jamespr's WebLog : MDC 2004

Arrived in Amsterdam

jamespr — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 01:26:00 GMT

I arrived in town this morning. After clearing some eMail I visited the RAI Center. It's a few years since I visited the RAI but I'd forgotten how HUGE it is. It took me some time to find someone who could let me in. I spent the afternoon in the keynote room getting a few things sorted out for the Mobile demo. We've got something a little special planned so I hope you enjoy it. Oh, and the opening of the keynote looks like it will be AWESOME!

TechEd Europe - Final stop on the MDC World Tour

jamespr — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 20:07:00 GMT

This week and next I've been preparing for my trip to Amsterdam to attend TechEd Europe and the MDC we're having there. Steve Lombardi and I have been working on our keynote demo and it promises to be something a little bit special. We thought we'd save the best til last. If you can make it there, we look forward to seeing you :)

Passing on the MDC Keynote Demo Torch

jamespr — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 04:49:00 GMT

We have MDC in Canada coming up next week. I spent some time today with Craig Neable passing on the “MDC Keynote Demo” torch which had already passed from Ori to me. I took Craig through the demo, some of the tips and tricks to making sure that Visual Studio 2005 doesn't blow up in your face which can always be embarassing during a keynote. I've passed on the laptop and devices with the special build. I'm certain Craig will do a great job in Toronto!

I've been back working in Redmond since Monday, feels like yesterday since I got back. Hope some of you were able to join me on the web chat I gave Tuesday, that was a lot of fun and the chat transcript and presentation from that should be posted soon.

Anyone who mailed me post MDC, I think I should have got to your mail by now but if you haven't received anything, please mail me back. Thanks for all the feedback on the website. I've passed that onto Monica in our team who will continue to drive those ideas and strive for a single site for Windows Mobile developers. We're working hard on those NAVs, both in the Developer Center (msdn.microsoft.com/mobile) and the MSDN Libray (msdn.microsoft.com/windowsmobile).

Last MDC post for a while

jamespr — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 06:06:00 GMT

I fly out of Malaysia early this evening. Yesterday we transferred from the Sunway Lagoon Resort hotel to the Mandarin Oriental which is musch closer to the MSFT office. I visited the MSFT office which is in the Petronas Towers which, if you didn't know, are the tallest twin towers in the world standing (I think) 425m high. I was lucky enough to be able to go across the sky bridge on level 41 and have a look at Kuala Lumpur from on high. It feels like I'm the only person in the world who HASN'T seen Entrapment which was apparently partially filmed underneath the skybridge.

Skybridge antics aside, I'd like to thank everyone who came to Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia to see us at MDC. There were a huge number of people present. I apologise for failing to switch to the M2M submission page during my keynote demo ... ooops ..... I swear I pressed the button to switch. Hello to all the developers who took time to ask me questions, to those I couldn't answer directly please fire me off a question and I'll get to it.

Finally a big thank you to Loke Uei, our local man on the developer street, who was both a great host and pulled together a GREAT event.

PS If you ever get a chance to come to the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur they have an amazing breakfast buffet which includes delights such as chicken sausages, turkey bacon and curry and noodles ... for breakfast!

Arrived for MDC Malaysia

jamespr — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 18:42:00 GMT

I've safely arrived at the convention center and am in the keynote room doing a run through. It's HOT! But I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. See you there.

Go Sydney! Developers turn out in numbers

jamespr — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 04:29:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who turned out in Sydney today! The various demos seemed to go down well and I hope we've excited Australian developers about the Windows Mobile platform. It's a pity I have to leave tomorrow for our next stop because I'd like to have spent some time here and to walk the bridge. Next time ...

Prep Day is Over

jamespr — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 16:26:00 GMT

Our prep day in Australia is now over. I'm awake and it's 11:24pm so I must be over the jet lag already. All I have to do now is get to bed and get a good night's sleep.

Oh .... and to people watching my demo tomorrow ... Hello!

MDC Australia, here I come

jamespr — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 09:11:00 GMT

I arrived in Australia this morning after a grueling 14 hour flight from San Francisco. I say grueling, to be honest it wasn't that bad as I managed to sleep through 11 hours of it. Add that to the two hours I got on the way down from Seattle and I think I may have set some sort of personal sleep record. I also managed to get a run through of one of my presentations in the flight and a few tweaks to my keynote demo. I think the guy sitting next to myself thought I was nuts as I was mouthing silently to myself.

Being technology geeks the second thing we did when we arrived at the hotel - after eating breakfast - was headed out to a nearby mall SupaCenta to try and get a few necessary supplies. Local power cords for my notebooks, plug converters for my phones. I was BLOWN AWAY by the number of accessories available for the XDA 2 here. Keyboard, stylus pack, extended battery, dock, usb cable, serial cable. AUstralians really know how to accessorize their PDAs!

Anyway, I'm psyched to be here. Can't wait for the show to get on the road.

MDC US Nearly Over

jamespr — Sat, 27 Mar 2004 20:59:00 GMT

It's Saturday morning, around 10:30 and I'm sitting in Doug Boling's Post Conference session. Doug is running us through building an application using the .NET Compact Framework. We're building a Conference planner application. Because it's a full day session we can actually go through the WHOLE process of building the application in much more depth than we usually would be able to in an hour talk.

