Follow-up: Telerik in an ALT.NET World

It's a little past midnight here in the "Amateur Sports Capital of the World" (Indianapolis for the uninformed), and several hours ago this was the scene for my talk to the Indy ALT.NET user group. The ALT.NET user group is still very young (this was their 3rd meeting), but it's already got a great active base of members. The meeting was lively with good audience interaction, and- despite a few "predictable" demo glitches- the talk went very well. Thanks again to everyone that came out tonight and for proving that ALT.NET developers really aren't that mean.

As promised in my announcement of this trip to Indy, my talk tonight focused on showing you how you can leverage many open source .NET tools (like NHiberante, LinqToNHibernate, NAnt, NUnit, NHibernateDataSource, and Dynamic LINQ) in conjunction with the latest features in RadGrid for ASP.NET AJAX (like client-side data binding , web service integration, and LINQ support) to build a demo app with an architecture much more fit for "real world" use. The result is a demo with a powerful data architecture that helps you see how to build a "better" practice (I'm not the person you should look to for "best" practice anything) application with Telerik's tools.

Since my demo code uses features coming in next week's Q2 2008 release, I can't make it available for download yet- sorry! In the mean time, you can grab the slides from tonight's session below, and as soon as the Q2 2008 release is public, I'll publish the code here for you to download, too. I hope you enjoy the resources. Watch for a "re-play" of this session at my future conference appearances and maybe even a webcast version. Anyone interested?

Telerik in an ALT.NET World downloads
Slides
Code [Coming Soon - after Q2 2008]

Join me in Indianapolis for ALT.NET Telerik session

Do you live and work in the Indianapolis area? If so, come on out to the next Indy ALT.NET meeting this week where I'll be the guest speaker. The meeting will be held this Thursday, July 17th and it will start around 6 PM (local time) with food and drink and socializing starting around 5:15. You can find all of the details on the Indy ALT.NET website.

For my part, I'll be doing a new talk titled "Telerik Tools in an ALT.NET World," which will highlight more advanced features of the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX running in what could be considered a "real world-ish" demo application. "Real world" because it will be a multi-tier, NHibernate-powered, TDD built, DDD inspired application- not some simple one-tier demo app. In the talk I'll show you how you can use the RadControls with open source tools like NHibernate and NUnit to build powerful, scalable applications, and I'll show you how you can use many of the new features in the RadControls to improve the performance of your web apps.

It should be a fun talk with lots of new stuff- I'll even be doing some LINQ to NHibernate- so come on out if you're in the area. If you're not, I'll make the slides and code available here shortly after my talk. See you on Thursday!

Join me for live webcast this Thursday

Looking for something to do during your lunch this Thursday? Why not join me online for a live webcast! This webcast, titled "Understanding the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX," will be a fun, hour long session that seeks to do two things:

• Introduce people to Telerik and the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
• Demo some tricks that will help you maximize the RadControls in your projects

If either of these scenarios sound interesting to you, then sign-up now and come join the fun. The webcast will start at 12 noon (EST) and I'm planning on leaving 15 minutes at the end of the session for answering questions. So even if you're not interested in the topics I'm covering, the live webcast is a great place to ask your questions (though I don't guarantee a live answer).

There is also a remote chance that I won't be able to do live demos on Thursday, so if that's case, plan on some follow-up videos to bring you the live demo action. Hopefully we'll be able to resolve the problem with our webcast provider and you'll get the full live experience, but I just want to put the warning out in case there is a problem. Hope to see you Thursday!

Reserve your seat for the webcast now

TechEd 2008 Wrap-up (with a twist)

TechEd 2008 has come and gone, and now that I'm back and settled in the office, I figured I ought to provide some wrap-up remarks- like every other TechEd blogger out there. I know, I'm not original. But with that confession, let's see if I can make this wrap-up post different from many of the others you've read.

Most wrap-up posts seem to follow this pattern:

1. Gushing thanks to those that visited the booth
2. Comments about how great the show was
3. Tantalizing promises of better things to come in 2008

Let me just get those out of the way by saying, ditto.

