PeteL's Blog : presentations

November is conference month…

PeteL — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:50:49 GMT

Every November comes around and I’m always reminded how many conference seem to take place about now, it’s kind of crazy – in a good way. I’m on to week three of travel, and haven’t seen my own bed in more nights than I care to count – but ah well!

Where I’ve Been

Last week was TechEd Europe in Berlin. A great conference with lots of good materials! Coincidentally it took place during the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, and the celebrations were pretty spectacular!

While I was there, I recorded a couple of TechTalks with my good pal Matt, they’re worth checking out!

Windows Internet Explorer Web Slices and Accelerator Analytics
Do you have an Accelerator or Web Slice on your website? This talk will cover how you can put analytics on those pages so that you truly understand how people are using them, and how you can best monetize them.

A Quick Tour Through Windows Internet Explorer 8's Security Features
Do you know all of the security features Internet Explorer 8 offers to consumers, developers, and enterprises? We'll take a whirlwind tour of all of them and how you might use them to make sure you are safe and your privacy is protected on the internet.

There should be one more coming in the next couple of days. I was feeling a bit goofy with the security one, so be sure to check it out :)

Where Am I Now?

This week is Web 2.0 Expo in NYC, so come say hi! If you’re in the city I think you can get a free expo pass and check out a bunch of the sessions without having to shell out a dime! Not a bad deal! We’ll be at the IE booth Wednesday and Thursday. My HTML5 session is on Thursday from 1:20 to 2:10pm.

While I’m here, I’m also applying for a visa to visit Saudi Arabia!

Where Am I Off To Next?

I guess technically it’s home next, but my next work trip is to Saudi Arabia to go to the Gulf Developers Conference in Riyadh! It’s going to be a super action packed couple of days with lots of great info. I’ve seen an early list of the agenda and wow! Think PDC but in Riyadh instead of LA. I’m not so upset about missing PDC now :)

PS: Still working on the VPC issue. I know it’s a problem and we’re still trying to find a good solution for this!

IE For Developers at Web 2.0 Expo

PeteL — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:21:00 GMT

Here's the slide deck from my session at Web 2.0 Expo last week. I cut out a few things in order to get it to fit in the 50 minute slot they allotted me, so it's kind of short, if you're looking for full details, check out the deck from Fronteers as it has a bit more detail on things.

I did add a bit about search providers to this deck, so there is a little new stuff there.

It was great to be in NYC for the week, and I met a lot of great people. It was exciting to see all the people who want to see IE8 and hear their excitement about standards and the new features! I can't wait to deliver!

Fronteers Session

PeteL — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:27:00 GMT

Here's the deck that I presented today at Fronteers 2008. Seems like people got something out of it, and was told by a couple of people that "wow, I have nothing to complain about any more"! Love it!

ReMIX Sessions from Amsterdam

PeteL — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:29:00 GMT

Sorry for being so quiet lately, things have been a little nutty, but in a good way. We've been pretty heads down working on all kinds of fun stuff, the next version of IE, the next version of Expression Web and getting ready to launch Visual Studio 2008. I'm really excited to see that one ship. I worked on it for almost a year before I transitioned to this role, and I know almost all the folks on the team, and am amazed at what they've pulled off!

I just got an email from Mariet, who was the primary coordinator of the ReMIX sessions in Europe this spring. All of the sessions in Amsterdam were video taped, and are now available online! So if you didn't make it to MIX or ReMIX, you can see some of the sessions, myself included on the ReMIX website.

PS: We should have the new VPC images up in the next day or two. I'll be sure to post when they are up!

ReMIX: Presentations in PDF & Source for VS2008 Demo

PeteL — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:02:00 GMT

Yep, the internet is on! I think most of the comments I got yesterday all revolved around the fact that I posted all my presentations in PPTX format. I work for Microsoft, and well, I use PowerPoint to create my presentations. I figured most people, even if they didn't have PowerPoint on their machines would at least have the viewer so they could see the slides, but it sounds like quite a few people would rather have a PDF or some other format. So, here you go!

TechEd: Top 5 Web Blunders
ReMIX: Building Your Own Video Site
ReMIX: Implementing Rich UI
ReMIX: A Tour Around VS2008
ReMIX: Search Engine Optimization for Rich Media

Note that these are stored on my personal website, so I can't guarantee how long they'll last as they're not on an official Microsoft server.

