Contagious Curiosity : Southern California

SoCalDevGal answers your Windows 7 Developer Questions

llangit — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:18:02 GMT

Wow what a launch today in Orange, CA! Thanks to the standing-room only audience this morning. Because of the crowd size, you were so kind as to send your questions via text messages. I didn’t have time to answer all of your many questions all at the event, so here are the rest of the answers. I’ll categorize the questions for easier reading too.

General Developer readiness and internals

Q: How do I get the Windows API Code pack?
A: The new MSDN Channel9 Windows 7 online training center has links to everything you’ll need. It includes links to SKDs, code packs, as well as all of the sample code from the demos I showed in today’s presentation – enjoy!

Q: Do developers have to distribute the API code pack .dlls with their applications that use them?
A: Yes, you do, but you can select the individual .dlls that apply so as to keep your application size as small as possible.

Q: What is the best way to take advantage of 64-bit applications? If I write an application for 64-bit, will it still work on 32-bit?
A: For a deeper understanding of Windows internals in general, and 64 vs 32 bit in particular, there is no better source than Mark Russinovich – his blog is here. He also has done several interviews on MSDN Channel 9 and has recently published a book on Windows Internals.

Q: If I write an application that uses a feature that is only available in a particular edition of Windows 7 (such as Bit Locker), what happens if someone tries to run my application on an edition of Windows 7 that does not contain that feature?
A: You should use version checking and ‘fail gracefully’ in your code (i.e. ‘the edition of Windows 7 that you are using does not support feature x). For more information see the hands on lab on version checking.

Q: How has UAC changed?
A: See this hands on lab, also the MSDN guidance

Q: How is PowerShell integrated into Windows 7:
A: PowerShell 2.0 is included – more info here (showing cmdlets)

Q: Does booting from VHD work in Windows 7?
A: It sure does – here’s a lovely blog post about this topic

Q: Can you demo homegroup setup?
A: Sorry no time, but here’s a video.

Q: Does Windows 7 support languages other than English?
A: Definitely – here’s a MSDN Channel9 video to get you started.

Sensor API

Q: Does the Location API support geo-coding? complete address reporting (also called civic address)?
A: If the location device provides that information and yes it does – more in this presentation.

Q: Are there any simulated accelerometers in the Windows 7 SDK or dev kits?
A: Not that I know of, however here’s a great blog entry on how to test/use the Freescale board (that I showed and gave away as swag) accelerometer with a sample XNA racing game.

Multi touch API (and Graphics Enhancements)

Q: How much of the multi touch API is in the current beta of .NET 4.0 (beta 2)?
A: It is not complete yet. Use the Managed Wrappers until .NET 4.0 is RTM’ed, or use native code.

Q: Can you use multi touch to geo tag items?
A: Yes the location gadget can be coded to work with touch (the sample uses a mouse click on a Bing Map to set your location).

Q: Can you use multi touch on multiple monitors?
A: Yes, as long as all monitors support touch

Q: If I code for an Infrared multi touch screen, does that mean that I’ll have to write different code for a Capacitive multi touch screen?
A: No, you will not. The same code will work for both types. However each type of screen may have a different maximum number of points of touch.

Q: Is there a built-in option in Windows 7 to automatically make the screen (or icons) bigger for touch?
A: No, but that has been coded into some Windows 7 applications. You’ll also see that design in jumplist menu items (i.e. more space between them). For more on the API, see these hands on labs.

Q: Do multi touch applications have the ability to respond to the amount of touch pressure? i.e. a ‘pressed harder’ event
A: Not at this time

Q: Can you define a custom gestures?
A: Yes you can by coding a custom response to a particular WM_TOUCH message, see the HOL referenced earlier for an example.

Q: Can we see Mike and Kim’s X-Ray multi touch application?
A: There is a video on MSDN Channel 9 about this application – enjoy!

Q: Is touch capability moving us toward virtual keyboards?
A: That is possible, also still complex. Microsoft Research has been doing some work in this area.