Now, on from there. I have a couple of interesting insights regarding TechEd 2008, a random tidbit from the MS Silverlight Team, a photo gallery to share, and Roy Osherove's TechEd 2008 version of "Every Build You Break."

First, the insights. As many of you may know, TechEd 2008 was a unique show. It was the first TechEd to split developers and IT "Pros" (I think the term should be applied loosely), creating two (theoretically) smaller back-to-back, one-week events instead of a single massive event. In theory, this change was supposed to improve the quality of TechEd for developer focused companies, like Telerik, and better match attendees with the available sessions and sponsors. And while I definitely agree that all of the conversations at this year's TechEd were better than last year (no more, Me:"We develop .NET UI components and developer tools." Attendee:"I'm not a developer." Me:"Okay...here's a t-shirt" exchanges), the overall energy of TechEd has definitely changed. There's just something about 10,000+ geeks in one place that strangely energizes people, and that was missing for the TechEd Developer Week this year.

So is the change good? I think the jury is still out. For developers, the change makes TechEd feel like a slightly bigger DevConnections (albeit with much better MS participation and a much better keynote). For companies that want to reach both audiences, it makes TechEd a serious endurance marathon as they camp out in Orlando for two solid weeks. We'll see if this new format survives for a second year, but if you attended the show and want to have a say, let Microsoft know what you thought of the change.

Next, a random tidbit from the Sivlverlight Team. After attending yet another Silverlight session where the demoer implemented their own boilerplate class to support the mouse scrollwheel, it struck me that I should ask the Silverlight Team if we could hope to see this seemingly obvious code baked-in to Silverlight 2 before its release. Unfortunately, I got a pretty non-commital answer at the show, but with the promise of follow-up. I'll try to get a definitive answer from the Silverlight Team soon. Until then, plan on rolling your own scrollwheel support.

Finally, a photo gallery and a video. For the gallery, hit up my Picasa Web Gallery (complete with picture captions so you know what you're looking at) to see pics of the show, the Universal party, and the Telerik crew. For the video, check out my new "Every Build You Break" YouTube clip. This is actually my first contribution to the great time suck that is YouTube, so I apologize in advance for contributing more meaningless dribble to the Interwebs. I think you'll enjoy the video and the song, though- it is very "geeky" humor.

And that about wraps it up! I hope you found this TechEd wrap-up post sufficiently different from others you've read and I hope you enjoyed my TechEd coverage. I'll try to provide even better coverage at future events, so keep it locked-in here for all the fun.

Join Telerik at TechEd 2008

I've been alluding to our presence at the upcoming uber tech event for a few weeks now, so let's go ahead and make the details official. Telerik will indeed be at TechEd again this year, so for those of you in the Orlando area (or those traveling there for a little business and fun), don't miss your next chance to come out and meet the Telerik crew. We'll have a strong contingent of Telerik-ers from our home office in Bulgaria in attendance, and I'll be around, too. We'd love to meet you, so stop by our huge new booth in slot 1101.

This year's event kicks-off with a keynote from Bill Gates (another "last" for Mr. Gates) on June 3rd, and you can bet I'll be there to bring you the live blogging coverage. I know many of you can't make it to TechEd, so I'll do my best to bring TechEd to you on this blog next week.

Meanwhile, in addition to being a Gold Sponsor of this year's event, Telerik will also be giving away more of the oh-so-popular .NET Ninja and Geekette shirts at our booth. I'll try to run another giveaway contest after TechEd to really share the excitement with those of you following along from your desks. On the technical front, we'll be showing-off brand new demo applications built with the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and will be premiering our RadControls for WPF and Silverlight. Downloads of the stuff we show-off at TechEd should be available in the next couple of weeks.

Clearly, it will be a fun time. Keep your feed readers locked-in next week for all of the live updates and get ready for a lot of exciting new downloads and announcements from Telerik!

Telerik at the Great Indian Developer Summit

With day one almost in the rear view mirror, I figured I should fix a bit of an oversight and let you know that I am at the Great Indian Developer Summit this week! I usually try to let you know about my whereabouts when I'm going to be on the road so you can make plans to attend my sessions if you're nearby (or bored, independently wealthy, and willing to buy a plane ticket). In this case, my mad rush to prepare my demos and my international travel left me no time to properly give notice on this blog. I'll do better next time.

