Since I’m in town for TechDays Winnipeg, I thought I’d stay an extra day and host a Coffee and Code there. I’ll be at the Second Cup at 100 Osborne Street from 11:00 a.m. until at least 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 9th, the day after TechDays. Come drop by, talk about Windows Phone 7 or any other topic that comes to mind!

Creative Commons photo (coffee cup) by Ballistik Coffee Boy.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

We’re holding a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code in Halifax on Thursday, November 4th at Just Us! Café (1678 Barrington Street) from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.. Come join us and learn about Windows Phone 7, see a Windows Phone and even try deploying apps to it!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

TechDays, Microsoft Canada’s cross-country technical conference for developers and IT pros, heads to Halifax next week! So far, we’ve been to Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto, and now it’s time to head out east.

TechDays Halifax will take place on Tuesday, November 2 and Wednesday, November 3 at the World Trade Centre (1800 Argyle Street). As with TechDays in every other city, there’s a lot going on:

• CloudCamp on Monday, November 1. On the day before TechDays, we’re sharing our venue with the folks behind CloudCamp, the unconference on cloud computing. To find out more about CloudCamp, check out the registration page.
• TechDays proper takes place on Tuesday, November 2 and Wednesday, November 3. We’re talking about 60 sessions on programming, systems administration, Microsoft technologies and “best practices” (I hate the use that term, but I’m at a loss for another phrase that captures its meaning). We take the content from big-ticket conferences like TechEd North America, MIX and PDC, give it to “local heroes” to present, bring it all to a city near you and charge a few hundred (instead of a few thousand) bucks.
• TechDays Gives Back! We’re asking TechDays attendees to bring a non-perishable food item to the conference. All food will go to a local food bank.
• Go DEVMental happens at the TechDays venue on the evening of Tuesday, November 2 – it’s our student event! If you’re a post-secondary student looking to get into web or phone development, you’ll want to catch Go DEVMental, where we’ll show you what’s possible with Microsoft tools and technologies, and you’ll walk away with a DreamSpark membership and fully-functional copies of Visual Studio Professional 2010 and Expression Blend. It doesn’t cost anything to attend; you just have to be a post-secondary student (with the ID to prove it. To attend, register here!
• We’ll be holding a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code during the afternoon of Thursday, November 4 at Just Us Café on Barrington (1678 Barrington Street) from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Come on down, see Windows Phone 7 devices up close and personal, and if you’ve got an app that you want to test on a real device instead of the emulator, this is your chance!

See you next week!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

It’s going to be a busy week for Yours Truly…

Monday: Windows Phone Deployment Clinic

On Monday, I’ll be helping out at the Windows Phone Deployment Clinic at Microsoft Canada HQ in Mississauga (1950 Meadowvale Boulevard, off Mississauga Road, north of Highway 401), where you can book some time to test your apps on a real Windows Phone 7 device. If you’ve got an app and you’re going to be in the area, drop me a line and book an appointment!

(By the bye, that thing I’m standing beside in the photo above is a promo device known colloquially as the “Big-Ass Phone”.)

Tuesday: AndroidTO and TechDays Setup

On Tuesday, I’ll be spending some time at the AndroidTO conference, a gathering of Android developers, where I’ll be minding the Windows Phone 7 booth. Yes, that’s right, Microsoft is a gold sponsor at an Android conference. Why? Because:

• We feel that if you’re an Android developer, go ahead an build Android apps, but expand your market reach by developing for Windows Phone 7 too! The programming languages and layout markup are similar.
• If you’re an Android developer, what’s the best OS for doing development? We think it’s Windows 7, which is a great environment for Java. Loads of great Java dev tools run on Windows, and we don’t consider Java to be deprecated.

AndroidTO takes place at the Polish Combatants Hall (206 Beverley Street, just south of College), is free-as-in-beer, and is alas, completely booked solid.

