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Slice of Life: Where I am Today

I’m working out of the building known as “The Richmond” today, participating in a showcase of Windows 7-ready hardware for the media. As of this writing, I’ve done demos of Windows 7 on an HP TouchSmart computer hooked to a Sony Bravia TV equipped with DLNA for a number of journos for various media outlets including ITWorld Canada, Butterscotch and Space.

Joey devilla, standing beside a "Windows 7: Welcome!" sign

We’re all in suite 104, which is a loft-ish split-level space where Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, Sony and Toshiba have set up tables to show of their Windows 7-compatible wares. I’m perched near the door, doing demos of Windows 7 features, while the hardware guys are showing off their machines

the richmond

I’ve been here since 8 in the morning, and the journos will be visiting continuously all day until about 5:30 or so. Most nerds find this sort of dog-and-pony activity excruciating, but I find schmoozing tech and consumer press energizing, so I’m having a blast.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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TechDays Canada Roundup

TechDays Toronto Wraps Up

techdays_toronto

TechDays Toronto took place last Tuesday and Wednesday, and it was a success! Over 1200 people registered to attend, and based on the attendee comments I’ve received, both face-to-face and online, people found their experience there both valuable and enjoyable.

As much as we hope the attendees learn at TechDays, we learn a lot at TechDays too. By holding events where you get to meet us face-to-face and talk to us, we learn about what you need to boost your knowledge, skills and career. If you have any questions, comments, concerns or suggestions about TechDays, please let us know! Leave a note in the comments or feel free to drop me a line.

techdays_halifax_sold_out

When Halifax got added to the cities in TechDays Canada’s cross-country conference tour, there was some concern about how many people would register. It’s the first time we’ve held a conference of this scale and scope in the Maritimes, but it turns out that we needn’t have worried: as of Thursday, every available seat for TechDays Halifax’s venue has been sold.

Thanks for being so enthusiastic, Halifax techies, and we look forward to putting on a worthy event!

TechDays Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg Coming Up

techdays_calgary_montreal_ottawa_winnipeg

The early bird pricing – that’s $299 Canadian – is still available for the other TechDays Canada cities:

  • Calgary (November 17-18)
  • Montreal (December 2-3)
  • Ottawa (December 9-10)
  • Winnipeg (December 15-16)

With over forty intermediate- to expert-level sessions covering Windows 7, SharePoint, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server, Expression Blend, Windows Server 2008 R2, WCF, Visual Studio, Hyper-V, System Center, Silverlight and more, TechDays Canada is your chance to learn about how to make the most of the Microsoft tools and technologies that are available right now. Register today!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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One Year Ago Today…

…I was looking for a job, what with my old one having been rendered defunct by the econopocalypse (mind you, in retrospect, that was one of the luckiest breaks of my career).

Here I am in “corporate drag”, dressed up for an interview with John Oxley, who would become my manager three weeks later:

Suave!

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TechDays: Reza Alirezaei on Developing and Consuming Services For SharePoint

reza alirezaei 1

As I write this, we’re getting into the final session of TechDays Toronto, which in my track – Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform – features SharePoint guru Reza Alirezaei doing his presentation, Developing and Consuming Services for SharePoint.

If you ask me the question “What is SharePoint?”, I’d most likely give you a description that sounds like this:

how sharepoint appears to uninitiated

Here’s a more accurate description of what SharePoint is:

sharepoint_diagram

Reza’s session takes a look at another aspect of SharePoint: as a platform on which you can build and deploy custom web services that other clients can call upon.

reza alirezaei 2

Once his session’s done, TechDays Toronto will wrap up and then the tear-down process begins.

Next stop: Halifax on November 2nd and 3rd!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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TechDays: Bruce Johnson on Building RESTful Applications Using WCF

bruce johnson 2

Right now (at the time of this writing) at the Toronto edition of the TechDays cross-Canada conference, in the Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track, is Bruce Johnson – “the speaker so nice, we put him on twice!” – talking to the audience about Building RESTful Applications Using WCF.

rest

REST – as in REpresentational State Transfer – while a big thing for a lot of developers, is still only gaining traction in the Microsoft world, in which a lot of resource access is done with SOAP. Since Microsoft is more about interoperability these days, it’s important to get developers building on the Microsoft platform up to speed with REST and different ways to build RESTful services using Microsoft technologies, whether it’s ASP.NET MVC or Bruce’s area of expertise, WCF, Windows Communications Foundation.

bruce_audience

Bruce is playing to a full room, which is a good sign – it’s good to see developers interested in learning new things!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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TechDays: Bruce Johnson on “SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC Applications”, Assless Chaps, Twitter and Opportunities

bruce johnson 1

This morning’s sessions in TechDays’ Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform focuses on both the ASP.NET MVC web app framework and recommended object-oriented programming practices, namely the Model-View-Controller pattern with Colin Bowern’s presentation earlier this morning and now (at the time of this writing) the SOLID principles in Bruce Johnson’s session, SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC Applications.

Assless Chaps + Twitter = Business Opportunity

You might remember Bruce from the “Assless Chaps” story. The story can be summarized in the three tweets shown below.

First came Bruce’s response to my article about CodeCamp back in April, in which I forgot to mention the session he was doing:

lacanuck_tweet_1

I tweeted him back and then decided to throw in a jokey reply:

accordionguy_tweet_1

My thinking was: Hey, this is a conference of Microsoft developers! Yes, they’re a bright and talented bunch, and I like them, but they’re an older, corporate, more buttoned-down crowd. They’d never go for renaming a session from “Data Binding” to “Data Bondage”.

But Bruce and the Toronto Code Camp organizers surprised me – he changed the name of his session very quickly:

lacanuck_tweet_2

And since he responded to my challenge, I had to fulfill my end of the bargain:

assless_chaps_closeup

assless_chaps_behind

The “Assless Chaps” story doesn’t end there. Yesterday, while we were hanging out by the Windows 7 lounge and the “Assless Chaps” story came up. Bruce told me that our conversation on Twitter about the assless chaps actually landed his company, ObjectSharp, some business. A local developer got curious as to what the “assless chaps” business was all about in Bruce’s and my conversation on Twitter and the ensuing conversation got them talking about ObjectSharp’s services, which in turn became a contract.

The moral of the story: there’s actual business value in Twitter and assless chaps. I may have to go buy a pair (I rented the ones pictured above).

There’s a tamer version of this story in Canadian Developer Connection.

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TechDays: Colin Bowern and “Introducing ASP.NET MVC”

Colin Bowern doing his presentation at TechDays

It’s Day 2 of TechDays Toronto! and after a hearty breakfast, we’re kicking off the Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track – my track, and thus to my mind the best one – with Colin Bowen doing his presentation, Introducing ASP.NET MVC, which takes a look at the new web development framework, ASP.NET MVC. If you’ve done development with Rails, Django, CakePHP or Catalyst, you should find ASP.NET MVC familiar.

gang_of_foreheads If you’d like to learn more about ASP.NET MVC programming, the best place to get started is chapter one of the “Gang of Foreheads” book, a.k.a. Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0, which I covered in the article The Best “Chapter One” I’ve Ever Read. This particular chapter walks you  through the construction of an entire site using ASP>NET MVC – NerdDinner.com – from start to finish.

You can get a free copy of chapter one of the Gang of Foreheads book [14 MB PDF] – er, I mean Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 – which is more than enough book to get you started.

Want the source code for NerdDinner.com? Not a problem – it’s an open source project on Codeplex released under the MS-PL license (and yeah, it’s Open Source Initiative-approved!).

Want to learn more about building applications using ASP.NET MVC? Watch this space!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.