But enough with the apologies. If you are in Bangalore (India, for the geographically and context clue challenged), definitely make sure you come to Day Two of the Great Indian Developer Summit. There are hundreds of .NET developers here, a number of great companies in the exhibitor area, and, of course, some great .NET speakers. The event kicked-off today with "Bleeding Edge .NET", and the .NET sessions will run through tomorrow. After that, the event moves-on to "Rich Web" and "Daring Java" to round out the week.

I did three presentations today on three totally different technologies- ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and WPF. Tomorrow I've got a fun 3+ hour Silverlight "deep dive." I should have asked to do a WinForms presentation and then made it a home run of .NET UI platform presentations! Today's presentations were very well attended and all went pretty smooth. I'll throw another post up later with my code and presentations, though, so I'll save the recap for that.

All-in-all, it looks like GIDS is off to a great start as one of India's premier .NET events and I can't wait to be a part of it in future years. Stay tuned for more updates and some great GIDS stories. Also, for those of you eagerly awaiting my next installment in the "Optimization" series, I haven't forgotten about you. I promise that I'll get that series back in gear as soon as I get back to the States!

DevConnections Presentation Follow-up, Slides and Code

In addition to being Platinum sponsors of this year's spring Dev Connections, Telerik also had the opportunity to do one "vendor session" presentation. I took the stage last night with Tervel Peykov from the Telerik ASP.NET product teams to deliver this session, and I am happy to report that it was a huge success! More than 150 people turned out to fill the room and catch our presentation on developing "rich, responsive, high-performance" applications with the new RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. The presentation generated a lot of good questions- both on the general technologies covered and the RadControls- so all-in-all, we were very happy we had this chance to get in front of a big DevConnections audience and talk about our controls.

If you were among the crowd at the presentation, thanks again for coming out! It was a lot of fun to meet you- most of you - and I hope you enjoyed the content we covered. As promised, the slides and code from our presentation are being made available at the bottom of this blog post, so whether you were in attendance or not, you can download the slides and code and learn how the RadControls can help you as a developer. I also want to congratulate again the three people that won full RadControl subscriptions after our presentation- if you're reading this, send me some lucky lotto numbers!

Download the slides and code

LIVE from ASP.NET Connections ScottGu Keynote

Note: Due to connection problems, this coverage was previously recorded.

8:00 AM - Okay, we're here, settled in to our seats, trying to get the Sprint wireless Internet to work. Hopefully things will work soon. Scott's on stage finishing some Starbucks and waiting for people to finish streaming-in.

8:03 AM - Here we go. Scott's welcoming us to the show and commenting on his past trips to speak at DevConnections. He's also running through the crazy list of teams he manages. This guy is a machine.

8:05 AM - Talking about VS 2008 and .NET 3.5. Just running down the basic list of features and benefits of these new releases. Nothing new if you've been following .NET and Visual Studio actively.

8:08 AM - Shreeeeeek! His wireless mic just had some major feedback that really woke-up this sleepy-eyed crowd. Now everybody's paying attention.

8:09 AM - Still talking Visual Studio features. Talking now about support for debugging in to the .NET framework. He polled the audience to ask how many people have used the feature before. No many people here have.

8:10 AM - Demo time! Scott's showing-off the ability to browse and debug the core ASP.NET code in Visual Studio 2008. The feature downloads the .NET source on-demand from Microsoft's servers so you can view it in the VS debugger. Pretty cool learning tool, if nothing else.

8:13 AM - Back to the slides and now time to talk about IIS7 and ASP.NET. Again with the basic feature coverage.

8:17 AM - Time for another demo. This time we're going to look at some IIS features and how they integrate tightly with ASP.NET. Scott reminded us that the IIS7 Manager communicates over HTTP, which means you can easily use the IIS7 Manager to manage servers through firewalls wherever they're hosted. Pretty cool. He's also showing us how you can use the IIS7 Manager to directly manage your ASP.NET Membership users and roles. You no longer have to build your own custom page or UI to manage your .NET Membership users- just use IIS7.

