Microsoft Canada is working with Yorkville Media Centre (YMC), a downtown Toronto learning facility where where you can learn the skills you need to work in digital media. Typically, YMC covers building websites with open source technologies like PHP, MySQL and WordPress, but this time, they’re doing so with a slight twist: they’ll still be building a site on open source technologies, but they’ll be doing so with Microsoft development tools and products such as the Web Platform Installer.
The course runs for nine weeks and takes place for a few hours every Saturday, and as an added bonus, they’ll be recording the whole thing as a series of documentary-style videos. You’ll see a season at Yorkville Media Centre, from the start where they introduce both open source and Microsoft tools and technologies right to the end, where they’ll have produced a fully-functioning web application.
Here’s their first video, Session 1: Industry Overview, which introduces YMC’s Mark Reale, the rest of Yorkville Media Centre and the people taking the course:
We’ll post these videos here as Yorkville Media Centre release them throughout the season. If you’re looking to learn about WordPress on Azure, WebMatrix, the Web Platform Installer, Web Gallery or any other Microsoft web goodies, check out these videos!
I’m in London, Ontario with Academic Developer Evangelist Associate Will Hoang to attend, exhibit and speak on a discussion panel at the DIG – that’s Digital Interactive Gaming – conference, which takes place on Thursday, November 18th and Friday, November 19th. DIG is all about encouraging growth in the videogame industry by bringing together game developers, tech companies, publishers and other associated folk together to discuss, share ideas about, and yes – play – games.
On Thursday from 3:45 to 5:00 p.m., I’ll be participating in a panel discussion titled The New Social Gaming Paradigm, where we’ll talk about social and online games and the sorts of challenges and opportunities that will arise from them. The other participants will be:
We’ll also be in the Game Zone of the exhibitor area, with Xbox 360s featuring big commercial and indie games, Kinects and the Kinect games Kinect Adventures and the incredibly popular Dance Central, PCs running Visual Studio and XNA Game Studio, and Windows Phone 7s also loaded with games. Come on down, say hi, and talk to us about making games with XNA for Windows, Xbox and the Phone!
Even though Windows Phone 7 is a new platform, there a lot of ground to cover. There are not one, but two programming frameworks, the touchscreen, GPS and other sensor input, the constraints of a smaller screen, battery life and on-the-go uses cases, and selling your apps or making them available for free through Marketplace. It’s a lot to absorb, and while I’m sure you’re all clever people, you might appreciate a tour of Windows Phone specifically tailored for the developer. Especially if it’s free!
If you’re thinking about getting started with Windows Phone 7 development and want to meet other like-minded developers in your area, come to our upcoming Windows Phone Developer Briefings. They’re free of charge to attend, feature sessions delivered by knowledgeable Windows Phone 7 developers from your community and will provide you with enough material to get you started.
Apps with Silverlight This session covers Silverlight. Microsoft’s event-driven framework for building interactive applications for the desktop, web and phone. If you’re building an “information”, “lifestyle” or “social” app, you’ll probably want to use Silverlight.
7:15 – 8:15 p.m.
Games with XNA This session covers XNA, the other Windows Phone 7 framework, designed specifically for developing games for Windows, Xbox 360 and the Phone. If you’re building a game, simulation or other app that needs to manipulate 2D sprites or 3D graphics, you’ll probably want to use XNA.
8:30 – 9:00 p.m.
Next Steps With the basics of development for Windows Phone 7 explained, it’s now time to talk about selling (or giving away) your apps, and other considerations you’ll need to take into account when developing for Windows Phone 7.
Register today! Click on one of the cities below to register for the briefing in that city:
Gamercamp takes place today and tomorrow in Toronto! Billed as “two days of living, breathing and playing video games”, it’s a conference for people who make – or aspire to make – videogames, love to think and talk about them, and of course, play them.
I’ll be there today, catching the keynotes, and tomorrow, demoing XNA, Xboxes with Kinect and Windows Phone (yup, Microsoft’s a sponsor).
