Are you a web developer and want to sharpen your jQuery skills? Would you like to attend a conference featuring some of the brightest lights in jQuery programming? Are you too short on time and travel expenses to hit such a conference?

For a mere US$150 and no travel at all, you can attend the jQuery Online Conference. It’s a live, over-the-‘net conference taking place on Monday, July 12th starting at 12:00 noon EDT / 9:00 a.m. Pacific and featuring these four sessions:

• Beyond String Concatenation. Using jQuery Templating to Cleanly Display Your Data
  Rey Bango (Client-Web Community Program Manager for Microsoft and Head of Evangelism for the jQuery JavaScript Project)
  In this presentation, Rey will show you a new way to produce easily maintainable dynamic pages via pre-built JavaScript templates and the Microsoft jQuery templating plugin.
• Testing Your Mobile Web Apps
  John Resig (JavaScript tool developer for Mozilla and creator of jQuery)
  This talk will be a comprehensive look at what you need to know to properly test your web applications on mobile devices, based upon the work that’s been done by the jQuery team. We’ll look at the different mobile phones that exist, what browsers they run, and what you can do to support them. Additionally we’ll examine some of the testing tools that can be used to make the whole process much easier.
• Taking jQuery Effects to the Next Level
  Karl Swedberg (Web developer at Fusionary Media, member of the jQuery Team, author of jQuery 1.3 and 1.4 Reference Guides and maintainer of the jQuery API site)
  One of the first things web developers learn to do with jQuery is to show and hide elements on a page and then add some flair by sliding those elements up and down or fading them in and out. Too often, though, we stop there, missing out on the incredible range and flexibility of jQuery’s core effects. In this talk, we’ll investigate both standard and custom animations and how they can be used to create useful and fun effects. We’ll also build a couple effects plugins, explore parts of the effects API that are often overlooked, and learn how to avoid common problems when attaching these effects to certain events.
• jQuery Pluginization
  Ben Alman (Developer at Boston.com, contributor to jQuery and Modernizr)
  In this live-coding session, Ben explains how, with just a little thought and effort around generalization, parameterization and organization, you can convert your "just get the job done" jQuery code into a legitimate, reusable, modular jQuery plugin.

Your conference attendance fee not only lets you watch the live event and ask questions of the presenters, it also lets you watch the recordings of the events any time afterwards. So if you can’t catch the live event (perhaps you’re busy at work, or it’s 3:00 a.m. in your time zone), you can still watch the presentations. This also lets you watch the live event to get the general idea, and then watch it again for note-taking or hands-on workshopping.

• For more information about the conference, visit the jQuery Online Conference site.
• To register for the conference, visit the jQuery Online Conference registration page. (Yes, there are discount rates for groups and students.)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

GovCamp in Toronto!

First came GovCamp in Ottawa (May 31st – June 1st), and now GovCamp is coming to Toronto! GovCamp is an “Open Government” or “Goverment 2.0” unconference with these two goals:

1. For governments to become more open, transparent, participatory, innovative, efficient and effective
2. For citizens to become more connected to each other around their civic passions in the place they call home

GovCamp Toronto will take place on the evening of Thursday, June 17th and will be an evening where all sorts of people, from private citizens to government officials to representatives of publicly-funded organizations will get together to talk about the intersection of:

• Government transformation
• Social networking software
• Participatory approaches to public engagement
• Open data
• Public service renewal

Is GovCamp the sort of thing you should attend? It is if you’re one of the following:

• A municipal, provincial or federal public servant or a public sector agency employee with an interest in these topics
• A thought leader looking to share and connect with this community
• A member of the community of developers, advocates and practitioners in public engagement, government communications, technology, open data, open government or "Gov 2.0"

Who’ll Be There?

Few people know more about setting up “Government 2.0” unconferences than Toronto’s favourite high-tech policy wonk Mark Kuznicki, and we’re very fortunate to have him as GovCamp Toronto’s MC and facilitator. Mark has been behind a number of similar unconferences, including ChangeCamp, TransitCamp and Metronauts.

There will be a number of special guests including:

• David Eaves, Public Policy Entrepreneur, Open Government Activist and Collaboration Expert
• Dave Wallace, Chief Information Officer, City of Toronto
• Steven Green, Director of Marketing & Communications, Cabinet Office, Government of Ontario
• Chris Moore, Chief Information Officer, City of Edmonton
• Peter MacLeod, Principal, MASSLBP
• Alison Loat, Executive Director, Samara

GovCamp Toronto will be hosted by:

• Omar Rashid, Public Sector, Microsoft Canada
• Julia Stowell, Interoperability Lead, Microsoft Canada

Where, When and What’s Happening

GovCamp Toronto’s venue is nice and also quite central: the Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street, just north of Bloor).

