Global Nerdy

Billing itself as the biggest mobile development conference in Canada, MobileTeach will take place in Montreal from Monday, May 30th through Friday, June 3rd. It’s put on by our friends at DevTeach and part of the annual DevTeach conference (also taking place May 30th – June 3rd) and will cover Windows Phone 7 development along with development for the Esteemed Competition’s platforms.

Among MobileTeach’s sessions on Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight are:

• What you should know about WP7 Dev
• WP7 high-end app pitfalls and how to avoid them
• Secure and Personalize with WCF RIA Services
• Async Calls in Silverlight and WPF clients
• Optimizing Silverlight animation

There will also be a full-day post-conference Windows Phone 7 workshop on Friday, June 3rd run by our good friend Colin Melia, who’ll get you up to speed on Windows Phone development topics, including:

• Silverlight Development
• UI Design
• Data Binding & Data Access
• Development Tools
• Notification Services
• Cloud Services
• MVVM
• Application Model & Navigation
• Input
• Shell Integration
• Devices Integration
• Building Phone-compatible Services
• Marketplace policies
• and other select topics requested and a selection of XNA topics

For all the details, see the MobileTeach site.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I’m told that if Brandon Foy’s funky indie ad (as in it wasn’t commissioned by Microsoft; he just came up with the idea and made it himself) for Windows Phone 7 gets 200,000 views, it’ll get aired in a national spot. Let’s give this young digital artist’s career a jump-start, shall we?

Brandon also created this ad (also for Windows Phone 7):

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

More IE9 / WP7 Boot Camps? Where and When?

We’ve had some great Internet Explorer 9 / Windows Phone 7 Boot Camps in many cities across Canada already, and here are two more!

The Ottawa Boot Camp takes place on Wednesday, May 11th. It runs all day (8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) and takes place at the National Arts Centre (53 Elgin Street, at Confederation Square) in the Panorama Room. This event is free, but you should register to attend.

Edmonton’s Boot Camp happens on Tuesday, May 17th. It runs all day (8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) and takes place at the Art Gallery of Alberta’s Ledcor Theatre (2 Sir Winston Churchill Square). This event is free, but you should register to attend.

What’s on the Agenda?

These boot camps will be all about making the most of IE9 and WP7. Internet Explorer 9 has released and Windows Phone is due for a couple of updates this year, so there’s never been a better time to get up to speed on these two technologies. That’s why we’re holding boot camps in cities across Canada to help you get the most out of both. These free (that’s right, free, as in you-don’t-pay-nuthin’) events will feature the sessions below.

The Internet Explorer Sessions (in the morning)

A Lap Around Internet Explorer 9 and HTML5
A look at IE9’s support for the troika that collectively goes by the name “HTML5”: HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. You’ll see how standards compliance and the resulting “same markup” will make life good for both developers and users and how that same markup runs faster on IE9 thanks to the newer, faster JavaScript engine and hardware acceleration.

Enhancing Pinned Sites with Internet Explorer 9
IE9’s “pinned sites” feature makes web apps feel more like desktop apps by letting users add website to the taskbar and start menu and let developers add custom context menus to pinned site icons, provide visual notifications on the task bar with icon overlays and even add custom buttons on the default thumbnail preview. This session will show you how to best use this feature and also cover IE9’s developer tools.

The Windows Phone Sessions (in the afternoon)

Windows Phone 7 Silverlight Recipes
You’ve read the introductory material and written “Hello World” on the Phone, and you’re now thinking of starting a bigger project. You’re now asking this question: “How do I do X on Windows Phone?”. This session is the answer. You’ll learn all the recipes for building blocks of applications, which you can use, modify and combine in your own Windows Phone 7 apps.

Windows Phone 7 XNA Kickstart
Haven’t you always wanted to write a videogame, but could never get started? This is your chance. This session will show you the basics of XNA, the game development framework for Windows Phone (and the Xbox 360 and Windows too!). You’ll get your feet wet writing 2D videogames, learn some game coding techniques and get you need to start you on your journey as a game developer.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

…and there’ve been quite a few since my announcement that I was leaving Microsoft, but I’ve had another gig lined up for a while now. After all, Tarzan doesn’t let go of the last vine until he’s got a firm grip on the next one, right?

