Archive for the ‘Speaking’ Category

Windows 8 from 30,000 ft ..

Posted: September 25, 2011 in Speaking, Windows 8
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Hopefully by now, most techies who follow MSFT keenly have had a chance to learn about Windows 8. BUILD Conference launched the pre-beta version of Windows 8, along with the developer tools that helps us build touch-centric Metro apps for Windows 8. There is obviously much to digest & learn .. these are the two best places to start:

To keep up with the hype, I decided to do a 20-25 min grok talk at our September Central Ohio .NET User Group [CONDG] meeting; details here. I believe we had an enthusiastic session with lot of audience interest in what’s new in Windows 8 and hope that folks enjoyed my little high-level overview. The slides for the talk can be found here. With Jeff Blankenburg (@jeffblankenburg) doing his brilliant “What’s new in Windows Phone Mango” session & me talking about Windows 8, there was no dearth of Metro UI love for the evening :)

If you attended the CONDG meeting, I would appreciate feedback. So, why is this Windows 8 stuff important? No, it is not another ecosystem that we are being asked to fill up with apps; it is WINDOWS!! And yes, that means 400 million PC users as potential customers when they eventually switch to Windows 8. And that, my developer friend, is opportunity! So, what are you building?

Adios!

Recap on “Pragmatic Windows Phone Developer” talk @ FANUG

Posted: September 1, 2011 in Speaking
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Last Tuesday, Aug 30th, I had the wonderful opportunity to head up a little north to Findlay OH and talk about Windows Phone development at the Findlay Area .NET User Group (http://www.fanug.org/). Thanks a bunch to @FANUG leader Brian Cobb (@brianjcobb) for having me over.

I thought we had very nice turn-out and hopefully I was able to get folks somewhat excited about Windows Phone & developing for it. We started out with some basics of why & where we are at with the Windows Phone platform and moved on to some demos. In retrospect though, since not many people had done Windows Phone development before, may be it would have been better to show some more basic stuff about Project templates & toolsets; guess something for me to learn & keep in mind. After the meeting, we headed out for the customary drinks at a local sports bar & had wonderful conversations over how the MSFT Surface should change the world etc. :) In all, a great experience with a wonderful group of developers, with logistics working out perfectly. Thanks @FANUG!

My slides for the day can be found here.

Also, below are some useful links if you are looking to get started with Windows Phone Development:

  • Commercial home of Windows Phone is here. Learn about the phone, features, carriers, devices & upgrades.
  • For the Windows Phone Development SDK, head over here. The App Hub is also the one-stop portal for signing up with MarketPlace Registration & application submissions. It has a large number of links to very important resources & also an active forum for Windows Phone Developers.
  • Developer Resources on App Hub here.
  • Windows Phone Team Blog is here .. tons of news & great articles.
  • What is Mango & resources for developers here.
  • Lots of Windows Phone code samples can be found here.
  • Want to look around Windows Azure? Start here for a free trial or here to activate your Azure benefits from MSDN.
  • Home for OData is here .. learn about the technology, producers, consumers & SDK.

 

Thanks to everybody who attended. I hope to be in Findlay again sometime soon.

Adios!

Mobile Smackdown & recap on DevLink 2011

Posted: August 21, 2011 in Speaking
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So, DevLink 2011 just wrapped up this Friday. For me, this was the first DevLink & hopefully many more to come. I found the conference to be rather well-organized, which regulars tell me should come as no surprise. I thought the Chattanooga Convention Center worked perfectly as venue with nice break-out rooms & plenty of space to stretch your legs. Almost every conference struggles to keep up with bandwidth-hungry geeks; so that little hiccup may well be overlooked. As for me, I drove down from Columbus & then back up. Yeah, it was long; but thankfully did not get stuck anywhere. A few friends came back with flight horror stories of connecting from ATL or DC; so in retrospect, wasn’t that bad a choice to drive.

