Winnipeg Tech Days 2009: A Review
Wednesday was the last day for the Tech Days 2009 tour hosted by Microsoft. This year, they decided to put on the full two day show for Winnipeg, and something was different this year. Something was better. That something better can be explained with the following formula.
Be warned that if you do not have some kind of training with formal mathematics, this may blow…your…mind.
The big difference about Tech Days this year was that the Wessty wasn’t just an attendee, but a presenter. I took part in two presentations over the course of the two days. The first day, I worked with Miguel Carrasco on the presentation entitled Expression Blend for Developers (with Miguel Carrasco). The second day, I presented Building RESTful Services in WCF on my own.
Expression Blend for Developers
As you may have noticed, the topics of my two presentations were very different. The first one was about my bread and butter, that being Expression Blend 3. Considering that I am something of a User Experience person, this topic was right up my alley. Miguel started off the presentation by introducing the software and explaining how it can be useful to developers.
My work in the presentation involved demonstrating how a developer can use Expression Blend in their work. I started out by demonstrating how to use SketchFlow with WPF and giving people a quick run down on its capabilities.This was followed up by implementing the front-end of the SketchFlow application using Blend and seeing how the new features in the software can help me build something that not only works, but looks good too.
I very much enjoy the Expression Suite of software. For more details, check out the Expression website.
Building RESTful Service with WCF
The second presentation discussed how developers can use WCF to implement RESTful services. At a glance, you might thing that a UX developer has no place presenting this topic, but that is where you would be wrong.
My roots are with .NET 3.0 and 3.5, which includes the project formerly known as Indigo (a.k.a. WCF). I have always loved WCF for its simplicity to get working and have a flexible communications layer in my application, without having to write any complex communications code. Unfortunately, this fantastic tool is only fantastic thanks to the tooling that has been provided with Microsoft. It sets up everything for the developer, without the dev actually knowing what is happening under the covers.
SOAP (which is the protocol used to send and receive messages in WCF) is quite complex, specifically with the protocol that must be followed on both the client and server to get it working. A service implemented with a RESTful architecture demonstrate a refreshingly easy way to implement a communications layer using nothing more regular web protocols.
For more information about this, check out the MSDN and get started.
Conclusion
This was a very enriching experience, and I would recommend anyone dealing with Microsoft technologies to considering coming out to the next one or checking out any of the other .NET development events happening in your area.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line on here or drop me an email.
Oh, and I will be posting some photos sooner than later. I just need to get them organized. Until then…
Catch you on the flip side.
Related Resources
Here are some other findings on the web that discuss Tech Days 2009. Check them out!
- D’Arcy Lussier Blog Post
- Canadian Developer Connection – Joey Devilla (a.k.a. Dude with the accordion)
- D’Arcy Lussier’s thoughts….
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