I've also included with this post the source to the VS2008 demo that I did. I had to swap the pictures out and replace them with corporate clip art, but the rest of the content is the same. I included the source for what I started with, and the source that I finished with so that you can see where I started, and where I finished. If you want to follow along, you can watch the original demo at the MIX site

ReMIX: Building Your Own Video Site

PeteL — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:01:00 GMT

In Amsterdam and Zurich, I presented a session called Building Your Own Video Site. It was pretty cool, but sadly, the one hour we had to do the session, there was no real way to build the application up from scratch, so we just used a pre-built sample, and added some new UI and features to it.

The site is available to play with today on the MIX07 servers at http://mixer1004.mixsandbox.com and you can see the slides and get the entire video from the MIX07 site. I would include the slides that I used here, but the PPTX is about 10megs, so I'd suggest getting it from the MIX07 site where there's a bigger pipe, and more edge servers.

Web Blunders: The Top 5 Biggest Mistakes On The Web

PeteL — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 23:45:00 GMT

At TechEd this year, I presented a session where I presented my top five pet peeves on the web, the biggest and easiest problems to avoid on the web. With how easy it is to share content on the web, I felt that these top five things were the best and easiest to get rid of.

In order, I felt they were:

5. Unprofessional Site Design
4. Lousy Content
3. Poorly coded HTML/CSS/JavaScript
2. Inappropriate use of Rich Content
1. Not Being POSH

I've attached my slides below, so check them out, and let me know what your pet peeves are!

TechEd & ReMIX

PeteL — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 19:25:50 GMT

What a great couple of weeks, and it's not over yet! In the last two weeks, I've been to Orlando, Budapest, and Amsterdam, and I'm headed off to Zurich on Sunday. I've got some down time today and tomorrow before two more full days in Zurich. I've learned a lot, seen some fantastic things, and met some really great people.

TechEd 2007 - Orlando

I started TechEd off in Orlando a little early as some of my friends were going to be down there for a few parties and other events that were going on so I figured I'd join them. It was a great way to start the trip and great to see my friends, and meet some new folks. Kind of crazy, and a lot of fun.

TechEd itself was pretty great. We got to meet lots of cool folks, and the presentations that the IE team and I did were all well received. I haven't seen the sessions go online yet, but as soon as they do, I'll make another posting to them. I did do one session, and I'll post it in another blog entry.

As usual, I shot a whole wack of photos that you can find on my flickr account.

ReMIX - Budapest

On the last day of TechEd, I got on a plane headed for Budapest to do my first ReMIX event. It started Monday at the Museum of Fine Art, one of the coolest venues I've ever seen. We basically had two big halls filled with chairs, a podium, speakers, projection screens and peices of art that were out of this world. I was presenting with two Greek urns (I think that's what they were) on either side of me. Kudo's to Microsoft for getting such a great venue.

The presentations went well in Budapest, though it was much different than any other audience I've ever spoken to before. Because of the language difference (English for me, and Hungarian+English) for everyone else, we had to speak very slowly, and be sure to ennunciate everything. I kind of felt like I was much more mellow than I usually am when I'm on stage. People seemed interested though, and had some great questions after my session, so I'm guessing everything went well.

Again, they said they would be posting our presentations, and I'll link to them as soon as they're up. If I don't see them in the next few days, I'll just upload them to my own server so everyone can get them.

Photos from Budapest are also uploaded to Flickr

ReMIX - Amsterdam

They mixed (pardon the pun) ReMIX Amsterdam with DevDays, and we had a great showing. I did a couple of fun sessions, and there were lots of people there. I was a little worried about my first session, but it seemed to go pretty well, and there were lots of good questions, so I was happy.

I haven't shot as many photos here, but I've shot quite a few, I'm planning on taking my film camera out tomorrow to see what I can get. It should be pretty interesting, there is lots of stuff around here to photograph.

I think I got my most interesting question that I've received since this tour started in Amsterdam though. The question was, "with Silverlight now out, does that mean HTML is dead at Microsoft?" The resounding answer is no. It's just another way of sharing stuff with your users, but I want to write a better post on it than that, so keep an eye out for it.

I'm off to Zurich on Sunday, then back to Seattle on Thursday, so I'll try to get back blogging as the week goes on! And if you're at any of the sessions, come on up and say Hi!

reMIX 07 and serEstandar.es

PeteL — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:53:00 GMT

With MIX07 just behind us, there are some fun events coming up in Europe, Asia and else where in the world. REMIX 07 is an opportunity to for people who didn't or couldn't make it to Vegas to see some of the great sessions and events that took place at MIX.