I was going to attend this year, even if I didn’t have a speaking opportunity. However, the bonus was when Jeff Blankenburg (@jeffblankenburg) asked me to do the Windows Phone part of the now-famous Mobile Smackdowns that we are starting to see in many conferences. Essentially, the idea is to build a simple but fully-functional Twitter Stalker client in iOS, Android & Windows Phone back to back, and in 15 minutes each without using any toolkit or code snippets!! This sharp time limit is what makes it a nerve-wracking live coding experience. However, the idea is not a competition; but rather to give the audience a feel for what it is like to develop a simple application in various platforms.

So, how was the experience? The other two “victims” [as Ben calls us] were Ben Von Handorf (@benvonhandorf) for Android & John Baker (@iamthegeek) for iOS. I’m sure each of us had practiced a lot; but nothing compares to doing it live in front of a large audience watching every move, correcting mistakes & egging you on. And the best part is we are expected to talk the audience through what we are doing so that everybody has a sense of what’s going on. It’s a total adrenaline rush; but a lot of fun! I think we all did fairly well and our respective apps were functional by the end of 15 minutes. I had the additional onus of doing the WP7 part well, since I personally believe our development tools are just fantastic. Think I finished the last line of code in the dying seconds .. phew! My personal recommendation if you are doing a smackdown like this — in practice, you need to get your time down to about 10 minutes to have a decent chance of finishing the app when infront of an audience. If interested to see the Windows Phone Twitter app I tried to build, the source code may be found (here). I would always appreciate any feedback on how the process could be streamlined or how we can make the Mobile Smackdowns even more fun! Thank you for all the support & encouragement.

DevLink was also wonderful in connecting with lot of folks I talk to a lot, but don’t see very often. It was great to see people like Michael Crump, Jeff Fansler, Sarah Dutkiewicz, Michael Wood, Jeremy Likness, David Giard & Richard Dudley — all of whom are technical honchos in their respective areas. So, I always learn a lot from them and have great conversations. So, in all, great conference, awesome people, superb presentations & priceless discussions. Cheers for DevLink & looking forward to next year!

Adios!

PS:
Ben’s write-up on the smackdown is here.
John’s iOS code is here.

Windows Azure & Windows Phone Firestarter Event!

Posted: August 18, 2011 in Azure Goodness, Speaking, Windows Phone 7 Stuff
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It is no surprise that Azure as a cloud computing infrastructure plays very nicely with mobile solutions, especially Windows Phone 7. So, when Michael Collier (@MichaelCollier) came up with the idea of doing a full-day event showcasing how the two technologies/platforms may work together, I was all for it!

So was put together this event @ the Columbus Microsoft Office: http://wazwp7firestarter.eventbrite.com/. We were fortunate to have two appropriate & really awesome MSFT evangelists as speakers — Brian H Prince for Azure & Jeff Blankenburg for Windows Phone.

My session was mostly centered around data and how it may be exposed/consumed from connected systems. We took a close look at Push Notifications to a Windows Phone app from an Azure-hosted web service, including the deep-linked Secondary Live Tiles in Mango. Then, we deep-dived into OData and its uses in handling data from/to SQL Azure from multiple platforms, including consumption & CRUD operations from Windows Phone apps.

Although my session was very code/demo heavy, the slide deck may be found here. More importantly, here are very some helpful links to the labs we did during the event .. useful for anybody trying to understand how Windows Phone & Azure play together:

  • Azure supported WP7 To-Do List application from the Azure training kit: here
  • Setting up Push Notifications for a Windows Phone Weather app .. the backend service can be easily hosted in Azure: here
  • Producing OData & Consumption from Windows Phone: here
  • And most importantly, the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7: here

In all, it was a fun day with free food & nice giveaways! Hope everyone who attended enjoyed the event.

Adios!