Q: What type of touch support is built-in to Windows 7?
A: Support for mouse clicks being replaced by simple gestures – like the Word 2010 (beta) scrolling with simple inertia that I demonstrated. More complex gestures, such as those with complex inertia, must be manually coded.

Q: Will a Windows 7 multi touch application be deployable on a MS Surface device?
A: Not presently, however we are working toward parity with MS Surface capabilities, particularly controls, for more info see this MSDN Channel 9 video.

Q: What is the maximum number of points of contact that a Windows 7 application can support?
A: That depends on the capabilities of the hardware. For example, on the HP TouchSmart tx2, 5 points of touch are supported after the N-trig monitor drivers are installed.

Q: Which applications that ship with Windows 7 are multi touch capable?
A: IE8 has the ‘bump’ feature; MS Paint is multi touch enabled

Q: Does Silverlight support multi touch? Do you code it the same way?
A: It will and coding is different at this time – here’s a Codeplex sample for Silverlight 3.0

Q: Is the Surface API / SDK separate from the Windows 7 multi touch API?
A: Yes it is separate at this time.

Q: Does Window 7 support handwriting recognition?
A: Yes, we have had this since earlier versions of the OS. It performs better after end-user training as well.

Q: Which version(s) of DirectX are compatible with Windows 7?
A: DirectX9, 10 and 11

Taskbar & Library API (also UX and Search)

Q: Can you set up a default save location in a library, like in a folder?
A: Yes, and that is a recommended programming practice for Window 7. You can see this ‘hands on lab’ for more information.

Q: Can you backup a library?
A: Yes, you can and you can automate those backups as well.

Q: When you copy a file into a library, where are you actually copying the file to?
A: The physical folder that the library is referencing.

Q: Can I pin an item to the start menu? (Run…)
A: Yes, right click the item and then click ‘pin to start menu’

Q: Why is your taskbar at the top of your screen?
A: Because I have chosen to put it there. I think it makes me more productive, it is an optional placement.

Q: Are programmable taskbar enhancements, i.e. icon overlays, etc…available only in Windows 7?
A: That is correct

Q: What gadgets do you recommend for Windows 7?
A: These are fun.

Q: Can we incorporate BING into Windows 7 search? how?
A: Yes, you can, via federated search. Using the OpenSearch standard, you can incorporate BING as well as other data sources, here’s some guidance.

Q: Does Windows 7 include voice activation? (i.e. a Speech API)
A: Yes, we’ve had one since Vista – here’s a link on how to build a WPF application that is speech-enabled.

Q: Is the scenic ribbon user configurable?
A: Not by default, but you can add that functionality to it with code. To get started coding a scenic ribbon, see these hands on labs.

Q: Where can I find a list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows 7:
A: Here’s a pretty good link.

About XP Mode

Q: When will XP emulation be fully available?
A: XP Mode is part of the the professional and ultimate editions of Windows 7. Read this blog to understand more about different types of virtualization offerings.

Other questions (ahem…I did not make these up, actual texts!)

Q: Where can I find information on the new Microsoft Store opening this week in Orange County? (Mission Viejo, CA this Thursday)
A: Here’s a link – get there early this Thursday for fun and prizes!

Q: Have they fixed the bug that makes developers burst into flames at the touch of sunlight?
A: I hope so, or there wouldn’t be any developers in SoCal!

Q: How are you?
A: Fine, but a bit busy at the moment. (asked during presentation via text).

Q: I was at U2 concert last and know how you feel (directed at Mike)
A: Exactly.

Q: I am 14 years old and my mom had to wake up at 4:30 am to drive me here, can I have some swag?
A: Sorry, no, but thanks to your mom.

Q: I noticed your frequent websites link included ‘Aries and Leo love compatibility’ – would you consider a Sagittarius?
A: Well, that is supposed to be a pretty good match for a Leo

Q: Will you marry me? (assuming this was directed at me and not at Mike Roth :)
A: Not at this venue – maybe a Las Vegas event in the future.

Q: Are you single? (same assumption as above)
A: Yes, are you?

