*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

This past week I spent several days in Nashville, TN at the DevLink conference.  It was a little rough to get around the conference for me as I had dislocated my shoulder last Monday but I managed. 

The conference itself was great. I had tons of great conversations and met some people that I’ve exchanged emails with.

As promised to those in my session “Demystifying Windows Communication Foundation” here is the slide deck and demos.

Hope to see you back next year!

DevLink – August 5th-7th

I will be at http://devlink.net in August from the 5th – 7th, 2010.  I will be speaking on Windows Communication Foundation.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) has gone through two major releases and is now ready for prime time but many enterprise developers are still holding onto ASMX web services. In this session we are going to learn why moving to WCF is a good thing and much easier in .NET 4.0. We’ll also look at many new features in WCF 4.0 such as simplified configuration along with multiple site bindings introduced with the latest release of .NET 4.0.

SQL Saturday Baton Rouge, LA – August 14th

I will be doing a full day track on .NET.  It is a great way to get started with the platform.

This seminar is for anyone who is starting at ground zero with .NET and wants to dive into the platform starting from scratch. It is designed for developers experienced in at least one other language, and starts with the basics of . NET and covers Microsoft Visual Studio, writing code in C#, and how to build applications in various technologies of the platform such as Windows, Web, Microsoft Silverlight, and Windows Mobile. If you are new to writing applications on Microsoft .NET this track is for you!

This is a free event, but you MUST register at http://sqlsatbr2010.eventbrite.com/. 

Today at 6:00 EST I’ll be live on .NET Rocks Live Weekend.  Here is an explanation taken from the .NET Rock Live Weekend web site:

Spend a long weekend interfacing with the .NET Community! Carl and Richard will be broadcasting live conversations with your favorite .NET rock stars 24/7 live from Pwop Studios! Listen to the stream live on your PC or Phone. That’s right, we’re streaming to your phone, no matter what phone you have (so long as it has Internet access and the ability to play streaming audio).

The Live Weekend starts at 8AM Eastern Saturday, June 26 and ends at Midnight Monday, June 28th, 2010, with repeat content continuing until 6PM Tuesday, June 29th. During periods of sleep they will replay content.

You can find the lineup of speakers and more information here:

http://www.dotnetrocks.com/liveweekend.aspx

And listen in live here:

http://mobileencoding.com/live-weekend.php 

I have no idea what I am going to be talking about but it should be fun!

TechEd 2010 was in New Orleans last week and I had the pleasure of doing a full day pre-conf session at TechEd.  Pre-confs are longer sessions where attendees can get into more details.  This year I did “.NET From Scratch” which was a one day session to introduce developers to the .NET platform. 

This seminar is for anyone who is starting at ground zero with .NET and wants a deep dive into the platform starting from scratch. It is designed for developers experienced in at least one other language, and starts with the basics of . NET and covers Microsoft Visual Studio, writing code in C#, and how to build applications in various technologies of the platform such as Windows, Web, Microsoft Silverlight, and Windows Mobile. If you are new to writing applications on Microsoft .NET, what better way to start your Tech·Ed experience?

As promised to the attendees, the slide decks and demos can be downloaded from the following URL:

http://keithelder.net/presentations/NETFromScratch/NETFromScratch.zip

Remember when learning a new platform as large as .NET the main thing to focus on are your immediate needs.  That may be a language and a framework and possibly web programming.  It is impossible to learn or know everything about a platform as large as .NET but knowing what is possible is half of the battle.  As engineers if we know it is possible it is just a matter of research to figure out how to make it happen. 

A big thank you to those that attended the session and I am truly sorry about how cold it was in the room.  If I’d known in advance I’d brought some firewood and blankets.  Enjoy.

Codemash 2010 is officially over and we await with anticipation for another year to go by so we can walk into the winter paradise of the Kalahari. 

This year Codemash was both exhilarating and exhausting!  First thank you to those attendees who sat through a full day Pre-Compiler about .NET.  I had a blast doing it and I hope you went away seeing all the various pieces of the platform.  I’ll be posting the slides later on.

I had the pleasure of being this year’s Master of Ceremonies for Codemash, an absolute honor.  It isn’t everyday one gets to stand in front of 700+ people of various technical backgrounds all with a common goal of breaking outside of their comfort zone.  Codemash just makes this happen. 

One of the things I did as MC this year was try to have a little fun during the lunch announcements.  The first lunch day I put together what I called a “Smartphone Typing Throwdown”.  The idea was simple.  Get as many different types of Smartphones as I could on stage and then see who could type the fastest.  Hopefully this would solve the world’s most troubling question: “Can phones with virtual keyboards type faster than phones with real keyboards?”.

Now of course this doesn’t scientifically prove ANYTHING, but it was fun.  As you watch the video, take out your phone and type the following sentence (complete with spelling and punctuation) and see how you fair against the contestants. 

Codemash continues to kill the Kalahari network.

Enjoy the video, and I’ll see you next year.