Here’s the agenda:

There are a number of ways to participate:

• You can host a conversation. The conversations at GovCamp Toronto are created by you. We are looking for up to 20 hosts to help convene small group conversations on a variety of topics related to our theme. If you’ve got an idea for a conversation topic, propose one using the online form.
• You can demo your web or mobile application. We’re looking for up to 6 web or mobile app demos that show the value of open public data, demonstrate what is possible in open government, or demonstrate real world application of social tools inside government. If you’ve built such an app, propose a demo using the online form.
• You can join the conversation. You can either:
  • Attend in person – registration is free, and you can register to attend online.
  • Follow the online conversation on Twitter: just look for the #GovCamp hashtag.

Find Out More About GovCamp

There’s lot of information, ideas and reportage from the recent GovCamp in Ottawa at the GovCamp site – be sure to check it out!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Just as i18n is shorthand for “internationalization” – it’s made by taking the first and last letters of the word and replacing the 18 letters in between with the number 18 – a11y is shorthand for “accessibility”. That’s why the accessibility unconference taking place at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow, June 8th, at the University of Guelph is called A11yCamp.

Here’s what A11yCamp’s site has to say about the event:

A11yCamp is a participant-driven event about IT accessibility, modeled after the unconference format of BarCamp.  Whether you are an expert or just getting your feet wet in the IT accessibility space, come join us!  With the schedule determined on the spot, A11yCamp Guelph will be a dynamic event with presentations, demos and interaction by and among participants.

Come out to the first A11yCamp at the Aiming for Accessibility conference at the University of Guelph (about an hour west of Toronto) to share and learn about IT accessibility in an open environment.  Also, there will probably be pizza.  And maybe t-shirts.  We hope.  Register Now!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Once again, my friend and former co-worker (I worked at his startup, OpenCola, during “The Bubble”) Cory Doctorow is holding the Canadian launch of his latest novel, For the Win.

Here’s the publisher’s blurb about the book:

In the virtual future, you must organize to survive

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.

Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation.

The event takes place tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Merril Collection of the Lillian H. Smith building (a.k.a. “The Library”) at 239 College Street, just east of Spadina. Perhaps a post-launch visit to Caplansky’s is in order.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Last night at a gathering of Toronto digital marketing and social media types held by TheBizMedia – I’m not sure I qualified for an invite, but hey, free beer! – Scott Stratten, president of UnMarketing, gave a very entertaining, funny and insightful presentation in which he talked about the lessons he learned as an online marketer.

I shot a five-minute video snippet of his presentation, where he talked about:

• First name and email address are often enough. When you need users to sign up for things like contests or surveys, do you really need to take up their valuable time by collecting information that you probably don’t need? (I know that at Microsoft, we ask for great gobs of information when you sign up for even the simplest of things. I do try to get them to tone it down.)
• How to get people to take your surveys. Telling them that “your answers will help us” isn’t going to get them to take your surveys. Scott found that what works for him is offering a chance at a prize – even a $50 Amazon certificate – boosts the number of people who take survey by orders of magnitude.
• Auto-DM replies on Twitter. Don’t. Just don’t.

You’ll probably want to turn up the volume on the video. Scott was speaking without a microphone, and as good a videocamera as the Flip Mino HD is, I would’ve had to get obnoxiously close to the stage to get better sound.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

If you’re a developer out in the Maritimes, you might want to check out Derek Hatchard’s Maritime Dev Con, which takes place on June 18th in Moncton. It’s a single-afternoon, two-track conference – which means you should be able to take time out to attend it – covering a number of topics including:

• .NET and ASP.NET
• Java
• iPhone development
• Ruby
• Python
• Groovy
• NoSQL and MongoDB
• “Rockstar Estimating Skills”

Maritime Dev Con has a registration fee that won’t hurt your wallet – it’s a mere CAD$19!