Recap on MVC3 & WebMatrix Sessions

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Speaking, Web Development Fun
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This has been an exciting start of the year for web developers. Several products were launched for the Microsoft Web technology stack .. very cool & exciting ways to do the web better. Check out this post from the Gu (here) on a recap of all the new products launched & also for some hands-on.

So, about two weeks back, I did a couple of sessions for my Sogeti colleagues & client on what’s new in ASP.NET MVC3 & WebMatrix. There was great audience participation during the demos, indicating how nice & fun web development is shaping up to be with the MVC paradigm and the new tools.

We covered topics as follows:

  • State of the ASP.NET world
  • MVC3 Intro
  • Razor View Engine & its syntax
  • What’s new in Models, Views & Controllers
  • ViewBag & HTML Helpers
  • Layouts & convention over configuration
  • Action Filters & Caching
  • Server, client & remote validations
  • Unobstrusive Javascript
  • Nugets
  • Introduction to WebMatrix & uses
  • Templates & Open Source integration
  • SEO & ease of publishing
  • Blogging with social media integration

The slide-deck is available (here). Also, MIX11 happened last week where several exciting enhancements were released for the next web. Most noticeable among them being the IE10 preview, HTML5 goodness & EF .. topics for some other day may be.

Adios!

Mobile 101

Posted: March 28, 2011 in Speaking
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Mobile is hot these days; cannot deny, can you? I believe we are in the middle of a huge transformation within our industry; computing is turning on a dime and form factors are changing dramatically.  At the forefront of this all, are some of the latest Mobile operating systems from the big software vendors. I’m going to go ahead and say that the big three are iOS, Android & Windows Phone 7. BlackBerry, WebOS & others are off course around; but in this day of cut-throat competition, you gotta be able to attract developers. This is where I think they are failing; but I’m a dork & could be completely wrong.

We, at Sogeti USA, are a software solutions company. We routinely take technology to its limits and do what makes sense for our clients. So, it makes sense that we would be good at providing Mobile solutions on the major platforms. From a client & developer perspective, the state of affairs is a little confusing. All three major platforms have their unique development paradigms, IDEs & toolkits.  It is almost the case where a single solution needs repeated to suit apps in the various mobile platforms. This may be seen as unfortunate, since it needs developers skilled in different programming languages; but unavoidable in the near future. May be someday, rich Mobile web with HTML5 standardization will the de-facto way of doing mobile applications; but we are far from it.

So, since we have a lot of expertise in all three mobile development paradigms, it was time for a little educative showdown! Two weeks back, myself & couple of my esteemed colleagues (namely Robert Omalley, Nihar Shah, Nathan Strandafer & Thomas Weeseling) got together and decided to teach a Mobile 101 class for everyone else. They had tons of experience in iOS & Android and I was obviously going to talk about Windows Phone 7. The idea was to have a session where we lay out the state of affairs, and then pick up each mobile platform individually and compare & contrast. This would be followed by a quick smack-down – the kind we have at most mobile conferences these days. We would all build the same simple Hello World type application in the different programming environments & compare the tools of trade. We had a decent turnout & it was a blast!

Now, this is Sogeti proprietary stuff; so I cannot share with anyone outside. For interested Sogetians, you may find the slide-deck here (requires Sogeti credentials). Please get in touch with us or your local Mobility leads if there are possible mobile opportunities you want to talk about.

To me personally, this was a good eye-opener for the various platforms and the development tools. One thing stood out for me; I may be biased though. The Windows Phone 7 ecosystem is the newest mobile kid on the block. However, in terms of development ease, it seemed to have the lowest barrier to entry. The toolsets are just awesome with Visual Studio, Expression Blend & managed Silverlight/XNA runtime.  MSFT has another comfort factor – the rich developer ecosystem around its .NET technology stack. As a result, there is no shortage of folks doing awesome cool stuff & then sharing their work as nugets/toolkits.

Anyway, I thought the session was really a lot of fun. Thanks a lot to everyone who attended or helped shape this talk.

Adios!

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