhat different – its target audience...

It’s because we have the best obscure pop culture references, as seen in Rob Burke’s presentation on Developing Composite Applications with Silverlight and WPF : (That’s a photo of my manager John Oxley and co-worker Damir Bersinic , used to illustrate heavyweight layer communication in Prism. If you don’t get the pop culture reference, this article on my Accordion Guy blog will help you.) Here’s Rob...

As I write this, we’re well into Day 1, Session 2 of the Toronto edition of the TechDays Canada conference, and ObjectSharp’s Barry Gervin is doing his presentation, Expression Blend for Developers . Since Expression Blend is a UI building tool that is separate from Visual Studio, it’s typically seen as a tool for designers rather than developers. However, as Barry pointed out in his presentation,...

Here are a couple of shots from the Toronto edition of TechDays , taking place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre right now. The Room I’m the lead for TechDays’ Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track, which I like to think of as the best damned track in the entire conference. The pre-registration numbers for this track were pretty high, so they gave me room 718A, a large room with a...

In planning this year’s TechDays conference, we made some significant changes to the developer tracks: they were reformulated into: A “tools and techniques” track, called Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices , for which my friend and fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe is the track lead A “technologies” track, called Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform , which I lead. As the track...

TechDays Canada 2009 is Microsoft Canada’s cross-country conference that shows you how to make the most of our currently available tools and technologies. A couple of weeks ago, we held the first TechDays 2009 conference in Vancouver, and it went quite well. This week, TechDays makes the second stop of its seven-city tour: Toronto, on Tuesday, September 29th and Wednesday, September 30th. TechDays...

What do you get when you get a bunch of geeks that love technology together and ask them to come up with some cool ideas around business application? No. You get this.   A full day of building a business application using Silverlight delivered by some of the best geeks in Montréal. Coming out of this, you’ll be able to develop some wicked apps using the latest tools from Microsoft. Space is limited...

What is WebsiteSpark? If you run or work at a small web design or development firm, WebsiteSpark might be for you! WebsiteSpark is Microsoft’s new global program who goal is to help small web companies succeed . What Do You Get When You Join WebsiteSpark? What do you get with WebsiteSpark? I put together a little graphic that explains it pretty quickly: Visibility: By being showcased in the WebsiteSpark...

Yossi Vardi, according to Wikipedia , is one of Israel’s high-tech entrepreneurs and for over 40 years has funded or helped build over 60 high-tech companies in the fields of software, energy, internet, mobile, electro-optics and water tech. If you’ve used ICQ or the services of my old company Tucows , you’ve used something he helped fund. He’ll be speaking tomorrow evening in Toronto at the Velma...

This Week’s Ignite Your Career On this week’s edition of the Ignite Your Career webcast (it happens tomorrow, Thursday, September 24th – see below for details), we’ve got author, evangelist, developer, speaker and Principal Program Manager of Microsoft’s Developer Division Scott Hanselman to join our panel of experts to talk about making the most out of your developer or IT pro career. This week’s...

It’s one thing to see an article on pair programming in a a book, magazine or site that concerns itself with software development, but it’s something completely different when you see it covered in the New York Times . Still, that’s exactly the topic of an article in the Sunday, September 20th edition titled For Writing Software, a Buddy System . In it, developer and Rubyist Jim Remsik , who works...

What is Code Camp? For a brief description about code camps, check out the Code Camp Manifesto . One of the great things about code camps is that they are run by the community and for the community. Another great thing about code camps is that they are free to attend, which is great for folks who are looking to learn more about particular technologies and processes around software development. An Overview...

Pictured above is a 16GB Zune HD (the accordion’s there to act as a nice stand and prove that it’s actually in our possession). It’s quite nice, the navigation system is both simple and clever, and the browser experience is nothing short of amazing – I spent a little time surfing with it last night and kept saying “If only they had a plan to put this into Windows Phone…” The Zune HD is not yet available...

The second installment of the Ignite Your Career webcasts takes place tomorrow, Thursday, September 17th, from 12:00 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern (9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Pacific). This will be the second of four Ignite Your Career webcasts taking place this month, and this week’s topic will be Internal or External Training – Know Your Options . Here’s the abstract: Maintaining your technical and personal...

Vancouver Convention Centre, as seen from the Fairmont Hotel across the street Yesterday marked Day 2 of the TechDays Vancouver 2009 conference . The track that I’m in charge of is the most broad one: Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform . With such a wide array of topics that I could cover, I decided to focus on four areas that I and the people I surveyed thought would be both important and...

Last night's Demo Ignite Camp was a success. We got a decent-sized crowd, a bunch of great presnetations on all sorts of projects by Vancouver-area techies and hopefully inspired the local nerds to get together and do "show-and-tell" events more often. Demo Ignite Camp came about thanks to a couple of lucky circumstances. First and foremost, Vancouver is lucky enough to have a guy like Boris...

We've been having a great time in the "Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices" track at Microsoft TechDays Canada . Lots of lots of great information is being shared with our awesome developer audience here in Vancouver. Michael Schweitzer demonstrated an epic list of tips & tricks for Visual Studio to a packed room. From there, Stefen Moser shared some great information about test...

Two out of three of this afternoon’s sessions in my track at the TechDays conference – Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform -- were presented by Anthony Vranic, an independent consultant who used to be a Microsoft developer evangelist. His sessions: Building Modular Applications Using Silverlight and WPF Optimizing Your Apps for the Windows 7 User Experience Next up were Anthony Bartolo and...

Yesterday, while setting up for the TechDays conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre, my co-workers Rick Claus (pictured below on the left with the red netbook) and Rodney Buike (pictured below on the right with the blue netbook) and I couldn’t resist playing around with the Dell netbooks that we were using to do PowerPoint donkey-work. John Bristowe , who was doing the photography, suggested...

It’s Monday, September 14th, which means that TechDays Canada 2009 has begun! We’re at the Vancouver Convention Centre in beautiful Vangroovy, the first city of sevencities we’re visiting in our tour. We’re travelling across Canada throughout the fall to show off the latest and greatest things that developers and IT pros can do with currently available tools and technologies from Microsoft. Last year...

For those of you attending TechDays Vancouver (or those of you who are just curious), I’ve put together a schedule (with actual times, rooms and maps) as well as some other information that you might find useful. Enjoy! Venue TechDays Vancouver takes place at the Vancouver Convention Centre , located right on the waterfront. If you’re taking the SkyTrain, it’s right by Waterfront Station. Schedule...