Local Flavours Track at Microsoft TechDays Canada 2010

I love the technical community in Canada. In particular, I find that it's our collective willingness to share knowledge and insights with others that makes us special. I see this demonstrated on a daily basis through our team's interactions with user group leaders, Microsoft MVPs, Microsoft RDs, and influential members of the Canadian technical community.

"Developer Foundations" at Microsoft TechDays Canada 2009

Last year, my manager (John Oxley) and I spoke to many folks across the Canadian technical community about TechDays. At the time, many of you stated that you wished to deliver content that went beyond what was on offer in the other tracks that we were hosting. Many of you felt it was important to also address developer practices and processes; that is, to look beyond the products or technology and instead, to focus on the act of building applications and services. As a result of this feedback, we decided to create an additional track entitled, "Developer Foundations". This wasannounced by John Oxley on our blog earlier last year. Overall, the track was a tremendous success due to the hard work of Justice Gray, Peter Ritchie and all of the speakers who participated in this track. The feedback that we received indicated that this idea was something we had to revisit for next year. (Fast-foward to 2010.)

Local Flavours Track at Microsoft TechDays Canada 2010

Earlier this year, we announced some changes to TechDays that we made based on your feedback. One of the announcements we made was the creation of a new track entitled, Local Flavours:

We recognize that each city has unique characteristics and needs. This track is all about celebrating the differences while allowing those individuals passionate about sharing their knowledge and expertise an opportunity to do so to help grow the skills of their peers and showcase the great work that is happening in the region.

We are looking for passionate individuals who want to share their knowledge and expertise with others.

This call for presentations is open to all roles of the Canadian technical community: IT professionals,developers, database administrators, system administrators, architects... everyone! If you are part of the Canadian technology community and wish to be a part of TechDays, I want to hear from you!We're seeking submissions right now. This is your opportunity to deliver a presentation on a topic that you're passionate about.

We have ten (10) 65-minute breakout sessions and two (2) 30-minute turbo talks available in each cityso please plan accordingly when drafting your abstracts. We're looking for content that covers a wide spectrum of topics. If you're interested in sharing your story and expertise on technology that will help your peers, please download the documents below to find out more about the submission process and timelines for the Local Flavours track in your region. To submit a session, send a completed submission form to us by email at td_can@microsoft.com and let’s start the conversation.

• Local Flavours Submission Information (PDF) (right click and save as)
• Local Flavours Submission Form (XLSX) (right click and save as)

Please note that there's no limit on the number of presentations you can submit. We want to see them all!

Download the form(s) (above) and EMAIL US YOUR SUBMISSIONS (td_can@microsoft.com)!

TechDays Defy All Challenges: 24 Hours of Developer Goodness

Later this week, the folks who run the site, msfttechdays.com will host a 24-hour virtual event, featuring 95 live sessions (!) available both live or on-demand. Earlier today, I checked out the list of available sessions and was impressed by the developer-specific sessions that are being covered.

The event sessions are broken down into one of five tracks:

• Windows Development and Frameworks
• Windows Mobile Development
• Office and SharePoint Development
• Developer Tools, Languages and Practices
• Web Development and User Experience

You can register for this event by visiting the site, msfttechdays.com.

Canadian developer and all-around nice guy, Marco Shaw is one of the presenters for this event. He’ll be delivering a presentation entitled, “Scripting the Microsoft .NET Framework Using Windows PowerShell”. Here’s the abstract:

Now that PowerShell is part of the Microsoft Common Engineering Criteria, expect to see more and more PowerShell in Microsoft server products. This session looks at how PowerShell can be used to directly access the .NET Framework. Some simple examples are demonstrated, but also more advanced examples of using Windows Presentation Foundation (.NET 3.0) and LINQ (.NET 3.5) are discussed.

As a fellow Canadian, I am asking all of you to register for this event and attend Marco’s session. I want his to be the most heavily-attended session for this event. Let’s show our Canadian pride and support our fellow Canuck! And who knows? You may learn something about [PowerShell] (an amazing technology, by the way).

Microsoft TechDays Canada is a Wrap

Last week in Vancouver marked the conclusion of Microsoft TechDays Canada. Starting last October, our team visited six cities across Canada delivering five separate tracks covering a wide spectrum of technologies.

Microsoft TechDays Canada was an event focused on supporting the skills you need to be successful with today’s technology. To that end, our developer tracks focused on technologies like ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Windows Forms. They also focused on a few technologies that you may not have heard much about but are as equally relevant to developers. They include the Microsoft Sync Framework, theWindows Vista Bridge, and ADO.NET Data Services. In combination, we believe that the developer tracks did a great job in providing an overview of our developer stack.

Developers Love Silverlight

In most cities, the 2-part Silverlight session entitled, “Mastering Your Samurai Skills of Silverlight” was totally packed. Like me, developers absolutely love Silverlight. It’s a wonderful technology that enables you to build RIAs using your existing .NET skills. For the Web Developer Track, we chose to deliver three sessions on Silverlight. Based on their popularity, perhaps the next time around, we should consider an entire track on Silverlight!

Windows Mobile FTW

As part of the Windows Developer Track, we invited Canadian and Windows Mobile guruMark Arteaga to deliver a couple of sessions on building applications for the Windows Mobileplatform. His sessions were very well received. He did a great job showing folks how to build applications for mobile devices while sharing his top tips & tricks.

Got Feedback?

Please let me know what you’d like to see from Microsoft TechDays Canada the next time around. We’re listening. Got an idea for a session or track? What did you think of the venues? Send me an e-mail.