by Joey deVilla on September 16, 2009
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 areas that I and the people I surveyed thought would be both important and interesting:
- Rich (Internet) Applications
- The “Software” half of “Software + Services”, namely client applications on computers and other devices
- ASP.NET MVC, the model-view-controller web app framework that I like to call “Rails That Scales”
- The “Services” half of “Software + Services”: services accessible via the internet
Day 1 was about the first two, and Day 2 covered MVC and Services.
The morning featured two ASP.NET MVC sessions. First, Charles Nurse of DotNetNuke presented Introduction to ASP.NET MVC, which was aimed at ASP.NET developers looking to make the leap from WebForms or to see what MVC is all about. Daniel Flippance of Habaneros provided a great follow-up presentation with SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC Applications, which matched two great topics – our new web application framework and the SOLID principles of object-oriented design (which I covered back in July with this article).
Charles Nurse and Daniel Flippance
The afternoon was all about services. We started with Phil Bolduc presenting Building RESTful Services with WCF, which covers two topics that Microsoft developers are just starting to pick up. After that came Ho Yan Leung, whose session was Developing and Consuming Services for SharePoint. As you can see in his photo below, you can find Windows 7 and Microsoft platform development in places you wouldn’t expect:
Ho Yan Leung
(Phil: I got sidetracked during your presentation and didn’t get a chance to snap your photo. My apologies!)
After the final session, we cleared out the presentation halls, gathered for a post-conference meeting to discuss what went right, what went wrong and what we should do at the next stop on the TechDays tour, which is Toronto on the 29th and 30th. We packed the demo machines in their nigh-indestructible flight cases:
The red, green and blue machines are Dell Netbooks. They’re cute, but my stance on netbooks remains unchanged.
The really nice machines are the copper-coloured 16 gig “Dell-a-saurus” machines in the middle row.
We marked the end of TechDays Vancouver 2009 with strong drink and flaming teppanyaki:
[This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.]
Tagged as:
conferences,
MVC,
services,
TechDays 2009,
Vancouver
by Joey deVilla on September 14, 2009
It’s Monday, September 14th, which means that TechDays Canada 2009 has begun! We’re at the Vancouver Convention Centre in beautiful Vangroovy, the first city of sevencities we’re visiting in our tour. We’re travelling across Canada throughout the fall to show off the latest and greatest things that developers and IT pros can do with currently available tools and technologies from Microsoft.
Last year, I was a mere presenter. This year, I’m the lead of the Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track whose abstract is below:
Learning key skills to develop rich client and web-based applications on the Microsoft-based platform is what this track is all about. In this track you will learn how to develop rich, interactive and interoperable applications for both the client and the web using our newest tools and frameworks. You’ll learn how to build software that helps to give your users the best experience possible, whether it’s a program running on Windows 7, a website built on ASP.NET MVC or a Silverlight-based rich internet application. You’ll also learn how to build services that can deliver data to almost any platform and internet-enabled device. And finally, you’ll learn how to build these software and services in ways that are modular and maintainable.
Here’s the room in which my track in taking place, as seen at 8:30 this morning (Pacific time, naturally), with a half-hour to go before the sessions began. We were already picking up a decent crowd:
First up was Zaheera Valani of the Silverlight team doing the presentation What’s New in Silverlight 3, where she showed off the features in the latest version of Silverlight. According to the rule of thumb for Microsoft software versions, this should be the version that really catches on, and the early signs indicate that this seems to be the case.
As I write this, my co-worker in Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism group, Qixing Zheng, is doing the Expression Blend for Developers session. That’s right, it’s not just for UI designers – it’s also a pretty good development tool:
Tagged as:
conferences,
TechDays 2009,
Vancouver
by Joey deVilla on August 31, 2009
by Joey deVilla on August 30, 2009
The early bird registration price for TechDays Vancouver (September 14th – 15th) and TechDays Toronto (September 29th – 30th) will disappear after Monday, August 31st. If you want to catch TechDays at the ultra-cheap rate, you should register now!
Here’s a quick graphic recap of what TechDays Canada 2009 is all about:
Rather than asking Canadian developers and IT pros to fly far away to a conference and take a hit on the currency exchange, TechDays Canada 2009 takes the conference to them. We’re taking the sessions and information from conferences like TechEd, updating them with the latest information and bringing them to the following cities:
- Vancouver (September 14 – 15…two weeks away!)
- Toronto (September 29 – 30…a month from now)
- Halifax (November 2 – 3)
- Calgary (November 17 – 18)
- Montreal (December 2 – 3)
- Ottawa (December 9 –10)
- Winnipeg (December 15 – 16)
TechDays Canada 2009 features the following tracks:
- Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform (which happens to be the track I’m in charge of)
- Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices
- Windows Client
- Servers, Security and Management
- Communications and Collaboration
And, as a bonus, we’ve got an extra track for Vancouver and Toronto: Developer Foundations, which contains sessions of a non-platform-specific nature covering best coding practices and good software engineering.
Attendees also get $700 worth of goodies, including a TechNet Plus Direct Subscription (which gets you Windows 7 for free, among other things), access to content from the TechEd conference, the TechDays 2009 Resource DVD, discounts on books and more.
TechDays presentations are given mostly by local people and attended by local people. If you want to get to know and network with developers, IT pros and techies in your area – and believe me, this sort of thing pays off in spades – TechDays Canada 2009 is a great place for it.
If you’re a developer or IT pro and work with the .NET platform – or are even just curious about it – you should be at TechDays Canada 2009. And if you like saving money, you’ll register before the end of Monday, August 31st.
Tagged as:
conferences,
TechDays 2009
by Joey deVilla on August 29, 2009
If you want to attend TechDays Vancouver (September 14 – 15) or TechDays Toronto (September 29 – 30) at the early bird rate, you’ve got 3 days left! After Monday, August 31st, you’ll have to pay the full $599. Register now and save!
Tagged as:
conferences,
Microsoft,
TechDays 2009
