From the category archives:

Meetups

TechDays: Bruce Johnson on “SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC Applications”, Assless Chaps, Twitter and Opportunities

September 30, 2009
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This morning’s sessions in TechDays’ Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform focuses on both the ASP.NET MVC web app framework and recommended object-oriented programming practices, namely the Model-View-Controller pattern with Colin Bowern’s presentation earlier this morning and now (at the time of this writing) the SOLID principles in Bruce Johnson’s session, SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC [...]

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TechDays: Colin Bowern and “Introducing ASP.NET MVC”

September 30, 2009
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It’s Day 2 of TechDays Toronto! and after a hearty breakfast, we’re kicking off the Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track – my track, and thus to my mind the best one – with Colin Bowen doing his presentation, Introducing ASP.NET MVC, which takes a look at the new web development framework, ASP.NET MVC. [...]

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TechDays: Anthony Vranic on Optimizing Your Application for the Windows 7 User Experience

September 29, 2009
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My photos from Anthony Vranic’s session at TechDays, Optimizing Your Application for the Windows 7 User Experience, are a bit dark because I used a different camera; my main camera was on video recording duty. I’m including them anyway, because I’m trying to keep a complete record of TechDays.

The original version of this [...]

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Why the “Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform” Track is the Hippest Track at TechDays

September 29, 2009
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It’s because we have the best obscure pop culture references, as seen in Rob Burke’s presentation on Developing Composite Applications with Silverlight and WPF:

(That’s a photo of my manager John Oxley and co-worker Damir Bersinic, used to illustrate heavyweight layer communication in Prism. If you don’t get the pop culture reference, this article on [...]

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How to Get to FailCamp Toronto 3 from Union Station

September 29, 2009
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Most of you will be heading to FailCamp via public transit, and many have asked how to get to FailCamp’s venue, the South Building of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, from Union Station – here’s how!
First, go up to the main level of Union Station, which looks like this:

On the west end of the [...]

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Barry Gervin: Expression Blend for Developers @ TechDays Toronto

September 29, 2009
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As I write this, we’re well into Day 1, Session 2 of the Toronto edition of the TechDays Canada conference, and ObjectSharp’s Barry Gervin is doing his presentation, Expression Blend for Developers.

Since Expression Blend is a UI building tool that is separate from Visual Studio, it’s typically seen as a tool for designers [...]

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TechDays Toronto 2009 Begins!

September 29, 2009
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Here are a couple of shots from the Toronto edition of TechDays, taking place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre right now.
The Room
I’m the lead for TechDays’ Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track, which I like to think of as the best damned track in the entire conference. The pre-registration numbers for this track [...]

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The “Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform” Track at TechDays Canada

September 28, 2009
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In planning this year’s TechDays conference, we made some significant changes to the developer tracks: they were reformulated into:

A “tools and techniques” track, called Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices, for which my friend and fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe is the track lead
A “technologies” track, called Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform, which I lead. [...]

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TechDays Toronto Schedule and Details / FailCamp Toronto 3

September 27, 2009
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TechDays Canada 2009 is Microsoft Canada’s cross-country conference that shows you how to make the most of our currently available tools and technologies. A couple of weeks ago, we held the first TechDays 2009 conference in Vancouver, and it went quite well. This week, TechDays makes the second stop of its seven-city tour: Toronto, on [...]

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FailCamp Toronto 3 Happens Next Tuesday!

September 24, 2009
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When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade. And when your company produces a cringe-inducing video on how to host a Stepford party, you repurpose it:

Don’t forget that FailCamp Toronto 3 takes place this Tuesday, September 29th at 7:00 p.m. in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building, Room 716. If you’re coming in [...]

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An Evening with Yossi Vardi: Thursday, September 24th

September 23, 2009
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Yossi Vardi, according to Wikipedia, is one of Israel’s high-tech entrepreneurs and for over 40 years has funded or helped build over 60 high-tech companies in the fields of software, energy, internet, mobile, electro-optics and water tech. If you’ve used ICQ or the services of my old company Tucows, you’ve used something he helped fund. [...]

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Slice of Life: Official Photos from Techdays

September 20, 2009
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For the TechDays conference’s stops in Vancouver and Toronto, Microsoft hired Vancouver-based photog extraordinaire Kris Krug to take photos of the Developer and Platform Evangelism team, which includes Yours Truly. The photos were taken during the conference, which meant that most of us were wearing the official TechDays shirts, which were colour-coded to match the [...]

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TechDays Vancouver 2009: Day Two at the “Microsoft Platform” Track

September 16, 2009
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Vancouver Convention Centre, as seen from the Fairmont Hotel across the street
Yesterday marked Day 2 of the TechDays Vancouver 2009 conference. The track that I’m in charge of is the most broad one: Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform. With such a wide array of topics that I could cover, I decided to focus on four [...]

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Scenes from Demo Ignite Camp

September 15, 2009
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Last night’s Demo Ignite Camp was a success. We got a decent-sized crowd, a bunch of great presnetations on all sorts of projects by Vancouver-area techies and hopefully inspired the local nerds to get together and do "show-and-tell" events more often.
Demo Ignite Camp came about thanks to a couple of lucky circumstances. First and foremost, [...]

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Kanye West Wants You to Go to FailCamp!

September 15, 2009
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That’s right, you want to join FailCamp Toronto 3, the celebration of FAIL taking place on Tuesday, September 29th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre! Take it from Kanye, you don’t want to miss this event. For more details, see the FailCamp event page and my earlier article on FailCamp Toronto 3.

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