Montreal

Montreal Bound

by Joey deVilla on January 20, 2010

porter plane Photo by Tom Purves.

I’m boarding a Porter flight bound for Montreal, where I’ll be attending CUSEC (Canadian University Software Engineering Conference). I’ll be there from today through Saturday afternoon, watching technical presentation, flying the Microsoft banner, hosting DemoCamp and having a beer (or twelve) with my fellow conference-goers. I’ll be posting notes and photos from the presentations and other goings-on, so watch this space!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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CUSEC 2010: Montreal, January 21 – 23

by Joey deVilla on January 18, 2010

CUSEC 2010 logo

For the latter half of this week, I’ll be at CUSEC – the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference – the annual Montreal-based conference by and for Canadian university students interested in topics on software development and engineering. For a conference that’s aimed at students, it punches above its weight class, having hosted some big name speakers including:

This year’s speaker list is pretty good. Among them are:

  • Douglas Crockford, Senior JavaScript Architect at Yahoo!.  If you truly want to understand JavaScript, listen to this guy! When people were dismissing JavaScript as a toy language – a strange concept in these Ajax-powered days, but this really was the case – he wrote articles like JavaScript: The Wrrrld’s Most Misunderstood Programming Language and other must-read pieces, all of which live at javascript.crockford.com. He’s also the author of the book JavaScript: The Good Parts, which is required reading for web developers. I had the pleasure of meeting him and seeing him speak at the Ajax Experience conference in Boston in 2006, and he’s both a great presenter and guy to hang out with at apres-conference events.
  • Greg Wilson, Assistant Professor at U of T. Greg is many things: much-sought-after provider to academic advice and support at U of T, co-editor of Beautiful Code, DemoCamp Toronto steward, and now, the guy behind the best presentation at the Stack Overflow DevDays Toronto: Bits of Evidence: What We Actually Know About Software and Why We Believe It’s True. It was the presentation so nice, he’s doing it twice – this time at CUSEC. Don’t miss this one!
  • Reg Braithwaite, Superprogrammer-at-large. Whether you know him as “Reg” or “raganwald”, you know that he’s got some seriously big-ass ideas about programming. Very few people push Ruby metaprogramming to its limits the way he does. Every time I see one of his presentations, I come out a little bit smarter.
  • Pete Forde, Unspace. Pete’s one of the “corporate speakers”, a designation that probably makes him feel very uncomfortable. He’s one of the guys behind the Toronto-based development shop Unspace and behind two of the best conferences I’ve ever attended, RubyFringe (2008) and FutureRuby (2009). It’s anyone’s guess as to what he’ll talk about, but it should be good, and we can only hope that he begins it with a dance number, like he did with his presentation at the Mesh 2009 conference.
  • Leigh Honeywell, Symantec. Leigh has forgotten more about security than I will ever learn, and she’s also one of the founders of HacklabTO, the Toronto “hackerspace”.

I had the opportunity to speak at last year’s CUSEC and had a wonderful time both speaking and hanging out with the students. I love the conference vibe – the energy, brainpower and passion of the attendees is palpable, and it makes me optimistic for the future of tech in Canada. I’m only too glad to be able to attend this year, and I’m honoured to be invited to host their DemoCamp event, which will take place Thursday evening.

I’ll be filing reports from CUSEC, so watch this space!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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TechDays Montreal, Day 2

by Joey deVilla on December 5, 2009

Day 2 of Techdays Montreal began with the A/V techs (and yes, me) ooh-ing and ahh-ing at presenter Maxime Rouiller’s Alienware laptop, He showed us the utility for controlling its backlighting colours:

01 alienware

Once set up, the Building for the Microsoft-Based Platorm track’s acting host Laurent Duveau introduced Maxime, who then presented Introducing ASP.NET MVC.

02 maxime and laurent

Maxime will present the same session in Ottawa, so if you’re there, you too can get a look at that Alienware. Wonder what it would take to get Microsoft to assign me one of those babies.

