Slides from My Summer HTML5 Sessions (so far)

It's been an unusually busy summer for me and conferences. Where I normally take a break from conference travel, I found myself spanning the United States in June, with quick stops at the SoCal Code Camp in San Diego, the huge ASP.NET Users Group in Dallas, and the inaugural MADExpo in Virginia. Fortunately, at each stop the focus of my sessions was the same: HTML5.

I've been "preaching" and teaching HTML5 concepts for nearly 2 years now, so it's fun to see the industry catching-up. It's always a good feeling to be ahead of a curve instead of behind it! But if you're just jumping in to HTML5, don't dismay. It's still very early in the HTML5 technology curve, and getting started now will set you up to be an expert as the technology matures.

For those of you that attended my sessions at any of the conferences this summer, thanks for choosing to attend! Hopefully you got some value out of our brief conversations and are now energized to learn HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. As promised (albeit a bit belated), slides from those sessions are available below. Enjoy the resources and stay tuned for more more HTML5 content in the very near future!

(Oh! And don't forget about htmlUI.com and @htmlUI. I'll be updating this resource significantly very soon, so bookmark for lots of great HTML5 resources.)

The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5

Doing More with LESS for CSS

HTML5 for Tablets and Mobile

HTML5 and CSS3 Techniques You Can Use Today (v2)

DevConnections Slides & Wrap-up

Now back in sunny (and unusually cool) Texas, I'm happy to report that DevConnections 2011 was another great developer conference! (Especially if you managed to attend my sessions and workshop on HTML5.) Developers from around the world trekked to the city made famous by the House of Mouse to spend 5 days learning about everything from HTML5 (my favorite) to SharePoint.

For my part, I delivered one half-day workshop on HTML5 and CSS3, plus two sessions: one on practical HTML5/CSS3 techniques you can actually use today, and another on LESS for CSS. Special thanks to everyone that attended (especially those of you that paid for the workshop)! My hope is that you left Orlando with a better understanding of "HTML5" and are now the experts in your offices.

For everyone else, I've made the slide decks from all three sessions available via SlideShare below. If you're really diving in to the content, you'll definitely want to download the slides as I've embedded lots of extra info and links to useful resources in the slide notes.

Finally #1: I created a new Twitter feed during DevConnections EXCLUSIVELY for sharing HTML5/CSS3/modern standards web dev resources. Follow @htmlUI or visit htmlui.com, which will soon re-broadcast and enrich the Twitter content for those of you morally opposed to social media.

Finally #2: Miss DevConnections and still want to talk HTML5? Come find me at MIX11 in Vegas next week (Telerik will have a booth), or visit my HTML5 session at TechEd Atlanta this May.

Slides

Accelerated Adoption: HTML5 and CSS3 for ASP.NET Developers
(Though most of this is generally applicable to any web developer adopting HTML5/CSS3.)

HTML5 and CSS3 Techniques You Can Use Today

Doing More with LESS for CSS

HTML5 and CSS3 session resources now available

The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5

HTML5 and CSS3 Techniques You Can Use Today

Over the last month or so, I've been traveling a fair amount speaking at .NET events around the world. From TechDays stops in Canada, to a quick stop in Florida for the SW Florida Code Camp, to the local (and huge!) Houston TechFest, to my most recent stop in Bulgaria for DevReach 2010, it's definitely "Fall Travel Season" in full-swing.

At several of the conferences I've visited this fall, I've talked a lot about two technologies that I'm particularly passionate about right now: HTML5 and CSS3. These two evolving standards represent the future of standards-based web development, and with the current crop of browsers, there is no reason to delay adding these technologies to your web applications. If you attended one of my sessions at these events, a special thank you to you! Hopefully you enjoyed the sessions and were able to learn something in the time we spent together.

For everyone else, I've made the slides from these sessions available online via SlideShare. Both presentations are embedded above in this post (sorry RSS readers), but be sure to visit the presentations on SlideShare to see the full slide notes, where I've captured many of the useful links to HTML5 and CSS3 resources that compliment the slides.