SoCalDevGal shares Windows 7 Launch LIVE

llangit — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:19:05 GMT

Well, it’s not me presenting, but it is the same content. If you couldn’t make it to the Windows 7 launch event next Monday, October 26th starting at 9am, you can watch the live stream of the presentation of my developer evangelist colleague Daniel Egan and more presenting on Monday.

Here’s the link for the live stream http://thenewefficiency.com/live

For those of you who DID register for my event on the same day (in Orange), I am looking forward to seeing you and will have some special surprises for select attendees.

SoCalDevGal presents Windows 7 Developer APIs

llangit — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:02:20 GMT

Next week Monday and Wednesday, I’ll be presenting at the MSDN launch events for developers for Windows 7. Both events are registered full already – however, I am posting my decks here for you. Also we may be recording one set of launch sessions, if we do so, I’ll post the link to the recording on my blog.

Session 1 – Windows 7 Taskbar and Library APIs

Windows 7 Developer APIs -Task Bar Libraries

View more presentations from lynnlangit.

Session 2 – Windows 7 Graphics Enhancements and Sensor APIs

Windows 7 Developer APIs - Graphics Sensors

View more presentations from lynnlangit.

Sessions 3 – Windows 7 Scenic Ribbon and Multi Touch APIs

Windows 7 Developer APIs - Multi Touch and Scenic Ribbon

View more presentations from lynnlangit.

Happy coding!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, please join my facebook group ‘Windows 7 Developers’ for more information.

TeachCamp 2010

llangit — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:17:50 GMT

You may know that I've led Microsoft's annual events for high-school aged girls (in SoCal) DigiGirlz for 3 years now. I will continue to do this, plan for 2010 is to host three one-day events (in April) in LA, Irvine and San Diego for DigiGirlz. Also, I will be participating in DigiGirlz events (as an instructor-trainer and as an instructor) in other geographies. An incredible group of community volunteers has been the key to the success of DigiGirlz events.

New for 2010 is a vision to implement a larger initiative for both boys and girls (middle school and high school). The 'big vision' is to create a series of annual events, in partnership with the local technical communities and one university per event, where we teach large numbers of kids technology. The style of the event is based on codeCamp, that is community-driven, with corporate support (Microsoft and more), with community volunteers setting up logistics (registration, schedule, setting up classroom loads, etc...) and teaching.

The first instance will be held in Mountain View on Feb 27 (single day) at Foothill Valley College (site of the hugely successful annual SVCCodeCamp). This is being run by the NorCal technical community. They have decided that their first event will target girls only (300), due to the under-representation of women in technology. I will participate as an instructor-trainer and instructor. Peter Kellner and his wife Tammy (they run SVCCodeCamp) are already on board to help with volunteers as well.

The second instance will be held at UCSD in San Diego the second weekend in July. Llewelyn Falco will co-lead the event with me. We are currently working on curriculum development and are looking for volunteers to assist with this. Jason Frankovitz & Thomas Mueller are also on board helping with curriculum development. As we get closer to the date, we will obviously be looking for a bunch more volunteers.

I would like to run one more instance in SoCal this year. I am looking for suggestions for venue and timeframe.

If you would like to be part of my TeachCamp planning (mailing list), because you'd like to contribute and / or host your own TeachCamp somewhere outside of the Western US, you are welcome to join the conversation too.

If you are interested in helping in any way please send me mail to lynnl at microsoft dot com with the subject 'TeachCamp'

Where is SoCalDevGal? – SoCal Developer Events for Oct 2009

llangit — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:22:21 GMT

By popular demand I am attempting to aggregate SoCal Developer events on a monthly basis. For October 2009 as follows below.
I’ll be happy to add any developer events I may have missed, just send me mail via my blog.

