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]

Understanding RadControls WebCast follow-up (update)

Last Thursday, I hosted a WebCast called "Understanding the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX," and despite a few "technical problems" the event was a huge success! If you were among the over 600 people that showed-up for the live event, thanks for tuning-in. Hopefully you were able to take away some new knowledge about the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX despite the fact that our huge crowd seemingly destroyed the WebCast provider's ability to host live demos. Needless to say, I'm really sorry the live demos didn't work during the presentation and I'll apologize one more time to those of you that feel you got the 'ol bait and switch with the webcast. Rest assured we'll do a follow-up with live demos soon!

In the mean time, the resources from the presentation are now available for download. Below you can download the slides from the presentation and all of the answers to the questions asked during the event. I spent the weekend answering all 120 questions (6,000+ words), so the Q&A document is a great resource to review if you have any Telerik questions. The on-demand video should be online soon, too, so I'll update this post with a link as soon as it is ready. Once it is live, you'll be able to relive all of the awkward system failure over and over again. Yay...

Download slides from webcast
Download complete Q&A PDF
View on-demand recording of WebCast [UPDATE: Just sign-up to watch on-demand]

Slides and Code from GIDS Silverlight Deep Dive

Another day of "bleeding-edge .NET" at the Great Indian Developer Summit and another great presentation to archive. On day one, I had the pleasure of delivering a handful of focused sessions on various Microsoft technologies, but on day two it was all about the Silverlight. Deemed a "workshop" by the schedule, but in reality more like an in-depth presentation, my near 4-hour Silverlight 2.0 Deep Dive was a fun presentation for Silverlight learners of all experience levels. I called it "101 to 301 in 3 hours."

Really, the only negative aspect of the presentation was that the room was too small. We had people filling every seat, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the aisles, and spilling out the doors for most of the session. Some GIDS attendees where even willing to stand for over 2-hours to watch the presentation from the door jam. I suspect we managed to cram about 125 or so people in to a room designed for 75, and I know many more simply didn't get to attend because there was no room.

Fortunately, for those that didn't get to get in, all is not lost. At the bottom of this post you can find the slides and code demos from the Silverlight Deep Dive session. In about a month, you'll also be able to grab the video of the session from the conference organizers, who are putting all sessions on a DVD. I want to extend a huge thanks to those of you that did attend, especially those that lasted all 4 hours. I had a great time and you had some great questions. I hope you enjoy these materials and I look forward to meeting many of you again on the .NET road!

Silverlight 2.0 Deep Dive
Slides Code

Slides and Code from Day One at the GIDS

Now that you know I'm in India speaking at the first annual Great Indian Developer Summit, it's time to move on and start doing some presentation wrap-ups. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've so far delivered three focused sessions on three relatively new Microsoft technologies- ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and WPF. These topics are clearly of great interest to the local .NET community as every one of my talks (except for the first, which was in the keynote main hall) were filled to capacity, standing room only. Even my first talk in the keynote hall was easily attended by over 300 people. Needless to say, the turnout is great.

For everyone here in India that attended one (or all, as I've had some people report) of my sessions, thank you very much for coming out and being a great audience. I know I can speak fast, so hopefully I wasn't too hard to understand. If I was, you were all very polite and faked enjoying my presentations well!

For everyone that couldn't make it to India for my presentations (I know there are a few of you out there), you can find the slides and demo code from my presentations at the bottom of this post. Some of the demos, especially those borrowed from Interknowlogy (like the 3d WPF apps and the XAML Cruncher tool), I'll omit from my downloads, but you can find links to download them yourself on Tim Huckaby's blog. I also can't make the Telerik RadControls for WPF "sneak peak" available for download right now, but watch for a public beta right before TechEd (I'll announce it on this blog).

Otherwise, I hope you can take away some useful tips from these decks and find practical help for diving deeper in to these emerging and maturing technologies. Watch for another update soon with the slides and code from today's Silverlight deep dive.

ASP.NET AJAX and the Future of Web Development
Slides Code

First Look: ASP.NET MVC
Slides Code

WPF: The Road Ahead
Slides Code

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

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)