Developing UX

Several people have asked me, “when are the final details going to be posted?”, Well, I’m happy to finally announce them! If you haven’t been following the Fit in February Developer Challenge, then it’s easy to catch up! Basically, it’s a challenge for developers (but anyone can participate) through the month of February, the prizes are a MSDN Team Suite Subscription, a Zune, and an 80GB VSTS Logo’d Zune! (very cool and geeky)

It’s easy to catch up… go check out the official site and then join the Facebook group!

Microsoft has put on several of these events all over the US. If you missed the Microsoft PDC Conference then the Dallas event on Monday is the best local place to get a lot of the same information on what’s new with .NET and the future roadmap of the Microsoft Platform. (Rich UX, RIA’s, Cloud Computing , Visual Studio 2010, etc…)

From the official site:

Missed the PDC? Catch the content LIVE at the MSDN Developer Conference. Register Today!

We’re bringing the PDC to you!

I’ll be there speaking about Developing Data-Centric Applications Using the WPF DataGrid and the new WPF Ribbon Controls with Visual Studio 2010. (I know… that’s a mouthful!) 

I’m looking forward to it and hope to see you there!

The last couple of months I’ve done a lot of speaking around Silverlight as well as developed a 3 day Silverlight class for Improving (where I work). This is one of the demos / exercises from that class. Enjoy!

Open in New Window

The Developer Challenge that I announced on Friday is gaining some awesome momentum! The Facebook group now has over 80 members (in 3 days) and in addition to the MSDN Team Suit that I am giving away, Brian Sampica has offered up a Zune, and the VSTS Team just added a VSTS Logo’d 80GB Black Zune to the mix!

Catch all of the details over on my health blog – Less of Me – then get ready to get active in February!

I just posted this on my new health blog. I’m re-posting it here because there is a definite overlap to this contest between getting healthy and the developers audience here.

Wednesday night I spoke at the North Dallas .NET User Group where I announced this for the first time publically… unless you count twitter (some good twitter feed back as well)

So Here’s the deal…. if you’ve seen my new health blog you’ll know that I’ve been having a lot a success lately getting back in shape with an eating plan. I feel great and I’d like to keep the momentum going and help “spread the love”. Too many developers are out of shape (including me).

To help keep this going I’m going to run a contest on my health blog in February: I don’t have all of the details worked out yet, but I do know that I’m going to give out a free subscription to MSDN Team Suit to the winner (approx $10,000 retail value!).

so, tune in, subscribe, or follow me on twitter and look for the final details to get announced here on my health blog before February. Also, if you have any suggestions on how we could do this fairly and accurately on line, leave a comment over there!

(I turned off comments on this post… so that they could go over here.)

We’re a bit past the new year… but I finally got around to trying this.

“I, Caleb Jenkins, herby resolve to Cut back on admitting fault at the office”

Hmmm… that resolution doesn’t seem very empowering or agile? Maybe you’ll have a better resolution than I had. I really like how the “wheels” look like they are rolling when really it’s just a simple gradient applied to the top and bottom of the visible area of a list box. Nice technique! Go try it out!

Enjoy!

I always like going up to the North Dallas DNUG. The first (pilot) CommunityCast.tv episode was shot there… and the last time that I was there Jason Alexander showed of Graffiti before Telligent had it released (CommunityCast episode 6).

Side Note: I just realized that Jason updates his blog less than I update  CommunityCast.   – go follow his twitter instead

Tonight I’ll be talking about Microsoft Silverlight, specifically some of the Data Binding and Visual Template features. This is a fun talk, but there is a lot to cover! We’ll start with data binding to business objects and then move to creating visual templates with Microsoft Expression Blend. I’ll also bring my camera so be prepared to chat about what you are doing later in the night!

If you’re in the Dallas area, be sure to stop by and check it out!

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I think that I’ve mentioned it before… but Improving Enterprises (where I work) has a single RSS feed mash up with ALL of the people at Improving that blog. You can subscribe to the feed here, or sign up for email notifications. While you’re at it, check out the cool widget from Feedburner (shown above).

Allen Hurst used Yahoo pipes to put this mash up together and then we ran the whole thing through Feedburner to give us the email and widget features. Awesome!