Week 1 (Sept 27 – Oct 3)

Mon, Sept 28 – GirlsInTech / Santa Monica / 7pm - ‘How much can you say without tarnishing your brand? (social media) – I am speaking
Wed, Sept 30 – CloudCamp / LA / MS Office / 6pm – I am attending, maybe speaking
Sat, Oct 3 – Silverlight Education Day / San Diego / 9am
*note – I’ll be at SVC Code Camp and then San Jose MSDN Windows 7 launch from Fri, Oct 2 to Mon, Oct 5*
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Week 2 (Oct 4 – Oct 10)

Tues, Oct 6 – DealMaker / LA / MS Office / 1-5pm – I am attending
Wed, Oct 7 – MSDN geekSpeak on WF / 12-1pm – I am moderating
Fri, Oct 9 – BecauseItsMyBirthday / EccoHollywood / 7pm until late – I am one of the LA City Hosts

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Week 3 (Oct 11 – Oct 17)

Thurs, Oct 15 – MindshareLA / 8pm until late – I may be attending

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Week 4 (Oct 18 – Oct 24)

Tues, Oct 20 – SQL UG / San Diego / 6:30pm to 9:00 pm – I am speaking on Gemini
Wed, Oct 21- MSDN geekSpeak on Refactoring / 12-1pm – I am moderating
Thurs, Oct 22-25 – Social Media for Small Biz Con / Aliso Viejo – 3 days – I may stop by

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Week 5 (Oct 25 – Oct 31)

Mon, Oct 26 – MSDN Windows 7 Launch Event / Irvine – I am speaking on Windows 7 for Developers (sorry, sold out)
Tues, Oct 27 – 140 conference / LA – I may be speaking (afternoon) on use of Twitter to drive nonProfit support activities
Wed, Oct 28 - MSDN Windows 7 Launch Event / LA– I am speaking on Windows 7 for Developers (sorry, sold out)
Thurs, Oct 29 – New Media Vault / LA – 7pm until late – I will probably be attending

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DigiGirlz camp LA for 2009

llangit — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:35:15 GMT

We hosted our first-ever DigiGirlz hi-tech camp for high-school aged girls at New Horizons, Culver City, (LA) CA last week (We have hosted previous events in SoCal in Irvine, CA and in San Diego, CA). DigiGirlz is a global program of annual, free events – supported by Microsoft. In SoCal we also have extensive community participation in addition to Microsoft’s support.

Photo of custom DigiGirlz participant certificate:

35 girls participated in activities over two days which included hands on classes (which we developed), demos of cool technologies (Kodu, World-Wide Telescope, Lego Mindstorms etc…), discussion groups with technical professionals and more. For links to the courses, which included ‘Intro to Programming using SmallBasic’, ‘Creating a Video Player in Expression Blend3’ and more, see my previous blog entry on past Digigirlz events in 2009.

The focus and goal of the program is to give girls information (and motivation) around careers which involve technology. Although I could write a really long blog post with detailed information about each aspect of the agenda, I do think that pictures speak volumes.

Here’s me demonstrating Windows 7 multi touch applications on my laptop. My challenge to the girls was ‘what multi touch applications will you create?’

Thanks to photographers, Wm. Marc Salsberry (he took the picture above), Jim (TechFrog) Alden (check out his DigiGirlz photo set on Flickr!) and Anna Webber for capturing the event.

While I am thanking people, local developer, Kim Schmidt took complete charge of organizing the event (during my trip to Africa), simply this event would not have happened without her. We had more than 25 volunteers in total:

From Microsoft – Cindy Palmer, Mary Jane Perez, Linda Routson, Curtis Wong, Avelina Serna
Community – Gina Johnston, Robyn Cohen, Marsha Collier, Heather Meaker, Heather Vescent, Cigdem Patlak, Thomas Mueller, Alexandra Mokh, Akiko Ashley, Mary-Margaret Walker, Leila Curic, Babette Pepaj and more!

More fun photos

From Kim Schmidt – Girls participating in SongSmith competition

DigiGirl taking notes during one of the speaker’s presentations

DigiGirlz events are one my favorite things to do at Microsoft. In addition to watching two girls who were completely new to programming challenge each other at the end of the first day of camp to create the coolest program in SmallBasic (after the intro class) and much more, I got extremely positive feedback from participants.

Also after every DigiGirlz event that I’ve ever participated in I ALWAYS get at least one letter like the one below (which I received today).