Want more HTML5 and CSS3? First, make sure you're following me on Twitter. Much of what I share is related to HTML5 and CSS3, so hopefully you'll catch some good links there. Second, watch for these sessions at an event near your in 2011. I plan to continue talking a lot about HTML5 and CSS3 in 2011, so I look forward to seeing you in a session soon! For now, enjoy the resources.

LIDNUG ASP.NET 4 presentation wrap-up

Ah, LIDNUG. The largest .NET User Group in the world (virtually). We had a great presentation yesterday covering what’s new in ASP.NET 4, with people joining from around the globe to see how Microsoft has improved WebForms in the “senior” release. We covered everything from changes in ViewState, to new modes for rendering ControlIDs, to simple ways you can leverage features of Dynamic Data in WebForms pages. In fact, the Dynamic Data demos lead @coridrew to express on Twitter:

"I want to cry with joy over the Dynamic Data enhancements I'm seeing demo'd in Telerik's .NET 4.0 www.LIDNUG.org webcast right now"

Thanks, @coridrew! If you missed the meeting, fear not. I've embedded the slides from today's presentation in this post (check in a browser if you're not seeing the slides in your RSS reader), and you can already grab the on-demand recording from the LIDNUG website. Hope you learn something useful about ASP.NET 4 and find new ways to be more productive as an ASP.NET developer!

devLink 2010 Wrap-Up

This has been a busy summer for speaking and .NET events! After the recent virtual mvcConf and (real) Dallas TechFest, I made my way to Nashville to participate in devLink 2010. If you’re not familiar with devLink, it is one of the largest (and best) community-run conferences in the US. John Kellar and crew put-on a 3-day, multi-track event that rivals the “big shows,” but unlike the big shows, devLink doesn’t cost you a paycheck. This year, devLink returned to the beautiful Lipscomb University campus in Nashville, and the event packed with over 800 paying developers.

I travelled to Nashville to deliver three sessions and participate on an impromptu panel on finding a job (hosted by David Giard or TechnologyAndFriends vidcast). My sessions were for the web developers at devLink, and we packed the rooms standing-room-only:

• The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5
• Combining WebForms, MVC, and Silverlight
• Getting the Most Out of What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0

Thanks again to everyone that joined me for the sessions, and big thanks to the person (sorry, didn’t grab your name) that taught that devLink vending machine a lesson for stealing my drink! I had a great time and hope you were able to learn something from the sessions. The code and slides for the sessions is available below for your on-demand learning pleasure.

For now, it’s time to prep and head-off to Baton Rouge for SQL Saturday. See you in Louisiana!

The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5
[Slides (PDF)]

Combining WebForms, MVC, and Silverlight
[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]

Getting the Most Out of What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0
[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]

Dallas TechFest 2010 Wrap-up

On Friday, I made the quick 3 hour drive from Houston to Dallas to participate in another Dallas TechFest. The Big D’s TechFest is put-on by Microsoft MVP Tim Rayburn and Telerik is a proud sponsor of the event. Unlike many “.NET events,” TechFest truly draws a diverse crowd of developers, with a fair mix of .NET, Java, PHP, Flex, and other “developer flavors” filling the sessions. This year’s event expected more than 400 developers, and I’d say they drew at least that to the University of Texas at Dallas campus.

Building on the popularity of a session originally presented at the Toronto Code Camp, I presented my “Getting Familiar with HTML5” talk to another standing room-only audience. Thanks to everyone that attended, and thanks for the great questions! It was fun to do this session with a group of developers with very diverse backgrounds and focuses.

Updated slides from this session are available below, complete with a resources page filled with related HTML5 links. Your next chance to hear this session live (along with some others) is devLink (this Thursday!), so if you’re curious and want to learn more, find your way to Nashville and be sure to visit my 4:00 PM session.

