Snowball - The Blog

To complete the travelling of 2011, I spent the last week of November touring the entire UK for another user group tour for Telerik (the second one in the UK this year). Telerik is very active in the support of user groups: through the Telerik Insider program, speakers can be requested to go and talk to user groups all over the world, entirely sponsored by Telerik. During the talks, which are deep-dive technical talks, licenses and swag is given to attendees.

This tour brought me in the Northern part of the country, more specifically, I visited a user group in Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. At each location, we did 2 sessions. One of these that we “repeated” at each location was an introduction to Windows 8 and WinRT development. This of course triggered a lot of interesting discussion and questions. Each stop also filled their rooms quite well! We were lucky to have good weather (we had, apart from one single rain shower, not a single day of rain in Scotland in the last week of November!) so I made all the cities in place. Also, the weather triggered high show-rates.

I brought home a few things from Scotland, including a cold that is now in its 10th day. This caused me to be delayed in posting all the content. But now, without further delay, here’s all the files (slides and demos) of all talks:

Windows 8 – Windows Runtime: slides – demos

Liverpool: Building a Windows Phone 7 app from start to finish:
slides – demos

Newcastle: Silverlight and Azure
slides – demos

Edinburgh: Building a Windows Phone 7 app from start to finish
slides – demos

Aberdeen: Silverlight 5 for LOB Development
slides – demos

I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for all the user groups for their work!

I’m getting ready for yet another user group tour for Telerik, the second time in the UK and Scotland this year (earlier I did Cambridge, Oxford and several other cities). Since Telerik is sponsoring these sessions, I can give away some licenses on each stop as well! Each evening, we’ll do some deep technical talks on XAML-related topics.

This time, I’m heading more to the North of the country: I’ll be stopping in Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In each city, I’ll be doing 2 talks. For most evenings, some seats are still available so you can still register. All sessions are of course free and some food (I guess pizza :) ) will be available as well.

Registering can be done through the following links.

• Monday 21st November: Liverpool
  Registration: http://thestack-november2011.eventbrite.com
  Sessions:
• Windows 8 Development and WinRT
• Building a Windows Phone 7 app from start to finish
• Tuesday 22nd November: Newcastle
  Registration: http://nebytesgcleerennov2011.eventbrite.com/
  Sessions:
• WinRT and Metro Applications
• Switching on the Cloud for Silverlight
• Wednesday 23rd November: Edinburgh
  Registration: http://gillcleeren2011.eventbrite.co.uk/?ebtv=F
  Sessions:
• Building a Windows Phone 7 app from start to finish
• Windows 8 Development and WinRT
• Thursday 24th November: Aberdeen
  Registration: http://www.aberdeendevelopers.co.uk/post/2011/10/10/ADNUGUK-%E2%80%93-November-2011-Meeting.aspx
  Sessions:
• Windows Runtime and Metro Apps for Windows 8
• Silverlight 5 for LOB Development

I hope to see you there!

Last week, I travelled through the UK to give a total of 8 sessions for Telerik to 4 chapters of the NxtGenUg.net user groups. More specifically, I went to Hereford, Oxford, Coventry and Cambridge. It was a pleasure being there, since we had some nice discussions throughout the talks (which of course caused all sessions to run longer than expected, some about 2,5-3  hours :) ). For the first time, I did everything by train and all went well (not a single delay on the 10 trains I took in the UK. I even had to pass through London when going from one station to another to go from Coventry to Cambridge).

This tour was sponsored again by my good friends at Telerik, which help to get speakers to user groups with the program I am in. If you have a user group yourself and want me to come over, let me know! It’s entirely free and I can give away some nice swag and licenses at each talk!

Here are some pictures of last week:

And as promised, here are all the slides and demos of all the sessions:

• Hereford:
  • Databinding in Silverlight
  • MVVM in Silverlight and WPF
• Oxford:
  • Building a LOB application in Silverlight 4
• Coventry:
  • jQuery in ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC
  • RIA Services in Silverlight 4
• Cambridge:
  • MVVM in Silverlight and WPF
  • RIA Services in Silverlight 4
    

As part of the Telerik Insider program, I’ll be touring in the UK this summer. More specifically, I’ll be speaking in Oxford, Hereford, Cambridge and Coventry. On each event, attendees can win a full Telerik license!

You can register here for the events:

• Hereford (July 4th 2011)
  http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=404
• Oxford (July 5th 2011)
  http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=405
• Coventry (July 6th 2011)
  http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=406
• Cambridge (July 7th 2011)
  http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=407

I hope to see a lot of you in the UK! (and while you’re at it, reserve me some nice weather!)

About 2 weeks ago, the Telerik insider program has been made official (I only found time to blog about it since we bought a house in that week, causing a lot of extra stress and work :) ). I’m very happy that the word on the program is now official AND that I was one of the first to be part of this fantastic initiative.

Let me start by explaining what the program is all about: The Insiders Program, a speaker’s bureau for the community run by Telerik, is comprised of 14 (thus far) passionate and influential speakers conducting a variety of sessions at community events and user groups. Check out their profiles and abstracts here and our FAQ page for detailed information. The full explanation can be found here: http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/posts/11-04-04/telerik_insiders_are_out.aspx .

The official press release can be found here: Telerik Emphasizes Commitment to Developer Community with Globally Expanded Insiders Program. Some interesting quotes:

The Telerik Insiders Program delivers added value by providing entrée to influential speakers willing to share their .NET knowledge, insight, and expertise,” said Svetozar Georgiev, CEO of Telerik. 

“I cannot express enough how much of a benefactor Telerik has been to our community throughout the last several years. They support user groups and community events by providing much-needed resources and help, but also go that extra step by providing top-notch, quality speakers who are passionate about training and knowledge-sharing,” says Pensacola User Group leader, Karla Landrum.

“User groups and regional events are really the heart of the developer community – they provide unique opportunities for peer-to-peer engagement, and facilitate sharing of real-world development best practices,” said Emily Parker, Community Program Manager at Telerik.

I was “enrolled” in the program December 2009 and have done quite a few speaker engagements since then. I went to VBUG UK, visited user groups all over Sweden and the Netherlands… This year, I’ll be visiting the UK (5 user groups) and Ireland (5 user groups) in the coming months.

What’s in it for you

The good news is that you can benefit from this program as well. If you have a user group (just about anywhere), you can contact us (insidersprogram@telerik.com) to have a Telerik Insider at your next event. All for free. Just send a mail and we can discuss things.

At TechDays Sweden, I was able to give away a Telerik license during my talk. The lucky winner gets a full Telerik Ultimate license, worth $1.995! All thanks to the people at Telerik.

And the winner is… Peter Forss! Congratulations!!