TechDays 2008 in Dallas

Today I’m speaking at TechDays with Roger Guess (of Silverlight Addict fame!) on WPF. This is going to be an awesome talk.. .if you are in the Dallas area be sure to stop by!

I’ve posted the Slides and Demo code on SkyDrive. 

    

Enjoy!

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Texas A&M University .NET User Group Next Wednesday

tamudnug_logo

Ineta_LogoNext Wednesday (November 5th, 2008) I’ll be heading down to College Station, TX for INETA to present at the Texas A&M University .NET User Group’s lunch time meeting.

   I’ll either be presenting on "Developer Designer Zen – Bringing two worlds together" or "Dependency Injection with Silverlight (A Silverlight Tale of Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control and the Strategy Pattern) "

It looks like the User Group as a list server (dotnet@listserv.tamu.edu) set up so that you can participate in the User Group conversation.

I’m looking forward to meeting the .NET developers at Texas A&M and then afterwards I’m planning on meeting up with some friends from Always Creative, then it’s off to my first visit to the Improving Rural Sourcing Development Center that’s based in College Station.

If you’re in the area be sure to drop by!

Texas A and M + net

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Register now for VS Live Dallas and Save $300!

VsLive

VS Live, the largest independent professional developer conference on Microsoft technologies, is coming to Dallas December 8th - 11, 2008!. I’ve been given a special registration code that I can offer to you that will save you $300 off of your registration at the next VS Live Dallas.

Register now with code: SPJEN to save $300!

I’ll be speaking on

See you there!

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Microsoft Live ID to Support Open ID

openid_LiveId

Looks like Microsoft just announced their plans to support OpenID via Live ID at the Microsoft PDC conference. Now, I’m not *cough* saying that I said they should do this way back in March *cough* or anything… but I will say that I still think that this is a great idea! Now that LiveID will support OpenID and since we can already use CardSpace with OpenID… here’s to hoping that the world (wide web) will be a better place without Usernames and Passwords every where I go!

Public Service Announcement: Friends don’t let friends use passwords on the Internet.

For those of you keeping track… that’s 2 world changing ideas down, 7 more to go, but I think that the first 2 are the most important anyway.    ;)

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Not At PDC? Do this instead!

NotAtPDC First, follow the virtual event going on this week on Twitter, Live Meeting and other various virtual platforms. Get all of the updates at http://notatpdc.com/ (like the schedule and presenters) drop them a line if you have a topic that you’d like to speak on this week. Just think.. you could be a presenter at NotAtPDC2008!

As a side note: I love community driven events like this! the .NET community literally, and nearly spontaneously launched NOT AT PDC Sunday night, and it looks live and active by Monday morning. Great work every one! (especially @RachelAppel and @ChrisLove)

OK, so now anyone "attending" NotAtPDC can also check out the other PDC’s keynote this morning as it will be streamed over the Internet too. (thanks for participating Microsoft! ;) )

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Other upcoming events that you should sign up for

AgileDotNet2008
The AgileDotNet Conference is a 1 day conference being put on by Microsoft, Improving Enterprises and the Dallas C# SIG dealing with bringing agile methodologies to .NET developers and especially dealing with the challenges of implementing an agile process in an enterprise environment. It’s gonna be awesome. Check out this video, then go sign up! (oh yeah, did I mention that it’s free!)

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This one will cost you$100 USD, but this content looks like it’ll will be well worth it! Microsoft is putting on a "traveling road show" covering a lot of the topics that are coming out of "the other PDC" this week. Check out their tour schedule and you’ll see that there is probably one coming to a city near you!

Hope to "see" you there!

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What does Agile mean to you? - AgileDotNet Conference 2008 is November 14th!

AgileDotNet2008

It looks like this was just posted over at CommunityCast.tv

After the Tulsa TechFest this year we went around and asked several attendees and speakers what Agile Development was to them… then we asked some of the non-attendees that happened to be in the area. Here are some of the responses.

Awesome! I’ve been working with Todd, and the team from Improving and from Microsoft to do some of the initial planning and web site work. I’m very excited about this 1 day conference. If you’ve been struggling to embrace a more agile methodology with your team, or if you thought that being agile meant that you had to use Java and only open source tools, then the AgileDotNet Conference is for you!

From the site:

an exciting one-day event to bring together the world of Microsoft .NET development with the world of Agile methods. Designed for both those experienced with Agile techniques and for those new to them, attendees can expect interesting presentations based on real-world experience

Plus, it looks like there will be a full Development Track, Business/Project Manager’s Track and a Requirements Gathering and QA Track… so everyone on your team should be covered!

Sign up now for the AgileDotNet Conference 2008! See you there!

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An HTML Public Service Announcement

Because friends don’t let friends use HTML Tables …

I’ve been spending more time lately working in MVC and MVP, (specifically M-V-VM) style applications. I thought that it would be a good time to pull out some of the great MVC PSA’s that Adam Keys from FiveRuns and the guys from RailsEnvy put together. They started a while ago, but they keep adding more! Be sure to check out the other MVC PSA’s linked below.

Check out the other Model View Control - Public Service Announcements:

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My Presenter Mentor Presentation - Becoming a Presenter in a .NET World

Last week I mentioned that I was asked to give a 30 minute high level talk on being a technical presenter in the .NET community for the first Presenter Mentor meeting in Dallas. This was a lot of fun, I’m looking forward to seeing this group grow! Although I was speaking to a .NET centric crowd, the principals and concepts that I went in to briefly should be helpful to anyone thinking about doing a lot of presenting.

Enjoy!

Direct Slideshare Link

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Silverlight 2 for Mobile at PDC!

I noticed this announcement (below) on the Mobile site from Amit about Silverlight 2 for Mobile. If you’re going to PDC this year, then you should definitely go check out Amit’s session!

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That’s right. I said Silverlight 2 for Mobile! - you know, Silverlight with the CLR running in it… on your mobile device!

Think of how awesome that would be!

What’s the big deal?
If you’ve been following the Silverlight for Mobile space, then you’ll know that the only thing that Microsoft has been talking about up until now has been Silverlight 1 for Mobile, even at at Mix this year. If you’ve been paying attention then you might have seen this little tidbit of a roadmap from Todd (technical evangelist from Microsoft).

Why am I excited?
While I think that most Silverlight for Mobile applications will focus on mobile gaming and consumer "widgets" (think: rich mobile widgets for mapping, weather and traffic notifications, etc..) I am most excited about the possibility of creating robust mobile applications for enterprise customers line of business applications. I’m specifically thinking about applications that leverage Test-Driven development practices,  Dependency Injection, and Model-View-View Presenter designs for robust flexibility and the ability to multi-target the same rich application for web and mobile web with multiple views.

MVVP-Silverlight-Mobile

My Take
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to talk about, other than the session title at PDC. But I will say that even the idea of having Silverlight 2 on a mobile device is truly exciting!

I’m guessing that there will be more to talk about after PDC.  I can’t wait!

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Presenter Mentor Kicks Off Today!

bob-incredibles This is a personal reminder that Presenter Mentor kicks off today at the Microsoft Las Colinas building from 11am to 1pm.

What is Presenter Mentor? From the site:

Presenter Mentor is a new user group whose goal is to develop local technical speakers. Have you ever wanted to speak at a user group meeting? Would you like to hobnob with the other speakers at TechFest? This is your opportunity to get on the agenda at a local user group or event.

Today I’ll be kicking things off to talk about "Public Speaking for .NET". This will be sort of big picture look at public speaking and the broader .NET community. I’m looking forward to it! Go check out the site, Dave’s comments, and then head over to CodeZone to register.

Hope to see you there!

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