8:20 AM - Slides again. We're now talking IIS7 support for web farms. Mentions that Dell.com and some other huge commerce site are already running on .NET 3.5 and IIS7. Point: IIS7 can scale very well.

8:22 AM - Time to shift gear and talk about what's coming (vs. what we already have). Finally.

8:23 AM - First-up is talk about the extensions being added to ASP.NET this year, like Dynamic Data, history support in ASP.NET AJAX, and MVC. He said we can also expect additional improvements in VS 2008 that deliver better JS formatting and that make it easier to support other Ajax libraries (like JQuery).

8:25 AM - Demo. He's now showing us how Data Dynamics works and how you go about creating a Dynamics site in VS 2008. Just a minute before he polled the audience to ask how many people build SQL driven websites and again got crickets. This audience is -really- dead and just not than excited this morning. Scott made a joke that he thought he may be at the wrong conference speaking to an audience that's never heard of .NET that was received to chuckles.

8:33 AM - Still showing a Dynamic Data demo and how the scaffolding automatically builds a CRUD interface. He's also talking LinqToSQL/LinqToEntities and how those technologies play a central row to Dynamic Data's features. Actually, he's going to show us how to use LinqToSQL to do business rule validation when data is updated. With this dead crowd, though, nobody is "oohing" or "awing" when he shows a what is supposed to be a cool feature. Poor Scott. It's like talking to an oil painting. Finished the demo by saying Dynamic Data stuff would be officially released later this summer.

8:38 AM - Back to the slides and now on to ASP.NET MVC. Scott started talking about MVC as a "new way" to do ASP.NET programming then quickly caught himself when he switched slides and revised his language to "new option." It's clear they're -really- trying make sure people understand MVC is not going to replace WebForms. Case in point: the first bullet on his MVC slide called it a "new option," the last bullet said "it's not for everyone." Get the theme?

8:42 AM - Just talking about how MVC works. Nothing new or shocking here, but definitely look for Scott's slides later if you're interested in his diagrams.

8:44 AM - Now for the demo. Scott's going to show us how to build a MVC site in Visual Studio. It's just another MVC catalog demo (showing Product, Category, Detail views), which seem to be about as common as carousel demos for WPF. I understand that this is a very clear and easy concept to demo MVC's functionality, but 'common. Let's see some more creativity with MVC! Scott's also showing us how to write unit tests for MVC, which is actually a good way to demo MVC and get people familiar with seeing TDD.

8:55 AM - ...writing code for MVC demo...

8:58 AM - We're finally done with MVC and now we're back to the slides. Scott's talking ".NET Continuum"- essentially, the story of Silverlight. "We're coming-up with a plug-in called Silverlight." Really?! Shocking. Honestly, who is forking over $1800 to attend this conference without knowing about Silverlight?

9:01 AM - Scott's covering Silverlight's basic feature list (multi-language support, WPF UI framework, LINQ support, etc.). Says Silverlight is about 1000 times faster than JavaScript running in the browser in terms of processing time!

9:04 AM - Scott says Silverlight currently has 35 UI controls. Really? Last time I counted there were no more than 29. Maybe there are some new controls that haven't been revealed he's counting. He also says there will be over 100 controls provided in Silverlight in a years time! That's news (finally).

9:08 AM - Silverlight demo time. Scott's getting things started by showing us the Hard Rock Memorabilia site (that premiered at MIX) that showcases Deep Zoom. More evidence that Deep Zoom is a cool demo technology, but hard to demo for practical uses. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Memorabilia app has generated the most crowd excitement and interest so far. Let me rephrase, the most impractical technology shown by Scott today is the only one that got people stirring. Go figure.

9:15 AM - Scott's now moved past the Hard Rock site and is showing us how to build a simple Silverlight site in Visual Studio. Says 99% of the time a Silverlight content will be running in the content of an ASP.NET website. Thinks of it more as rich content enhancements you can add to your ASP.NET site. Interesting perspective.

