AzureFest, the get-together where developers and aspiring developers learn how to use and deploy applications and databases to Azure, took place at Microsoft Canada headquarters in Mississauga on Saturday.

The event was held by our partners ObjectSharp and led by Cory Fowler, an Azure MVP. There was a morning sessions and an afternoon session, and my rough estimation of both events put the attendance at around 130 in total.

Each three-hour session consisted of a quick overview of the Azure platform, the distribution of all the necessary developer tools, signing up for an Azure account and using the prototyping-and-wallet-friendly Introductory Special and deploying that old ASP.NET MVC standby app NerdDinner and its associated database to the cloud. The three-hour format covered more practical ground than the typical one-hour conference session and gave Cory and the ObjectSharpies a chance to make themselves available for one-on-one assistance.

In Case You Missed AzureFest…

If you couldn’t make it down to Mississauga to participate in AzureFest, you can still benefit from the AzureFest session. The ObjectSharpies are recording a version of Cory’s Azure deployment walkthrough and making it available online. Watch this blog for more details.

Try Azure and Get Some Money for Your User Group!

If you’re the member of a Canadian Microsoft User Group, you can help them make a quick $25 which they can use to fund their activities. All you have to do is:

• Open an Azure account: either the introductory special offer or using the Azure benefit that comes with your MSDN subscription
• Deploy an application – any application, including pre-written ones like NerdDinner – to Azure
• Send an email to cdnazure@microsoft.com with the following:
  • A screenshot of your application running on Azure
  • The name of the user group to which you’d like to get $25
  • Feedback about your experience with Azure

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

If you’ve been meaning to take up Windows Phone 7 development but didn’t know where or how to get started and you’re in the Ottawa area, this event is for you! Join Microsoft Developer Advisor Christian Beauclair and DreamDigital’s Colin Melia as they present a hands-on lab this Saturday where they show you how to write apps for our new phone.

At this lab, you’ll:

• Learn how to develop apps for Windows Phone 7 in Silverlight and XNA
• Follow along at a workstation as Christian and Colin walk you through WP7 development
• Get familiar with the software tools: Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone, Expression Blend and the WP7 emulator
• Have an opportunity to try out a real live Windows Phone

This training lab will take place at Algonquin College (1385 Woodroffe Avenue, Ottawa). It’s free of charge, but you must register in order to be able to attend.

This is a hands-on lab, so space is limited – if you want to attend, register now!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Creative Commons photo by Jason V. Click the photo to see it on its original page.

Don’t forget that this Saturday, September 25th, is the first SharePoint Saturday in Vancouver!

It’s a FREE public event, and it’s a chance for people in the Vancouver area to dive into SharePoint. It promises to be an educational, informative and lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals and MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-oriented topics.

For more details, see my earlier blog entry on SharePoint Saturday Vancouver as well as the SharePoint Saturday Vancouver site and the registration page.

Thanks to Yaroslav Pentsarskyy for letting me know about this event!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Don’t forget that a Samedi .NET event is taking place this Saturday, September 25th in Montreal: Introduction au B.I., or as they say en Anglais, Introduction to B.I.. As in Business Intelligence. For the full details, see my earlier blog entry and the event’s registration page. It won’t cost you much to attend; admission to the event is under $10.

Thanks to La Communauté .NET Montreal for putting on the event and to Microsoft Canada Regional Director Guy Barrette, my go-to guy for keeping me in the loop on Montreal geek events!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I know that this is incredibly short notice, but I just heard about it myself:

Join us on September 21 2010 at 8.00 am PDT (11:00 EDT) for the first of two Office Live Meeting broadcasts.

The Microsoft Windows Phone 7 marketplace will open in October, and Microsoft wants to help you make your app the best that it can be. If you would like to ensure that you’ve considered key submission criteria and that your app is of the highest quality, this free live training is for you!

Join Rob S. Miles and Andy Wigley once again (both MS Press authors and MVP’s) for an engaging training on advanced topics for Windows Phone 7 application and game development.

We’re also including a session on Windows Phone Design and Designing with Blend, taught by Microsoft SME’s Bryan Agnetta and Jon Harris. Bryan is a Senior User interface Program Manager in the design studio for Windows Phone 7 team. His responsibilities include managing the Design Integration team and Program Manager for Application development in the studio. His 9+ year tenure at Microsoft has all been with the Windows Phone User Experience team. Jon is the Senior Product Manager for Expression Blend and SketchFlow. He joined Microsoft as the first User Experience Evangelist! And now 4 years later, 4 releases of Blend, 4 releases of Silverlight and a new release of Blend 4 for Windows Phone… you get the benefit of his expertise in this session.

The last hour is dedicated to the questions you have. We’ve pulled together a panel of Microsoft SME’s in addition to Rob, Andy, Jon and Bryan. Through the Live Meeting Q&A function, you can get all your Windows Phone 7 development questions answered real time.

Sign up for both Part One and Part Two to get full coverage.

Here’s the agenda:

Part One: Tuesday, September 21, 2010, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. EDT

Click here to register for Part One.

