Mark Johnston's Blog : Events

MSDN UK events – Silverlight and WPF

markjo — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:55:02 GMT

The guys in the MSDN team are presenting a load of events on rich client technologies during February:

Event Description

Audience: Developers

In this half-day session we’ll do a refresh of the technologies that we can use to build rich, interactive clients with .NET in 2008. We’ll take a look at how we can be cross-platform, cross-browser with Silverlight 2 and yet get the full development experience of a .NET application and then we’ll explore how we can take that further with the Windows Presentation Foundation V3.5 Service Pack 1 which allows for the richest, most-productive development model for Windows applications. There’ll be lots of demos and code as we bring you bang-up-to-date with what’s happening in the world of Microsoft clients.

Agenda:

Silverlight 2: From Scratch

Haven’t seen or experimented with Silverlight 2? This session is for you. We’ll explain the platform’s capabilities for rich, internet applications and we’ll look at how you go about building applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. Along the way, we’ll look at the major stepping stones like how we can make use of the network, how we can make use of the filesystem, how we can re-use and make use of existing controls and we’ll look at the controls that come “in the box” along with the ones in the Silverlight Toolkit on CodePlex. We’ll also look at the tooling involved in building a Silverlight 2 application with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1.

Windows Presentation Foundation: From Scratch

New to WPF? Coming back to the world of “rich client” after building web applications? In this session we’ll do a refresh of what Windows Presentation Foundation is, what its core capabilities are and how we build applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. We’ll bring this bang up-to-date by having a look at what’s new for WPF since its original release in 2006 and we’ll look at some of the newer developments such as the WPF Toolkit with its DataGrid and Ribbon controls on CodePlex.

They will be presenting in the following cities:

London
Birmingham
Edinburgh
Manchester

You can find out more and sign up for the event by visiting the MSDN Events site here

Microsoft Student Technology Day Videos Online - SteveB and more industry/MSFT greats

markjo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:49:35 GMT

On 1 October 2008, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer and a host of industry professionals discussed the next generation of computer science innovations with more than 300 students and lecturers from across the UK - the event was the Student Technology Day.

The videos are now all online in glorious Silverlight. And I've embedded the big man here, he was on fire that day:

The videos:

There is embed code on the site for you to put the videos on your blog/site/etc - Student Technology Day

Enjoy!

Imagine Cup Day on 5th June 2008 - Celebrating the best in UK student talent

markjo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:49:42 GMT

It's been a busy couple of months for the Imagine Cup and we have a good 200-odd students fighting it out for great prizes and the opportunity to travel to Paris (in style) to compete at the worldwide finals.

And to celebrate the best year for the Imagine Cup in the UK we are going to run an event tentatively called Imagine Cup Day (I'll update with a better name shortly!). It will be an event exclusively for Imagine Cup finalists in various categories to come to London to hear from Microsoft, leading industry speakers on the future of Software and to network with future employers looking for talented students. That's right, you could get a job at this event....

Credit to PSD

We will have several VIPs, employers and our sponsor Windows Live Search there on the day to talk to the students.

Outline agenda looks like:

Keynote presentation on the future of software innovation
Technology sessions
Showcase of Imagine Cup entries
Career networking session
Award ceremony (think the Oscars without the crying luvvies)

And then we throw a party! Got some fun stuff lined up - Guitar Hero III, Universally Challenged (a NxtGen production) and music/food/beer/drinks :-)

I bet you are wondering how to attend this extremely cool event - Well, if you are a talented student competing in the Imagine Cup then expect an invite very shortly. Same goes for our sponors, mentors and the student academics. If you are a London blogger - and want to attend, then we want you there - email me at markjo@microsoft.com and we'll get you a press pass (although these are very limited).

Mix:UK session videos now available

markjo — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:33:09 GMT

Like many people...well, most actually missed the cool event which was Mix:UK in September. Ian Moulster posted that the sessions were recorded and now live:

We recorded most of the sessions at the recent Mix:UK event and have now made them available online for you to view / download.
They're available at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/mix07/agenda.aspx, and worth a look.
The Scott Guthrie sessions are particularly good, and the Windows Live sessions are some of the best I've seen to get you up to speed with the developer capabilities of Windows Live.

Mix:UK session videos now available