TechEd Panel: Windows Mobile Application Development

At TechEd in Orlando last month a few of the Windows Mobile presenters discussed development for mobile devices in a panel session. You can view the recorded session here.


The panel consists of Andy Wigley, myself, Maarten Struys, and Paul Yao.

You can also see other panel sessions and recordings from TechEd online

TechEd Australia, the mobile story

September seems like a long way off, but before you know it it will be here and so will TechEd Australia.
I (and other great community members) have been working with the guys down under to help shape the look and feel of TechEd for you to learn about mobile development.
Don Kerr has posted the current thinking for the sessions, what do you think?

TechEd 2008 Day 0

It's only the end of day 0?
Wow, its been a fun packed day already, with lots of the familiar faces in the community engaging in conversations about all things good, bad and beautiful in the world of software development.
I could hardly walk 10 yards today without meeting someone who I knew or knew me, or even better both :)
It's always good to finally meet people I have had email conversations with and put faces to names.
I helped to get a bunch of demos running today that will be shown on the show floor at the product booths. If you are at TechEd you should certainly swing by and have a look at some of the cool product demos.
I am already getting a good feeling about the event splitting so IT Pro and Developers have their own events. This week is the developer week (no surprises) and I am getting good vibes about this. Developers connecting with developers and knowing that nearly everyone else is a developer will make the meal time conversations easier.
If you are at TechEd then come and find me and say hello.
I will be often found in and around the Windows Mobile booth space.

Local Feedback Loops

I had a wonderful beach side meeting and lunch with Andrew Coates yesterday and we talked through a number of ideas. Mostly about TechEd Australia as that is Andrew's focus right now.
We brainstormed ideas around how to get people talking more at the event rather than make it a series of push sessions.
I find I rarely attend a session at conferences any more as I can watch them all online afterwards. The real value of a conference is meeting people and talking to them. Creating feedback loops for thought processes. Sometimes just listening in to other people talking can be enlightening too.
We brainstormed some ideas around having the first session after the keynote being a panel for each track. The panel would introduce the speakers on that track and start the conversation around the track topics. Andrew has blogged about it.
I hear complaints about there not being enough content at TechEd and comparing TechEd Australia to TechEd USA, which does have a lot more content and a much higher attendance. I don't think this is a good argument. You are allowed to go to both! TechEd USA is an awesome event and worth going to. TechEd Australia is different, it is a local event, smaller in nature and allows the local community to engage with each other. I don't believe TechEd Australia should just be a mini version of TechEd USA. That is a waste of time, the world is a small place and Australians are mostly capable of getting on an airplane to fly to TechEd USA if they want to. TechEd Australia has an opportunity to do something different and better for the local community. I believe the same is true for all events that run locally in a region.
I am hoping for lots of good conversations at TechEd Australia that have local relevance.

New Windows Mobile Dev Blog

Amit Chopra from the Windows Mobile developer tools team at Microsoft has set up a new Windows Mobile developer blog.
He has kicked off with a post about the the great line up of sessions at TechEd in Orlando next month.
I'll be doing a session on Windows Vista sync center and some chalk talks.
I'm looking forward to catching up with the mobile developers there.

Dr. Neil's Notes 49

Welcome to Dr. Neil's Notes Show 49

Warning lower than average recording quality, sorry.

A week of travel.
TechEd South East Asia in Kuala Lumpur, 2 sessions on the Windows Live Platform
Mix UK, a session on designing user happiness.

Feedback on the ViaWindowsLive site.
A call for participation, get involved in the community.

Happy Coding!

TechEd South East Asia

I am just heading out of Singapore now and spent the day in Kuala Lumpur at TechEd South East Asia. I gave two presentations this morning on the Windows Live development platform. The first session was an overview of the Live Services and I did a demo of the new ScreenEdit site. The new ScreenEdit site uses Live Id, Live Search, plugs into Live Spaces and pulls content from Silverlight Streaming.
The second session was a more detailed look at Virtual Earth and Live Search.
I am now heading to Mix UK for some fun with Developers and Designers tomorrow :)