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

As a Windows Phone "Champ" — one of a select group of developer evangelists whose job is to get developers to build apps for Windows Phone – I get a lot of direction from Brandon Watson, whose business card reads “Director, Developer Experience, Windows Phone”. The dude is smart, savvy in the ways of both business and geekery and driven in that way that only people who participate in Ironman triathlons are (yup, he does that). He’s exactly the sort of guy who should be heading up the developer experience part of Windows Phone.

eWeek has an article about him titled Brandon Watson: The Man Behind Microsoft`s Windows Phone Developer Push. In it, they talk about his background, how he sees his role, the upcoming stuff being delivered in the next update of Windows Phone, and the challenges that he and the Windows Phone Team and Champs face.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

One of the Canadians at MIX11 was Imaginet’s Miguel Carrasco, whom you may have seen either speaking or track hosting last year at TechDays. He’s a developer, UI guy and Expression Blend MVP, and as such, the content of the MIX conference was exactly the kind of stuff that he was interested in. I caught him at the very end of the last day to talk about what he checked out at MIX, what he was up to at Imaginet, and the launch of Imaginet’s new service, Imaginet Interactive; it’s all captured in the video above.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

A Shallow Pool

The subtitle of the Wall Street Journal article Mobile App Talent Pool is Shallow tells the story: “Companies Scramble for Engineers Who Can Write Software for Smartphones”. If you’ve got the mobile dev know-how, you can write your own ticket anywhere.

Some of the key take-aways of the article:

• Companies are competing fiercely with each other in an attempt to snap up mobile development talent – to the point where the competition is a “bottleneck”.
• The number of developers with mobile development skills isn’t enough to meet the demand, which has been increasing at a greater rate than for other types of development.
• The shortage of mobile talent means that companies are willing to find developers with promise and invest in getting them trained to develop mobile applications.
• The wages are good: average pay among mobile developers and designers is higher, with a Dice.com survey taken last fall reporting that experience mobile developers are raking in US$90K – $150K.

Deep Opportunities

If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, you know all about the importance of having a head start. The book is full of king-sized success stories, from Bill Gates to the Beatles to hockey players to big Manhattan lawyers, all of whom were passionate about something, honed their skills and then capitalized on that experience when the opportunities arose.

If you’re a .NET developer, Windows Phone is a “lining up of the planets” that represents an opportunity that you can capitalize on:

• You already have a head start on Windows Phone development! You use Visual Studio (either the full version or the free Express edition) as your IDE, familiar languages like C# and VB, and the .NET framework. If you’ve been working with Silverlight or XNA, you’re even father ahead of the game.
• You can stand out. The growth in the number of apps in Windows Phone’s marketplace is pretty impressive; about 12,000 since November and climbing fast. It’s the perfect opportunity for someone trying to make a name: small enough that you can make a splash, but big enough so that the splash you make actually matters.
• We’ve got your back. Microsoft has team of Windows Phone 7 “Champs”, whose mission is to make sure that you get the help, information and support as you write Windows Phone apps. As far as I know, the Esteemed Competition doesn’t have a team that has this level of support for developers building on their platforms.

Hackfests in Vancouver and Toronto Tomorrow

If you’ve been thinking about getting into Windows Phone development and you’re in the Vancouver or Toronto areas, you’re in luck – we’ve got free Windows Phone Hackfests in those cities tomorrow! These are events where you can learn about Windows Phone development, try your hand at it, and share ideas for apps. Here are the details:

• Vancouver’s Hackfest takes place this Saturday, April 16th from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. at BCIT Burnaby Campus (3700 Willingdon Avenue, Burnaby), Building SW3, Room 1710. This event is free – click here to register!
• Toronto’s Hackfest also takes place this Saturday, April 16th from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the ObjectSharp offices (11 King Street West, Toronto), suite 1400. This event is free – click here to register!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.