I’m a big fan of small, regional gatherings like Maritime Dev Con and its western counterpart Prairie DevCon. Each region has its own specializations and needs that a by-locals, for-locals conference can do a better job of serving, and the smaller size of these conferences allows for more back-and-forth between audience and presenter, and between attendees. Support your local conference!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I’ll post a more detailed write-up of the Make Web Not War conference later, but I thought that those of you who were there (or wished they were there) would like to see some photos as soon as possible. I’ve posted my photos at full resolution to my Make Web Not War Flickr photoset, which you can view either on Flickr or the slideshow above. The photos all have titles, and I promise I’ll finished the remainder of the descriptions over the next couple of days.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The business of helping out with the NerdTrain, the Make Web Not War conference, associated activities and participating in a team offsite meeting has kept me a busier than I expected to be – in fact, this has been my first chance to post a blog entry! Stories and pictures are forthcoming, but in the meantime, enjoy this video that explains what I’ve been working on for the past couple of days.

As I write this, the chaos typically associated with getting a conference set up has subsided and I hope to squeeze in a couple of posts later today as well as tomorrow.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team is headed to Montreal this week, where we’ll be getting together for our annual team meeting as well as to help run the Make Web Not War conference on Thursday.

We’re not travelling in the usual way either. We’ve hired out a VIA Rail car to take us and a lot of Make Web Not War attendees to Montreal in style. The car’s rigged with power, wifi, Xboxes, Rock Band, monitors and other goodies to make the five-ish-hour trip even more enjoyable for all that nerdy brainpower on board. The train leaves Toronto on Tuesday morning and returns on Friday – watch this space for reports from the train as well as from Montreal!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

It’s not too late to register for Prairie Dev Con, the prairie developer conference, which takes place in Regina next week on Wednesday, June 2nd and Thursday, June 3rd – in fact, you can still get a discount on the registration fee! Register before next Monday, May 31st, and save 20% off the ticket price.

Winnipeg-based developer D’Arcy Lussier put together Prairie Dev Con with the goal of providing techies in the prairie provinces a developer conference with great content without having to deal with the high cost of travel and hotels. It’s a two-day conference with four tracks:

• Web/Rich Internet Applications
• Development Foundation
• Application Lifecycle Management
• Database/Business Intelligence

with fifty sessions in total.

Donald “Brownfield Application Development in .NET” Belcham will lead a post-conference workshop, Making the Most of Brownfield Application Development, on Friday, June 4th. There’s an additional fee to attend this workshop, which you can attend either as a follow-up to the conference, or on its own (see the registration page for full details).

If you’re a developer in The Prairies and looking for a conference that provides a lot of knowledge but is close by and won’t drain your training budget, register for Prairie Dev Con!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The Hand Eye Society describes itself as a “not-for-profit coalition of people and projects in support of Toronto’s videogame communities”. Their goals are:

1. To help people make games
2. To connect game makers with each other and with an audience, offline
3. To foster diversity in game creation and public perception of games

I shouldn’t be surprised that one of the people behind the Hand Eye Society is Jim Munroe. He’s a former Adbusters editor turned self-publishing author of a number of enjoyable science fiction books such Flyboy Action Hero Comes with Gasmask and Angry Young Spaceman, developer of indie games including the interactive fiction piece Punk Points (the online version requires Java), maker of movies and all-round Toronto DIY-espousing creative type.

Also connected with the Hand Eye Society are other indie videogame notables including:

• Capy (whom you might know as Capybara Games)
• Superbrothers
• Metanet
• Queasy Games
• RSBLSB (short for “Right Square Bracket, Left Square Bracket”)

The Hand Eye Society is throwing a social this Thursday, May 27th in Toronto at Unit Bar (1198 Queen Street West, a shade east of Dufferin/Gladstone, halfway between the Drake and Gladstone hotels). The doors will open at 7:00 and there may be a set of curated videogames for you to check out.

At 8:00 p.m. special guest dignitary Brandon Boyer, Chairman of the Independent Games Festival and contributing editor for Boing Boing and Boing Boing’s games blog Offworld, will, as the Hand Eye Society’s blog puts it, “deliver some form of immensely significant communication to the assembled videogame creators, enthusiasts, organizers & slack-jawed onlookers.”

If I weren’t going to be in Montreal that evening for the Make Web Not War conference, I’d most certainly at this event (I’ll definitely catch the next social). If you’re in Toronto and love videogames (especially ones that break from the mainstream) and especially if you love making them, catch the Hand Eye Society’s social this Thursday!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Make Web Not War, the conference on how Microsoft and open source tools and technologies can work together takes place in a week! Because we’re feeling pumped about this event and got an advance shipment of swag, we thought we’d share the wealth. If you’ve already registered for Make Web Not War (which you can do here, for free), here’s how you can win some cool stuff before the event next Thursday.

How Do You Win Swag By Bringing a Friend?