I’ll also be doing some setup for TechDays Toronto, which takes place on Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday: TechDays Toronto and Go DEVMental

Wednesday brings with it TechDays, Microsoft Canada’s cross-country tech conference: two days of great sessions for developers and IT pros who are building stuff with the Microsoft stack. I’m the guy who picked the content for both developer tracks, “Developing for Three Screens and the Cloud” and “Optimizing the Development Process”. I strove for the best mix of both technology-specific stuff like Mark Arteaga’s Windows Phone 7 sessions and Kate Gregory’s Windows API Code Pack presentation as well as practice-of-programming sessions such as “Top 10 Mistakes in Unit Testing” and “Branching and Merging Strategies”. TechDays will occupy me from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m..

From 7 p.m. on, it’ll be Go DEVMental, the student event where we’ll show university and college students what’s possible with Microsoft’s web and mobile platforms. I’ll be doing a presentation on getting starting with game development for Windows Phone with an amusing little live-coded game called “BieberSmash”, starring the bubblegum pop idol of the moment. Go DEVMental is free and open to post-secondary students – just bring your student ID! You’ll get all sorts of goodies, including a DreamSpark token and Visual Studio 2010 Pro.

Both TechDays and GoDEVMental take place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre’s South Building (222 Bremner Boulevard, right beside the CN Tower).

Thursday: TechDays, Day 2

Thursday means another full day of the TechDays conference, to be followed by some very strong whiskey-based drinks.

Friday: Coffee and Code

I’ll be running a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code this Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Timothy’s at 225 Front Street West (in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre building). I’ll be hanging out at the cafe, working on Windows Phone 7 code on both the emulator and real Windows Phone devices. Want to learn more about Windows Phone 7, see a real-live phone, play some games or test your code? Come on down!

Saturday: ACSE Conference

University of Toronto computer science prof Steve Engels invited me to speak in front of a group of high school teachers at the ACSE (Association for Computer Studies Educators) Conference taking place on Saturday. I’m going to be showing them programming for high school students on Windows Phone as well as with the Kodu game development environment.

…and Sunday?

Well, it won’t be all sleep. I’ll have to pack for my Monday flight to TechDays Halifax!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Just a reminder: there are a couple of Coffee and Codes this week…

• Ottawa: Join developer/trainer Colin Melia and IT Pro Evangelist/destroyer-of-technology Rick Claus as they set up office on Thursday, October 14 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Bridgehead Coffee House at 109 Bank Street (at Albert). They’ll have some WP7 devices that you can deploy apps to, and you can ask them questions about Windows Phone 7. Colin will field the developer questions while Rick will handle your “How does this fit into the enterprise?” inquiries.
• Toronto: Join yours truly, Joey deVilla, at the Starbucks at King and Yonge, where I’ll be on Thursday, October 14 from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.. I’ll have a WP7 device you can deploy apps to, and if you’re working on an app and think you have have it done by Monday the 18th, you will really want to drop by and talk to me!

Come on down, see a real live Windows Phone up close and personal and deploy your apps to it!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

You’re building apps for Windows Phone 7. You’ve tested them as much as you can on the emulator. You now need to test them on a real device. We can help!

Getting your hands on a Windows Phone is a very hard thing to do. Even those of us who work inside the company are having trouble getting our hands on them because there just aren’t enough advance devices to go around. We have a small pool of phones and a big number of people who need to test their apps on them, so we’ve had to get creative in order to help people test.

First, there’s Coffee and Code. Coffee and Code has traditionally been an event where we take advantage of our mobile worker status and work out of a café, where we’re easily accessible. Lately, we’ve been using them as a chance for you to drop by, impromptu, take a look at our Windows Phones and even deploy apps to them for some quick testing. These are pretty informal, with no appointment required, and first-come-first-serve.

Then, there are the Deployment Clinics. These are a little more structured – you book an appointment to drop by one of Microsoft Canada’s offices and spend some quality just-you-and-your-app time with a Windows Phone. You have to book time in advance, and you have the phone all to yourself for the appointment.

