We had a great time last Saturday hosting http://www.jaxcodecamp.com at UNF. We had around 530 with about 430-440 attend. One of the closest amounts of registered vs. attendee ratio. I want to thank the many speakers, sponsors and vols that helped make our event successful. For more info and feedback, visit http://www.twitter.com and so a search on #jaxcc.

Register for the events below at Jacksonville's Code Camp at http://www.jaxcodecamp.com 

SESSION1 – Windows Phone 7 Overview – A Look at the platform, the phone, and the ecosystem around it.  Full hands on walkthrough and demo of Windows Phone 7.  Explore the application approaches, the developer ecosystem and see some sample applications  - Joe Healy – Microsoft -  http://www.devfish.net

SESSION2 – Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 – Henry Lee – New Age Solutions - You’ve heard the fundamentals; now it’s time to dig a little deeper. This session will focus on building Windows Phone 7 applications with Microsoft Silverlight. You’ll see first-hand how to use Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend to develop and debug projects. You’ll also learn about the built-in templates and the many available controls and styles for WP7 - http://www.newagesolution.net/Blogs/NewAgeSolutionBlog/tabid/412/BlogId/14/Default.aspx

SESSION3 – XNA Dev Game Programming for Windows Phone 7 – Microsoft XNA has been a favorite with game developers for many years. Now game developers will be able to harness the power of the XNA framework to create  highly immersive and responsive games for Windows Phone 7.. Bill will charge full-speed into XNA to outline the basic Windows Phone model, explore its core device characteristics, and review the highlights of the XNA phone framework. Finally, he’ll show you some of the cool and impressive games that have been developed specifically for Windows Phone 7. – Bill Reiss – http://www.bluerosegames.com

SESSION4 – Real World WP7 App From Scratch –– Creating a currency conversion application on the fly from scratch - Application Bar – Location Service - Rx.Net – Web Service Calls - Web Browser control  - Push Notifications - Tile notifications- Toast notifications - Eugene Chuvyrov -- http://twitter.com/EugeneChuvyrov

SESSION5 – Monetizing Your Passion Through Windows Phone 7 -  Windows Phone 7 will launch with a fully loaded Marketplace and the opportunity for developers to sell or distribute their applications. . In this session, you’ll get the details about how to navigate the certification process and publish your application including updates. Learn how to increase discoverability as well as deepen your connection with your customers through the powerful business intelligence capabilities of the marketplace.- Nikita Polyakov - http://geekswithblogs.net/campuskoder/Default.aspx

SESSION6 – Windows Phone 7 LoadFest and Open Lab – Come to an open “build-a-phone-app” session and work on labs or your applications.  If you have an app ready to test on a 6414 Flashed Windows Phone we’ll have a setup available for you.  If you don’t have the developer environment for WP7 installed, this is a fantastic opportunity to drop the tools and the Windows Phone Training Kit onto your machine.  Greg Leonardo - http://www.codefertilizer.com/ and friends.

Want to learn more about Windows Phone 7 for free? We have a a whole day dedicated to WP7 development at http://www.jaxcodecamp.com

August has been a tough one for getting any good posts out. Currently I am sitting at a local coffee shop replying to emails and making plans for our codecamp at http://www.jaxcodecamp.com. This is pretty much the norm for about 3 days out of the week, since the end of July. I think this year has been harder than last year, however I am working closer with our contributers(vols, speakers and sponsors) who really make the event a success. Now I need to focus some on advertisement.

Ready For Code Camp!!!

Speakers and sessions have finally been approved and posted on http://www.jaxcodecamp! We are still working on the schedule, however you can look at all the sessions and see which presentations you would like to attend. We have a lot of talent coming to speak from all over. Usually I would say just Florida however this year we have speakers from other states too. Something else that is happening but has not been added to the site yet are the speakers and content that will be happening for Windows Phone 7. Once that track is finalized I will be pushing out the information as well.Jax Code camp is geared for you and this year's code camp is a special one. With the release of VS2010, Blend, Silverlight and other cool Microsoft Technologies this year, each presentation has been selected to help get you ramped up quickly by helping you understand how to use these cool new tools. We have some serious rock stars who consult for a living who will be demonstrating and teaching cutting edge skills, so make sure you are registered for codecamp and stay ahead! To register for codecamp, go to http://www.jaxcodecamp.com/Attendee.aspx/Register

While at Sharepoint Saturday I attended an interesting session titled, "Workflow Visio and SharePoint Designer". I was really amazed that WF had finally found a home in Visio. Visio is a great designer tool for modeling applications through flowcharts and now business users like business analysts and 'subject matter experts' are one step closer to actually being able to design workflows and have them pushed up to Sharepoint. One of WF's greatest features is giving business  professionals the power of designing workflows so that developers do not have to.

 

Tonight is our monthly meeting and all week I have been building Hyper-V machines to serve as the cluster I will be using for my demos. My company, FlowFocus Solutions (http://www.flowfocus.com) will be hosting the meeting with food afterwards at Longhorn. Hope to see ya!

When L2S came out I was fan and have been ever since, however there were some concerns of what was going to happen to it with EF closing in on its heels. As with any technology there is a couple of factors that can help make technology adoption decisions.

1. Meeting a need
2. Support
3. Future

Even though Support and Future can be the same the can also be different as in this case. For example, VB6 is no longer supported however it has no future either! L2S and EF are both supported however what is their future? Obviously, Microsoft has chosen EF as their primary ORM framework because it plays better with other non-Microsoft technologies, but L2S has less of a learning curve when compared to EF which makes it fairly easier when connecting to Sql Server. At this point a decision could be made based on which technology "meets the need", but as a consultant I think it is equally important on understanding how both technologies work and what features can be taken advantage of during development. Here are some of the changes that were added into .Net 4.0.

 Post initiated from this Visual Studio article

 

Just wanted to send out Kudos to Tim McAliley for a great presentation on TFS2010. Tim is a personal friend who recently started sharing his knowledge with others on Sql Server and TFS by presenting at Florida events. Looksing forward to seeing you at the next event Tim!

We finally have our Codecamp site up! If you are interested in speaking please feel free to regsiter at here!