Continuing the morning’s ASP.NET MVC theme, Simon Laroche took to the lectern:

03 simon 1

Simon presented SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC Applications, which used the refactoring of an ASP.NET MVC application to demonstrate the SOLID principles of object-oriented design in action:

04 simon 2

Next came lunch, once again held on Centre Mont-Royal’s fourth floor:

05 lunch

Here are Developer Evangelist Christian Beauclair and IT Pro Evangelist Rick Claus preparing for the lunchtime presentation:

06 christian and rick

07 christian

And here they are doing that presentation, in which they show off some of the new features in Office 2010. I rather the like the goodies in PowerPoint 2010:

08 christian and rick

In the meantime, some of the attendees hung out in the Windows 7 lounge, trying out the touchscreen machines and playing games – including the indie hit I MAED A GAME WITH Z0MB1ES!!!1 – on the XBox 360:

09 windows 7 lounge

Mario Cardinal led the first session of the afternoon:

10 mario

His presentation was on Building RESTful Applications Using WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). Mario knows his stuff, and as a seasoned presenter, had no problem crossing the stage and doing part of his delivery far away from the lectern and any speaker’s notes:

11 mario and audience

Mario will also present the same session at TechDays Ottawa.

Some of the staff saw me walking around with Rick’s DSLR camera and asked me to take their picture. I was happy to do so – TechDays doesn’t happen without their help:

12 staff

One nice thing about Centre Mont-Royal is that there’s plenty of “hanging out” space. If you’re not spending at least a little time in these spaces between sessions, getting to know the other techies in your community, you’re not getting all you can out of TechDays:

13 break

14 break 2

The final session in my track had Francis Beaudet speaking:

15 francis 1

He presented Developing and Consuming Services for SharePoint:

16 francis 2

Day 2 wrapped up at 4:00 p.m., at which point we quickly dismantled the machines we’d set up on Tuesday and packed them up for shipping to Techdays Ottawa. Some of the team stayed to do the end-of-conference review, which Christian and I had to run to catch the Microsoft open source cocktail party at the W, which I’ll cover in the next blog entry.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Career Demo Camp Montreal

by Joey deVilla on December 5, 2009

career demo camp montreal

On Wednesday, a mere hour or so after the end of Day 1 of TechDays Montreal, came Career Demo Camp Montreal, a community event that combined presentations on job-hunting and career-building with demos of projects by Montreal-area developers.

What’s With All These “Demo” and “Camp” Events and Techdays?

techdays canada For this year’s edition of TechDays, we decided to try something new. TechDays is a two-day cross-Canada conference taking place in seven cities – Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg – and all the conference events take place during the day. There are no events scheduled for after 5 p.m., which means that on the evening of Day 1, the venues are ours – and unused. Since they’re already set up for presentations and it costs relatively nothing to hire an A/V tech for a few extra hours, we decided to make our venues open to local developer community events. We even lent a hand in helping put the events together.

This year, we opened our space to four such community events:

The Career Portion

People started milling in at around 6:00 p.m.:

02 audience

The evening began with Alex Kovalenko, Director of Operations at the tech recruiting company Kovasys. His presentation was all about what smart job hunters do, how to write a good tech resume, and the elements of a successful tech interview.

01 alex kovalenko

Alex was joined by a couple of his coworkers at Kovasys for the Q&A session, which included the question “What kind of salary can a PHP developer command in Montreal and Toronto? If I recall correctly, their answer what that in Montreal, they’ve seen a range of CDN$55k for starters to CDN $90k for leads. Salaries are 15% higher in Toronto, but with that comes a commensurate increase in the cost of living.

03 kovasys

Next came my presentation, Better Living Through Blogging, in which I talked about how having a blog has improved my life in a number of way, not the least of which was to help land me the last four of my jobs.