Invite a friend to register to attend Make Web Not War, which takes next Thursday, May 27th, in Montreal at “Reunion – Ambiance A La Carte” (6600 Hutchison).

On the registration form, one of the questions in the optional section is “Where did you hear about this event?” Ask your friend to answer this question by selecting “Friend” from the drop-down menu and specifying your name in the field below it, as shown below:

This offer is available only to those friends who haven’t yet registered.

What Will You Get?

If you get a friend to register and specify that you made the referral before Friday, May 21st, you and your friend will each get this cool 2GB Make Web Not War USB key:

If you’re among the first 25 people to bring one friend, you’ll get a Make Web Not War T-shirt:

If you’re among the first 25 people to bring two friends, you’ll get a $25 Jump Card, which is good for discounts at major stores across Canada:

The first person to bring five friends gets a special Make Web Not War bundle that includes a token for an MSDN Premium Subscription, which is valued at $2,500:

What are you waiting for? Go invite a friend to Make Web Not War!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Creative Commons Photo by the Poissant Family.

Canada GovCamp is happening May 31 and June 1, 2010 at Ottawa U. and you’re invited!

What is GovCamp?

It’s a gathering of local citizens, public sector employees, service delivery leaders and policy people with an interest in having a conversation on engaging citizens, empowering business and increasing internal efficiencies through transformational government activities across all levels of government (municipal, regional, provincial and federal). It’s neither a trade show nor a product-oriented discussion, but rather a workshop style unconference where participants establish the agenda and explore the themes that are of most interest to them.

Why GovCamp?

We’ve seen a number of great communities spring up across Canada to think about, discuss and build a new relationship with their local governments, often through the use of technology. These activities are accelerated by bringing the community together at workshop-style unconferences such as ChangeCamp and BarCamp. Having participated in these local activities and experiencing the creative energy first-hand, we began to think about how the ideas and enthusiasm we saw at these local events could be shared in a broader context. We thought that it would be interesting to bring together communities across camps, a sort of Jamboree, to explore opportunities to work together on open government activities across multiple levels of government.

To Talk about What?

• Wouldn’t it be great to call one number and be able to get an answer to government services regardless of which level provided it?
• Reserve your campsite from one website without having to think about which department managed the site?
• How about being able to give your input and be heard on government initiatives that start from the speech from the throne and are delivered through provincial programs by you municipality?

These are the types of conversations we are looking to have.

Who Else Will be There?

Confirmed guests include:

• Welcome keynote speaker Jerry Mechling, from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
• The opening panel discussion members:
  • Guy Michaud, CIO, City of Ottawa
  • David Eaves, a major proponent of Vancouver’s OpenGov, who’ll also do the end-of-unconference wrap-up
  • Eric Sauve, Newsgator and former CEO of Tomoye
• Mark Kuznicki, Toronto’s civic unconference organizer extraordinaire, who’ll lead the development of the ideas matrix from which the unconference sessions will be formed

In putting GovCamp together, we’re reaching out to a number organizations and communities including:

• Industry Canada
• The Treasury Board Secretariat
• Public Works and Government Services
• Public Safety Canada
• The Information Commissioner of Canada
• The Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner
• Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
• The City of Ottawa
• Open Government and ChangeCamp community leaders

Who is GovCamp For?

This event is for:

• IT People –Technology is one way that governments are transforming how they deliver services externally and internally. Technology people are needed to explore the art of the possible for these new services. Mash-ups, Open Data, social media are but a few of the possible areas for discussion.
• Policy People – We need you in the conversation so that you can share your expertise on the realm of the possible from a policy perspective. Privacy, Security, Access to Information, Information Management are all key considerations for successful government transformation.  Come share your knowledge on how to make these policies enable new services.
• Government Services leaders – Ultimately, government delivers value through the many services that are provided. GovCamp is about exploring the realm of the possible for service to individuals, services to businesses and services to other departments. Your voice is essential to inform the community and to guide those ideas that the community may have for you!
• Community – We are fortunate that there’s a passionate and creative community with vibrant ideas about how they can help create a closer connection between governments, individuals, businesses and even among government itself. Your participation at the Canada Gov Camp will provide you with a venue to share your great ideas and, if all goes well, interact with some of the people that can take your idea further.

How Much, and Where do I Register?

Registration for GovCamp is free! To register, visit the registration page. For more information, see John Weigelt’s blog.

Who’s Behind this Event?

