webDU 2012

I was in Sydney earlier this week to speak at webDU. This year marked the 10th anniversary of this conference and I admit that I walked away impressed by the quality of the presentations that were delivered along with the professionalism of the organising staff.

Initially, I had planned to deliver a talk on responsive design. However, I was asked to cover for a missing speaker due to illness. My first talk entitled, “Make Awesome Web” covered a top 25 list of sites and tools I had curated on Make Awesome Web.

• Kendo UI
• Raphaël
• HTML5 Please
• CSS3 Please
• CSS3 Test
• 39 Ridiculous Things To Do With CSS3 Box Shadows
• Bootstrap, from Twitter
• HTML5 Boilerplate
• httpstat.us
• FitText
• OMG Text!
• Pretty Loaded
• BuiltWith
• HTML5 Progress Polyfill
• Bacon Ipsum
• PeopleMov.in
• NewZealand.com
• JS Bin
• Paper.js
• MicroJS
• PhoneGap
• CreateJS
• jsFiddle
• HTTP Archive
• The Noun Project
• Wheels of Steel
• Anatomy of a Mashup
• Mother-effing Text-Shadow
• Mother-effing HSL
• Mother-effing Animated GIF
• FOUT-B-Gone

This talk went very well. In retrospect, I probably should have given the presentation a better title. Something like “Johnny’s Crazy-Ass Brain-Dump of Awesome Sites and Tools” would have been much more appropriate.

Later in the night, I was a panelist in a BOF entitled, Building Native Apps with Web Frameworks, which featured a lively discussion about building applications for mobile devices with web development technologies. Of course, I spoke at-length about how we (at Telerik) approach this problem with Kendo UI. Our view is that many developers and companies want to build applications that look and feel native without having to resort to differing frameworks and unfamiliar languages. During our discussion, I made the point that of all the viable mobile platforms in existence (and soon-to-be-in existence), the Metro UX metaphor presented by Microsoft is the one that certainly disrupts the in-and-out push-button experience you see across iOS, Android, and Blackberry today. This certainly got a few questions raised. Of course, the reality is somewhat interesting this days with Apple and Google owning a great deal of developer and consumer mindshare in this space. Nevertheless, it’s one that a lot of folks are watching with great interest.

As I stated earlier, I had planned to deliver a talk on responsive design on the following day of the conference. Unfortunately, my son back in Melbourne was very sick and I received word from my wife that I needed to come home immediately. I was (therefore) unable to deliver my talk but I suppose that’s life as a parent.

On a side note, I was great to meet a number of the speakers and attendees at webDU. I was quite impressed by the level of expertise and experience at this conference. I truly hope to be invited back to speak next year and I look forward to seeing the list of talks on-offer at that time.

YOW! Melbourne 2011 and that Crankshaft Presentation

Greetings from Melbourne! This week, I attended YOW! 2011, a conference for Australian developers featuring talks on web development, infrastructure and coding practices.

Opening remarks at YOW! 2011 in Melbourne

According to the YOW! conference organizers, approximately 500 people registered for this event. This wasn’t a surprise to me; Melbourne has a fantastic developer community and has always supported events such as these. Mitch Denny and I were witness to this when we co-founded the Melbourne .NET User Group back-in-the-day.

On day 1, I attended a number of excellent presentations. However, there was one presentation in-particular that was simply awesome. It was a presentation by Kasper Lund from Google talking about Crankshaft, the compilation infrastructure of V8 (Chrome’s JavaScript engine). FWIW, Kasper’s also a member of the Dart team.

Kasper Lund (Google) at YOW! 2011 in Melbourne

In his presentation, Kasper went into great detail about how Crankshaft optimizes JavaScript. It’s amazing to hear some of the things that Crankshaft does to tease out every possible drop of performance possible from JavaScript. Much of it involves runtime inspection of the code as it’s running and optimizing when it’s appropriate to do so. The big take-away for me was realizing that JIT compilers have a tough job; they have to walk a fine line between making JavaScript run super-fast without bogging down the environment.