04 yann and joey

Blogs, I argued, were probably the most effective way for you to have control of your online identity and therefore to put your best foot forward to potential employers and customers. Among that stats and opinions I cited in the presentation were:

  • 77% of recruiters surveyed by ExecuNet said that they use search engines to check out job candidates.
  • According to CareerBuilder.com, 1 in 4 hiring managers say that they use search engines to research potential employees.
  • SearchEngineWatch.com reports that there may have been up to 50 million proper-name searches in 2006.
  • Tim Bray, Director of Web Technologies at Sun: “If someone came looking for a senior-level job and had left no mark on the Internet, I’d see that as a big negative.”

goku and vegeta

That was followed by a quick presentation by my coworker at Microsoft, Open Source Strategy guy Arun Kirupananthan, who used Dragon Ball Z as a metaphor for Microsoft (as Vegeta) and Open Source (as Goku) and how they can work together and talked about the Make Web Not War conference, which will take place in Montreal in May 2010.

The Demo Portion

The first demo was by Brendan “DigiBomb” Sera-Shriar, who presented WPTouch.

05 brendan 01

“With a single click,” he said, “WPTouch transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with Ajax-based article loading and effects when viewed from an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android or Blackberry.”

06 brendan 02

Next up: Patrick Lafontaine, MySQL developer and DBA:

07 christian and patrick

His presentation was on how to back up your MySQL databases effectively and for free-as-in-beer.

(I have to give Christian Beauclair kudos for volunteering to be his mic stand. It’s not easy holding a mic in a single position for ten minutes!)

08 patrick

Then came Sylvain Carle of Praized:

09 sylvain 1

Sylvain talked about the Praized API, which lets you harness their “white label” local search platform fro finding people and services in your local community.

10 sylvain 2

After Sylvain came Marc Laporte demoing TikiWiki, a Full-featured open source multilingual all-in-one wiki with content management and groupware features, written in PHP. It’s our plan to make TikiWiki one of the apps included in Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer:

11 marc

Bruno of DokDok did the next demo. DokDok is a way to share, track and version files of any size, and it’s done using an interface that everyone understands: email.

12 bruno

Then came Marc-André Cournoyer and Gary Haran of Talker. I liked the Ruby pseudocode that they displayed on the big screen:

13 talker

Talker is a group chat application that is particularly good for collaborative work. I may have to give it a try soon.

14 marc-andre and gary 1

Testatoo – I think it’s a pun on “tests à tout”, or “tests for everything” – was the next presentation, which was given by David Avenante.

16 david

Here’s a closer look at Testatoo in action:

17 testatoo

The final demo was Pierre-Luc Beaudoin’s L’Agenda du Libre du Quebec:

18 pierre-luc

L’Agenda du Libre is an online calendar of Free Software events in Quebec and was implemented in Django in under 30 hours:

19 agenda du libre

The Aftermath

stewie griffin

This was the first DemoCamp-style event where the presentations were some presentations were done in English while others were done in French. I felt like a Family Guy character listening to Stewie Griffin during the French presentations: I got the general gist, but missed out on the subtleties. Guess I’m going to have to work on my French!

With the demos done, all that was left to do was to award an XBox 360 Arcade to the presentation that the audience liked most, based on their applause. Marc-Andre and Gary of Talker won, and in a very generous move, decided to donate it to the Salvation Army so that some kids who’d otherwise never get the chance would get a video game console this Christmas. Nicely done, gentlemen!

No DemoCamp-style event is complete without a trip to the pub afterwards, so about 35 of us moseyed down to the 3 Brasseurs on Avenue McGill College and St-Catherine, where Microsoft bought the first round of pitchers.

21 3 brasseurs 2

A few brave souls, Arun and I kept the party going at Benelux where we continued to chat and drink until 2 in the morning, after which I had to scurry back to the hotel in order to get some shut-eye for Day 2 of TechDays Montreal.

I’d like to thank the following people for Career Demo Camp Montreal a success:

  • All the presenters, for putting in the time and giving great presentations. It’s not possible without you!
  • Jean-Luc San Cartier and Yann Larrivee for helping us put it together on the Montreal community end.
  • Christian Beauclair for his invaluable assistance with the A/V setup.
  • Matthew the TelAV A/V guy for his work and for staying late.
  • TechDays head honcho Damir Bersinic for giving me the latitude to use TechDays’ space for community events.
  • Microsoft’s Open Source Strategy team of Nik Garkusha and Arun Kirupananthan for helping to put this thing together on the Microsoft end.