Take advantage of these opportunities to test your WP7 apps on a real phone!

Here’s the schedule for the upcoming Coffee and Code and Deployment Clinics:

To book an appointment, drop Samantha Wong a line and she’ll set you up.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

…or a phone call, or visit or something along those lines. The past couple of days have kept me quite busy helping run TechDays Edmonton, but that ended yesterday, and I’m spending today helping run Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code Edmonton (it’s at the Second Cup at 102 and Jasper) and getting caught up. I’ll be working through my backlog in reverse chronological order, and if there’s something that needs my attention, it wouldn’t hurt to fire me a reminder email!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

A test version of Smiles running on my WP7 device.

In between chatting with developers who dropped by today’s Coffee and Code in downtown Toronto and getting some work done, I’ve been playing Smiles (pictured above), an incredibly cute and incredibly addictive puzzle game by London, ON-based development shop Sykhronics.

Here’s a video of Smiles’ gameplay in its “Drop” mode:

Mike Kasprzak of Sykhronics was kind enough to send me an early test version of Smiles to show off the Phone’s game capabilities as well as the level of “polish” that Windows Phone 7 developers should be aiming for in their apps. Mike’s got some pretty high standards and is working to make sure that Smiles for WP7 meets them, and it shows! Even in this test version, Smiles looks and feels like a polished arcade classic, and when it’s done, it’s going to be a must-buy.

Keep writing those apps, and aim high! We’ll do what we can on our end to help out, which includes:

• Articles on Windows Phone 7 development in Silverlight and XNA
• Articles on good mobile user interface design and marketing your apps
• Announcements of upcoming Coffee and Codes and WP7 Deployment Clinics across Canada
• Coverage of “Phone Heroes”: People building apps for Windows Phone 7 – and hey, you could be one of them!
• Pointers to useful tools, resources and other things to help you build WP7 apps

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Deployment Clinic Today in Montreal

Deployment clinics are a little more formal than Coffee and Codes. You can book an exclusive timeslot to deploy and test apps to a Windows Phone 7 device, and there’s one taking place all day at Microsoft’s Montreal office (2000 Avenue McGill College, 4th floor) on the 30th. Email Christian Beauclair to reserve a time slot.

Coffee and Code Today in Toronto

I’ll be at the Starbucks at King and Yonge (4 King Street West) from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a Windows Phone 7 for you to play with and deploy your apps to. I’ll be at or near the big table in the back — come on down!

Montreal “Speaker Idol” Deadline is Soon!

Compete in Speaker Idol to win a licence of Visual Studio Ultimate and the respect of the Montreal .NET Community! The deadline to subm,it a 200-word abstract and a brief bio for your 10-minute presentation is coming fast (midnight Friday).

TechDays Edmonton is Next Week

TechDays comes to Edmonton next week, taking place on October 5th and 6th, and with it will come CloudCamp Edmonton (October 4th) and Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code Edmonton (October 7th). Watch this blog for more details!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Today, Wednesday, September 29th, join “les bons gars”, Developer Advisor Christian Beauclair and Regional Director Guy Barrette, who’ll be holding a Coffee and Code at Le Café de la Cité on 75 Queen. They put on a professional appearance, but we all know qu’ils vont ecrire des «fart apps»! They’ll be doing it in both official languages: Silverlight and XNA!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Creative Commons photo by “Demion”.

Join us as we make ourselves available to you so you can try out a real live Windows Phone 7 device and see how your apps work on the real thing. We’ve got a couple of Coffee and Codes and one deployment clinic this week:

Wednesday, September 29 in Montreal (Coffee and Code)

Coffee and Code is all about us spending the day working out of a cafe so that you can find us, join us, talk, ask questions and get to know us better. These days, it’s also about Windows Phone 7, but we’re happy to talk and answer questions about anything. Please drop by, whether it’s for five minutes or five hours!