9:21 AM - ...still building his basic Silverlight demo. Using Blend to show-off design-time features. Showing workflow integration between Visual Studio and Blend. He's now building the simple IM application in Silverlight that he's built a number of blog posts around. If you're interested, refer to his blog posts.

9:27 AM - Demo is still going. Looks like Scott is going to run a little past his 9:30 cut-off.

9:31 AM - "In the future, you may see an ASP.NET server control that uses Silverlight for rich UI presentation but keeps data processing on the server." Interesting! Microsoft is thinking about making Silverlight a core front-end option for ASP.NET.

9:33 AM - Scott's wrapping things-up now. Reviewing what we "learned" today. Still saying Silverlight is due "later this year"- no willingness to get more specific on the time frame.

9:35 AM - And that's it! Hope you enjoyed the coverage (even if there wasn't anything particularly "exciting" in this keynote). Clearly, a keynote at MIX and a keynote at DevConnections mean very different things.

With the keynote coverage wrapped, stay tuned for some live booth blogging from the expo floor soon.

Join Telerik at DevConnections next week

We're here in sunny central Florida again (Orlando, to be specific) for spring DevConnections 2008! Actually, we're really here for ASP.NET Connections, but all of the "connections" kind of run together in my opinion. This is an exciting show for Telerik for a few reasons:

1. We've got a brand new, custom designed, huge booth to premier at this show!
2. We just released Q1 2008, so we've got some great new demos to show-off
3. We've got a cool vendor session to present at the conference
   

If you're in the Orlando area, come on out to DevConnections and say hello. The Telerik crew (and our shiny new booth) will be in booth space 107 on the exhibit floor. We're also a Platinum Sponsor of this event, so I'm sure that means there will be some Telerik swag floating around that you can collect.

If you're not in the Orlando area (or if you just don't want to pay "the man" to get in the door), fret not. Just like I did at MIX in March, I'll be making my best effort to live blog the various keynotes that I attend so you can experience all of the action from the comfort of your keyboard. I'll also be updating the blog with periodic updates from the show floor, complete with pictures, so you'll almost feel like you're here with us at the event...almost...

These events are always a lot of fun and we love meeting customers in person. Stay tuned for all of the DevConnections updates- things kick-off Monday morning with ScottGu's keynote!

TechExpo 2008 Wrap-up

As you know, last week I had the opportunity to visit the Little Rock area and speak at the 2008 TechExpo. While it was not the first year for the TechExpo (I've learned), it was the "first year" after a short hiatus. This year's event was a re-launch of sorts- a successful re-launch at that. Over 150 people turned out to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to join the .NET fun, and a group of about 7 speakers (self included) served-up sessions on everything from TFS to Silverlight. I personally did 3 sessions: a lunch session about Telerik and RadAjax Prometheus, a session on ASP.NET AJAX and the future of web development, and the closing keynote covering Silverlight 2.

If you were at the TechExpo and attended my sessions, thanks again for coming! If you didn't get to make it out to the Expo, I'm posting my slides and sample code below for your personal enjoyment. The demo code has not been cleaned-up for educational use (i.e. you probably won't find good commenting), so use it as an implementation reference for your own practice and don't try to learn from it directly. If you need help, come visit me at DevConnections later this month in Orlando and I'll be happy to assist!

ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, and the Future of Web Development (Slides & Code)

Intro to Silverlight 2.0 (Slides & Code)

Join me at TechExpo 2008 this week

Looking for another opportunity to hang out with fellow .NETers and meet someone from Telerik? Well, your next chance is upon you as I will be traveling this week to the 1st (annual?) TechExpo in Little Rock, Arkansas. TechExpo 2008 is being put on by the Little Rock .NET User Group and it is expected to attract about 350 people from the Little Rock area. The event is going down this Thursday, March 27th, from 8 AM to 5 PM. There will be three separate tracks running throughout the day, which means there are 18 unique sessions for you to attend.

For my part, I will be delivering two sessions- one covering ASP.NET AJAX and the Future of Web Development, the other an Intro to Silverlight 2. The first talk is one I've done in a couple of places before and it has been very popular; the second presentation is brand new for this event and is a great Silverlight 2.0 primer.