(By the way, if you’ve got an open source project and are wondering what Microsoft can do for you, you’d do well to get in touch with Nik and Arun, shown below!)

20 3 brasseurs 1

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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TechDays Montreal, Day 1

by Joey deVilla on December 4, 2009

With the setup complete, TechDays Montreal was ready to begin, which it did on Wednesday. Like TechDays Halifax, Techdays Montreal sold out weeks before its date. Here’s what the registration line looked like at 7:45 a.m.:

01 registration

We members of the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) team arrived at 7:00 a.m., but the TelAV A/V guys (I keep saying that their motto should be “To Serve and Project”) had been there at least an hour before, making sure that the displays and sound were working perfectly:

02 theatre

The speakers were asked to show up at 8:00 a.m. in order to be briefed on the day’s proceedings, double-check their demo setups and make sure that they were familiar with the audiovisual equipment.

03 laurent

TechDays Montreal, being the only TechDays held in the province of Quebec, required extra work to support both English and Français. Attendees could request radio headsets which they could use to tune into simultaneous translations of the sessions, which were provided by translators located in booths near the rear of every presentation room:

10 translation booth

All the presentation slides were translated into French, and we showed both the English and French slides at each presentation, with the French slides on the left screen and the English slides on the right. Each slide deck ran on its own PowerPoint machine and was advanced using a “clicker” that advanced the slides on both machines simultaneously:

06 laurent

With the exception of my start-of-day introductory mini-session, all the sessions in my track, Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform, were done in French. As track lead, I normally play the role of host in my track, but my rather limited command of the French language just wasn’t up to the task. I was very fortunate that one of my presenters, Laurent Duveau (pictured below by the lectern) was able to act as host. He did an excellent job MCing and introducing the speakers.

04 laurent

Laurent was also the first presenter of the day. He did the What’s New in Silverlight 3 session:

05 laurent

The second session of the day was Expression Blend for Developers, which was presented by Louis-Philippe Pinsoneault. The two photos below show Laurent on the left and Louis-Philippe on the right:

07 laurent louis philippe

08 laurent louis philippe

Here’s Laurent introducing Louis-Philippe:

09 laurent louis philippe

Just down the hall, Dan Nerenberg presented at the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010: The Next Generation session:

11a dans room

Dan presented to a packed room:

12 audience

Then came lunch, which took place in the large room on Centre Mont-Royal’s fourth floor:

13 lunch 1

The lunch highlight was a demo showdown in which we asked the question “Who can do better Windows 7 demos – developers or IT pros?” Christian Beauclair represented the developers and Pierre Roman represented the IT Pros; both got four chances to do 60-second demos of various features in Windows 7.

Here’s Pierre setting up before the showdown:

14 lunch 2

The winner was determined by audience applause, and Christian (and thus the developers) won.

In addition to the sessions, attendees could also visit the Windows 7 lounge, and area set up with Windows 7-equipped touchscreen computers and an XBox 360, where they could take Windows 7 and its multitouch features or XBox 360 indie games for a spin:

15 lounge 1

16 lounge 2

17 lounge 3

Day 1 of TechDays included a bonus session at the end of the day. Rodney Buike and I did a presentation in which we talked about PHP on Windows, the Web Platform Installer (WPI) and the Expression Web tools. In another room, Anthony Bartolo and Mark Arteaga, did their presentation on developing for Windows Mobile:

18 windows mobile

Although TechDays’ Day 1 had ended, it wasn’t the end of the day for some of us – we had Career Demo Camp that evening, which I’ll cover in the next article.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Setting Up for TechDays Montreal

by Joey deVilla on December 4, 2009

TechDays is no small undertaking: it’s a seven-city two-day conference tour with over 40 sessions featuring content from the TechEd North America 2009 conference and delivered by local and “imported” speakers (we try to get local speakers) to hundreds of developers and IT pros in each city. Montreal was the fifth stop on the tour, and I thought I’d show you some behind-the-scenes stuff that took place on Tuesday, the day before TechDays Montreal took place.