"Dear DigiGirlz team,

Thank you so much for putting on DigiGirlz. I've learned so much these past two days! I've already started reading your (Lynn's) book, and will start playing around with SQL Server as soon as I am verified as a student (and can download SQL Server via DreamSpark). The first thing I am going to do is to make a database for my clothes!

Lauren (Berger) has inspired me to start working as an intern and I've contacted Alex (GirlGamer) about an internship at her company. The DigiGirlz experience was truly amazing, and I hope your team continues inspiring girls as you all have inspired me."

DigiGirlz Summer Camp 2009

llangit — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:38:30 GMT

We hosted around 20 girls over the past two days at Microsoft’s Irvine, CA office. The global DigiGirlz program is funded by Microsoft and supports annual hosting of either one-day spring events or multi-day summer camps. The goal of the events is to get high-school aged girls interested in technology careers. I am the lead for SoCal. This year I elected to lead 4 events. The two spring events occurred in LA and San Diego. This first camp was held in Irvine. There will be another two-day camp at New Horizons, Culver City, CA on Thursday August 27 and 28. 50 high-school aged girls are registered to attend that camp.

The OC Register covered the Irvine event both on the front page of today’s Local section (two photos and a short story) and on-line (13 photos and stories).

Also some of the leads took pictures. Kim Schmidt was showing the girls SongSmith.

John Hubbard created a Photosynth of the participants.

Here is the list of volunteers (their roles at the camp listed as well) for the Irvine camp:

From Microsoft: Cindy Palmer / proctor
From the local technical community:
Kim Schmidt, Gina Johnston, Chris Savolskis curriculum creators, instructors and proctors
John Hubbard, Michael Hubbard / proctors
Marek Schmidt / setup help
Alexandra Moth / Heather Vescent / Lauren Berger / speakers

and a picture :)

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We encourage ANYONE to reuse our curriculum. Below is the agenda and after that are all our our PowerPoint presentations.

Camp Agenda

Day One
8:00 – 8:30 - prepare facility, greet girls, gather registration / release forms – Icebreaker
9:00-10:00 – SQL Database class
10:00 – 10:15 – break
10:30-11:45 – Small Basic class
11:45 – 1:00 – Lunch + technical career discussion with all instructors
1:00 – 2:15 – DemoFest – Kodu, MS Surface, SongSmith, Windows 7 multi touch applications
2:15 – 3:00 – speaker, Intern Queen – Lauren Berger

Day Two
8:00 – 8:30 - prepare facility, greet girls
9:00-10:00 – Movie maker class
10:00 – 10:15 – break
10:30-11:45 – XNA Game class
11:45 – 1:00 – Lunch + speaker – Alex Moth from Girl Gamer
1:00 – 2:15 – Blend 3 class
2:15 – 3:00 – speaker, Heather Vescent from the Purple Tornado
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Classroom machine setup requires the following

Internet access
Vista w/ Windows Movie Maker
SQL Server Express 2008 w/Advanced Services
XNA
Visual Studio 2008 Express C#
Expression Blend 3 CTP + Silverlight SDK

We also set up demo machines with
Kodu (Academic edition is via internal MS beta only) and requires wired XBox 360 controller
SongSmith - (non-expiring edition is via internal MS beta only)
Windows 7 Touch Pack Applications on multi touch HP TouchSmart tx2 laptop (software is MS internal only at this time)

We used a samples files for the database class (boyfriends.mdf) and for Blend class. We also created an icebreaker activity. All of these files can be downloaded from this Skydrive location (you must sign in with ANY Windows Live ID first).

Power points

1 Digi Girlz So Cal Databases Kims Final

View more presentations from llangit.

2 Digi Girlz Small Basic

View more presentations from llangit.

3 Kodu

View more presentations from llangit.

4 Making Movies

View more presentations from llangit.

5 Digigirlz Xna

View more presentations from llangit.

6 Digigirl Creating A Video Player In Blend 3

View more presentations from llangit.