Join “les bons gars”, Developer Advisor Christian Beauclair and Regional Director Guy Barrette, who’ll be holding a Coffee and Code at Le Café de la Cité on 75 Queen. They put on a professional appearance, but we all know qu’ils vont ecrire des «fart apps»! They’ll be doing it in both official languages: Silverlight and XNA!

Thursday, September 30 in Montreal (Deployment Clinic)

Deployment clinics are a little more formal than Coffee and Codes. You can book an exclusive timeslot to deploy and test apps to a Windows Phone 7 device, and there’s one taking place all day at Microsoft’s Montreal office (2000 Avenue McGill College, 4th floor) on the 30th. Email Christian Beauclair to reserve a time slot.

Thursday, September 30 in Toronto (Coffee and Code)

I’ll be at the Starbucks at King and Yonge (4 King Street West) this Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a Windows Phone 7 for you to play with and deploy your apps to. I’ll be at or near the big table in the back — come on down!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

This week, we’re having Coffee and Codes in Ottawa and Toronto! Coffee and Code is where we work out of a cafe so that we’re easy to find. Come and talk to us, ask us questions about Microsoft tools and technologies, the industry, career, whatever! We’re also here to help you deploy apps to Windows Phone 7: we’ll have a real live Windows Phone 7 device that you can deploy apps to.

Wednesday, September 22 in Ottawa

Colin Melia and Rick “Claus” Claus from Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team will be at Bridgehead Cafe (224 Dalhousie Street) from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to host a Coffee and Code there. Drop in, say hi, have a coffee, ask questions and if you’ve got an app, try deploying it to a real live Windows Phone 7 device!

Thursday, September 23 in Toronto

Join Kate Gregory and me as we host a Coffee and Code at the Starbucks at King and Yonge (4 King Street West) from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., where we’ll merge with the Coffee and iOS group who are coming in at 4:00 p.m.. Want to find out more about WP7 or iOS development? This is the time and place!

See Kate’s blog entry about this Coffee and Code

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Update (Sept. 21 @ 6:15 p.m. EDT): Made some corrections to the schedule.

We’re out there, and we want to help you with your Windows Phone 7 development by giving you a chance to deploy your apps to an advance-release Windows Phone 7 device for testing! We’ll be in the following cities on the following dates:

Wednesday, September 22 in Ottawa (Coffee and Code)

Colin Melia and Rick “Claus” Claus from Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team will be at Bridgehead Cafe (224 Dalhousie Street) from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to host a Coffee and Code there. Drop in, say hi, have a coffee, ask questions and if you’ve got an app, try deploying it to a real live Windows Phone 7 device!

Thursday, September 23 in Toronto (Coffee and Code)

Join Kate Gregory and me as we host a Coffee and Code at the Starbucks at King and Yonge (4 King Street West) from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., where we’ll merge with the Coffee and iOS group who are coming in at 4:00 p.m.. Want to find out more about WP7 or iOS development? This is the time and place!

See Kate’s blog entry about this Coffee and Code.

Wednesday, September 29 in Montreal (Coffee and Code)

Join “les bons gars”, Christian Beauclair and Guy Barrette, who’ll be holding a Coffee and Code at Le Café de la Cité on 75 Queen. They put on a professional appearance, but we all know qu’ils vont ecrire des «fart apps»! They’ll be doing it in both official languages: Silverlight and XNA!

Thursday, September 30 in Montreal (Deployment Clinic)

Deployment clinics are a little more formal than Coffee and Codes. You can book an exclusive timeslot to deploy and test apps to a Windows Phone 7 device, and there’s one taking place all day at Microsoft’s Montreal office (2000 Avenue McGill College, 4th floor) on the 30th. Email Christian Beauclair to reserve a time slot.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Day 0 (The Day Before)

TechDays typically happens on a Tuesday and a Wednesday; we usually arrive on the Sunday or Monday in order to prepare the venue, our speakers and our own presentations. The afternoon of Day 0 is usually spent setting up the computers in each of the track rooms and in the Collaboration Lounge and “Ask the Experts” areas.

