Speaking at DevTeach in June

Url: http://www.devteach.com/

I just got the word that I am speaking at DevTeach in Vancouver, BC this June. Its a great conference with lots of your favorite speakers including Tim Huckabee, Ted Neward, Julie Lerman, Miguel Castro, Rod Paddock, Kathleen Dollard, Orin Eini and Beth Massi.

I will be talking about several topics including:

Data in the Cloud

Storing data outside the data center is not a new concept. But with the introduction of Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s SimpleTable platforms, storing your data in a available/scalable way is becoming easier. In this talk I will discuss the storage model for these services and how you can determine what data you can trust in the cloud.

*** NDA TOPIC ***

I would like to discuss a Silverlight/Blend topic that I can’t divulge publically until March. I can assure you it’s a very cool new feature, but I can’t discuss it yet.

Navigating the DMZ

The Blend/Visual Studio story is supposed to bring peace to the ongoing battles between developers and designers. But there are real world hiccups in how this integration works. In this session, I will highlight lessons learned from the field to help you turn your cease-fire into a full-fledged peace.

Silverlight + MVVM = Easy

Building a simple gadget or proof-of-concept in Silverlight is a pleasurable experience. But for larger applications, we should be able to leverage some of the tried and true software development patterns to help us build reliable and robust solutions. One of the most power of these techniques is the model-view-view-model (MVVM) pattern. In this session, I will present a example of building your applications using the MVC pattern to enable testability and separation of concerns.

Will It Blend?

It’s easy to assume that the Expression toolset is just for designers. It’s even got that cool dark background with a completely non-Windows looking skin. But is that the reality? In this session I will show developers how Blend can be used to make their jobs quite a bit easier, even without a single ounce of artistic talent.