Another important piece of information we shared with all of the DigiGirlz is the fact that they (and ANY high-school aged student) can have access to FULL VERSIONS of our software for studying via the DreamSpark program. Included products are shown in the screenshot below.

So, spread the word, find a kid and teach her (or him) how to code today! If you’d like to be a part of a future DigiGirlz event, please read the FAQ below first.

DigiGirlz FAQ

Q. When is the next event? Is there an event in my area?
A. Read the DigiGirlz site – all events are listed there.

Q. I want to send my daughter – what is the age limit? requirement, etc..?
A. Read the DigiGirlz site – all attendance information is listed there. All attendees must register in advance. Each event has specific attendance limits because there are hands on classes (i.e. need to have one computer per attendee.)

Q. I would like to volunteer, what can I do?
A. Great! We need help with logistics management (i.e. answer email, evaluations, etc..) and with technical classroom proctoring. We do conduct ‘train-the-trainer’ sessions at DigiGirlz SoCal prior to each event. Proctors should have technical backgrounds.

Q. Can I use your courseware?
A. Yes, but this is a volunteer effort, so there is no one to support it beyond what I post on this blog.

Q. I would like to be a speaker at a DigiGirlz event, what is the next step?
A. Send an email to the event coordinator (email listed on DigiGirlz site) with your resume / topic

Q. I am a teacher, can I attend?
A. This varies by location. Contact the location lead to ask via the email listed on the DigiGirlz site.

Q. Can boys attend?
A. No, this program is specifically targeted at girls. However, you can use/modify the courses and hold your own event with these topics.

Report from StepUp First Annual Career Conference in Carson, CA

llangit — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:29:47 GMT

On Saturday after TechEd, I attended the first-ever StepUp Career Conference for underserved high-school aged girls. This event was put on by the national StepUp non-profit, based in Los Angeles and was hosted at the Dermologica HQ in Carson, CA. On this day 30 girls and their professional mentors participated in a series of activities around career development. I was connected to this organization’s local lead, Alexa Brandt, by formerly LA-based do-gooder Sloane Berrent, because of my work with Microsoft’s Digigirlz program.

I loved attending and learned quite a bit about how their very effective professional mentor program runs. I enjoyed observing the activities and the girls seemed quite engaged all day. Below is a picture from a great activity, speed mentoring. During this mentees were encircled by mentors, music was played and when it stopped, girls asked professional women a series of questions. Dancing was encouraged, fun and learning was had by all! This was a very successful event and I intend to continue to work with this organization in Southern California.

Here’s the detailed agenda for the conference:

Agenda:

1. Mentor Check In, Debriefing and Refreshments (9:30-10) - Review event details with Senior Program Manager Alexa Brandt - Girls Arrive (10:00)

2. Welcome, Introduction of Mentor/Mentees and Ice Breakers (10-11)

3. Break into two groups – Successful Sisters & Working Women (swap after sessions)

Working Women: How to Become an Internship Queen by Lauren Berger www.internqueen.com (11:00 – 11:45)

a. What is an internship/part-time job. Why is it beneficial, why would you work for free? Where can you find an internship? Mentors share their internship experiences

b. Strengths with fun self-assessment tests

c. Interview tips and role playing

Successful Sisters: A Career Girl’s Keys To Success Led by Lisa Lee (11:00 – 11:45)

a. What is a Career, My Mission: What Do I Want to Do

b. My Plan: How Do I Make it Happen, Importance of Education, Time Management & Prioritization

c. Women’s History in the Workplace

d. Activity: Each pair will be given an item such as a cel phone, magazine, credit card, etc. The pairs will be asked to brainstorm as many careers and related skills that correlate with the product. The exercise is designed to get girls to look at everyday items in a new way and get them thinking about careers they may not have considered

4. Lunch and Trivia (12:30-1:15) Please sit with your mentee(s) during lunch

5. Career Speed Networking (1:15-1:40)

a. Inner/Outer Circle – all mentors will be in the “inner circle” in which they face out while girls will be on the outer circle, facing in. Music will be playing while everyone walks in a circle. When the music stops, girls will ask 2-3 career related questions to whichever mentor they stop in front of. We will play a handful of rounds.

