Tag: training

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Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp

Devvin' for Seven: Windows Phone 7 DevelopmentYou’ve seen the announcement and perhaps you’ve downloaded the beta of the Windows Phone 7 dev tools (if you haven’t, do it now!)

Click here to download WP7 Developer Tools Beta

Now that you’ve got the tools, what’s next? Will they just lie there, dormant on your hard drive, or are you going to use them and be a trailblazer on a brand new mobile platform?

Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp: Montreal (August 23 - 24), Vancouver (August 30 - 31), Ottawa (September 2 - 3), Toronto (September 7 - 8)

If you’re looking for intense training with personal attention by a highly-rated presenter with Silverlight and cloud development expertise, you’ll want to check out DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps. They’re being presented by Colin Melia, who’s presented at TechDays, wrote the Silverlight demo app that we used for the EnergizeIT tour and is one of our go-to guys for Windows Azure – simply put, the guy knows his stuff.

BootThe Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps are serious courses – two full days of in-class hands-on training in which Colin will explain the Windows Phone 7 platform and especially Silverlight as it runs on Windows Phone, with all the details on Silverlight programming techniques, controls, templates, styling, resources, animation, data binding, navigation, interfaces and all those things you need to know about to build a mobile app. The course will mostly cover the Silverlight side of Windows Phone development, although there will be a section on game development with XNA.

If you’re a busy developer who’s having trouble setting aside time to learn all those separate bits that go into Windows Phone development – Silverlight, calling on web services, the Windows Phone-specific APIs, using information for sensors such as GPS and accelerometers and dealing with the constraints of mobile devices – this course is well worth the money. It’ll give you the kick start you start writing apps and capitalize on the wide-open marketplace of Windows Phone apps.

Windows Phone 7 "People" hubThe bootcamps take place in the following cities on the following dates:

  • Montreal: Monday, August 23 and Tuesday, August 24 at the Microsoft office
  • Vancouver: Monday, August 30 and Tuesday, August 31 at the Sutton Place Hotel
  • Ottawa: Thursday, September 2 and Friday, September 3 at the Microsoft office
  • Toronto: Tuesday, September 7 and Wednesday, September 8 at Microsoft’s downtown office

The registration fee is CDN$999 for the full-day training session, and you can save $100 by using the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP when you register. I repeat:

Save $100 with this code: WP7BOOTCAMP

For the full details on the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, see the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp: Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto

windows phone 7 bootcamp

Want some hardcore training from a developer who’s been doing Windows Phone 7 development since the tools were released in March? Then you’ll want to check out DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, taking place late this summer in Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto.

The Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp is an intense two-day training session run by indie training conference organizers DevTeach and will be hosted by Colin Melia, principal architect for DreamDigital. Colin’s knows a lot about Silverlight and cloud technologies and will share this knowledge at the Bootcamp, showing you how to make great mobile user interfaces as well as how to write phone apps that harness the power of networked-based services such as notification and location services as well as data access and isolated storage.

save 100 with WP&BOOTCAMP codeWhat You’ll Need to Know

Colin’s going to dive right into the nitty-gritty of developing apps for Windows Phone 7, and there’s quite a bit of material to cover, so you should at least be familiar with the following to get the most out of the Bootcamp:

  • Visual Studio 2008 or 2010
    (You can familiarize yourself with these by downloading the free Visual C# 2010 Express or Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone)
  • The C# programming language, or something similar
    (If you’re a Java developer you should find the transition pretty easy; developers using other object-oriented programming languages shouldn’t have too much difficulty following C#)
  • The .NET programming framework
    (Actually, pretty easy to grasp, especially with the assistance of Visual Studio)
  • XML
    (A basic understanding will do)

What You Won’t Need to Know

You won’t need to have any experience with Silverlight or phone development – the Bootcamp’s covering that!

What You’ll Need to Bring

one laptop will do

You’ll need to bring your own laptop running Windows 7 or Vista SP2 with “an appropriate up-to-date set of tools installed and functioning”. That means Visual Studio 2010 or at least Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone.