Keep in mind that what you’re seeing here is the setup for the conference’s technical content and only a small portion of what goes on to make TechDays happen. In a later entry, I’ll show you photos of that many other people who make Techdays run smoothly: the event coordinators, A/V team, benue staff, and Windows lounge volunteers.

Tuesday started with a hearty breakfast at Dunn’s, which I enjoyed with my coworkers Rick Claus, Pierre Roman, Christian Beauclair and my road trip buddy Damir Bersinic. 

01 dunns

With hunger satisfied, it was time to make our way to the Centre Mont-Royal to transform the place into TechDays Montreal. Here’s one of the smaller rooms, just after the A/V setup and before the chairs were rolled in:

02 Cartier 1

TechDays Montreal was sold out, so we had to provide overflow seating outside the rooms, just in case. At Techdays, we place a large monitor outside every room with a live feed to the audio and video from the presentation.

03 overflow seating

Here’s one of the larger theatres. Some of our sessions could easily pack one of these rooms.

04 large theater

It meets with Christian’s approval:

05 christian approves

We TechDays organizers aren’t just a bunch of pretty faces: we move our own gear (and remember, we need enough computers and ancillary equipment to support over 40 tech demos!). So it was off to the loading dock to get the demo machines – assuming we survive the cargo elevator ride. Here’s a photo of Pierre learning why dangling clothing and cargo elevators where you have direct exposure to the elevator shaft don’t mix:

06 maudit ascenseur

“Sixteen years at the company and I still don’t have any roadies! I wonder if Ballmer has to lug his own demo gear….”

07 christian and hand truck

“Why’d this thing get so heavy all of a sudden?”

08 why is this so heavy

The answer, of course, is Pierre:

09 pierre on cart

Conference wifi is a very expensive proposition, with many venues asking for hundreds of dollars per user. In order to keep the cost of TechDays affordable (early bird registration is under $300, which is a steal). we decided to forgo the conference wifi and provide internet kiosks instead. The kiosks were Dell laptops, which we had to initialize with clean copies of Windows 7 with both French and English settings.

To make setup simpler, we laid out the machines in a row and worked on them in assembly line fashion, each one of us performing a specific task to set up the machine. I was step 1: boot up, delete old virtual hard drive, and copy new virtual hard drive from the appropriate USB key…

12a usb keys

to various machines, starting with these ones…

10 trio of dells

…after which I moved on to these machines…

11 row of dells

…and then these machines:

12 even more machines

…and of course, there’s the matter of setting up the machines that would be used in the presentations.

13 starting setup

I had to duck out of the setup room for a little bit to record the Developer Night in Canada podcast with John Bristowe – we were doing an interview with the folks at Habanero Consulting Group:

podcast

Dell is our hardware sponsor, and they provided an assortment of computers, from the netbooks, which were used as secondary PowerPoint machines, to the copper-coloured “Dellasaurus” machines, big honking laptops with serious horsepower for sever demos:

14 machines in crates

Here’s Pierre doing some setup with Christian shoulder-surfing:

15 pierre is leeeroy jenkins

Here’s Rick, who can sometimes kill technology by just looking at it, pleased that his setup works:

16 rick claus

And finally, a photo of the last two machines to be set up: the rig for the lunchtime demos:

17 lunchroom

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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TechDays Montreal: Next Week!

by Joey deVilla on November 27, 2009

montreal elm de maisonneuve

TechDays Canada, Microsoft’s cross-country conference covering how developers and IT pros can best make use of current Microsoft tools and technologies, hits Montreal next week. As with TechDays Halifax, which took place earlier this month, Techdays Montreal is completely sold out – there aren’t any tickets left to be had for love or money.