If you're interested in either of these topics, or if you just want to meet and say 'hey', and you're in the Little Rock area, come join me this Thursday for the fun. If you're not in the area, I'll make the slides available after my presentation so you're not totally left out. See you in a couple of days!

Telerik at MIX this week

In a few hours, I'll jump on a plane headed to Sin City for this year's highly anticipated MIX 08 conference. I'll be in town through Thursday and I'll be joined by a crew of about 7 from Telerik's home office in Sofia, Bulgaria. The representatives from Bulgaria will cover a lot of Telerik's new product lines, including devs from the Silverlight and WPF teams. Needless to say, if you're going to be at MIX too, definitely drop me a line and let me know so we can try to meet at one of the many MIX parties. We love meeting fans customers at these events and putting faces with names!

Otherwise, stay tuned this week for some "live" MIX updates. I'll try to post some extra info after we start getting the big news at the keynotes on Wednesday and Thursday as I expect there will be plenty of interesting things to talk about. Last year's MIX brought us the first alpha of Silverlight 1.1 (and the Silverlight name), news of the cross-platform CLR, the infamous ".NET Wins" Silverlight chess demo, and the introduction of the DLR. I expect this year to again focus largely on Silverlight, though all indications are that we should also be hearing more about IE8 and ASP.NET MVC. By the end of the week, I predict we'll have betas (or announced beta dates) for Silverlight 2.0, IE8, and Expression Blend 2. An ASP.NET MVC beta is probably further off.

So if you're not going to join me in the desert, keep your RSS readers locked-in and I'll help add to the flood of news sure to begin this Wednesday.

Future of Web Development Slides and Code

Any .NET event that gives speakers "Coders Cabernet" has to be good, right? That was certainly the case for the 2008 South Florida .NET Code Camp, an outstanding .NET community event I had the privilege of speaking at today. With over 600 people in attendance, the event was an energetic gathering of .NET developers from around the state of Florida.

For my part, I delivered a fun presentation on "ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, and the Future of Web Development" to a standing room only crowd. Before I go any further, I want to extend a big thank you to those of you that came to today's presentation (especially those that had to sit on the floor). For everyone else, I'm making all of the slides and the demo code from the presentation available online. You can download your own copy of my materials (sans my witty presentation humor) at the bottom of this post. It's a great set of slides and code if you're interested in learning more about ASP.NET AJAX, basic Silverlight, or future web browser versions.

If I learned anything this weekend, it's that Florida has one incredibly active .NET community. I can't believe how many great .NET speakers are here in Florida and how many events like the SF Code Camp occur around the state. I had a great time speaking here and I look forward to coming back in the future! Now on to Mix, DevConnections, TechEd, and beyond...

Download slides
Download code

Join me at South Florida .NET Code Camp this Saturday

Okay, so you missed the fun Silverlight presentation in Second Life and you're wondering what your next opportunity is to hear some great .NET presentations. I've got your answer: the 2008 South Florida .NET Code Camp. Lasting all day on Saturday, February 2nd at DeVry University, the Code Camp is featuring an agenda full of great speakers and topics. There will be 12 different tracks running all day with about 6 presentations delivered in each track (that's over 70 .NET presentations in one day for those too tired to do the math)! I will be joining the speaking crew to deliver an afternoon talk in the Web Development track titled "ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, and the Future of Web Development." It will be a fun presentation and I'll be sure to post the slides here after the event.

And as if that wasn't enough to make you register right now, Telerik is sponsoring the event After Party! What better way to help retain all that .NET learning than to relax with your fellow geeks at a Telerik sponsored party. The party details are being distributed to Code Camp attendees at the event, but if can't make the event for some reason and want to meet at the party, let me know and I'll try to help you out.

So there you have it: your Saturday plans (if you're in South Florida, of course). See you there.