Canada GovCamp is being hosted by the Canadian Association for Information Technology Professionals, sponsored by Microsoft Canada on behalf of the community.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Once again, Kristan “Krispy” Uccello has declared another Toronto developer dim sum lunch! It’s at the usual place – Sky Dragon, located on the top floor of Dragon City mall (corner of Spadina and Dundas) tomorrow (Friday, May 14th, that is) at noon.

I’m trying to boost the .NET geek quotient at these lunches – it can’t just be me, Mark Cidade, Reg “Raganwald” Braithwaite (he’s developed with just about everything under the sun) and David Crow! If you’re in the area, come on down and have some cheap, delicious dim sum. We split the bill at the end, and it typically runs about $11 – 12 a person.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

A quick reminder: if you’re looking for cheap transport to Montreal for MonDev, Montreal’s Open Source Week (which concludes with the Make Web Not War conference), we’ve booked an entire VIA Rail car from Montreal to Toronto! The train car (pictured above) has wifi, power outlets and will be equipped with video monitors, an Xbox or two, a big-ass HP TouchSmart computer and other technological goodies to make the time pass by.

Best of all, if you want to book a trip on this car, we’re subsidizing it. Round-trip tickets are a mere $50 and cover the cost of the ride, a sandwich lunch and drink voucher! The train departs for Montreal on the morning of Tuesday, May 25th and departs back for Toronto on the morning of Friday, May 28th.

For more details, email cdnsol@microsoft.com.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The 2010 Mesh Conference – the fifth one – takes place at Toronto’s MaRS Collaboration Centre on Tuesday, May 18th and Wednesday, May 19th. Its organizers call it “Canada’s Web Conference”, and it is: it’s this country’s premier get-together for creatives, techies and “suits” to share ideas about the internet and how it affects how we work, live and play.

This Year’s Keynote Speakers

This year’s keynote speakers are:

Chris Thorpe, Developer Advocate for the Open Platform at The Guardian

His background as a research scientist and his early involvement in Open Access publishing, makes him fascinated and passionate about what happens when data, content, platforms, identity and pretty much anything opens up. He spends his time at The Guardian working on the best ways to integrate The Guardian’s content, data and APIs with other people’s technology and businesses as part of the drive towards building the distribution and engagement channels of a mutualized newspaper.

Joseph Menn, author of Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet

Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet, Menn’s third book, was published in the US in January 2010 and in the UK in February 2010 by PublicAffairs Books. Part true-life thriller and part expose, it became an immediate bestseller, with Menn interviewed on national television and radio programs in the US, Canada and elsewhere. Menn has spoken at major security conferences on his findings, which include hard evidence that the governments of Russia and China are protecting and directing the behavior of some of the world’s worst cyber-criminals.

Scott Thompson, President of PayPal

Scott Thompson is president of PayPal with overall responsibility for establishing PayPal as the leading global online payment service. Scott previously served as PayPal’s senior vice president and chief technology officer, where he oversaw information technology, product development and architecture for PayPal.

Arvind Rajan, Vice President, International at LinkedIn

Arvind Rajan leads the company’s initiatives in markets outside the United States and Europe. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Arvind was the CEO of Grassroots Enterprise. Also a co-founder of the company, Arvind developed pioneering online grassroots communications programs for a wide variety of Fortune 500 companies, trade associations and nonprofit organizations. Arvind began his career with the Boston Consulting Group, and has held a wide range of leadership positions in emerging growth technology companies.

This Year’s Topics

Mesh will have two days’ worth of sessions covering a number of topics, including:

• Open Government
• Mobile phones and computing
• The Pirate’s Dilemma
• Privacy in the age of Facebook
• Real-time
• Social media in the Olympics, in the newsroom, as used by Médecins Sans Frontières and your business

For more, see the schedule.

Who’s Behind Mesh?

Mesh is a great example of the sort of thing that engaged and enthusiastic communities can create. It wasn’t created by a professional conference-organizing company, software vendor or government program, but by these five individuals known through the Toronto tech scene:

• Mark Evans: Digital marketing and social media consultant, former VP at my old company, b5media, worked with the startups PlanetEye and Blanketware, and former tech journo with the National Post and Globe and Mail.
• Mathew Ingram: Senior writer with GigaOm, former tech journo with the Globe and Mail and supreme tech blogger-about-town.
• Mike McDerment: Runs Freshbooks, one of Toronto’s most successful start-ups.
• Rob Hyndman: If (or more likely, when) I get sued, I’ll haul ass for Rob’s office! Considered by the Toronto tech scene to be its unofficial legal advisor, Rob runs Hyndman | Law, a boutique law firm catering to tech companies.
• Stuart McDonald: Runs Tripharbor/Tripharbour; in a former life, he brought Expedia to Canada.