fleur-de-lisTechDays Montreal will feature some interesting Quebec twists, one of which is that all the presentations in the developer tracks – that’s Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform and Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices – will be done in French. If you’re an Anglophone, worry not: there will be a translation service to help you out. We’re happy to be able to do our presentations in our freres’ and souers’ mother tongue.

career demo camp montreal

On the evening of the first day of TechDays Montreal, we’ll be loaning out our conference space to the fine folks at PHP Quebec and ConFoo so they can hold Career Demo Camp Montreal, a gathering that combines a career advice workshop with a DemoCamp-style event (I’ll be doing a presentation about boosting your career through blogging). Admission to this event is free-as-in-beer, and no, you don;t have to be a TechDays attendee to get in. For more details about Career DemoCamp Montreal, see their sign-up page.

caroffcliff

And finally, there’s the matter of how we’ll get there. My coworker Damir Bersinic and I will be hopping in his van and drive from Toronto to Montreal. The usual sort of hilarity is likely to ensue, and we’ll take pictures and shoot some video and post tweets (he’s @DamirB on Twitter, I’m @AccordionGuy) along the way.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Career Demo Camp Montreal: Wednesday, December 2nd

by Joey deVilla on November 18, 2009

career demo camp montrealIf you’re a techie in Montreal, you want to attend Career Demo Camp on Wednesday, December 2nd at 6:30 p.m. in the Mont-Royal Centre! It’s part tech career guidance conference, part DemoCamp-style event, and an opportunity for developers and start-ups to get together and learn about the job market, see projects that Montreal-area techies are working on and get to know and network with your local nerds. It’s presented by the Confoo conference (taking place in March 2010) and PHUG and will be hosted by Yours Truly and Jean-Luc SansCartier.

Here’s the schedule:

  • 6:30 p.m.: Intro to Career Demo Camp
  • 7:00 p.m.: Alex Kovalenko – IT Headhunting and Recruiting
  • 7:30 p.m.: Joey deVilla; Better Living Through Blogging
  • 8:00 p.m.: DemoCamp Introduction
  • 8:15 p.m.: DemoCamp Presentations
  • 10:00 p.m.: Networking Session

oh yes its free

The event is free of charge! All you have to do to attend is sign up at Career Demo Camp’s Registration page.

Microsoft Canada’s providing the space – we booked the Mont-Royal Centre for TechDays Montreal for two days (December 2nd and 3rd) and we weren’t doing anything with the space on the evening of Day 1. We decided to offer the space for some kind of community event, and Confoo and PHUG put together Career Demo Camp. I love doing developer community events and was only too happy to co-host.

The DemoCamp portion of the evening needs people to do DemoCamp-style demos: 5 minutes of “Show and Tell” where you show your software, web application or project in action. It’s the only thing you’re allowed to show on the big screen — no slides allowed! The idea is for you to show off your technology in action and inspire us, not to do a sales pitch. Think you’ve got a demo in you? Contact Jean-Luc Sans Cartier or Yann Larrivee and let them know you want to demo at Career Demo Camp!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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TechDays Canada Roundup

by Joey deVilla on October 5, 2009

TechDays Toronto Wraps Up

techdays_toronto

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.

techdays_halifax_sold_out

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

techdays_calgary_montreal_ottawa_winnipeg

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.

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Montreal Coffee and Code: Monday March 16th at Cafe Depot

by Joey deVilla on March 13, 2009

This article originally appeared in the Coffee and Code blog.

Montreal skyline

cafe_depot

Montreal is the home to some amazing cafe culture, so it’s only fitting that we hold a Coffee and Code there. As part of Microsoft’s cross-Canada EnergizeIT tour,  we’ll be holding the first Montreal Coffee and Code at the Cafe Depot at 550 Sherbrooke on Monday, March 16th from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m..

Christian and Pierre

This is your chance to meet up with the guys I like to call “les bons gars”: Microsoft Developer Advisor Christian Beauclair and IT Pro Advisor Pierre Roman in a relaxed setting where you can talk to them about Microsoft, EnergizeIT, Windows 7, the tech industry in general or anything else (be sure to ask Christian about the new DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned).