Here’s Christian Beauclair taking a tour of the facilities on the afternoon before TechDays.

I usually see Samantha Wong at Microsoft Canada’s headquarters in Mississauga, but last week she was with us at TechDays Vancouver, minding the table for the WebsiteSpark program, which gives free development tools available to eligible fee-for-service web design shops.

We made the TechDays venue available to CloudCamp on the evening of Day 0. The Vancouver one was quite well-attended. John Bristowe, pictured below with the camera, took some photos of the crowd:

We’re usually quite busy with other things on the evenings of Day 1 and Day 2, so we hold the speaker dinner on the evening of Day 0. We took the speakers to Town Hall, where they got a chance to hang out with us over food and drinks and play with the new Windows Phone 7 devices. Morten Rand-Hendriksen seemed particularly delighted to take WP7 out for a spin:

Day 1

Here’s track host Miguel Carrasco delivering a short introductory presentation for “Developing for Three Screens and the Cloud” track the at the start of Day 1. We have introductory presentations on both days; they ease the audience into the day and tell them what to expect from each track.

Also presenting in the “Three Screens and the Cloud” track was Aaron Kowall:

Both developer tracks were well attended. Here are some scenes from the other developer track, “Optimizing the Development Process”:

Day 2

We’ve always got extra goodies to give away at TechDays. This year’s bonus prize was a special Halo Reach edition of the Xbox 360, and Lowell Picklyk was the lucky winner. Here he is, being presented the prize by Barnaby Jeans:

Here’s Anthony Vranic talking about some of the new goodies in ASP.NET 4 WebForms:

And here are Aaron Kowall and Miguel Carrasco watching Anthony:

In addition to the usual developer and IT pro tracks, we added a new track to TechDays: the Local Flavours track. Unlike the other tracks, whose content comes from other big Microsoft conferences such as TechEd North America, MIX and PDC, Local Flavours’ presentations are the creations of developers and IT pros in each city.

In Vancouver, the last Local Flavours session was a special treat: a recording of a DotNetRocks show with DotNetRocks stars Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin interviewing Pete LePage, Senior Product Manager for Internet Explorer. IE9 Beta had been released earlier that day, so it was the perfect time to interview him.

Here are Richard, Carl and Pete being introduced to the audience by John Bristowe:

Day 2 Evening

After the end of TechDays, we tore down the computer setups in the session rooms, “Ask the Experts” area and Collaboration Lounge and packed them for shipping to Edmonton, the next TechDays city (TechDays Edmonton takes place on October 5th and 6th).

The day wasn’t over yet: we changed out of our TechDays clothes, dressed up a little and made our way to Glowball Grill in Vancouver’s Yaletown district for an IE9 blogger night, where 604-area tech bloggers, tech press and other notable nerds were shown IE9 in action.

Here’s Arnaud Gabaudan, the consumer lead for Internet Explorer, welcoming the crowd:

John Bristowe waits “in the wings” to do his presentation after Arnaud’s introduction:

And we’re off! Here’s John’s grand tour of the new, faster, more standards-compliant beta of IE9:

And tucked off to the side were those of us in the bar. We still had a pretty good view of the presentation, plus we had easy access to drinks!

Don’t worry, John; I’m paying attention – I just pay better attention when I’m enjoying a Bloody Caesar:

Day 3 (The Day After)

We held a Coffee and Code on the day after TechDays at the Take 5 Cafe at Granville and West Hastings, a stone’s throw from our hotel, and the site of the foundings of a couple of Vancouver tech groups and startups. I started Coffee and Code at the beginning of 2009 as a way for Microsoft to be better in touch with and more accessible to developers, it’s been going strong ever since.