I've been in San Francisco since last Sunday. I've spoken in 5 sessions, attended a stack more and met 10s of developers. I'm only sorry I couldn't have met more. Many of me have shared your thoughts on the direction of our tools and technology and for that I thank you. It looks like we're heading in the right direction with Future Windows Mobile and Visual Studio 2005. One of the first things I need to do when I get back is install that and start playing with the new tools , which is something I haven't been able to do while preparing for MDC.

Thanks again for coming and don't be frightened to post conference feedback on my blog. What did we do well? What didn't go so well? Did you get to see all the sessions you wanted to? Were there any sessions you had expected that we didn't put on?

Developers Are Awesome

jamespr — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 02:01:00 GMT

Thanks to anyone who came to either of my first two sessions today. What never ceases to amaze me is how quickly our developer community process and come up with interesting scenarios and questions around our development platform. For those who couldn't be here today, BillG announced the release of the Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software which enables new screen resolutions and orientations. For Pocket PC, the platform supports VGA, Landscape and Square screens. For Smartphone there is support for QVGA.

Am I weird? This feels just like Christmas!

jamespr — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:49:00 GMT

I just got back to my hotel after the run through of the Panel session that is tomorrow at 10:30, right after the keynote. Yes, 11pm the night before the session was the only time I could get ALL the participants together for a run through. Craig Neable was filming some behind the scenes footage. I don't know if/when that will be made available but it would be awesome for you all to see some of the behind the scenes activity. The panel session run through was great. We have a good 20 minutes for questions at the end. Come prepared with your questions about which technology is most appropriate for your mobile project!

I bumped into Ori this evening, a couple of times in fact. He'd had a keynote practice tonight.

MDC Comes Together

jamespr — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 04:20:00 GMT

I've been on site all day today and I'll be honest ... I'm not exactly sure where all the time went. At this stage it's a case of making sure that everything is where it's supposed to be, that all the speakers know where they're supposed to be when etc etc. It's been awesome to sit in the speaker lounge and hear/see people running through decks and presentations.

The new Windows Mobile Resource Kit DVD is on site so everyone should that at the keynote tomorrow. It's pretty awesome!

A little tip for you. If you see Kevin the event co-ordinator, ask him a question which requires him to use his radio. He LOVES using his radio!

I'm off to run through my Panel session tomorrow. See you there.

Arrival in San Francisco

jamespr — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 21:00:00 GMT

I arrived last night into San Francisco and took the BART downtown. I can highly recommend that for anyone staying in the downtown hotels. It costs 5 bucks and comes out very close to the Moscone Center. When I checked into my hotel I got a Windows Mobile Developer branded key card. It's so cool to see these things come together. In case you were wondering which way to insert the card, do so by grabbing our green friends head and insert the other end!

I'm just tying up a few loose ends today. Finalizing slides for the panel session and practicing my sessions. I'll be heading over to the center later to see things. I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS CONFERENCE TO START.

Final Preparations

jamespr — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 22:26:00 GMT

OK. It's been a while. Yesterday I got a batch of Pocket PCs for some of the speakers to use to do demonstrations in high resolution. Let me tell you, the screen is stunning :) I've seen a couple of other new devices about as well. You'll have to come to MDC where if you're lucky you might just see them!

In the last week we've been doing session reviews. That's where the speakers put on something like an internal Mobility DevCon so people who work here who can't go to the conference can come along and see the sessions. There are some TOTALLY awesome demos coming up. One I particularly liked was David Stewarts messaging demo. I didn't realize that you could define your own message types and your own view forms. Combine that with message interception and you have a totally cool application!

I strongly urge you to come to Greg Keyser and Jason Fuller's orientation and resolution awareness sessions. I don't say that because I'm speaking in them, don't worry, I only speak for a few minutes! They've got some REALLY good tips and you might just catch a glimpse of one of those high res screens I spoke about.

Looking forward to seeing you all there. I'm there for all 5 days including pre and post con. I'll be in a lot of the Windows Mobile sessions. Feel free to grab me and say hi.

Speakers, Slides and DVDs

jamespr — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 09:42:00 GMT

It's been a couple of weeks and no post. What the hell have I been up to?

1. I've finished signing up the speakers. We're working on getting all the session titles, abstracts and speaker bios in place. The speakers are starting to work on their decks. They're all very excited :)

2. I've just finished a “speaker guidance” deck. This gives them guidance on what kind of content to cover, what split of current to future technology. This is incorporates the feedback you were all kind enough to give me on what you wanted to see. You have a couple of slides dedicated to “What the community wants to hear”.

3. If you've been to an event which had a mobile element during the last year or so you'll have seen the Mobile Resource Kit. Well, I'm working on a completely new kit. This will include brand new technical content, new samples, some tool updates, white papers, SDKs and information about our various programs. We're also creating a simple wizard to help you pick the tools you need to install and what order you should install them in. Expect a sneak peak of the cover art soon!

4.Today Kevin and I sat down for 5 straight hours to do the first cut of the session layout. Wow! That was a brain melter. You find yourself debating the nuances of what type of person might want to go to two particular sessions so that you don't overlap two things which someone might want to go and see. Hope we don't disappoint anyone. Jono would have been involved had he not had a small fire in his apartment. Hope you're all fixed up now Jono!

James