And of course, there are the sponsors, which includes Microsoft Canada. I’ll be there, representing The Empire along with my coworkers David Crow, Barnaby Jeans and John Oxley.

Get Your Tickets Now!

There’s not much time left before Mesh, and tickets are going quickly. The student tickets are already gone, but a few regular tickets — CAD$539 each – are still available at the registration page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

MeshU – short for “Mesh University” – takes place on Monday, May 17th at the MaRS Collaboration Centre (101 College Street, just east of University). It’s a series of workshops for web designers, developers and “suits” that takes place the day before the Mesh Conference (“Canada’s Web Conference”) and will feature 12 workshops divided into “Design”, “Development” and “Management” streams delivered by people with real-world startup/tech business experience.

I’ll be there, as both an attendee furiously taking notes (which I’ll post here) as well as a representative of Microsoft Canada and Silverlight, who are MeshU’s event partners.

Keynote: Bill Buxton

Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, human-computer interaction guru extraordinaire and fellow alumnus of Crazy Go Nuts University, will deliver the morning keynote. Every presentation I’ve ever seen him do has always inspired me and given me at least three new ideas, and I expect that this one will be no different. He’s an intelligent, engaging and interesting speaker – don’t miss your chance to see him live!

MeshU Sessions

Here are the MeshU sessions:

• Design Track
  • Principles of Design – Meredith Noble (Usability Matters)
  • [Untitled] – Asa Raskin (Mozilla)
  • [Untitled] – Adrian Belina (Jam3Media)
• Developer Track
  • Data Chemistry – Chris Thorpe (The Guardian)
  • [Untitled] – Diana Clarke (FreshBooks)
  • Scaling Your Tech Teams – Joe Stump (SimpleGeo)
  • Lean Product Development: Learning is the Killer Feature – Dan Martell (FlowTown)
• Management Track
  • The Agony and the Ecstasy: Building and Scaling Inside Sales – Isaac Garcia (Central Desktop)
  • Customer Milestones to Startup Success – Sean Ellis (12in6)
  • How (and Why) to Build a Data Warehouse 101 – Antony Upward (Edward James Consulting)
  • Hiring Mistakes: A How-To Guide – Ben Baldwin (Clearfit.com)

Registering for MeshU

Alas, the $49.00 student tickets for MeshU are sold out. Here’s what remain:

• Regular tickets: CAD$289.00 each
• “Friends of MeshU” sponsorship: CAD$1000 each – with this, you get:
  • 1 regular ticket
  • 1 student ticket
  • Your logo on the MeshU site and at the event
• “Really Good Friends of MeshU” sponsorship: CAD$2000 each — with this, you get:
  • 2 regular tickets
  • 2 student tickets
  • Your logo on the MeshU site and at the event
  • A table at the event

To register for MeshU, go to the MeshU registration page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

  Creative Commons Photo by the Poissant Family.

Open Government / Government 2.0

The intersection of the internet and politics has given rise to many things, including the concept often referred to as “Open Government” or “Government 2.0”. To borrow a couple of lines from Mark Kuznicki’s keynote at ChangeCamp Toronto, its goals are twofold:

1. For governments to become more open, transparent, participatory, innovative, efficient and effective
2. For citizens to become more connected to each other around their civic passions in the place they call home

Events like ChangeCamp, TransitCamp and Metronauts – unconferences where ordinary citizens, government officials and representatives of organizations that receive public funding meet to exchange ideas – have been happening across Canada. At these events, people have thought about, discussed and built new relationships with their local governments, often through the use of technology.

Most of these events focused on a local community, municipality or occasionally, a province, but none of them have had a discussion at the federal level. Could this be done at a broader level?

GovCamp: May 31 – June 1 in Ottawa

That’s where GovCamp comes in. It’s an “Open Government”/”Government 2.0” discussion where the topics will be centred around Canada as a whole, the interactions between cities and provinces, and how our provincial and federal governments can help cultivate the growth and prosperity of Canadians and their vibrant communities.

John Weigelt, Microsoft Canada’s National Technology Officer, is putting together this event, which takes place on Monday, May 31st and Tuesday, June 1st in Ottawa. It’ll be a gathering of local citizens, public sector employees, service delivery leaders and policy people with an interest in having a conversation about engaging citizens and businesses and making government at all levels more open, responsive and efficient. It won’t be a trade show or product-oriented discussion; instead, it will be a workshop-style unconference where participants establish the agenda and explore the themes that they care most about.