The faces I know in the pictures above and below, from left to right:

• Boris Mann (blue jacket)
• Chris Nicol (red shirt)
• Christian Beauclair (blue shirt)
• Morten Rand-Hendriksen (green plaid shirt, far back)
• John Bristowe (black t-shirt, seated farthest back)
• Anthony Bartolo (rightmost blue shirt)
• Mark Arteaga (rightmost in the white shirt)

We will be holding Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code events in all TechDays cities. Watch this blog for announcements about the locations of upcoming Coffee and Codes!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The idea behind Coffee and Code is simple: I, along with some of my fellow tech evangelists from Microsoft, take advantage of our status as mobile workers and choose a day to work at a cafe. We announce that we’re doing this and put out a general invitation to come join us – perhaps for a few minutes, a few hours or the entire time – to chat, ask questions, tell us what you think and get to know us. It’s us, working out in the open and making ourselves available to you.

With so few pre-launch Windows Phone 7 devices available, Coffee and Code is your best chance to see one up close and personal and test your apps before they hit the stores. Many developers have already joined us for coffee and a chat, checked out the phone and deployed and optimized their apps to an actual phone as opposed to the emulator. While you can get pretty far with the emulator, it’s no substitute for the real thing.

We’re taking advantage of our TechDays travel to hold Coffee and Codes in TechDays cities on the day after TechDays. Join us! Get to know your friendly Microsoft evangelists, find out about Windows Phone 7 and other parts of the Microsoft platform, and if you have Windows Phone 7 apps that you’d like to test on a real device, this is your chance!

We’ve got Coffee and Codes scheduled for the following dates, cities and locations:

…and yes, we’re confirming venues for December in Winnipeg and Calgary.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Pre-manufacturing Windows Phone 7 devices are incredibly hard to come by, but we’re working on ways for you to test your WP7 apps on the real thing. One way we’re doing this is by holding “Deployment Clinics” all over Canada.

Today (Thursday, Sept 2): Toronto

• If you’re in downtown Toronto, I’ll be holding a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. today at the Starbucks at King and Yonge (northwest corner, right above King subway station). We’ll be at the big table in the back. Bring your Windows Phone 7 app and see how it runs on a real phone!

Friday, September 3: Calgary and Toronto

• Hey, Calgary! John Bristowe will be holding a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code from 9:00 a.m. to 12 noon at Kawa Espresso Bar (1333 8th Street SW). He’ll have a Windows Phone 7 device, so bring your apps!
• Toronto WP7 developers get a second shot at deploying their apps to a WP7 device: I’ll be holding another Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Starbucks at King and Yonge on Friday.

Next Week: Montreal

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Francophone, Anglophone or allophone: we want you to come see and deploy to Windows Phone!

Thursday, September 9th

A Microsoft Canada event: Windows Phone 7 Night in Montreal (featuring a developer device!)
5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the Microsoft Montreal office (2000 Ave McGill College, Suite 450, Montreal)

Join Christian Beauclair from Microsoft Canada, along with Colin Melia from DreamDigital, for an evening about Windows Phone 7 in the flesh.  That’s right, they’ll be there in person, oh and so will a real developer device!

In October, Microsoft will start accepting application submissions on the mobile marketplace for Windows Phone 7 applications, with devices being available at retail shortly thereafter.

Will you be one of the first developers selling a cool application? Are you an IT Pro that wants to figure out how these devices fit into your organization?  To get to grips with this new mobile platform and build on your existing .NET and infrastructure knowledge, you’ll need to know the features of the new phone platform.

Visual Studio 2010 together with the WP7 tools make building applications a delightful experience. During this evening event, you’ll have the opportunity to see the phone in action, learn about the tools and understand how the phone integrates into your enterprise.

You absolutely must be registered to attend.

