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Edmonton Code Camp 2009: September 26th!

Edmonton skyline, with North Saskatchewan River in foreground.

Edmonton is holding a Code Camp on September 26th, 2009! It’s going to take place at Grant MacEwan College’s downtown campus. There’s a call for speakers – if you’ve got a topic that you’d like to present, now’s the time to let them know. You can find out more at the Edmonton Code Camp site and the YEGCodeCamp Twitter account.

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Guelph Coffee and Code: Tuesday, June 23rd

"Code Monkey" coffee mug

If it’s Tuesday, it must be time for Guelph Coffee and Code! See the Coffee and Code blog for details.

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DemoCamp Toronto 21: Tuesday, July 28th

New Location: Rogers Theatre!

Rogers Building at One Mount Pleasant, Toronto.

As David Crow puts it: “It’s time for a DemoCamp Jeffersons-style. That’s right, we’re moving on up! Thanks to Mike Lee from Rogers Communications, DemoCamp 21 will be taking place at Rogers Theatre at One Mount Pleasant.

We’d like to thank everyone who attended, sponsored and survived DemoCamp Toronto 20, which was a great event. We collected your feedback from that DemoCamp, and we’re going to make a few changes that we believe will help improve the event, the hosting and networking opportunities, including:

  • More food. We’re doubling the food order.
  • Timing and flow of the presentations. It felt a little long and disjointed.
  • We’re going to change the questions and reduce the random banter.
  • We’ll make it easier to submit events, job postings and requests for help from the community.

We’re always working on making DemoCamp better! Keep those cards and letters coming!

The Details

Who Should Attend?

DemoCamp Toronto is a show-and-tell for Toronto’s entrepreneurial developers, designers, and marketers. The goal is to see new technology, meet other interesting in emerging technology, early-stage companies, and making Toronto a better place.

How Do I Present?

Everyone who wants to present must submit an application. We are looking for submissions that :

  • Inspire us;
  • Challenge our notions of software, user experience, business models, funding sources;
  • Aren’t mere derivatives or copies (if you’re thinking "we’re the next YouTube/Facebook/MySpace/TagCloud/TechCrunch," DemoCamp might not be a good fit).

The goal is to find projects, people, applications and companies that will inspire, challenge or educate people who have seen the latest and greatest on the web and around the world.

Presentation Formats

At DemoCamp, presentations are limited to 5 minutes. You get 5 minutes on stage to convey your revolutionary ideas in either a demo or an Ignite presentation.

Demos are limited to 2 slides and showing functional code or a lightning talk that is a presentation with auto-advancing slides. Ignite presentations are 20 slides by 15 seconds per slide (total 5 minutes).

Sponsors, Tickets and Free Tickets

Why do we need sponsors?  Where are the free tickets?

All very important questions. Sponsor tickets are available through EventBrite. I don’t know about you, but an event between 6pm-9pm is right during the dining hours for me. We like to provide pizza/food to help offset the beverages (aka social lubricant). Sponsorship dollars will be put towards the event costs.

There are free tickets. However, in an effort to continue to keep these tickets available, they will be announced a few days before the event. What we don’t want is a land grab, we’re trying to encourage a strong sense of community through participation. Read Joe Thornley’s thoughtful piece on why he is charging a registration fee for Third Tuesday.

We also provide corporate sponsorships at a rate of CAD$250 each. With these, you get:

  • 2 tickets
  • Your logo on event materials including DemoCamp.com web and presentation
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TechDays 2009

Microsoft TechDays Canada 2009Summer may just be starting, but we’re already working on on Microsoft’s big conference for the fall, TechDays 2009. It’s our cross-Canada conference for Developers and IT Pros that covers Microsoft tools and technologies that are available right now.

I was a presenter at TechDays 2008, and this year, I’m in charge the Developing for the Windows Platform track, responsible for choosing the sessions and training their speakers.