Gamercamp spans two days (here’s the agenda), with a different location for each day:
It’s the 21st century, and that means it’s time to get your news the 21st century way: not read by some Western talking head on TV, but in the form of Chinese computer-generated animation!
NMA News are aware of their popularity of their YouTube postings and have since expanded to create a “World Edition” version of their channel in English. The latest posting to this channel is an amusing gangsta rap number that does a pretty decent “101 level” introduction to the currency battle between the U.S. and China, as rapped by Hu Jintao and Barack Obama:
Money is not the only resource over which “Westerners” and “Asians” seem to be doing battle – universities are another one. The Canadian magazine Macleans (for those of you outside Canada, think Newsweek with a more conservative bent) publishes an annual issue in which they rank Canada’s universities and feature stories on university life and other issues surrounding post-secondary education. As they are wont to do, Macleans went straight for the cultural “hot button” with an article titled Too Asian?, which starts off with these paragraphs:
When Alexandra and her friend Rachel, both graduates of Toronto’s Havergal College, an all-girls private school, were deciding which university to go to, they didn’t even bother considering the University of Toronto. “The only people from our school who went to U of T were Asian,” explains Alexandra, a second-year student who looks like a girl from an Aritzia billboard. “All the white kids,” she says, “go to Queen’s, Western and McGill.”
Alexandra eventually chose the University of Western Ontario. Her younger brother, now a high school senior deciding where he’d like to go, will head “either east, west or to McGill”—unusual academic options, but in keeping with what he wants from his university experience. “East would suit him because it’s chill, out west he could be a ski bum,” says Alexandra, who explains her little brother wants to study hard, but is also looking for a good time—which rules out U of T, a school with an academic reputation that can be a bit of a killjoy.
Or, as Alexandra puts it—she asked that her real name not be used in this article, and broached the topic of race at universities hesitantly—a “reputation of being Asian.”
Those of you who know me well know that I went to one of the “white kids” schools – Crazy Go Nuts University, a.k.a. Queen’s. For me, it’ wasn’t that University of Toronto was too Asian, but too close to home; going there felt like flying to Paris and eating at McDonald’s. Queen’s, and for that matter, the other “Canadian Ivies” Western and McGill (where my sister did her undergrad), were popular choices with those Asian students who wanted to work both sides of the cultural divide. I led an experience more akin to Harold and Kumar than Long Duk Dong, but still majored in computer science. Crazy Go Nuts University let me sharpen both my computer programming skills and schmooze-fu, and both have proven to be a handy yin and yang that have kept me quite recession-proof (I even ended up benefiting from the econopocalypse of 2008).
To anyone who’s a bit freaked out over Asians taking over universities, I have two things to say:
Would it kill you to crack open a math book once in a while and solve for x?
Remember the sage words of “Jack” (the TV exec on 30 Rock played by Alec Baldwin): “This country was built by immigrants. The first generation works their fingers to the bone building it from the ground up. The second generation goes to college, drives innovation, and makes a better life for their families. The third generation…[sigh] snowboards and takes improv classes.”
Just a few more pictures from TechDays Ottawa, starting with Louis-Philippe Pinsonneault from RunAtServer:
Here’s Wes MacDonald doing the presentation on SharePoint development for ASP.NET developers:
Meanwhile, in the “Local Flavours” track, Colin Melia did a session in which he built a Windows Phone 7 application from “File-> New”, right in front the audience, in a session titled “From Zero to Phone App in 60 Minutes”:
“Release the Kraken!”
Here’s Telerik’sEvan Hutnick dropping some ASP.NET MVC science in the last session on the last day:
And finally, a shot of things to come: the probable venue for TechDays Ottawa next year – the new convention centre, which we expect will be finished in a few months…
It’s the 21st century, and that means it’s time to get your news the 21st century way: not read by some Western talking head on TV, but in the form of Chinese computer-generated animation! 