They’re a friendly bunch, speak both official languages – English/French and C#/VB –  and they’ll even offer to buy you some coffee!

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Pub Night Tonight at Benelux in Montreal

by Joey deVilla on January 22, 2009

Benelux brasserie artisnale et cafe

From tonight until Sunday morning, I’ll be in Montreal for CUSEC, the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference. If you want to catch up with me, I’ll be at tonight’s CUSEC Pub Night, which takes place at Benelux (245 Sherbrooke Street West) starting at 9 p.m.. See you there!

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CUSEC: The Canadian University Software Engineering Conference

by Joey deVilla on January 17, 2009

This story originally appeared in Canadian Developer Connection.

CUSEC 2009 conference logo CUSEC, the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference, takes place next week in Montreal, from Thursday, January 22nd through Saturday, January 24th. It’s the only software development conference I’m aware of that’s specifically aimed at students, and like the best conferences I’ve attended, it’s put together by computer science and software engineering students who are passionate about software.

They’ve managed to snag some big names to speak; past guests include Tim Bray, Dave “Pragmatic Programmer” Thomas, Kent “Extreme Programming” Beck, Zed Shaw, Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood and Kathy “Creating Passionate Users” Sierra. This year, they’ve got an interesting set of speakers, including Leah Culver, former lead developer of Pownce and now working at Six Apart, and Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Here’s the abstract for my presentation, which takes place on Friday at 4:30:

Squeezeboxes, Start-Ups and Selling Out: A Tech Evangelist’s Story

You’ll spend anywhere from a third to half (or more) of your waking life at work, so why not enjoy it? That’s the philosophy of Microsoft Developer Evangelist Joey deVilla, who’s had fun while paying the rent. He’ll talk about his career path, which includes coding in cafes, getting hired through your blog, learning Python at Burning Man, messy office romances, go-go dancing, leading an office coup against his manager, interviewing at a porn company and using his accordion to make a Microsoft Vice President run away in fear. There will be stories, career advice and yes, a rock and roll accordion number or two.

I’ll be flying into Montreal Thursday afternoon, so the first event I’ll be able to catch is the pub night at BENELUX at 9 that evening. If you’re attending – and it’s dirt cheap at the early-bird price of CAD$60 – I’d love to meet you! As the guy carrying a red accordion, I’ll be quite easy to spot, and I’d be more than happy to chat.

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Want to Catch Up in Vancouver or Montreal Next Week?

by Joey deVilla on January 15, 2009

This article was originally published in Canadian Developer Connection.

Vancouver Convention Centre

Next week’s a travel week for me and a fair number of the Developer & Platform Evangelism team. On Wednesday, January 21st and Thursday, January 22nd, we’ll be at TechDays Canada Vancouver, the last leg of our cross-Canada tour where we show Microsoft developers how to best make use of today’s Microsoft tech and development tools. I myself will be do the Deep Dive into ASP.NET AJAX presentation (I’ll post a little more about this tomorrow) on Wednesday, and on Thursday, I fly to…

Montreal Skyline

…Montreal, where I’ll be attending CUSEC, the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference, where I’ll be giving a presentation titled Squeezeboxes, Start-Ups and Selling Out: A Tech Evangelist’s Story. CUSEC runs from Thursday, January 22nd through Saturday, January 24th. Once again, I’ll post a little more about this presentation tomorrow.

If you’d like to catch up with me at either of these cities, get in touch with me! Send me an email, message me at Twitter, or give me a ring on my mobile (416-948-6447). I’ll be staying in Vancouver at the Fairmont Waterfront on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and in Montreal at the Omni Mont-Royal (the conference hotel) from Thursday through Saturday nights. 

[Vancouver Convention Centre photo by Footloosiety; Montreal skyline photo by Anirudh Koul. Both photos are licensed for reuse, commercial use and remixing under Creative Commons.]

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