After Kasper’s presentation, it felt like my brain had been through the spin cycle of a washing machine. This is a good thing. Many presentations today are way too shallow. I always prefer to “go deep” on something, struggle along the way, and then reformulate afterward.

Anyway, I found a video up on Vimeo of a talk Kasper gave about the V8 engine:

It’s worth a look in order to gain a better understanding how Google Chrome optimizes JavaScript.

Flyabout Australia: My Upcoming Travel Itinerary

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making my way around Australia, attending conferences, connecting with the developer community, and meeting with Telerik customers.

November 26-29: DDD Brisbane (http://lanyrd.com/cfmcc)

This will be my first DDD event. I’m looking forward to it. Over the past few years, I’ve heard a lot about DDD Melbourne and other DDD events held across Australia. They tend to have a solid following and the presentations are said to be excellent.

December 1-2: YOW! 2011 Melbourne (http://lanyrd.com/cdpfp)

This will be my first YOW! event. The speaker line-up look pretty tight.

Mid-December/January: Perth is TBD. I’m working on getting things organized at the moment.

MSDN Update: 'Tis the Season of Conferences!

This week, Microsoft TechEd 2011 is happening down in Atlanta and the good news is that the breakout sessions have been recorded and posted online! Simply visit to theTechEd 2011 page on Channel 9 to download or stream these sessions directly to your browser. Some of my favourite sessions so far include A Lap around Microsoft Silverlight 5 by Pete Brown, Advanced Programming Patterns for Windows 7by Kate Gregory, and An Overview of the Microsoft Web Stack by Scott Hanselman. Of course, watching them is an investment in your time but you’ll be glad that you did. The breakout sessions from TechEd are always great and the best part is that you’ll be supporting your skills by taking time out to reinforce a concept or perhaps learn something new. Make sure to check it out!

Speaking of conferences, have you registered for DevTeach yet? Register today if you’re looking for an excuse to spend time with awesome speakers and members of the developer community in beautiful Montreal! The conference will run from May 30th to June 3rd along with pre- and post-conference workshops, featuring some of the top speakers in Canada and the USA! Don’t miss out on your opportunity to improve your skills and have some great conversations with developers at DevTeach .

Another conference I’d highly recommend is Prairie Dev Con on June 13th and 14th in Regina. This event will feature more than 30 presenters and over 60 sessions on topics and technologies that developers are using today. The event will also feature a special appearance by members of the Channel 9 team, Jeff Sandquist and Duncan Mackenzie , who will deliver a special keynote address to the audience. Join us in the heart of Saskatchewan for two days of learning with fellow members of the western Canadian developer community. Register today!

Finally, make sure to subscribe to the Canadian Developer Connection blog for updates and information from our team. We’re here to help support you and one of the ways we’re doing that is by keeping your informed on what’s current and what’s important. Subscribing to our blog post is a great way to do just that.

Go Canucks Go!

See You at MIX!

There’s a good chance you’ve heard of MIX. It’s our super-awesome conference that brings together web developers, designers and builders under one roof. MIX also a community site with articles and labs showcasing what’s possible on the web.

Once again, MIX is coming to Las Vegas! It will occur on April 12-14 and will feature some of the top web developers and designers in the world, speaking about a wide range of topics including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and more.

This year, I’ll be delivering a session entitled, “Adding the Awesomesauce Flavor with Internet Explorer 9 Pinned Sites”:

By now, you’ve heard about pinned sites in Internet Explorer 9. And, you’ve probably even used them yourself. But, did you know that this feature can help increase site visits and engagements by as much as 50%? In this session, you’ll hear stories of Pinned Site implementations by some of the most popular websites on the web today. You’ll also discover how to support pinned sites with a few lines of markup. Finally, you’ll learn best practices that will help you deliver an awesome experience to your visitors.

See you at MIX!