The Ignite Your Coding LinkedIn group is a place for Canadian Developers to find out the latest tech news, see what’s happening in the world of Microsoft and other platforms, make announcements, exchange ideas and get to know other Canadian developers. Although we folks at Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team run the LinkedIn group, it’s open to all, no matter what platform you develop for. It’s a a place for all Canadian developers to connect, network, and learn in order to help them grow and be successful in their careers regardless of the tools or platform they use.

Let me say that again: the Ignite Your Coding LinkedIn group is for all Canadian developers, not just Microsoft ones. (And we’re not too fussy about the “Canadian” part, either.)

For those of you interested in certain niches of development, the Ignite Your Coding Linked group has subgroups as well:

• Mobile Development: for developers and designers building apps for all mobile platforms – not just Windows Phone 7, but also Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, whatever!
• Windows Development: for developers and designers building applications for Windows.

Join Ignite Your Coding, participate and reap the benefits!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Update: Please note the changes to the Toronto-area deployment clinic locations!

The "Windows Phone Canada" LinkedIn Group

If you’re not a member of LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, you should join it now! It’s a great place to keep in touch with your network of working peers, post and maintain your resume, find people in your industry and be found yourself, and take part in professional discussions in LinkedIn groups.

Once you’re a member of LinkedIn, you should join the Windows Phone Canada group. It’ll have links to the latest Windows Phone articles, host discussions about all aspects of Windows Phone development, from coming up with ideas for apps to writing them to selling them in Marketplace. You’ll also get to network with Windows Phone developers across Canada, and as I’ll tell you over and over, that’s where opportunities are born.

Join the WP7 discussion – join the Windows Phone Canada LinkedIn group!

Windows Phone Deployment Clinics

Pictured above: some of the phones we’ll be using in our deployment clinics.

Anyone who’s built apps and tried them out on an emulator and then deployed to the real thing will know what Jan van de Snepscheut was talking about when he said “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”

To support you in your WP7 development and help you make the leap from theory to practice, we’re starting our deployment clinics this week! It’s your chance to deploy your app to a real WP7 phone and see how it works. This week’s are being held in:

• Wednesday, September 1st:
  • Ottawa: Microsoft Ottawa office (100 Queen Street, Suite 500, Ottawa)
  • Mississauga: Starbucks near Square One (189 Rathburn Road West, Mississauga),
    11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
• Thursday, September 2nd:
  • Downtown Toronto: Starbucks at King and Yonge (4 King Street West, Toronto)
    11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
• Friday, September 3rd:
  • Downtown Toronto: Starbucks at King and Yonge (4 King Street West, Toronto)
    11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

There are also some events being planned for next week:

• Thursday, September 9th:
  • Montreal: User Group meeting at the Microsoft Montreal office (2000 Ave McGill College, Suite 450, Montreal)
• Friday, September 10th:
  • Montreal: Deployment clinic at the Microsoft Montreal office (2000 Ave McGill College, Suite 450, Montreal)

(I’m working on Toronto dates for next week…watch this blog!)

We’re working on ways to hold deployment clinics in as many places across Canada, as often as our schedules and pool of phones will allow. For those of you out west, we’re working on getting clinics out your way – watch this space!

Windows Phone Bootcamps

DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp – a four-city, two-day, hands-on intensive training course taught by Colin Melia – started off quite nicely last week in Montreal (pictured left).

This week, the Bootcamp comes to Vancouver on Monday and Tuesday (August 30 – 31) and Ottawa on Thursday and Friday (September 2 – 3).

Next week, Yours Truly sits in on the Toronto Bootcamp, which happens next Tuesday and Wednesday (September 7 – 8).

Want to sign up for the Bootcamp? Register here, and save $100 when you use the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP.

Windows Phone Training and Deployment Clinics at TechDays

TechDays, our cross-Canada conference on how to make the most of Microsoft’s tools and technologies, is just over two weeks away, starting with TechDays Vancouver on September 14th and 15th. We’ve got two 65-minute breakout sessions on Windows Phone app development being presented by Windows Phone MVP Mark Arteaga and a half-hour “Turbo Talk” by Windows Phone MVP Anthony Bartolo on distributing your apps through the Marketplace. To find out more about TechDays, visit the TechDays site.

We’ll be running deployment clinics in the TechDays cities when we’re there (those cities, in order: Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary), in the TechDays lounge, as well as outside the conference. Watch this blog for details!

Windows Phone Training for Students at Go DevMENTAL

Just as TechDays is a cross-Canada tour for working developers and IT pros, Go DevMENTAL is a cross-Canada tour for post-secondary students who’d like to learn more about the coolest apps and platforms, get connected with people in the software industry and get help in pursing a career. To find out more about Go DevMENTAL, check out the Go DevMENTAL site.

One of Go DevMENTAL’s tracks is dedicated to creating Windows Phone apps. It’ll have two sessions: one on building Silverlight apps for WP7; the other on building XNA-based games for WP7.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

If you’re on LinkedIn (and really, you should be) and are interested in developing for Windows Phone 7, you should join the Windows Phone Canada LinkedIn group! It’s a place for Canadian WP7 developers, enthusiasts and users to connect, share news, links to articles, exchange ideas, look for work and projects and get to know each other. You’ll also be able to start your own discussions, ask questions and point people to your WP7-related projects.

Those of you who know me well know I keep saying it over and over again: community and connections is an important and underappreciated element of your career. Join Windows Phone Canada, start some discussions and make those connections!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Here’s an interesting bit of information for those of you who are reviewing prospective hires: people are more honest on their LinkedIn profiles than they are on their resumes. That’s what LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said at the Social Recruiting Summit held last week at Google.

It’s understood that people “pad” their resumes. A sizeable portion of the interview process seems to be devoted to determining if the candidate is as good as his or her resume says he or she is. I’ve been in interviews where a prospective employer had a member of the development team to sit in and act as a “bullshit detector”; I’ve also done the same duty when working at companies that were interviewing prospective developers.

I think that Kris “The HR Capitalist” Dunn’s theory about why LinkedIn profiles are more honest is spot-on:

…if you’re truly looking for "what’s up" with a candidate, you need to rely on the LinkedIn profile.  Why is that true?  Because there’s a community of co-workers, friends and past colleagues that always have access to the LinkedIn profile, and there’s no such community with constant visibility to a random resume the candidate sends in, and you have no means to circulate the resume to that type of community to fact check.

Simply put: it’s harder to lie when you’re in front of a group of colleagues who might call you on it.

Kris also talks about how many candidates don’t include the “5 – 6 bullet points that you;re usually used to seeing on the resume” on their LinkedIn profiles. This isn’t the case with me: when I got laid off from my last job back in September, I rewrote my resume completely, starting with my LinkedIn profile, after which I simply pasted the LinkedIn information into a Word document and gave it a little formatting. This approach killed two birds with one stone, affording me more time to concentrate on my (thankfully short – 17 days from my last official day at b5media to my first official day at Microsoft) job search.

I don’t know if it applies in other fields, but in the tech sector, I think that LinkedIn profiles are resumes and that you should based your resume off your LinkedIn profile rather than the other way around. Yes, the social networking aspect of LinkedIn means that you can’t pad your resume as much, but it also means that prospective employers can trust that your credentials are genuine.