Category: Uncategorized

Windows Phone Unleashed Rocked!

Thank You
First things first. Thank you to everyone who came out last night for Windows Phone Unleashed @ TechWeek! We had just the right number of attendees and 21 innovative App Pitches. Just a few more attendees and we might have seen sunrise at the AON Center. To those that couldn’t make it out, but spread the word and extended the invite to others, thank you!

Thank you to everyone who helped organize the event including Dave Bost, Matt Hidinger, Mary Perisic, Deanna Robison, Connie Bernard and others. Without everyone’s help this would not have come together so nicely and quickly. A huge thank you to Microsoft for sponsoring the event, providing everyone a great meal, and giving away all of the great prizes, cash and swag. And lastly, thanks to Centare for providing the beverages and energy drinks. I don’t think I would have made it home without being hopped up on Monster and AMP.

Build
Last night, we saw some amazing pitches and now it’s time to take the great ideas and make them real in the Windows Phone Marketplace. The following are some great resources to help you get started developing for the Windows Phone. Regardless of your preferred learning style, one of these resources will be perfect for you. There are instructional videos, hands-on labs, sample code, books, technical documentation and blogs.

Windows Phone Tools
http://create.msdn.com

Windows Phone 7 Training Course
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wp7trainingcourse.aspx

Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide (Patterns & Practices)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg490765.aspx

Windows Phone MSDN Documentation
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402535%28v=VS.92%29.aspx

Windows Phone Team Blog
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/

Make $$$
As I mentioned last night, there is a huge opportunity to make serious money with the Windows Phone. The following are some resources to get you started making money with Windows Phone.

Microsoft pubCenter – Monetizing with Ads
http://pubcenter.microsoft.com

My Presentation on SkyDrive
Making $$$ With Windows Phone

WIN BIG!!!
We gave away some awesome prizes last night, one person left with an Unlocked Samsung Focus, and three others left with cash ranging from $75 to $225. The goods news is there are more opportunities to win and get Marketplace accounts. If you attended last night and would like to be notified of the ways to win more great prizes, including the exclusive special offer that was announced for attendees who get apps in the Marketplace, email me and let me know that you want “More Prizes” and I’ll add you to that list. It is very likely that we will be have more events like this one in the near future, if you would like to be notified of upcoming events like this one, even if you didn’t attend last night, email me and let me know that you want “More Events” and I’ll add you to that list.

Community
A final note, whenever you begin any new journey, it’s often helpful to find people with similar interests that can offer collaboration, support and help you make progress on your journey. The Chicago Windows Phone Developer Group is a great community you should consider joining and getting integrated into.

Chicago Windows Phone Developer Group
http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Windows-Phone-Developers

Once more, thank you everyone!

Get FREE Windows Phone Goodies During TechWeek

Starting today and running through next Friday, July 29th is TechWeek Chicago. TechWeek is a week of conference, expo and events with over 2,000 entrepreneurs, business leaders, and innovators, 4 days of conference sessions, over 150 international speakers, 4 days of an expo hall with over 100 exhibitors, 35 competing tech startups, and over 30 independent off-site events. TechWeek connects the newest web and mobile technologies to thousands of Chicago business, academic, community, art, and media professionals- all within one week. For more information about TechWeek, check out http://www.techweek.com.

During TechWeek Chicago, Microsoft is hosting “Windows Phone Unleashed @ TechWeek”. This will be an incredible evening getting hands-on with Windows Phone and you will have the opportunity to work with the Windows Phone and Windows Azure experts to help get your app ideas of the ground. More details for this event is below.

There are a limited number of tickets, so RSVP ASAP!
http://windowsphonetechweek.eventbrite.com

Don’t miss this opportunity to get hands on with Windows Phone and the new features coming in Windows Phone “Mango”. Get help developing apps from the Windows Phone experts! This is a “hands-on” Hackathon where you will learn how to build, scale and publish your Windows Phone apps from the Windows Phone and Windows Azure experts. If you are a beginner or even an expert Windows Phone developer, you should not miss this event.

We will have short sessions on how to get started creating apps for the Windows Phone. And sessions on how to make serious $$$ building Windows Phone apps. Bring your laptop and we will provide all of the necessary tools needed to build your apps. This five hour event will bring together experts and developers with the purpose of developing WP7 apps.

Bring your ideas! Present them to your peers and WIN! Top app ideas will be voted on with an opportunity to WIN FREE Marketplace registration and more! We will also show participants who manage to create a Windows Phone app how they can be entered to win a new Windows Phone!