When and Where?

The Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps will be limited to 25 seats in order for you to be able to interact better with Colin, so register as soon as you can! They’ll be taking place in these cities:

  • Montreal: Monday, August 23 and Tuesday, August 24 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel
  • Vancouver: Monday, August 30 and Tuesday, August 31 at the Sutton Place Hotel
  • Ottawa: Thursday, September 2 and Friday, September 3 at a location to be announced
  • Toronto: Tuesday, September 7 and Wednesday, September 8 at a location to be announced

The registration fee is CAD$999 for the two-day training session, and you can save $100 by providing the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP when you register.

For More Information

If you’d like to know more about the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, visit DevTeach’s site, and particularly their special page devoted to the Bootcamp.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Azure Training Videos

Windows Azure logoWindows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, and it’ll be going live very soon – expect to hear a number of announcements about it from next week’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC).

I’ll be posting articles showing you how to get into developing on Azure, but if you want to get a head start in the meantime, a good place to go is MSDev, Microsoft’s site that’s packed to the rafters with video training on all sorts of Microsoft platform development topics. There’s a series of training videos covering Azure development, including:

…and more videos are on the way.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Ignite Your Career Webcast: “Internal or External Training?” – Thursday, September 17th

in-and-out_training

The second installment of the Ignite Your Career webcasts takes place tomorrow, Thursday, September 17th, from 12:00 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern (9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Pacific). This will be the second of four Ignite Your Career webcasts taking place this month, and this week’s topic will be Internal or External Training – Know Your Options. Here’s the abstract:

Maintaining your technical and personal skill sets are critical to being successful in the job you already have and anything you might be looking to progress into. Unfortunately, the option of external training might not be available to you at this point in time. How can you take advantage of internal resources like job shadowing, mentoring, internal courses, study groups as well as external training activities when available? How can you pitch setting up new training options to your team and managers? Looking externally – what about valuable online free offerings, professional associations and community events? This session will bring information together to equip you with the knowledge and resources required to get the ball rolling.

The panel of industry experts speaking at this webcast will be:

Ignite Your Career is presented by Microsoft Canada and is about helping you make the most out of your career and make the best career choices. As such, it’s “platform neutral” – whether you develop on .NET, the iPhone or Ruby on Rails, the topics covered in Ignite Your Career apply to you.

It doesn’t cost a thing to catch an Ignite Your Career webcast. Simply register at the Ignite Your Career site.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows 7 Developer Resources

Screenshot of the Windows 7 Training Kit

Over at Canadian Developer Connection, my friend and co-evangelist John Bristowe has an article on Develeoper Resources for Getting Started with Windows 7 RTM.

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The Silverlight Tour: Travelling Across Canada This Summer!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Sliverlight Tour logoIf you’ve been meaning to get into building rich internet applications using Silverlight, you might want to check out The Silverlight Tour. Billed as “a worldwide three-day course on Silverlight”, the Tour mixes lectures, demonstrations and hands on labs, covering Silverlight development from three angles:

  • Design
  • Development
  • Server-Side Code

The Silverlight Tour people have been keeping up with the latest developments. While they cover development in Silverlight 2, they’ve already updated their seminars to cover the latest and greatest features in the upcoming Silverlight 3.

According to their site, here’s what you get:

  • 3 days of intensive Silverlight 2 and 3
  • Coverage of Expression Blend and Visual Studio
  • Architect Silverlight Solutions
  • Understand the full Control Model and Customization
  • Data Access and Web Services

The full details are covered in their workshop outline.

They’ve announced a set of Canadian tour dates, most of which are in the summer:

  • Montreal: July 13 – 15
  • Vancouver: July 20 – 22
  • Ottawa: August 3 – 5
  • Quebec City: August 10-12
  • Toronto: November 11 – 13

Registration for this hardcore three-day workshop is $1995 – the registration page is here.