The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5 [Slides PDF]

Toronto Code Camp wrap-up

So, yeah…in my busy haste to finish 1,001 tasks last week, prep a brand new HTML5 session for the Toronto Code Camp, speak at the South Houston .NET Users Group, and join Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell for their Houston .NET Rocks! Road Trip stop, I kinda sorta ran out of time to actually mention that I was going to Toronto this weekend to speak. So, to kill two birds with one blog post, this is both your “heads-up” post that I’m speaking at the Toronto Code Camp 2010 and the wrap-up!

I presented two sessions this weekend, and I was pleased that they were two of the most popular sessions at the entire event. It always amazes me that people are willing to stand for 75 minutes to watch a session when a room is full. You guys are hardcore and get bonus points in my book. Thanks to everyone that attended the sessions, though! I hope you took away at least one useful bit of info.

My sessions at this event were:

• Maximizing Ajax Performance – Not new, but always useful for people to see how Ajax really works and what you can do as an ASP.NET developer to get the most out of Ajax. Unfortunately, I was a bit rusty delivering this session in Toronto because I was prepping the next session…
• The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5 – Brand new for Toronto Code Camp, I’ll be doing this session a lot this summer and fall. This is your primer to HTML5 and a must see if you A) care about standards, or B) are a web developer.

Slides for both sessions are available below. The slide notes contain a lot of links to additional resources, so be sure to check them out if you’re trying to dive deep on these topics (especially HTML5). I’ll post code soon, but it needs some tidying before it’s “download ready.”

Overall, it was a great event and more than 600 developers ventured-out for the day of learning. Other than a more than frustrating experience with Canadian immigration cops, I had a great time and would encourage anyone to attend this event in the future!

The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5
[Slides (PPTX)]

Maximizing Ajax Performance
[Slides (PPTX)]

[Picture courtesy of Joey DeVilla’s Code Camp Flickr set]

Louisiana DNUG Road Trip wrap-up

Last week, I spent three days crisscrossing Louisiana on a .NET User Group Road Trip. I made stops in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, and I had a great time interacting with the LA .NET community (that’s LA as in the state, not the city). We packed the house and talked about what’s new in Silverlight 4 and ASP.NET 4. It was a lot of information to cover, but we managed to get through it all, and hopefully there are 100+ developers in Louisiana more ready for .NET 4 this week than there were last week. Thanks to everyone that came out for the events!

The slides from my Louisiana talks are available below, but most of the demos I used were borrowed from other great minds in the .NET community. As promised, here some some direct links to the original demo source:

• Silverlight Issue Tracker by David Poll (Multi-page printing)
• Simple SL4 Printing Demo by Tim Heuer
• Simple SL4 Drop Target Demo by Jesse Liberty
• Photo Drop Target Demo by Jeff Prosise
• Simple SL4 Web Cam Demo by Tim Heuer
• ScottGu PDC Keynote Demo (WebBrowserBrush)

Of course, one final reminder, make sure you’re following/subscribing to these people in the Microsoft community to keep-up with all of the Silverlight 4 news:

• Tim Heuer, Silverlight Program Manager
• Jesse Liberty, Silverlight Community Program Manager
• Adam Kinney, Silverlight Technical Evangelist
• Brad Abrams, Silverlight Program Manager
• Nikhil Kothari, Software Architect (RIA Services)

What’s New in Silverlight 4 and ASP.NET 4
[Slides (PDF)]

#SFLCC wrap-up, Twitter insights

As you know from my last minute post on Friday, I spent a part of this past weekend in southern Florida for the South Florida .NET Code Camp 2010. As usual, it was a great time, with lots of eager .NET learners and interesting content. And while it looked like some of the speakers might not make it due to the storms in the North East, I think almost everyone made it to the event. A big thanks to everyone that came to the Code Camp, especially all of you that packed my two sessions!

Meanwhile, I learned, or rather re-enforced, another little tidbit on this trip: Nobody in South Florida uses Twitter.

I’ve polled audiences for well over a year now asking two questions:

1. How many of you “use” Twitter? That is, do you tweet?
2. How many of you “lurk” on Twitter (you read, but don’t tweet)?