GovCamp is being hosted by CIPS – the Canadian Association for Information Technology Professionals – and sponsored by Microsoft Canada on behalf of the community.

Who’s Coming to GovCamp?

In putting GovCamp together, we’re reaching out to a number organizations and communities including:

• Industry Canada
• The Treasury Board Secretariat
• Public Works and Government Services
• Public Safety Canada
• The Information Commissioner of Canada
• The Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner
• Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
• The City of Ottawa
• Open Government and ChangeCamp community leaders

Who is GovCamp For?

This event is for:

• IT People –Technology is one way that governments are transforming how they deliver services externally and internally. Technology people are needed to explore the art of the possible for these new services. Mash-ups, Open Data, social media are but a few of the possible areas for discussion.
• Policy People – We need you in the conversation so that you can share your expertise on the realm of the possible from a policy perspective. Privacy, Security, Access to Information, Information Management are all key considerations for successful government transformation.  Come share your knowledge on how to make these policies enable new services.
• Government Services leaders – Ultimately, government delivers value through the many services that are provided. GovCamp is about exploring the realm of the possible for service to individuals, services to businesses and services to other departments. Your voice is essential to inform the community and to guide those ideas that the community may have for you!
• Community – We are fortunate that there’s a passionate and creative community with vibrant ideas about how they can help create a closer connection between governments, individuals, businesses and even among government itself. Your participation at the Canada Gov Camp will provide you with a venue to share your great ideas and, if all goes well, interact with some of the people that can take your idea further.

How Much, and Where do I Register?

Registration for GovCamp is free! To register, visit the registration page.

GovCamp will be held at the University of Ottawa, in a location to be determined.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Make Web Not War is a cross-platform conference focusing on web development in mixed open source and commercial environments. Make Web Not War is jointly sponsored by Microsoft, our friends at PHP Quebec and open source communities across Canada. We’re proud to be a part of MonDev, Montréal’s Open Source Week, which takes place from May 24th through 28th, 2010.

About Make Web Not War

Make Web Not War is a free-as-in-beer event taking place on Thursday, May 27th featuring free-as-in-speech software development. Among other things, you’ll get to:

• Mingle with some of the best web developers in the country
• Listen and learn from industry experts and leaders
• Play with some of the new and exciting toys being offered by Microsoft
• See who gets crowned as Canada’s top developer at the FTW! Coding Competition
• Attend the VIP party held in the heart of beautiful Montréal

Make Web Not War’s schedule has two tracks:

• The Main Track, which covers new opportunities and the business impact of interoperability on the web. Its sessions will be short presentations followed by roundtable discussion with the panelists and Q&A.
• The Developer Track, which are hands-on sessions covering interoperable tools and technologies.

Make Web Not War will take place at Reunion, located at 6600 Hutchison:

Want to Attend Make Web Not War?

Registration is free – just visit the registration page and sign up!

About MonDev

MonDev, Montréal’s Open Source Week, runs from Monday, May 24th through Friday, May 28th. It’s a celebration of Open Source technology and community throughout the Montréal area and features many events, including:

• Demo Ignite Camp
• Startup Drinks
• WebCamp
• Make Web Not War

From MonDev’s “About” Page:

By encouraging local and international partnerships, Open Source developers are creating free software that can be continuously updated and shared. For many software innovators, Open Source represents the future transformation of software development.

Through Open Source, communities, cities and nations around the world are presented with the opportunity to promote and actively nurture an environment of learning, collaboration and innovation.

Montréal is an important centre of global Open Source activity and home to many software developers, projects and companies. Open Source Week will bring together industry leaders, teachers and students from around the world for a full week of activities that will include workshops, seminars and presentations.

Take the DEVTrain to Montreal — $50 Round Trip!

Microsoft Canada’s Technical Evangelism team – Yours Truly included – will be taking the train to Montreal, and we want you to ride with us! We’ve booked an entire car, and we’re bringing the Xbox, Rock Band (and hopefully Red Dead Redemption) and other goodies, and since it’s VIA Rail, there’ll be wifi and power aplenty, and good company and conversation, of course! Best of all, we’re subsidizing the trip – you can travel from Toronto to Montreal on Tuesday morning, depart Montreal for Toronto on Friday, and it’ll cost you only $50!

What’s on the train?

• Power and wifi
• We’re sponsoring a meal and a drink
• A chance to mingle with Toronto’s web developer community (you’ve got about 6 hours to make friendships and even collaborate)
• A chance to meet Microsoft Canada’s Technical Evangelism team – a fine bunch
• The cheapest, most comfortable round trip to Montreal you’re going to find!