6. Passport to Professions: Career Stations (1:40 – 2:25)

a. Mentors will be grouped together by industry. Each industry will have a table where you will sit. Girls will have a passport booklet. They have to find mentors that meet certain requirements such as find a woman that works with clients or patients. How does she work with different personality types?

b. If you meet the bill, chat with the girl and then stamp her passport

7. Closing Remarks and Gift Bags (2:25-2:30) - Girls turn in their passport for a Dermologica goody bag. Volunteers get bags too!

Report from TechEd – MVP pre-show summit

llangit — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:19:44 GMT

Sunday before TechEd I represented local evangelists at the TechEd MVP pre-summit. In addition to meeting several MVPs for the first time, I got a chance to plan new events with key SoCal MVPs (most of whom also lead or actively participate in local User Groups as well) -- James Johnson, Denny Cherry, Mike Vincent, Andrew Karcher, Mark Rosenberg and more attended.

Here are some of the ideas for new types of events that we kicked around – what do think?

1) Give Camp – a weekend coding smack down, to be held at a university, with teams of developers working to create solutions that will benefit non-profits. Judging, technical resources (i.e. help) from MS and more. MS did this in Dallas last year with great success. Also post solutions to CodePlex. (Later in the week I had dinner with Sara Ford, who runs CodePlex for Microsoft and she thought this was a great idea and agreed to highlight any projects we might produce there. Also tie this project to James’ NING site - ‘Geeks Without Borders’ to increase reach beyond SoCal.

2) Proctored Hands on Labs with prerequisites – repeating our highly successfully Silverlight 2.0 HOLs last year, with themes of WPF and/ Windows 7 development. Have a first night (Tues) with lecture, which is also recorded, in case you can’t make it, then the lab night is on Thursdays. Repeat frequently, host at technical training centers throughout SoCal.

3) geekSpeak guests – I am always looking for interesting new guests for my weekly webcast series (MSDN geekSpeak) and I met several MVPs at this summit who I’ve invited to appear on the show this summer.

Report from TechEd – What is Oslo? What is M? What is Intellipad?

llangit — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:38:19 GMT

All week at TechEd I worked in the Oslo booth in the SOA area. I worked with Kris Horrocks, Miguel Llopis and Shy Cohen. Kris and Miguel are on the Oslo product team and Shy is an architect and trainer, who recently left Microsoft after over 10 years in Redmond. Working with Softies from the Product Team is always a treat because I get to ‘go deep’ into a technology. This is definitely something I miss about my job as a broad reach developer evangelist. I spent a good amount of time listening, and doing my usual translating, trying to help the customers to understand our vision of Oslo. So the questions came is two groups.

1) I am a developer and this is a developer thing that I have never heard of - so what is it exactly?

2) I am an architect (usually a large enterprise architect) and I use product X right now, how does Oslo compare?

To answer the first one, we started with basic concepts. Oslo is a platform for creating model-driven application and it contains a language, M; tools, IntelliPad and Quadrant; and a (SQL Server) database, Repository. The MSDN Oslo developer center is a great place to start learning – it’s here.

Oslo allows developers to use, extend or to create DSLs (domain-specific languages). DSLs are used to create models which conform to schema or grammar types. All artifacts, i.e. models, schemas, etc…are stored in the Repository. We intend to provide several core DSLs as part of Oslo when it ships as a product. These include MWeb for ASP.NET, MService for WCF / WF, MEntity for the Entity Framework, and MSchema for SQL. You can use these DSLs ‘as is’ to improve developer productivity, i.e. write in a more natural way (for developers) and get output in various formats, or you can extend the DSLs we provide, or even write your own. A fun example that we showed was a ‘MWindow’ DSL that ‘translated’ input in the form of a poem, i.e. ‘Give me a Window, With a Title of New, Color the Outside, And the Inside too, Make them both, blue, light, blue’, which was then translated into XAML, which was next associated with the runtime to output a WPF application.

Of course the key to using any new toolset is understanding the language. For a quick look at M, see the video referenced below.