Those that don’t respond to either question are either A) already sleeping, or B) presumed to not use Twitter at all (read or write). Traditionally, I’ve found that in a “normal” developer audience, no matter where in the world I’ve done this poll, only 10% (or so) of the audience does anything with Twitter. In other words, In a room of 50 people, 5 people (on a good day) use Twitter.

Florida was different. In two rooms of 50+ people, only 1 person admitted to using Twitter. More reinforcement of the idea that Twitter is a much smaller active community than the numbers suggest.

Telerik Prizes via Twitter

This created a bit of problem for my swag scheme. To win swag from my sessions, I told everyone to simply follow me on Twitter and on Monday (today) I would select two random winners. Fortunately, with a little coaching, I managed to bring a small chunk of South Florida on to Twitter, and I’ve got my random winners:

@marquinakat
@gardavis

Congrats to both! You each get a Telerik Premium Collection. And you may now resume not using Twitter.

Thanks again for attending my sessions and feel free to grab the session resources below. See you next year!

Resources from my sessions

Being Productive with Telerik Extensions for MVC
[Slides (PDF)]

ASP.NET Fundamentals: ViewState Tips & Tricks (v2)
[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]

DevReach Follow-up, Part I

Hello from Bulgaria! This update comes to you direct from Telerik HQ in cold, wet Sofia, Bulgaria. I am seated high atop the Telerik building listening to the sounds of buses and cars cruise by on the wet streets below as I get prepared for a busy week with the local teams, and I figured it was high-time I broke my blog "travel silence" to bring you a quick update.

As you know, I am in the middle of the busy "fall travel season," and since I'm in Bulgaria, that means it's time for DevReach 2009. The conference went down last week and it was a great event! Despite the economic turmoil plaguing many events this year, DevReach was as strong as ever, with over 450 attendees packing the two days of sessions delivered by "first class" speakers. Everyone from Richard Campbell to Shawn Wildermuth to Tim Huckaby, Chris Sells, and Kent Alstead (and many others) trekked to the capital of Bulgaria to put on a good show.

I, of course, joined this stellar cast of speakers as the "outlier." I presented three sessions this year at DevReach:

• Maximizing Ajax Performance with REAL Ajax
• Building a Common Data Layer for ASP.NET and Silverlight
• Will It Blend? Building Websites with All Flavors of ASP.NET

All of the sessions were well attended and everyone seemed to have a "good enough" time. The most popular session this year (of mine)? Probably "Will It Blend." A big thanks to everyone that came-out to my sessions and for putting-up with my random Texas trivia. Hopefully you all had a good time and managed to learn something (even if only how great Texas is) at each of my sessions.

I captured some video from around the conference I'll be working to transform in to a new TWM as soon as I can. Stay tuned for that "Part II" update. Until then, enjoy the resources below from my sessions and then watch for more updates as "Fall Travel Season" wears on. Next-stop: Q3 2009 release week!

Maximizing Ajax Performance with REAL Ajax

[Slides] [Code]

Will It Blend? Building Websites with All Flavors of ASP.NET

[Slides] [Code]

Building a Common Data Layer for ASP.NET and Silverlight

[Slides] [Code coming soon...]

RadGrid optimization webinar on Telerik TV

Did you miss last week's RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX optimization webinar? Then don't miss this recorded video. This session covers the basics of optimizing RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX and introduces a handful of techniques you can use to make your ASP.NET pages with RadGrids faster. Catch the video above and grab the session slides and demo code below. Enjoy!

Watch RadGrid optimization webinar in full size on Telerik TV

[Slides (PDF)] [Code]

SW Florida Code Camp 2009 wrap-up

The fall travel season is swinging in to full gear and already blog posts are getting behind (which reminds me, I need to create a post about the "fall travel season"...). Kicking-off the season of conference travel was last weekend's trip to Fort Myers, Florida for the SW Florida Code Camp. A full-day Saturday event held on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, the 2nd Annual SWFLCC brought out almost 150 people to engage in .NET learning.