When and Where

TechDays 2009 takes place in September, November and December. We start with Vancouver and Toronto, the cities with the two largest venues. We leave October open for the AlignIT conferences. Things pick up again in November, when we hit these cities: Halifax, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg.

Here’s are TechDays 2009’s cities and dates:

TechDays 2009 City Conference Dates
Vancouver September 14th and 15th
Toronto September 29th and 30th
Halifax November 2nd and 3rd
Calgary November 17th and 18th
Montreal December 2nd and 3rd
Ottawa December 9th and 10th
Winnipeg December 15th and 16th

As a track owner, I will be at all the cities for the week around those dates. My plan is to try to hold a “Coffee and Code” event in each TechDays city during that week, so watch this blog for those announcements.

TechDays 2009 Tracks

TechDays 2009 will have five tracks:

  • Developing for the Microsoft Platform (mine!)
  • Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices
  • Windows Client
  • Servers, Security and Management
  • Communications and Collaboration

We’re currently in the process of choosing the sessions for each track, which spans the two days of the conference, four 75-minutes sessions per day.

Here are the details for each track:

Developing for the Microsoft Platform (This one’s mine!)

Key Technology Areas Covered:

  • Silverlight
  • Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
  • Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
  • Windows Mobile Development
  • Developing applications for Windows 7
  • Internet Explorer 8
  • ASP.NET

That’s right, I’m in charge of choosing the content and training the speakers for this track. If you have suggestions for particular topics you’d like to see in this track, email me or leave a comment!

Learning key skills to develop rich client and web-based applications on the Microsoft platform is what this track is all about. In this track you will learn how to develop and enhance your web-based applications both locally and for the Cloud. You will also learn how to leverage Visual Studio 2008 to develop applications for Windows 7 and the unique opportunities offered by this exciting new operating system. You will also learn how you can take your applications on the road with Windows Mobile.

Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices

Key Technology Areas Covered:

  • Application Lifecycle Management
  • Visual Studio Team Suite
  • Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
  • SQL Server 2008
  • Interoperating with Java, PHP, and MySQL
  • VB6 to .NET migration
This track is all about taking your skills up a notch while at the same time ensuring effective and efficient interaction with all members of the development team from architect, to developer, to tester. You will learn about the importance of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and how to leverage the Visual Studio development platform to streamline your efforts. Transitioning to new technologies is never easy so we will provide some best practices on how to transition from technologies like Visual Basic 6, Java, and others to Microsoft .NET and the Windows Platform including SQL Server.
Windows Client

Key Technology Areas Covered:

  • Windows 7
  • Application Compatibility Tools
  • XP Mode
  • Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)
  • Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP)
  • System Center Configuration Manager
  • Forefront Client Security
  • DirectAccess
  • BranchCache
As a new version of the Windows client operating system gets released you find yourself thinking about a number of issues – Will it run on my hardware? How can I deploy it efficiently across my organization? Will all of the applications we need work with the new Windows version? What are my options to ensure key applications will function properly? How can I secure our organization’s desktops? How can I provide my users with easier and secure access to our network? In the Windows Client track you will learn the skills to allow you to answer all of these questions and more. You will learn how to implement key technologies like DirectAccess and BranchCache providing a richer user experience, as well as easier administration, with the combination of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Servers, Security, and Management

Key Technology Areas Covered:

  • Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Hyper-V
  • System Center Suite of Products
  • Forefront Suite of Products
  • SQL Server 2008
In these tough economic times organizations are looking to you to help them implement technologies that will streamline operations and reduce costs. In this track you will learn how to migrate to and implement a virtualized infrastructure while also increasing availability. You will see how Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, and the System Center suite of products provide a robust solution to deploy and manage your datacenter. You will learn how to take advantage of new enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2 to enhance scalability and availability, as well as how to secure your organization from external and internal threats with the Forefront suite of security products. Automating administration allows you to focus more on key issues for the business, and we will show you how to leverage the System Center suite of products to reduce your workload while increasing your effectiveness. As well, you will learn how to take advantage of these and to use best practices to ensure your SQL Server and other server components are operating efficiently and securely.

