Todd Anglin on MVC, Ajax, Silverlight, WPF, Web Browsers

One of the things I did while in India back in May was sit down with a video crew to film a quick interview for DevMarch.com. The interview has finally been processed and published online and made available for your viewing pleasure. A few quick notes about the video:

• It was shot in mid-May 2008, so obviously, the info is dated to that period (though most of the content remains relevant today)
• The video was shot in an old dressing room backstage at the Indian Institute of Science after days of marathon sessions, and the interviewer specifically asked me to not look her direction (she was sitting to the left of the camera). So if I look like I'm trying to not look at the questioner during the video, that's why.
• The video is about 12 minutes long and it covers a lot of topics. I think it starts with browsers, then moves on to Ajax, MVC, and then WPF and Silverlight. Feel free to skip to the parts that interest you.

The video was shot to help generate content for the DevMarch.com site, a new developer portal launched by Saltmarch Media shortly after the Great Indian Developer Summit concluded. You can find other videos on the site from some of the other speakers I shared the event with, so spend a few minutes looking around if you've never seen this resource before. Other than that, enjoy the info-packed interview! Watch the interview video now

Great Indian Developer Summit 08 Wrap-up

The first annual Great Indian Developer Summit is almost over, but the .NET portion- "Bleeding Edge .NET"- has been over now for a couple of days. And now that I've made the 20+ hour journey back to the US from Bangalore (with a quick stop in the oh so hip Dubai), it's time to provide some final thoughts and follow-up. In short, for a first-year event, GIDS 2008 (at least the .NET portion of it) was an amazing success! There were about 1,000 developers in attendance for both days of the .NET sessions, which for those not aware of "average" .NET event sizes is incredible. It solidly makes GIDS the largest .NET event in India and probably among the largest in that part of the world.

Beyond it's success in numbers, the event was also very well run. Attendees really seemed to be enjoying themselves and I know the speakers were all very satisfied with session turn-out. Each of my sessions was easily attended by well over 100 devs, the largest of which was probably attended by close to 300. And if my Silverlight session had been in the main keynote hall, I bet I could have attracted 600 people to the talk. I guess we'll never know...

If you didn't catch my earlier posts, be sure to take a moment and grab the slides and code I presented on days one and two. They are great resources for review if you're interested in ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, or Silverlight. If you're interested in pictures of this year's summit, be sure to check out the photos Jean-Luc David (MS Team System DE) posted to Flickr. He's also got a Bangalore set that features some of the speakers (yours truly included), so check that out if you've never been to India or are interested in seeing some speakers model for the camera.

I think GIDS has a great future and I look forward to participating in the coming years. GIDS 09 planning is already underway, so watch soon for the dates for next year's event. For me, it's now on to TechEd 08!

Slides and Code from GIDS Silverlight Deep Dive

Another day of "bleeding-edge .NET" at the Great Indian Developer Summit and another great presentation to archive. On day one, I had the pleasure of delivering a handful of focused sessions on various Microsoft technologies, but on day two it was all about the Silverlight. Deemed a "workshop" by the schedule, but in reality more like an in-depth presentation, my near 4-hour Silverlight 2.0 Deep Dive was a fun presentation for Silverlight learners of all experience levels. I called it "101 to 301 in 3 hours."

Really, the only negative aspect of the presentation was that the room was too small. We had people filling every seat, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the aisles, and spilling out the doors for most of the session. Some GIDS attendees where even willing to stand for over 2-hours to watch the presentation from the door jam. I suspect we managed to cram about 125 or so people in to a room designed for 75, and I know many more simply didn't get to attend because there was no room.

Fortunately, for those that didn't get to get in, all is not lost. At the bottom of this post you can find the slides and code demos from the Silverlight Deep Dive session. In about a month, you'll also be able to grab the video of the session from the conference organizers, who are putting all sessions on a DVD. I want to extend a huge thanks to those of you that did attend, especially those that lasted all 4 hours. I had a great time and you had some great questions. I hope you enjoy these materials and I look forward to meeting many of you again on the .NET road!

Silverlight 2.0 Deep Dive
Slides Code

Slides and Code from Day One at the GIDS

Now that you know I'm in India speaking at the first annual Great Indian Developer Summit, it's time to move on and start doing some presentation wrap-ups. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've so far delivered three focused sessions on three relatively new Microsoft technologies- ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and WPF. These topics are clearly of great interest to the local .NET community as every one of my talks (except for the first, which was in the keynote main hall) were filled to capacity, standing room only. Even my first talk in the keynote hall was easily attended by over 300 people. Needless to say, the turnout is great.

For everyone here in India that attended one (or all, as I've had some people report) of my sessions, thank you very much for coming out and being a great audience. I know I can speak fast, so hopefully I wasn't too hard to understand. If I was, you were all very polite and faked enjoying my presentations well!

For everyone that couldn't make it to India for my presentations (I know there are a few of you out there), you can find the slides and demo code from my presentations at the bottom of this post. Some of the demos, especially those borrowed from Interknowlogy (like the 3d WPF apps and the XAML Cruncher tool), I'll omit from my downloads, but you can find links to download them yourself on Tim Huckaby's blog. I also can't make the Telerik RadControls for WPF "sneak peak" available for download right now, but watch for a public beta right before TechEd (I'll announce it on this blog).

Otherwise, I hope you can take away some useful tips from these decks and find practical help for diving deeper in to these emerging and maturing technologies. Watch for another update soon with the slides and code from today's Silverlight deep dive.

ASP.NET AJAX and the Future of Web Development
Slides Code

First Look: ASP.NET MVC
Slides Code

WPF: The Road Ahead
Slides Code

Telerik at the Great Indian Developer Summit

With day one almost in the rear view mirror, I figured I should fix a bit of an oversight and let you know that I am at the Great Indian Developer Summit this week! I usually try to let you know about my whereabouts when I'm going to be on the road so you can make plans to attend my sessions if you're nearby (or bored, independently wealthy, and willing to buy a plane ticket). In this case, my mad rush to prepare my demos and my international travel left me no time to properly give notice on this blog. I'll do better next time.

But enough with the apologies. If you are in Bangalore (India, for the geographically and context clue challenged), definitely make sure you come to Day Two of the Great Indian Developer Summit. There are hundreds of .NET developers here, a number of great companies in the exhibitor area, and, of course, some great .NET speakers. The event kicked-off today with "Bleeding Edge .NET", and the .NET sessions will run through tomorrow. After that, the event moves-on to "Rich Web" and "Daring Java" to round out the week.

I did three presentations today on three totally different technologies- ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and WPF. Tomorrow I've got a fun 3+ hour Silverlight "deep dive." I should have asked to do a WinForms presentation and then made it a home run of .NET UI platform presentations! Today's presentations were very well attended and all went pretty smooth. I'll throw another post up later with my code and presentations, though, so I'll save the recap for that.

All-in-all, it looks like GIDS is off to a great start as one of India's premier .NET events and I can't wait to be a part of it in future years. Stay tuned for more updates and some great GIDS stories. Also, for those of you eagerly awaiting my next installment in the "Optimization" series, I haven't forgotten about you. I promise that I'll get that series back in gear as soon as I get back to the States!