TDD session at TechEd last week

Last week at TechEd Australia I presented a session on Unit Testing and Test Driven Development. Presenting this session raised a dilemma for me.
I have been using Unit Testing, Test First and TDD for eight years now. I have been teaching the benefits of a test first approach for seven years.
Should I assume the attendees coming to this session are already sold on TDD and therefore target the content at some of the issues with TDD and tooling or should I focus on teaching the benefits of TDD to attendees who are not yet TDD believers?
I thought about this and decided that while TDD is becoming popular the attendees coming to this session are most likely to not be practicing TDD and want to learn why they should care about unit testing and TDD.
It was a gamble that seemed to pay off. If you attended my session and were already a believer, I hope you learned something and I apologize that it might not have been what you were expecting.
The majority of the attendees in the TDD presentation were learning about TDD for the first time, and the feedback I received was awesome. Here is a sample of the comments about the session:

Brilliant - got my value for TechEd in a single session (especially as my manager who needed convincing re nunit was sitting with me )

Brilliant. I want to get this presentation delivered to all my developers who couldn't make it to TechEd. We've bought into Unit Testing and we need to get to 100% breakthrough, next up has to be TDD

By far this is my best TechEd experience so far. WE NEED MORE NEIL's IN THIS WORLD. Thank you for giving him a session to WOW us with.

Excellent session - I am now a believer!

Excellent session - well presented, clear and concise with lots of useful items and practices to take away. Best session yet.

For me, this has been the best session so far! Excellent content and an excellent presenter! Fantastic. I would love to learn more about this subject. I am implementing unit testing in my team starting Monday!

Great presentation. Very important way of doing development.

Highlight of the conference for me. 11 out of 10.

Thank you to everyone who attended this session.

Information on the eXtreme .NET book I mentioned in the talk

TechEd 2007 Orlando

Day 2 of TechEd already!
Catching up with lots of people and my decks and demos are nearly finished.
It was interesting to see Agile given so much time in the keynote yesterday, and the Agile .NET session yesterday lunch time was packed out.
I am talking to lots of people who say they are getting value out of the event which is good.
There is, of course, a lot of marketing hype and BS around as well. It amazes me that peopl eactually believe that buying a software tool/product/plugin/component will make them better developers.
As I pointed out at the Agile .NET session, delivering great software is about sticking to values, not applying practices or using tools. The practices are only there to help you stick to the values, and if the practices don't do that then you need to change them.

Conference season has started

Last week I was in Las Vegas (yeh baby!) for MIX and MEDC.
Doing 2 conferences that overlap was ambitious but it worked out great. I met so many amazing people and had fantastic conversations about technology, the future of the web, and heaps of other topics.
I also got to see some very cool new projects.
My friends from the ScreenEdit team in the UK were also there, recording plenty of conversation and points of view. Look out for the interviews appearing on the site soon.
So what other conferences do I plan to attend this year?

• TechEd in Orlando
• ReMix Australia in Melbourne
• TechEd Australia on the Gold Coast (yes the site uses Flash - can you believe it?)
• DevConnections Las Vegas

Maybe I will see you at one of these events?

TechEd Sessions

I am sitting in the airport about to fly out of Sydney and I get an email telling me that I am going to be presenting the following sessions this year at TechEd in Orlando

Windows Live Services on Windows Mobile

Mashup Windows Live

Windows Vista Gadgets That Talk to My Mobile Phone -

The Synchronization Story: Building Windows Mobile Applications That Work with Windows Vista Sync Center

How cool! Looking forward to showing off some cool idea in these sessions :)

Submitting Sessions for TechEd - why is it so hard?

In the last couple of weeks I have been asked by a number of different people at Microsoft to submit sessions for TechEd.
At TechEd this year there will be a number of different tracks:

• Architecture
• Mobility
• Business Applications (Microsoft Dynamics)
• Office System
• Business Intelligence
• Security
• Connected Systems
• Windows Server Infrastructure
• Database Development and Administration
• Web Development & infrastructure
• Developer Tools & Technologies
• Windows Client
• Identity & Access (virtual track)
• Management & Operations
• Unified Communications

Each track has a 'secret' code to allow me to make a submission to that track. I started with 2 submissions for the Windows Client track. Now I have some submissions to make for the Architecture and Mobility tracks. the system will not allow this. How could someone present sessions on more than one area?

My profile is now tied to the Windows Client track and I cannot submit sessions for the other tracks. Is there anyone else that has this issue? Am I a freak of nature for wanted to submit sessions in more than one track?

Update: My MVP lead has found someone that can edit the system and asign my submissions to the correct tracks.