Mobile Development Camp in Fredericton

I am please to announce that myself and Matt Simms on behalf of the Fredericton Developer User Group  (http://frederictonug.net/ ) are organizing a full day code camp on mobile development.  This will be held at the crown plaza http://www.cpfredericton.com/! It is on April 14th a Saturday from 8AM to 5PM.  The format of this event is to have technical talks in the morning and then a code camp in the afternoon where you will be building mobile app and deploying them! You must bring your own laptop.

April Mobile Cloud Event

The fee is 30$ and with your ticket you will get:

At 8 AM: Breakfast “Healthy Choice Continental “

• Assorted Muffins
• Assorted Yogurts
• Muesli
• Fresh Fruit Salad
• Assorted Preserves
• Chilled Juice
• Freshly Brewed Coffee & Tea Selection

At 12 PM: Executive Luncheon Buffet

• Freshly Baked Rolls and Butter

Salads

• Seasonal Greens with House Dressing
• Mel’s Pickled Vegetable Salad
• Farfalle Pasta with Maple-Curry Vinaigrette
• Shredded Cabbage, Root Vegetable and Keswick
• Apple Slaw
• Pepper and Spicy Olive Salad

Entree Selections

• 8 Cut Chicken with Home style BBQ Sauce
• Served with:
• Seasonal Vegetables
• Choice of Chef’s Starch

Desserts

• Sliced Fresh Fruit
• Assorted Pies

At 3:00 PM: Afternoon Break “The Cookie Jar”

• Assortment of Cookies
• 2% Milk and Chocolate
• Chocolate milk
• Coffee & Tea

The presenter will be Atley Hunter http://www.atleyhunter.com/

AGENDA

8:00 am – 8:30 am – BREAKFAST & Getting Started on Mobile App Development (Show up on time, busy day!)

(Platform Agnostic) – You will learn how to get going on Mobile Development.  By the end of this session, you will have an understanding of how your development changes when you start to develop for Mobile whether it be for phones or tablets.

8:30 am – 9:00 am – MVVM, Binding in Silverlight and Windows Phone
                              (Windows Phone, Silverlight) – In this session, you’ll find out how easy it is to separate concerns and quickly develop data driven UI elements for Windows Phone, Silverlight.

9:15 am – 10:00 am – XNA – Video Games in Windows Phone, Windows and XBox

(Windows Phone, XNA, Windows) – Here you’ll find out how easy it is for .NET developers to build great XNA games for several different platforms.

10:00 am – 11:00 am – Azure, the Cloud and Your Mobile Apps

(Platform Agnostic) – Even your playing field and compete on a global level easily with the fantastic services and toolkits provided by Azure for every platform.  You will find out how easy it is to implement an easily scalable, truly competitive set of backend data and/or services for your Mobile apps.

11:00 am – 12:30 pm – Down to business – Making Money on Windows Phone Development

(Windows Phone) – How do I make money with my apps?  How do I engage and keep my users interested?  Come to this session and find out!

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm – Lunch / Discussions – I’m always open to your questions, suggestions, feedback, etc. Take 15 minutes to grab your lunch and during lunch we will have Breakout Session #1:  What They Didn’t Tell You About Windows Phone Development (Lessons Learned through Coding and Too Much Soda) – Benefit from my many late nights experimenting and testing the limits of the development system, the processes and talking to developers from all over the world!

1:30 pm – 4:00PM  – Coding / Discussions – Bring your unfinished or unstarted mobile projects and work with a group of developers.  Pick my brain as much as you want to help flesh out your use cases and your app!  I’ll be here to help!

NOTE: If you DON’T have an IDEA for an app, FDUG has a project you can work on. 

4:00 PM – 5:00PM  Breakout Session #2: Binding and More in User Controls – Find out how easy it is to implement Binding in User Controls for Windows Phone.  You will learn to create your own, powerful, reusable controls and get the most of your Windows Phone development time.  Write once, use in many apps with this powerful, easy to use set of steps.

ADDITIONAL PERKS:

1. Evening With Atley Hunter

Since Atley will be in Fredericton, attendee can either join us for supper or for an evening at the Garrison Ale House for an informal chat with Atley. This is not sponsor by us, you pay for yourself$!  http://www.thegarrison.ca/

2. Breakfast with Atley Hunter

We will pick a location on Sunday morning and we will do a breakfast and code with Atley. This is not sponsor by us, you pay for yourself$!

I hope you can attend this fabulous learning experience event. I am more than happy to have donated my time to make this come true.

3. Prizes

Microsoft is sending me a box of swag. Not sure what we’ll get but I’ll keep you posted!

---

REGISTRATION is 30$ + 2.79$ (Eventbrite fee):

http://fdug-april-mobile.eventbrite.ca/

Gaetan

p.s. Do you love the Mobile Cloud Care Bear safely driving with hands free? Designed by @Matty_Simms for @FredDevUG http://t.co/UrW470SF

---

QUESTION AND ANSWERS (Q/A)

---

Q1. We’d have a couple of folks interested if it was on iOS or web apps.

A1: This event will be on Mobile development but the majority of sessions will be on utilizing the Windows Phone platform.  Perhaps you can come for the afternoon coding session where there will be breakout sessions that will be much more platform agnostic.

Q2. I am just looking at the mobile development camp you are having. It looks interesting BUT I have limited .Net experience and coming of a maintenance project just before that. Not sure I would be able to contribute much to the breakout sessions but I do have VS 2010 express installed on my old laptop. Do you think it would be too far over my head?

A2: The event is designed to help developers of all levels to improve and expand their skills.  Come early as the startup sessions will be first.

Q3. What is the skill level required for this? I am assuming this is not geared towards beginners, that is where I would fall in

A3: The items discussed will range from beginner to expert with something for everyone. I am planning on starting with 0-App – I’ve Installed the Tools, Now What.This session will be the very first one, so get there early. I will also be there an hour before the event for the people that want to get that much more info.This event is for you, the developers. Tell me what you want and need and I’ll do everything I can to get you exactly that.

Q4. In order to use the Azure tools for Visual Studio 2010, including the express edition, you will need Windows 7 or Server 2008. What is the minimum requirements for the laptop that I am able to bring?

A4: The OS requirements are:

• Windows Vista (x86 & x64) with Service Pack 2 – all editions except Starter Edition
• Windows 7 (x86 & x64)
• Windows Server 2008 (x86 & x64) with Service Pack 2
• Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

A4:The Hardware requirements are:

• Computer that has a 1.6GHz or faster processor (32-bit or 64-bit)
• 1 GB (32 Bit) or 2 GB (64 Bit) RAM (Add 512 MB if running in a virtual machine)
• 3GB of available hard disk space
• 5400 RPM hard disk drive
• DirectX 9 capable video card running at 1024 x 768 or higher-resolution display
• DVD-ROM Drive

Q5: Is there a discount at hotel for out of town people?

A5: We have reserve a block and the block code is DEV.  Guests will have until March 13^th to call and reserve their guestrooms.  After that date, all unreserved rooms will be released back into our general inventory.

Q6: Being a MAC and/or Linux user, what can I do as an alternative to attend your event?

A6: For you Mac and Linux folks, We will have a VirtualBox image of Windows 7 (90day trial) with the Express edition of VS.NET 2010 installed and ready to go for the workshops. We’ll likely have something like a Gigabit switch for speedy transfer (make sure you have ~10Gib of space for the image).

Q7: do you know if there is a phone SDK that we need to install on top of VS (for tomorrow)? I’m playing around AM with setting up..?

Yes there is at create.msdn.com

---