This was my first trip to the SWFLCC and it was a great time! I presented 3.5 sessions- 3 scheduled + 1 "pinch hit" for a speaker that had a family emergency. My sessions were packed to capacity, and aside from some slow morning grogginess during my 8:30 AM slot, the audiences were very involved with great questions. To everyone that attended my sessions, a big thanks for coming out and being involved! Hope you learned something.

For sessions, I covered a lot of ground, with topics ranging from Silverlight to MVC to Dynamic Data. You can grab all of the slides from this even below along with relevant demo code. Enjoy the resources and stay tuned for an updated list of my conference stops this fall.

Rich Islands of Functionality: Silverlight in ASP.NET

[Slides (PDF)] [Code]

Will It Blend? Building Websites with All Flavors of ASP.NET

[Slides (PDF)] [Code]

Being Productive with ASP.NET MVC: Telerik Open Source Extensions for MVC

[Slides (PDF)]

P.S. Big congrats to John Dunagan for playing such a big role in the success of this year's event! John is doing a great job unifying the .NET community in SW Florida, and with a little encouragement, I think he could expand SWFLCC to 300 people next year. Easily.

Houston TechFest 2009 wrap-up, Slides and Code

This past Saturday played host to the 3rd (4th?) annual Houston TechFest, and this year's event was record setting! There were well over 1200 people registered for this year's event, and- if I've heard the reports correctly- almost 1,000 people joined in the day of technology festivities at the University of Houston. That makes this easily the most attended TechFest in Houston to date and it also makes Houston TechFest one of the largest "regional events" in the US!

And thanks to sponsors, like Telerik, the event was once again 100% free to attendees (with a provided lunch)! Obviously, a great place to be if you are a .NET (or Java or whatever else was covered on Saturday) developer. At the Telerik "micro-booth" I had a great time meeting a lot of you and introducing you to the All-in-one .NET Toolbox.

Usually I like to "pre-promote" my attendance at these events on Telerik Watch, but time escaped me last week to update the blogs (all the more reason to follow me on Twitter for "quick updates"). So instead, a quick post-event recap:

I presented three sessions on Saturday: one-and-a-half on Silverlight, one-and-a-half on ASP.NET/Ajax ("havles" because one session talked about using Silverlight in ASP.NET, so it covered both technologies). All of the sessions were well attended and (with the help of some t-shirt bribes) all were very interactive. Big thanks to those of you that attended all of my sessions on Saturday! I don't know if I could even tolerate 4 hours of listening to me...

As promised, I am making the slides and code from the sessions available for everyone here. Find my full session list with accompanying resources below. Until next year, make sure you stay plugged-in to the Houston .NET community through the area DNUGs, like NHDNUG in my neck of The Woods!

What's New in Silverlight 3 [Sept09 update]

[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]

Rich Islands of Functionality: Silverlight in ASP.NET

[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]

Maximizing ASP.NET Performance with REAL Ajax

[Slides (PDF)] [Code (Zip)]

Austin DNUG Ajax talk wrap-up, Reminder to check your spare tire pressure

After a quick 6-hour round-trip to Austin, I'm back in Houston and ready with some wrap-up thoughts (and slides) from my talk at last night's Austin .NET Users Group meeting. First, let me thank everyone that came-out for the event (including the "jQuery mafia")! I had a great time and I hope you were all able to learn something about Ajax as we weaved our way through JavaScript, jQuery, and ASP.NET AJAX 4.0. If you didn't learn anything and you hated the session...I'm sorry?

Really, I expected the session to crash and burn. Not becuase I wasn't prepared or because I didn't have confidence in the topic, but because I had a "bad omen" on the way to Austin. In the middle of my trek from Houston to Austin, located in nowhere Texas, traveling at 80 MPH (129 kph, for the rest of the world), I blew a tire. Fortunately, my "fancy dancy" car quickly informed me of the tire pressure issue and I was able to put my mechanical skills to good use and change my tire in 15 minutes flat, but something "unexpected" like that just throws-off your A-game as a speaker.

Fortunately, A-game or not, the session went well and I made it back to Houston with all four tires inflated. As a word to the wise (especially since I just got lucky on this point), take this post a chance to check the pressure of your spare tire. You never know when you're going to need it...