Want to travel on the cheap in in high geeky style? Take the train with us – email cdnsol@microsoft.com to get the invitation to ride.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The fifth annual Toronto Code Camp took place on Saturday at Seneca College’s Campus at York University. This was the most ambitious one by far, with the number of sessions increased from 25 to a whopping 40, arranged into 8 tracks.

For those of you unfamiliar with Code Camps, they’re software development conferences organized by the .NET community, featuring community-developed material, for the benefit of the community. Code Camps must be free-as-in-beer to attend, and the content and code in its presentations must be shared, free-as-in-speech style. While a number of business and organizations throw in sponsorship money and swag to help cover costs – The Empire included – Code Camps are powered by volunteers. From the organizer to the presenters to the staff, they do it for free, because they love what they do.

Want to see the full-resolution versions of my photos of Toronto Code Camp? I’ve posted them to this Flickr photoset.

The day opened with ObjectSharp’s Barry Gervin delivering the keynote. I was moving swag at the time, so I could catch all of it, the bits I did catch were pretty entertaining. I expect no less from Barry and the rest of the ObjectSharpies, all of who are top-notch presenters:

Perhaps I’m wearing out this phrase from overuse, but let me say it just once more: Mark Arteaga of RedBit Development has forgotten more about mobile phone development that I will ever learn. He did the first session in the mobile track, providing an overview of developing apps for the upcoming Windows Phone 7:

The Empire is quite serious about web development, which is why Internet Explorer’s Big Kahuna Dean Hachamovitch stated very clearly that yes, we believe HTML5 and all the goodies that go along with it are the future. One of those goodies is JavaScript, and nothing turbocharges Javascript quite like jQuery. We love jQuery, and Colin Bowern from ObjectSharp walked a full room through an introductory session:

The “Rule of Two Feet” – that is, go the sessions you find interesting and bail from the ones you don’t – is proof that .NET developers care about web development. Here’s a shot of the jQuery session hall, which was standing room only:

Colin is truly dedicated to the craft; so dedicated, in fact, that he did this presentation even though he was getting married the next day! He’s resourceful too – he used his impeding nuptials as fodder for his presentation, using jQuery to build little mini wedding-planners. Congrats, Colin, on getting married and having a very understanding fiancee!

Colin Melia is a rock star. He did some great presentations and an Azure exercise for Techdays, wrote one of the demo apps we used in EnergizeIT and will be helping out at Make Web Not War. He also played to a very packed room at Code Camp with a session on Silverlight Essentials:

Here’s Infusion’s Nickolas Landry doing a presentation on XNA development. He showed a Space Invaders game with an interesting twist – it was written as a 3D game rather than a 2D one, which opened up some interesting possibilities. I lent him my Xbox 360 controller, which I usually have in my knapsack, which he thought was a little bit weird (Is it? I don’t know any more):

None of this would’ve happened without the dedicated efforts of MVP Chris Dufour, the heart and soul of Toronto Code Camp. Here he is, taking a small breather in the speakers’ lounge:

While wandering the halls of the building, I saw something that I thought looked familiar:

Upon closer inspection, it was indeed a familiar object – a “Make Web Not War” sticker, promoting Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer. As you can see, some puny Jedi attempted to remove the sticker, but his piddly powers were no match for the Dark Side!

Meanwhile, Bruce Johnson from ObjectSharp was showing the room his “OData face”…

…and while that happened, Ryan was in the lunchroom, valiantly guarding the bag lunches prepared for attendees.

Ever wondered what 400 bag lunches look like? Like this:

If there was an award for the best-attended session, we’d have to hand it to Telerik’s Todd Anglin, whose very well-attended presentation on Ajax was followed by an even-better attended presentation on HTML5. This one had people filling every seat, standing at the back and even sitting in the aisles:

Always controversial is the “Flash vs. Silverlight vs. HTML5 – how do they stack up?” question. Here’s Todd’s answer:

Here’s a close-up. Feel free to discuss this in the comments!

Here are the two closing slides from Todd’s presentation. The first was by Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen:

The consumer should be able to decide which technologies they want to use, but a multi-platform world is definitely where the world is headed.

Followed by a quote from Dean Hachamovitch, who agrees with me that:

The future of the Web is HTML5.

I had a great time watching presentations and talking with people at Code Camp. It’s great to see the .NET community getting together like this, and I’d love to do it again. See you next year!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.