Part Two: September 21, 2010, 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. EDT

Click here to register for Part Two.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

If you’re in Montreal on September 25th and want to learn about developing BI applications – that’s BI as in “Business Intelligence” — La Communauté .NET Montreal’s Samedi.NET event, Introduction au BI, is exactly what you need.

Here’s what the event site says:

La Communauté .NET vous propose une journée de formation complète sur le B.I. Le but de la journée est de de faire un tour d’horizon des bases et des techonogies de B.I.  Le public cible est un développeur .NET ou un DBA n’ayant jamais fait de B.I. Le format de la journée est "hands-on" avec une série de démos ayant une suite logique.

And here’s my best shot at translation, courtesy of my high school French classes and youthful dalliances with a Quebecoise or two:

Montreal’s .NET Community will be presenting a day’s worth of information on BI. Its goal is to give you an overview of BI basics and technologies. The intended audience is a .NET developer or a DBA who’s never done BI before. It’ll be a hands-on event featuring a series of demos to illustrate the concepts.

Here’s the schedule – note that it’s subject to change:

The sessions will be presented in a classroom-style amphitheatre to make it easier to take notes. They recommend bringing paper and your favourite writing implement; while you can bring a computer to take notes, they can’t guarantee that electrical outlets will be nearby (bring an extension cord). Note that the event will not have internet access.

To attend the event, you have to be a member of La Communauté .NET Montreal, which you can join via their site. The registration fee for the event is $5 plus service charges, and as the event site says, “$5 c’est pas tellement cher”. (Loosely translated, that means “five bucks ain’t gonna hurt your wallet.”)

Want to find out more? Visit the event site for Introduction au BI.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Bob Caswell from Microsoft’s Learning division told me about some free online training that’s available for developers wanting to get a head-start on Windows Phone 7 Development. Here’s the skinny from the Born to Learn blog:

Get Trained for FREE – Windows Phone 7 Jump Start

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start is a FREE virtual live class for developers interested in developing applications and games for Windows Phone 7.  The course is organized into four virtual instructor-led sessions that are of 3-hour duration.  They will be presented by forthcoming MS Press authors and MVP’s, Andy Wigley and Rob Miles. It will provide developers a jump start for developing Windows Phone 7 applications.  The labs will be completed offline with office hours access to the instructors.

The dates for these course sessions are:

• July 20 – 11am (EST) / 8am (PST): Session One: Getting Started with Microsoft Windows Phone and Silverlight
• July 20 – 4pm (EST) / 1pm (PST): Session Two: Programming Game Applications with XNA
• July 22 – 11am (EST) / 8am (PST): Session Three:  Programming Applications with Silverlight
• July 22 – 4pm (EST) / 1pm (PST): Session Four:  Review and Wrap Up

Space is limited, so go register for the course now!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

You’ve seen the announcement and perhaps you’ve downloaded the beta of the Windows Phone 7 dev tools (if you haven’t, do it now!)

Now that you’ve got the tools, what’s next? Will they just lie there, dormant on your hard drive, or are you going to use them and be a trailblazer on a brand new mobile platform?

If you’re looking for intense training with personal attention by a highly-rated presenter with Silverlight and cloud development expertise, you’ll want to check out DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps. They’re being presented by Colin Melia, who’s presented at TechDays, wrote the Silverlight demo app that we used for the EnergizeIT tour and is one of our go-to guys for Windows Azure – simply put, the guy knows his stuff.

The Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps are serious courses – two full days of in-class hands-on training in which Colin will explain the Windows Phone 7 platform and especially Silverlight as it runs on Windows Phone, with all the details on Silverlight programming techniques, controls, templates, styling, resources, animation, data binding, navigation, interfaces and all those things you need to know about to build a mobile app. The course will mostly cover the Silverlight side of Windows Phone development, although there will be a section on game development with XNA.

If you’re a busy developer who’s having trouble setting aside time to learn all those separate bits that go into Windows Phone development – Silverlight, calling on web services, the Windows Phone-specific APIs, using information for sensors such as GPS and accelerometers and dealing with the constraints of mobile devices – this course is well worth the money. It’ll give you the kick start you start writing apps and capitalize on the wide-open marketplace of Windows Phone apps.

The bootcamps take place in the following cities on the following dates:

• Montreal: Monday, August 23 and Tuesday, August 24 at the Microsoft office
• Vancouver: Monday, August 30 and Tuesday, August 31 at the Sutton Place Hotel
• Ottawa: Thursday, September 2 and Friday, September 3 at the Microsoft office
• Toronto: Tuesday, September 7 and Wednesday, September 8 at Microsoft’s downtown office

The registration fee is CDN$999 for the full-day training session, and you can save $100 by using the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP when you register. I repeat:

For the full details on the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, see the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Want some hardcore training from a developer who’s been doing Windows Phone 7 development since the tools were released in March? Then you’ll want to check out DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, taking place late this summer in Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto.

The Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp is an intense two-day training session run by indie training conference organizers DevTeach and will be hosted by Colin Melia, principal architect for DreamDigital. Colin’s knows a lot about Silverlight and cloud technologies and will share this knowledge at the Bootcamp, showing you how to make great mobile user interfaces as well as how to write phone apps that harness the power of networked-based services such as notification and location services as well as data access and isolated storage.

What You’ll Need to Know

Colin’s going to dive right into the nitty-gritty of developing apps for Windows Phone 7, and there’s quite a bit of material to cover, so you should at least be familiar with the following to get the most out of the Bootcamp:

• Visual Studio 2008 or 2010
  (You can familiarize yourself with these by downloading the free Visual C# 2010 Express or Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone)
• The C# programming language, or something similar
  (If you’re a Java developer you should find the transition pretty easy; developers using other object-oriented programming languages shouldn’t have too much difficulty following C#)
• The .NET programming framework
  (Actually, pretty easy to grasp, especially with the assistance of Visual Studio)
• XML
  (A basic understanding will do)

What You Won’t Need to Know

You won’t need to have any experience with Silverlight or phone development – the Bootcamp’s covering that!

What You’ll Need to Bring

You’ll need to bring your own laptop running Windows 7 or Vista SP2 with “an appropriate up-to-date set of tools installed and functioning”. That means Visual Studio 2010 or at least Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone.

When and Where?

The Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps will be limited to 25 seats in order for you to be able to interact better with Colin, so register as soon as you can! They’ll be taking place in these cities:

• Montreal: Monday, August 23 and Tuesday, August 24 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel
• Vancouver: Monday, August 30 and Tuesday, August 31 at the Sutton Place Hotel
• Ottawa: Thursday, September 2 and Friday, September 3 at a location to be announced
• Toronto: Tuesday, September 7 and Wednesday, September 8 at a location to be announced

The registration fee is CAD$999 for the two-day training session, and you can save $100 by providing the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP when you register.

For More Information

If you’d like to know more about the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, visit DevTeach’s site, and particularly their special page devoted to the Bootcamp.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, and it’ll be going live very soon – expect to hear a number of announcements about it from next week’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC).

I’ll be posting articles showing you how to get into developing on Azure, but if you want to get a head start in the meantime, a good place to go is MSDev, Microsoft’s site that’s packed to the rafters with video training on all sorts of Microsoft platform development topics. There’s a series of training videos covering Azure development, including:

• Windows Azure Overview
• Windows Azure Fundamentals
• Developing a Windows Azure Application
• Microsoft SQL Azure Overview for Developers

…and more videos are on the way.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The second installment of the Ignite Your Career webcasts takes place tomorrow, Thursday, September 17th, from 12:00 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern (9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Pacific). This will be the second of four Ignite Your Career webcasts taking place this month, and this week’s topic will be Internal or External Training – Know Your Options. Here’s the abstract:

Maintaining your technical and personal skill sets are critical to being successful in the job you already have and anything you might be looking to progress into. Unfortunately, the option of external training might not be available to you at this point in time. How can you take advantage of internal resources like job shadowing, mentoring, internal courses, study groups as well as external training activities when available? How can you pitch setting up new training options to your team and managers? Looking externally – what about valuable online free offerings, professional associations and community events? This session will bring information together to equip you with the knowledge and resources required to get the ball rolling.

The panel of industry experts speaking at this webcast will be:

• Barry Gervin, ObjectSharp
• Brian Bourne, CMS Consulting
• Maurizio Laudisa, LifeLabs
• Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight

Ignite Your Career is presented by Microsoft Canada and is about helping you make the most out of your career and make the best career choices. As such, it’s “platform neutral” – whether you develop on .NET, the iPhone or Ruby on Rails, the topics covered in Ignite Your Career apply to you.

It doesn’t cost a thing to catch an Ignite Your Career webcast. Simply register at the Ignite Your Career site.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Over at Canadian Developer Connection, my friend and co-evangelist John Bristowe has an article on Develeoper Resources for Getting Started with Windows 7 RTM.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

If you’ve been meaning to get into building rich internet applications using Silverlight, you might want to check out The Silverlight Tour. Billed as “a worldwide three-day course on Silverlight”, the Tour mixes lectures, demonstrations and hands on labs, covering Silverlight development from three angles:

• Design
• Development
• Server-Side Code

The Silverlight Tour people have been keeping up with the latest developments. While they cover development in Silverlight 2, they’ve already updated their seminars to cover the latest and greatest features in the upcoming Silverlight 3.

According to their site, here’s what you get:

• 3 days of intensive Silverlight 2 and 3
• Coverage of Expression Blend and Visual Studio
• Architect Silverlight Solutions
• Understand the full Control Model and Customization
• Data Access and Web Services

The full details are covered in their workshop outline.

They’ve announced a set of Canadian tour dates, most of which are in the summer:

• Montreal: July 13 – 15
• Vancouver: July 20 – 22
• Ottawa: August 3 – 5
• Quebec City: August 10-12
• Toronto: November 11 – 13

Registration for this hardcore three-day workshop is $1995 – the registration page is here.