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.

We’re in Halifax this week for TechDays! Here’s what we’re up to this week:

• Tuesday, November 2nd, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.: TechDays, Day 1
• Tuesday, November 2nd, 6:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.: Go DevMental
• Wednesday, November 3rd, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.: TechDays, Day 2
• Thursday, November 4th, morning: Presentation at Nova Scotia Community College
• Thursday, November 4th, 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code

Watch this blog for updates and goings-on!

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.

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.

TechDays Toronto Wraps Up

TechDays Toronto took place last Tuesday and Wednesday, and it was a success! Over 1200 people registered to attend, and based on the attendee comments I’ve received, both face-to-face and online, people found their experience there both valuable and enjoyable.

As much as we hope the attendees learn at TechDays, we learn a lot at TechDays too. By holding events where you get to meet us face-to-face and talk to us, we learn about what you need to boost your knowledge, skills and career. If you have any questions, comments, concerns or suggestions about TechDays, please let us know! Leave a note in the comments or feel free to drop me a line.

When Halifax got added to the cities in TechDays Canada’s cross-country conference tour, there was some concern about how many people would register. It’s the first time we’ve held a conference of this scale and scope in the Maritimes, but it turns out that we needn’t have worried: as of Thursday, every available seat for TechDays Halifax’s venue has been sold.

Thanks for being so enthusiastic, Halifax techies, and we look forward to putting on a worthy event!

TechDays Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg Coming Up

The early bird pricing – that’s $299 Canadian – is still available for the other TechDays Canada cities:

• Calgary (November 17-18)
• Montreal (December 2-3)
• Ottawa (December 9-10)
• Winnipeg (December 15-16)

With over forty intermediate- to expert-level sessions covering Windows 7, SharePoint, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server, Expression Blend, Windows Server 2008 R2, WCF, Visual Studio, Hyper-V, System Center, Silverlight and more, TechDays Canada is your chance to learn about how to make the most of the Microsoft tools and technologies that are available right now. Register today!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Today, as part of our EnergizeIT cross-Canada tour, Christian Beauclair, Rick Claus and Pierre Roman are heading out to Halifax. As part of their visit, they’ll be hosting a Coffee and Code event today from 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Just Us Cafe at 1678 Barrington Street.

Coffee and Code is your chance to have a nice up-close-and-personal get-together with people from Microsoft, ask questions, let us know what you think and get to know us better. As an added bonus, it’s your chance to install the Windows 7 beta on your laptop: Christian, Rick and Pierre will be bringing installer discs and helping people get the new operating system (which we’ve been using on our production machines since January) installed.

For more details about today’s Coffee and Code and mini-installfest, see this earlier article.