We also showed some other DSL examples, (such as one for the X10 home automation domain) via IntelliPad. The example shown below is from the IntelliPad team blog and it shows MSchema, or SQL generation.

Quadrant, which was previewed at PDC last fall, is NOT part of the current Oslo CTP (Jan 2009). This CTP includes all the samples we showed at TechEd as well as IntelliPad. Principal Architect of Oslo, Don Box, also presented a session at TechEd on Oslo, which should be available online (eventually) after the show.

As I told many customers as the show, we are ‘early’ in the development of our modeling platform, so if this is an area of interest for you, please grab the CTP, check it out and send me your feedback. Our product team really wants to hear from you.

Going to TechEd in LA next week? – find SoCalDevGal there

llangit — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:53:00 GMT

TechEd starts for me on Sunday, May 10. Here’s where to find me day-by-day – if you can’t find me send me mail via this blog with your number and I’ll text you back.

Sunday
day - MVP event at LACC -and- OSLO booth prep
night – SharePoint by Night Party -and- MCT ‘foodie’ meet up

Monday
morning – at the show
afternoon – Oslo booth
evening – Win7 party

Tuesday
morning – Oslo booth
afternoon – MCT lounge, then book signing at TechEd bookstore (4pm – 5pm)
evening – West Region team dinner

Wednesday
morning – at the show
afternoon – Oslo booth
evening – secret party

Thursday
morning – Oslo booth
afternoon – WomenBuild prep (facilitator training starts at 4pm)
evening – Community Party 5pm, WomenBuild 6:30pm

Friday
morning – Oslo booth

SoCalDevGal’s Tweet Stream – Do you follow llangit?

llangit — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:33:37 GMT

Many of you have expressed interested in this week’s Windows 7 Developer Incubation week which is being held at Microsoft in Irvine, CA. The quickest and easiest way to follow what is going is to follow me on Twitter (llangit), as I’ll be here all week and will be tweeting as we go. We’ll also be shooting video and posting either here or via various Twitter vehicles, 12seconds, etc…I have protected my updates on twitter, so if you want to follow, then just request and I’ll approve you. See ya’ there!

Win7 – getting your apps ready – here’s how

llangit — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:46:03 GMT

Check out this great blog post one of our Architect Evangelists (Bruce Kyle) – filled with useful links. Probably the best place to start learning about Win7 is to learn how to enable multi-touch. Of course there is much more as well.

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/04/25/walkthrough-to-get-your-applications-ready-for-windows-7.aspx

Watch my blog for more info, as I’ll be participating in the Win7 Developer’s Incubation week in our Irvine office all next week and will be blogging, etc…on how it goes. Here’s the gist – we’ll have 4 teams of developers working to create Win7 applications. We are providing the following resources to help them:

1) 1 day’s dedicated technical training – delivered by partners who have been working with Win7 since early betas.

2) The latest hardware, like the HP TouchSmart, etc…

3) Technical (developer) advisors [both MS staff and partners] on site all week to help the teams.

4) Remote developers in India, who have been working with Win7 since early betas, available to code on our overnight (their day), so that teams can make more progress during the week on their projects.

5) Presentation and judging on Friday afternoon. Judges consist of MS staff (me, among others!) and externals business people (VCs and more)

What would you like to see from this competition? Daily highlights? Interviews with the developers? Let me know and I’ll share.

Live in the OC? Want to learn Win7 dev for FREE Hands on NEXT WEEK?

llangit — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:21:14 GMT

SoCal .NET Developers want to learn Windows7 development (multi-touch, sensor-aware apps & rich client) for FREE next week? Send me mail to lynnl at microsoft dot com and I’ll tell you how.

Free WPF training near LAX on April 24 and 25 – will you be there?

llangit — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:28:24 GMT

UI matters. Does yours look like this?

If you are interested in Windows Presentation Foundation development training delivered by two top-notch instructors, then check this event out, by registering here. If you are not a MS-partner, follow the instructions on the linked blog post. This event is targeted at all .NET developers, not just partners.