Register for this event

Friday, September 10th

Deployment clinic at the Microsoft Montreal office (2000 Ave McGill College, Suite 450, Montreal)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

As I write this, my Toronto Windows Phone “Coffee and Code” event is drawing to a close. Held at the big communal table in the back corner of the Starbucks at Toronto’s busy Yonge/King intersection, I announced it a mere two days prior, first on Twitter, and then on the Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy blogs, so I was prepared for only a handful of people to show up. I was pleased by the outcome: in the end, we got about three dozen people to show, with twenty people crowding around our table at peak, and not counting the half-dozen people who wandered over saying “Did I hear you had a new Windows Phone?”

What is Coffee and Code?

As a mobile worker, I’m not tied down to an office. As a product of late 1980s/early 1990s computer labs, I’m actually quite comfortable working in a noisy, busy environment like a café, and in the late ‘90s, when I ran my own consulting shop, I cranked out VB applications for a mid-sized company in Chicago out of a hip little café on Toronto’s Queen Street West. During that time, I met a number of interesting people, including folks from the local tech scene, which I enjoyed. So when I landed the job with Microsoft and returned to the mobile life, I thought, why not bring a little of that back?

So I started a little event I called “Coffee and Code” back in early 2009. The idea was simple: work out of a café, announce that I’ll be there and will be happy to take visitors, see who shows up. It worked out pretty well, and I hold them whenever my schedule allows. The attendance usually ranges from 6 to two dozen or so, and we talk about all sorts of things, from programming (.NET, open source and everything in between), the local tech scene, the industry in general and just about every other topic – the conversations aren’t always technical. It’s a great way for people to meet up with me, and a great way for me to know what’s on developers’ minds.

The idea has spread beyond Toronto; my coworkers and I have held Coffee and Code events in cities across Canada, Denny Cherry has held a couple in southern California and Cory Fowler holds them regularly in Guelph.

Who Was There?

Luckily, I didn’t run this alone. I was backed up by a couple of great people:

• Developer Mark Arteaga, a Microsoft MVP who’s forgotten more about mobile development with Microsoft tech than I will ever learn. You should catch his Windows Phone 7 sessions at TechDays.
• Mobile telco expert Anthony Bartolo, who works with me a Microsoft as the phone infrastruicture expert guy with over a decade’s worth of experience in the mobile industry. He’ll also be speaking at TechDays about Windows Phone Marketplace.

Among the people in attendance were:

• Mobile tech bloggers: The guys from Mobile Syrup and The Cellular Guru, there to see a real-life Windows Phone 7 phone. As Anthony noted, they were impressed with the smoothness of the phone (yet more people saying that they love its touch responsiveness) and loved the features. Not bad for a beta OS running on prototype devices!
• Kate Gregory: She’s one of Canada’s Microsoft Regional Directors, a select group of developers and architects who volunteer their time to share information about Microsoft tools and tech with their communities and give us feedback. She’s my C++ go-to person; I’m glad I have one! In addition to talking about Windows Phone, she told me some very enlightening stories about the industry and where C++ gets used as well as some hilarious tales from tech conferences. She’s creating the content for the TechDays session on the Windows API Code Pack and delivering that session at TechDays Toronto.
• Developers, developers, developers! Guys from the Ryerson Digital Media zone (including Alexey Adamsky and Alex Yakobovich, who are working on a great 3-D version of Sudoku), local development shops, indie coders, SharePoint guys looking to build business apps, iPhone and Android developers wondering what Windows Phone 7 was like…and they all seemed pretty impressed. They chatted, ate, did some test deployments onto actual hardware and even did some coding. (By the way, if I didn’t mention your company or name and you want it mentioned here, let me know and I’ll update this article!)

How About Cross-Country Coffee and Codes?

In response to my quick announcements about this Coffee and Code, I got a number of questions via email, Twitter and Facebook asking me if I’m holding Coffee and Codes elsewhere in Canada (particularly from people in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa). The answer is, I’d love to, and I’m working on ways to make that happen.