Communications and Collaboration

Key Technology Areas Covered:

  • Microsoft Exchange 2007 and 2010
  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007
  • Visual Studio 2008 for SharePoint Development
  • Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite
  • SQL Server 2008
When it comes to ensuring your users are happy, two things might be top of mind – make sure that users can always get to their email no matter where they are; and, provide them with access to files and documents they need to work with when they need them. This track is all about teaching you the skills to keep your users happy. You will learn how to migrate to the most recent versions of Exchange and SharePoint to take advantage of the many new enhancements to safeguard your users’ data including integrated archiving in Exchange 2010, version and content management in SharePoint, and much more. You will learn how to develop enhancements to SharePoint using SharePoint Designer, and Visual Studio. You will also learn how to manage both your SharePoint and Exchange infrastructure more efficiently and ensure higher availability. Finally, you will learn how the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) can be used to reduce costs and increase availability, while also integrating it with your existing Active Directory and Exchange environments.

Who’s Presenting

Photo: Microphone in foreground, auidence in background. TechDays isn’t just about technology presentations; it’s also about building up local developer communities. We provide the session topic and presentation materials, but we want you, the developer community, to do the presentations. Whenever possible, we want people from the region to speak: developers and IT pros from Vancouver, Victoria and parts surrounding speaking at TechDays Vancouver, developers and IT pros from in and around Toronto speaking at TechDays Toronto, and so on.

As I write this, we’re contacting developers and IT pros across Canada, asking them if they’d like to present at session at the TechDays conference nearest to them. If you’ve got the presentation skills (and yes, we’ll help you sharpen them, too!) and think you might do a great job presenting at TechDays 2009, drop me a line and we’ll talk.

How Much?

It’s very, very reasonable: the early bird rate is CAD$299 – and that’s for the full two days, five tracks and breakfast and lunch and an opportunity to network with both Microsofties and your local developer community, Even if you’re in a startup living on ramen noodles, TechDays 2009 won’t break your budget.

Find Out More

You can get the full scoop on TechDays 2009 at the TechDays site, techdays.ca.

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Toronto Agile User Group Meeting: Thursday, June 25th

Dilbert comic on agile programming: "That means no more planning and no more documentation. Just start writing code and complaining." I kid because I care!

The Toronto Agile User Group’s next meeting takes place on Thursday June 25th at Microsoft Canada’s office in Mississauga (1950 Meadowvale Road – take the Mississuaga Road exit off Highway 401 and go north). This meeting will be hosted by Profile.com and will feature a panel discussion whose topic is: Agile vs. Traditional: How to Choose the Best Approach?

Here’s the abstract for the discussion:

The goal of this panel discussion is not to prove that one approach is better than other but to understand the principles of each approach with the ultimate goal of dramatically improving project performance. We will also have a quick presentation on Visual Studio Team System which includes Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) process templates and tools for Agile and CMMI processes and we’ll also discuss what’s new in VSTS 2010.

You can find out more at the meeting’s details page and in the article on the meetup at Canadian Developer Connection; you can sign up to attend at the Toronto Agile User Group’s registration page.

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16 Megabytes, Yo!

Late '60s/early '70s photo of man in "clean suit" pushing a giant hard drive on a cart in a computer room.Photo courtesy of “SirMildredPierce”.
Click the photo to see it at full size.

I’m sure that this beast of a hard drive is now dwarfed by the USB keys that they give away as swag at tech conferences.

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Guelph Coffee and Code Tonight!

Cappuccino with smiling face in the crema.

There’s a Coffee and Code in Guelph tonight, and it features a field trip! It’ll start at the usual place at the usual time – Albion Hotel (49 Norfolk Street, Guelph ON) at 7:30 p.m., but at 8:15 they’ll be heading over to Synnema at Synn Studios (121 Wyndham Street North, Suite 106, Guelph ON) to scout it out as a location for education and group project events. For more details, see the Guelph Coffee and Code Announcement on the Coffee and Code blog.