Maximizing Real Ajax Performance

[Slides (PDF)]

Resources

- ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 Preview Bits on CodePlex

- Visual jQuery | Learning jQuery Blog

Dallas TechFest Wrap-up, Slides and Code

With the weekend squarely in the rear view mirror, it's time to close the books at this year's Dallas TechFest. The event, which was held on Friday, was a full-day of not only .NET learning, but Java, Cold Fusion, Flex, and Ruby, all held in the setting of the beautiful Westin Stonebriar Resort. I never saw an official "numbers" report, but it looked like there were easily 250 - 350 people taking part in the fun (maybe even more), so by all accounts I think the event was a success. Both of my Silverlight 2/3 sessions went well, too. Aside from my ThinkPad giving me plenty of reason to think about shortening its life, the demos went well and the crowds got a good taste of SL3. In fact, Building Business Apps with SL3 was a standing room only session, so extra special thanks to those of you that came and stood through it all! Below you can find the slides and code from my sessions. Be sure you have Silverlight 3 installed to work with the code, and don't forget that installing SL3 means the end of your SL2 development. Until the tooling gets better, it's an either-or choice. Building Business Applications with Silverlight 2 (and 3) [Slides (PDF)] [Code (8MB Zip)] What's New in Silverlight 3? [Slides (PDF)] [Code (3MB Zip)]

Austin Code Camp 2009 wrap-up, Session slides and code

Sometimes it's just incredible how fast time flies. It's already been a full week since I spoke at the 2009 Austin Code Camp, so it's high time I posted my follow-up materials! In general, ACC09 was a great event. Both of my sessions were packed- standing room only- and the audiences were very engaged. For an Austin .NET community that occasionally gets a bad rap in Texas for not being as active as Houston or Dallas, this event was a strong showing- probably close to 250 to 300 people. As a reminder, I did two sessions, one on ASP.NET MVC and one on Silverlight 3. Both sessions seemed to go well except for an unfortunate Visual Studio gremlin with Silverlight 2 during the last session of the day. I suppose that's the end result of sleeping for 3 hours, driving to Austin at 5:00 in the morning, and then doing the last session of the day. Se la vie! The slides from both of my sessions and some of the code is available below. I say only "some" of the code because some it is not worth packaging- just simple demos created on the fly that don't offer much "after the fact" learning value. Even the code posted here is very basic- nothing special- so don't lean on it too heavily for learning. Enjoy the resources, though, and then get ready to come back out and hang-out with me at the Dallas Tech Fest in a couple weeks! ASP.NET MVC: Red Pill or Blue Pill? (Updated for MVC v1) [Slides (PDF)] [Code (ZIP)] (NOTE: Code includes updated RouteDebugger assembly for MVC v1) Building Business Applications with Silverlight 3 [Slides (PDF)] [Code (ZIP)] (NOTE: Code is for Silverlight 3 beta 1) P.S. As mentioned in my Silverlight session, here is a link to my Silverlight 2 Hands-On-Labs that guide you through the process of learning how to build business apps with Silverlight 2.

Skinning Deep Dive Webinar Follow-up

Miss today's fun skinning webinar? No worries- I've got the on-demand resources ready for your immediate enjoyment. As promised, today's webinar covered a wide range of skinning topics for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. We discussed skinning basics and highlighted how the "OTBE" (Out-of-The-Box Experience) for the RadControls makes it very easy to get started with professional skins. We moved on and gained a deeper understanding of how the RadControl's skin CSS is structured and how it can be very easily customized. We took a deep look at how you consume customized skins. And we even spent some time looking at ways to optimize your skin performance. Thanks to everyone that turned-out for the live event! I hope you enjoyed the content. For everyone else, the session recording is available above and on Telerik TV. Slides and demo code used in today's presentation is below. No go forth and be confident Telerik skin masters! Skinning Deep Dive for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX [Slides (pdf)] [Code (zip)] [Full-res Video on Telerik TV (online)]