If you are a student, this is an event you can’t afford to miss! We will show you multiple ways to get FREE Unlocked Samsung Focus Windows Phones, FREE Xbox 360 games, FREE Visual Studio 2010 Professional, FREE Windows Phone Marketplace accounts and FREE Gift Cards.

Centare at Tonight’s Chicago Network After Work

Tonight, 700+ Chicago business professionals will be hanging out on the 80th floor of the Aon Center at The Mid America Club. The Mid America Club is the only club in Chicago that offers a 360-degree panoramic view of Chicago’s distinctive skyline and incomparable vistas of Lake Michigan, Millennium Park and the Gold Coast. While enjoying the amazing view, we will have the great opportunity to get to know other Chicago business professionals from a range of backgrounds, industries and career levels.

If this sounds like a great way to spend this evening, check out http://chicago.networkafterwork.com and register. Hurry, there are only a few spots left.

If you are attending, find me and say hello. I will likely be the guy hanging out discussing the “Almighty Cloud”. Thanks T-Mobile for mixing in more marketing hype and adding to the Cloud confusion.

WI .NET UG Recap – Moving Web Apps to the Cloud

Thank you to Scott Isaacs and the WI .NET User Group for inviting me to present last night. And another thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy summer schedule to participate in the local developer community. I had a blast presenting one of my passions, Cloud Computing, PaaS and Windows Azure. I really enjoyed our discussion and interaction last night and would love to continue the dialog if you have further questions or need assistance with moving “To the Cloud”.

I hope you left with a better understanding of the Cloud, PaaS and Windows Azure. Specifically, I hope that you now have a better idea of how to get started migrating an existing application to Windows Azure. We explored some of the items that can be extremely simple to move, like Application Data in SQL Azure, ASP.NET Membership and Diagnostics. We also discussed some of the items that can offer a challenge, both technically and architecturally, such as Claims-based security and Non-relational, NoSQL, data.

The guidance from Patterns & Practices is great when exploring these migration scenarios. You can read the P&P content online at MSDN. And if you prefer a paper book or an eBook, those are available for purchase too. Downloads for Hands-On Labs and source code for the a-Expense application are also available from P&P. The one caveat worth mentioning is that what’s currently published was developed with Visual Studio 2008 SP1, .NET 3.5 and Windows Azure SDK 1.1. It’s still a great resource to check out and there will soon be a Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 and the Windows Azure SDK 1.4 update. Subscribe to my blog and I will let you know when that update gets released.

The following links are resources that will help you on your Windows Azure journey.

Patterns & Practices – Moving Applications to the Cloud – Online Content
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx

Patterns & Practices – Moving Applications to the Cloud – Code Samples
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=2798

Patterns & Practices – Books
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/hh124092

Windows Azure SDK and Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sdk/

Windows Azure Pricing Calculator
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/

If you would like a copy of the slides from last night, you can download them from my SkyDrive.

Finally, please let me know what other cloud computing topics, either business or technically focused, you would like to learn more about. Your feedback will help guide future presentations and events. Thank you for attending and check back later next week for more details about a new community launching to provide practical, deep, hands-on experience developing with Windows Azure.

Moving Web Apps to the Cloud at WI .NET User Group

As a developer with years of experience developing web apps using ASP.NET, SQL Server, Windows Server and Active Directory, how do you move to the cloud with Windows Azure? How can you apply your existing skills and experience to developing cloud apps in Windows Azure?

These are common questions that get raised when considering Cloud Computing, PaaS and Windows Azure. Often, developers and technology managers have applications that come to mind when hearing about Windows Azure, but they are existing apps that were designed to run on-premise and not in Windows Azure. Since the apps already exist and it doesn’t make sense to throw them away and start over, Windows Azure seems out of reach.

Next Tuesday, July 12, 2011, at 7PM, I will be presenting on this very topic at the WI .NET User Group. We will take a simple, ASP.NET web app, designed to run in the traditional data center, and walk through the migration to Windows Azure. We’ll discuss the important considerations, practices, architectural differences, challenges, advantages and economic benefits to consider when migrating to Windows Azure.

If you are planning to attend, please take a moment to register for the event. There will be FREE pizza and soda sponsored by Centare. And I will bring some additional cloud giveaways.

One important detail to take note of, we will not be meeting at the normal Direct Supply location, but instead at Northwoods Software. Thanks to Northwood Software for providing the location this month.

Northwoods Software Development, Inc
4600 West Schroeder Drive
Brown Deer, WI 53223
Map & Directions