But what I like about reMIX is that I get to do a couple of the sessions, and maybe even a keynote. The sessions are still being locked down, but there is a live site with a bunch of the information at http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/visitremix/index_emea.html

I'm currently planning on heading to:

I'm also heading to Seville at the end of June for serEstandar.es. The site is in Spanish, which I can't really read, but I can tell you the names of the other presenters are pretty prestigeous! It'll be a bit intimidating to be with all of those great speakers, but a lot of fun none the less. I do get to spend pretty much the entire month of June with Molly, so that should be a blast, I'm quite looking forward to that.

Edit: fixed URL for reMIX site

Pre Define Your Event Tags

PeteL — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:02:31 GMT

I'm on the airplane on my way back from the SV Web Builders Browser War event, and it was pretty cool. It was great to meet Mike Shaver from Mozilla (and fellow Canadian), Hakom Lie from Opera and Douglas Crockford (aka Internet Genius) of Yahoo! fame.

As I was shooting photos (which will be on Flickr shortly after we get on the ground and I can get a net connection), and shooting video, it occured to me, how am I going to tag this stuff? The event organizers didn't define and promote any tags for the event!

One of the really successful things that the Web Directions North guys did was predefine the tags and tell people about them. They were in the attendee book, and they were mentioned several times during the conference. You can find all the photos from Web Directions North just by looking at a few of the tags.

So, if you're putting on any kind of event, user group meeting, conference, geek meet up, anything, I'd love it if you told me how to tag it so my photos are associated with the event, and I can easily find everyone elses.

And on that note, if you're on flickr, be sure to turn on public tagging! It's a great feature, and lets the community tag and add all sorts of info to your photos. I think every one of my WDN photos are tagged with the people in them now because of that!

IE, Firefox and Opera On Stage Together

PeteL — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 02:52:00 GMT

I often forget to blog about some of the cool events I attend until it's a little too late, but hey, better than blogging about it after the fact, when people can't even try to show up right?

Tomorrow, Chris Wilson and I are headed down to San Jose for an event put on by the Silicon Valley Web Builders for a session that they're calling Browser Wars: Episode II Attack of the DOMs. Beside the name being something that bugs me a bit, this is going to be a fantastic event!

This is one of the few times that Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera have been on stage together to talk about where the web goes next, and what their visions are for the future. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what Chris has to say. Chris and I sat down on Monday to figure out what we were going to say, and what we wanted to get across for this event. We only have a 10 minute presentation. After each browser vendor has done their presentation, we move into a discussion.

I'm going to take my camera, and a video camera, and try to get a few video clips that we can put online, so keep an eye on my blog early next week for a summary and photos!

PS: we're still working on judging the entries for the IE add-on contest, and should have the results up Monday or Tuesday! Good luck to all who entered!

Edit: Fixed title

Ottawa Dot Net User Group Meeting

PeteL — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 19:39:00 GMT

How sucky is it to wake up on the first day of 2007 not with a hang over, but a head cold! Well, from personal experience, it's not much fun. And I'm home in Seattle where I could just turn on the fireplace (it's electric), and curl up and watch TV. I'm up in Ottawa, where I got to spend a great New Years Eve with some good friends. I'm staying for a few extra days to do a user group presentation on IE.

If you're in Ottawa, or know anyone in Ottawa, let them know, it should be really interesting. I'm going to talk a bit, then really dig into some fun code. I've included the description of the session below, along with the registration info. I'll post the slide deck tomorrow after the presentation.

Internet Explorer 7 took us over 5 years to get out the door, we'll look at why it took us so long, and some of the challenges that the IE team faced in making sure IE7 was more standards compliant, and didn't break "the Internet". After that brief introduction, we'll look at some of the new features of IE7 and how you can use those to drive traffic to your site, and create a better user experience.

Registration: RSVP for this event by sending an email to Events@OttawaCommunity.NET

Web Design World Session: IE7 From CSS to RSS: How to Take Full Advantage

PeteL — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 23:51:00 GMT

I just finished my session titled "Internet Explorer 7 From CSS to RSS: How To Take Full Advantage" here at Web Design World, and it went over pretty well. Cameron Moll is currently doing a session right now, so we did lose quite a few people to him, but he's an excellent speaker and is showing some really cool CSS and design stuff, so I understand why they're over there.

I talked about some of the cool features around IE7, like what quirks mode is vs. standards mode; how to use RSS on your site, how to implement OpenSearch on your page, and then finally some of the cool CSS fixes that we made for IE7.

I've uploaded my slides along with this post so that the info can be shared. I'm don't have the samples that I showed available, but much of the info that I showed is included in the slides. If you're looking for something specific, let me know and I'll try to get it up there for you!