RadControls for Silverlight in ASP.NET

For those of you that missed today's Weekly Webinar, you missed a fun topic! We looked at how you can use the RadControls for Silverlight in ASP.NET. Specifically, we looked at how you can use RadChart, RadGauge, and RadUpload for Silverlight in an existing ASP.NET application by utilizing the DOM Integration features of Silverlight. There were lots of demos and we covered a lot of ground, but hopefully everyone that attended live (thanks, by the way, for watching today!) feels like they have the knowledge they need to start leveraging Silverlight controls in ASP.NET. For everyone else, all resources from today's session are now available online. Below you can download the slides and demo project code, and above you can watch the recorded session (or you can watch it on Telerik TV, of course). Enjoy and watch for more follow-up resources soon! RadControls for Silverlight in ASP.NET [Slides] [Code] Watch recorded webinar in full resolution on Telerik TV

South Florida Code Camp 2009 Wrap-up (update)

As everyone knows, this past Saturday I made a quick trip from Texas to attend and speak at the 2009 South Florida Code Camp (#SoFlCC, for all you twits out there). It was another outstanding event and I'm very glad I made the trip! Registration numbers topped 800 and over 600 people turned-out for the day-long event, which for anyone not "in the know" is pretty incredible for a "code camp." I'm always amazed by the size and involvement of the Florida .NET community, and this year's Code Camp did nothing but further that amazement. My two sessions also went very well. Both were packed and both sessions generated a lot of good questions. A big thanks to all of you that came out to one (or both!) of my sessions. Hopefully you enjoyed the content despite my speaker "idiosyncrasies." Congrats to all of the t-shirt and Telerik license winners, too! As promised, I'm making the slides from both sessions available on this blog post (see links below). I'll be making the code available, too, but there are some problems with the server hosting my downloads, so the links aren't live yet. Check back soon for live downloads. Finally, I couldn't call this a real wrap-up post if I didn't mention Telerik's sponsor involvement. I had a great time manning the Telerik "micro booth" and talking to many of you between sessions. I always enjoy meeting Telerik "fans" and people that want to join the club. I learned about some very cool projects being built this year and I'm thrilled that Telerik has been selected as the trusted partner for .NET tools and components. The Telerik-sponsored after-party was fun, too. If you missed it, you missed a good time- don't miss it next year! Needless to say, SoFlCC remains a bright spot on my calendar and I look forward to heading back to Florida next year for SoFlCC 2010! ASP.NET MVC: Red Pill or Blue Pill? [Slides] [Code] ASP.NET ViewState Tips & Tricks [Slides] [Code]

devLink 2008 wrap-up (update)

Another event, another wrap-up. And I'm happy to report that this was another great event. DevLink 2008 saw well over 400 .NET developers converge on speed-ticket happy Murfreesboro, Tenessee for two days of (as one attendee put it) "better than TechEd quality" sessions. For my part, I tried to bring as many updates from the conference as I could while running between sessions and conference parties. If you haven't seen the video updates, check out Live from devLink 2008, devLink 2008 Montage, and my Silverlight Intro Session Replay. Of course, nothing beats actually being at the event, so start making plans now to attend next year's festivities.

As far as sessions go, my two Silverlight sessions went very well. Well, actually, my "Intro" session went really well and my deep dive was okay. Not that the session was bad, but a day that started with a speeding ticket didn't get better when the original room's projector failed and I discovered I had 2.5 hours for a "3 hour deep dive." So apologies to those of you at the deep dive that didn't get to see as much as I had planned.

As promised, below are links to download the slides and code from both of my Silverlight sessions. They are great resources if you're trying to get started with Silverlight, and they're completely updated to reflect the latest changes in Silverlight 2 beta 2.

Enjoy the learning resources. I'm off to count 120,000 12,000 pennies to mail to the fine state of TN.

Intro to Silverlight 2

[Slides] [Code]

Silverlight 2 Deep Dive

[Slides] [Code] UPDATE: Josh caught my decimal point error: I only owe TN 12,000 pennies for driving 50 in (as far as my time on the road was concerned) an unmarked 40.