Related to my previous post, I wanted to mention that if you’re building Windows Phone 7 apps, there will be phones available to use and deploy on at Irish Open Spaces Coding Day on September 11th at the Enterprise Ireland offices in Dublin.  You’ll need to bring your own laptop and your app ready to deploy and test.  Putting your app on SkyDrive, DropBox or a USB key is a good backup and will help make the deployment easier.

There’s more information at http://codingday.org, and you can register your attendance here.

To find out more about events like this, follow http://twitter.com/dublinaltnet.

Last night ALT.NET and Dublin MTUG held a joint event in the Radisson Blu hotel in Dublin city centre to show off Windows Phone 7 and talk about building applications and games.

Despite being serenaded by an ice cream truck, deafened by alarm sirens and evacuated from the building due to the faulty alarm, I think the evening went fairly well!  There were some fantastic questions which I’m working on getting answered for folks. 

I’ve received several e-mails today asking about the content we didn’t cover due to the evacuation.  What we didn’t get to cover before we were so kindly evacuated basically consisted of three things: 1) Building applications using Expression Blend (instead of Visual Studio), 2) How to get your app deployed and/or tested (in other words, “I NEED A PHONE!”), and 3) How to make money building apps in the next month.

1) BUILDING APPLICATIONS USING EXPRESSION BLEND:
I’d like to do a short video on this, but in the interest of time I’m pointing you towards some other folks’ material:

• “Video Tour of Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone” --  http://www.microsoft.com/expression/windowsphone/ 
• “MIX10 Talk: Authoring for Windows Phone, Silverlight 4 and WPF 4 with Expression Blend” -- http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL02

2) HOW TO GET YOUR APP DEPLOYED AND/OR TESTED -- (“MARTHA, I NEED A PHONE!!!”):
Phones are in short supply, there’s no way around it.  Today you have three options.  You can:

1. Send me your app to deploy.  E-mail me the .XAP file, send me a link to a Dropbox folder or Skydrive folder, point me to a public share, whatever you have.  I will deploy your app onto a phone here, video it & send you a link to the video so that you can see the functionality and how it looks and behaves.
2. Attend a deployment lab.  Keep an eye on this blog – I’ll shortly be announcing several dates in September where we’ll be standing by with phones for you to test.  You can simply e-mail me or send me a message on Twitter to let me know you’ll be attending.  Bring your code & your own laptop and we’ll deploy your app to a phone for you to test.
3. Request a phone.  If your app really needs a lot of testing, e-mail me and let me know what you’re working on and when you’ll be ready for a phone.  I can loan them out for a couple of days, but the requirement is that if you borrow a phone, you’re committing to having an app built for the Windows Phone 7 launch in mid October.  It may sound harsh, but as I said phones are in short supply so this is how we’re trying to reward developers who are building great apps at the moment.

3) WHERE CAN I GET SOME SWEET CASH FOR A GREAT WINDOWS PHONE 7 APP?:
Glad you asked!  We’re shortly launching an app contest for developers in Ireland & Northern Ireland with prizes including cash, Xboxes, and more!  Again, keep an eye on this blog and we’ll have more on this in the next couple of days.

My slides are below if you’re interested, and I’ve also included several links which would be of interest to individuals building apps for Windows Phone 7.  Tomorrow I’ll post answers to the questions, and in the meantime if you have any other ones please leave a comment or e-mail me. 

Windows Phone 7 Slides:

Windows Phone 7 Links for Developers:

• Developer Starting Point (Marketplace Registration, Tools download, forums, etc.): http://developer.windowsphone.com/
• Channel 9’s Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/WP7TrainingKit/
• Channel 9 Windows Phone 7 Jump Start Videos with Andy Wigley & Rob Miles: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/egibson/Windows-Phone-7-Jump-Start-Session-1-of-12-Introduction/
• Windows Phone 7 Jump Start by borntolearn: http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/wp7/m/classresources/default.aspx
• Consumer Introduction to Windows Phone 7: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-ie/default.mspx
• Windows Phone 7 Video Resources: http://www.windowsphone7.com/multimedia/media20