Firstly, I’m taking advantage of the fact that I’m already flying across the country to help run TechDays. I’ll be in six of the eight cities:

• Vancouver
• Edmonton
• Toronto
• Halifax
• Ottawa
• Montreal

…and I plan to be in those cities not just for TechDays, but a couple of days before and after the event as well. I’ll hold Coffee and Codes in those cities when I’m there, with a chance for you to see Windows Phone 7 devices up close and personal, try deploying an app to them, and ask questions.

Secondly, I’d like to see if Windows Phone Coffee and Code events can take place all over Canada, whether or not I’m there. I know it’s possible; Cory Fowler has held way more Coffee and Codes than I have in Guelph, and I’m sure that more of you would be interested in holding get-togethers would like to hold similar events in your area. If we made some kind of Coffee and Code “starter kit” to help you start a Coffee and Code in your town, would you do it? Let me know – email me if you’d be up for it!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Interested in finding out more about Windows Phone 7 development and the opportunities that come with it? Want to see both the Samsung and LG Windows Phone 7 prototypes up close and personal? Want to take a break and have coffee with us?

I’m holding a Coffee and Code with mobile developer Mark Arteaga and mobile expert Anthony Bartolo in downtown Toronto at the Starbucks at King and Yonge this Thursday from noon to 7 p.m. (4 King Street West, right on top of the subway station). We’ll be at or near the big conference table they’ve got in the back. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, “Coffee and Code” is an event where I take advantage of my status as a mobile worker and work out of a work-friendly cafe, where I’m reachable, findable and approachable. If you’ve got any questions about Microsoft, software development, the industry, the tech scene or just about anything else, this is a perfect chance to ask me!

This is a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code, and I’m bringing a couple of Windows Phone 7 people along with me. If you were at last year’s TechDays conferences, you may have seen them: Mark Arteaga, who’s written many apps for the old-school Windows Mobile and now writing apps for Windows Phone, and Anthony Bartolo, who’s been working in the mobile industry longer than a lot of my peers have been working. Come join us for a coffee (or tea, or lemonade) and some tech talk!

Catch Mark’s blog entry about this upcoming Coffee and Code here.

Anthony has also written a blog entry about Coffee and Code here.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

This afternoon (Wednesday, November 4th) from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Atlantic time, I’ll be holding a Halifax edition of “Coffee and Code” at Just Us Cafe on Barrington (1678 Barrington). My coworkers Damir Bersinic and Rodney Buike will be joining me. Come on down and chat with us about Microsoft, the tech industry in general, the job market, accordions, whatever!

(If you’re a developer who’s interested in building a cloud computing-based application on Windows Azure, you might want to come down for this one, as I might have an offer that you might find difficult to resist. Just sayin’.)

There may be plans for dinner and accordion-and-beer-fueled mayhem this evening, so if you’re into that sort of thing, drop me a line.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

TechDays, Microsoft’s cross-Canada conference for developers and IT pros took a break in October, but returns in November to complete its tour of the five remaining cities, starting in Halifax!

I, along with the rest of the TechDays team will be in Halifax and places nearby starting this weekend and for most of next week:

• We’ll be around on the weekend doing setup and rehearsals for the TechDays conference
• The TechDays conference itself will take place on Monday, November 2nd and Tuesday, November 3rd at the World Trade Convention Centre Halifax.
• On Wednesday, November 4th, I’ll be hosting a Coffee and Code event at the Just Us Cafe (1678 Barrington Street) from 2 to 6 p.m.. That means I’ll be working from that cafe – drop by and chat!

And don’t forget that TechDays Canada is also visiting these cities:

• Calgary: November 17th and 18th
• Montreal: December 2nd and 3rd
• Ottawa: December 9th and 10th
• Winnipeg: December 15th and 16th

Tickets are a still available for these cities.

In case you’ve forgotten the TechDays formula, here it is again:

See you in Halifax!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.