Silverlight presentation in Second Life available on-demand

If you missed my Silverlight presentation in Second Life this Saturday, you really missed an experience that was out of this world! Okay, bad pun. But in all seriousness, the presentation was a lot of fun and we had a great turn out from the .NET denizens of Second Life. The crew from Microsoft and the Second Life .NET User Group have done a great job building and improving the tools for presenting in Second Life, and I must admit the experience was a lot more like presenting to a "real life" audience than to a normal web cast- complete with a hand raising system to ask questions!

For those of you that couldn't make it to the live show, the SLDNUG recorded the presentation "in world" and have posted the video to their website (using Telerik's Silverlight media player, no less). The presentation system is still evolving, though, and you may find the audio hard to hear on the linked video. The SLDNUG is actively working on publishing another version of the video with better audio timed to my slides, so check back for updates later this week or next. While you're at the SLDNUG site, you'll also find copies of my slides and links to download JPEG versions of my slides (if you don't have PowerPoint 2007 handy).

Enjoy the on-demand resources and watch for future Second Life presentations in the coming months. If you ever wondered if Second Life had any purpose, presentations like this are definitely it.

Reminder: Second Life Silverlight presentation tomorrow

Normally I refrain from doing "reminder" posts, but since this event is both unique and on a Saturday and on a hot topic, I thought I'd break with tradition. So once again, tomorrow I'll be delivering a talk in Second Life on Microsoft's Visual Studio Island covering Silverlight. We'll cover everything from the roots of Silverlight to how you build a simple Silverlight application in VS 2008 to how UI components will make Silverlight development fun. There will be plenty of "pseudo demos" (Second Life doesn't accommodate live screen casts...yet), so this is a presentation you don't want to miss if you're interested in Silverlight. Besides, what better way to get out of doing your Saturday "honey-dos" than telling your significant other that you've got an important meeting to attend in a different world! Well...it may not save you from all of your chores, but at least it will break up the day. See you tomorrow at 12:00 PM Second Life Time (3:00 PM EST, 2:00 PM CST).

Join me in Second Life for Silverlight presentation

If you've already retreated from your first life (or are considering it) to join the ranks of the growing Second Life community and are concerned you'll miss great .NET events, fear not. The Second Life .NET User Group has got you covered. That's right. There is a sizable (and growing) community of .NET developers in Second Life that meet regularly for digital socialization and to listen to great .NET speakers. The group meets every other Saturday at 12:00 PM SLT on Microsoft's Visual Studio Island (that's Second Life Time - synced with Pacific Time for the uninitiated).

This coming Saturday, January 26th, I have the privilege of joining the group to deliver a talk on Silverlight. My talk will be broad, covering everything from Silverlight's roots to how to build a basic Silverlight application in VS 2008 to how you'll be able to use UI components to enhance your Silverlight development. So if you're at all interested in Silverlight, mark your calendars and set your Saturday alarms for this unique presentation. An on demand version should be available shortly after the event for those of you that can't join us in world for the live meeting. See you there!

P.S. My in world identity is Bluelaser Hax. Look for the guy with the Telerik t-shirt on.

Celebrate VS 2008 in San Jose with Telerik, be first to see Silverlight 1.1 RadControls

For those of you that missed us at TechEd, DevReach, DevConnections, and Boston, there is yet another opportunity to meet with Telerik this year. And this time we're showing some love to the West Coast by visiting beautiful San Jose, California to participate in a "Visual Studio 2008 Celebration". This event is being organized by our good friends and partners at Falafel Software in cooperation with Microsoft to celebrate the release of VS 2008, WPF, WCF, WF, and other new Microsoft technologies. The December 10th half-day seminar will kick-off at 9:00 AM in the Sainte Claire hotel and will be packed full of information and practical demonstrations. The main speaker at this seminar will be the always entertaining and brilliant Falafel President and CEO Lino Tadros, which alone makes the event worth attending.

I will be the sole Telerik rep at this event and I'll be doing a short presentation towards the end of the seminar. My presentation will cover some Telerik basics and, for the first time ever in public, preview the Telerik RadControls for Silverlight 1.1. If you're dying to see what's coming in our 1.1 component suite, you definitely don't want to miss this conference!

The event is free, so register today to save your spot and come say 'hi' in a couple of weeks. See you there!