Mark Arteaga

TechDays is fast approaching and is next week in Toronto.  Similar to past years (2008, 2009, 2010) I’ll be presenting on Windows Phone.  This year is great because I finally think Windows Phone is in a state where consumers will finally start paying attention and the competition is actually starting to copy features in Windows Phone (who would have ever thought that!)

This year TechDays will be taking place in the following cities so make sure to register

1. Toronto – October 25-26
2. Vancouver – November 15-16
3. Montreal – November 29-30

If you do register for TechDays 2011, make sure you use this promo code TDSPKR11CAN to get 50% off the conference admission!

Here is a summary of my session that I put together. I’ll be presenting the first day @ 10:30am.  I have merged things from Mix11 and tried to condense as much as I could into 75mins.

Windows Phone 7.5: An Overview and Architecture Deep Dive

Windows Phone is a different kind of phone, architected to put the focus on end users while enabling developers to build compelling, connected experiences that enhance the phone. Peer under the covers to see how the architecture evolved to deliver powerful functionality

I’ll also be hanging around all day so if you want to chat about the phone, the competition, development options or anything else, find me, I’m always willing to chat!

Hope to see you there and remember to register!

This Saturday June 18 I will be co-presenting a session with Paul Laberge titled On Mobile App Design: Experiences that Don’t Suck at North by North East Interactive (or nxne-i) which is a week long conference held from June 13th-19th.

What is nxne-i all about?  (taken from nxne website)

It starts with the presentations. Three solidly packed days of presentations, both technical and creative. Presenters from around the world have been hand-picked for their skill and talent, and all are eager to share and meet you. It’s also about the networking. Being able to meet and talk to people who share your passion for this industry. Meet them at the presentations, in the exhibitor hall, or at the evening party.

I’ll be there discussing things to look out for as a designer and developer.  It’s all small things, but it’s the small things that can completely ruin a user’s experience when using your app!

Here is a description of the session.

On Mobile App Design: Experiences that Don’t Suck
Clearly, modern mobile devices have changed the way we interact with the world, each other and technology in general. What is true about this disruption is that while state of the art hardware makes it possible for people to create amazing apps, it’s the creative implementation of those ideas that really make the apps and games popular. In this session, we’ll show you how mobile app designers and developers create effective experiences for their apps and why design is absolutely essential to the success of those apps. Examples will include sample applications on the Windows Phone 7 platform and a discussion on Microsoft’s Metro design language, with the intent of showing how designing great experiences on mobile platforms is not a cookie-cutter process.

If you are attending nxne-i be sure to join Paul and I.  Here are the details

Date of Presentation: Saturday, June 18
Time of Presentation: 9:30 to 10:30
Room: Regency D/E

Hope to see you there!

During MIX11 the Windows Phone Developer Tools team made some great announcements that will help developers build new types of applications for the next version of Windows Phone code named Mango.

From the beginning I knew Windows Phone was a great platform and they had something big.  Now, have they won the mobile space yet? No they haven’t, but they are putting everything in place with things like the Nokia deal which is a great opportunity for developers and still believe Windows Phone will be successful. 

With the announcements at MIX11, Microsoft have ‘opened’ up the platform some more to developers.  Now, when I say ‘opened’ I’m not talking about open sourcing their OS like Android, but opening up in a sense of API usage for developers. 

API support missing in Windows Phone we as developers have complained about but now the Tools team is delivering.  Is it coming tomorrow? No, but apparently we will be getting tools where we will be able to get ready for the Mango build of Windows Phone.  So we still have to be patient but the platform is getting there.

What are we getting? there are over 1500 new APIs available for Mango.  Here is an image of some of the APIs

Here is a list of some of the stuff that I find interesting

• Multitasking - Fast App Switching (FAS) and background agents.
• IE9 for Windows Phone
• Additional sensor and runtime access – camera stream access, compass, gyroscope, sockets
• Structured storage: Use SQL CE Databases using LINQ to access data. 
• Contact and Appointment APIs
• XNA/Silverlight integration – use XNA and overlay over Silverlight pages
• Tooling investments – profiling tools (initially demoed at PDC10), emulator enhancements that allow devs to manipulate the sensor data

So, a lot of features that are coming in Mango for developers.  The Windows Phone developer tools are getting better and we as developers will be able to innovate on this platform.

If you are interested in getting a sneak peak at what is available in Mango be sure to check out the Windows Phone sessions from Mix all available online.  Some of my favorites are (in no particular order)

1. Day 2 Key Note – About Silverlight and Windows Phone
2. Analyzing and Improving Windows Phone Application Performance – Jeff Wilcox built 4th and Mayor Foursquare client and is on the Silverlight product group and guru.
3. Deep Dive MVVM – MVVM is a must in my opinion for building Windows Phone apps.  Built right, you can use a lot of your code for Silverlight desktop also.
4. Rx: A Library for Managing Asynchronous Data and Events in your Windows Phone 7 Application – Interesting way to write multithreaded code, makes things way too easy
5. Multitasking in the Next Version of Windows Phone, Part I and Multitasking in the Next Version of Windows Phone, Part II: Using Background Agents – yes Windows Phone finally gets multitasking, it’s always had it just not exposed to developers.
6. New Data Access Features Coming to Windows Phone – SQL Compact Database support
7. What’s New in the Windows Phone Developer Tools? – memory profiling, dev life just got a little easier

Those are my recommended ones, but make sure to go through the whole list of Windows Phone developer sessions at MIX11.  They are all useful!

In the next days I’ll go in details on the features that are coming.  Unfortunately, I have no code samples as tools are not yet available.  As tooling becomes available, I will most likely create some sample code.  In the meantime be sure to check out all the Windows Phone sessions available online from MIX.

This Friday March 18th, I’ll be delivering a session on developing for Windows Phone using Silverlight.  For this session there will be lots of code to share and very little power point slides and we are calling it ‘Silverlight Recipes’.  The goal is to get developers up and running with code snippets that they can hopefully re-use in their applications.  Here is a description of the event

Windows Phone 7 Silverlight Recipes (75 Mins)
If you’re building Windows Phone apps to help organize your life, capture your ideas, find out what’s going on around you, stay in touch with friends or gather the information you need, chances are you’ll be building them using Silverlight. We’ll show you how to build Silverlight apps that fetch data from web services, get the phone’s current location, display maps, organize applications into panoramas and data into pivots, make use of input and sensors and more. With these recipes under your belt, you’ll be writing apps that make the best use of Windows Phone 7 features in no time!

I’ll also be doing the same presentation on March 25th 2011, and then the sessions go across Canada.  Here is a list of all the cities.  Unfortunately I won’t be at all cities and someone else will be presenting the content.

 

Where and When	Which Sessions
Downtown Toronto Microsoft Canada Ernst & Young Tower, 12th floor (222 Bay Street) Friday, March 18th Click here to register	WP7 sessions only
Mississauga Microsoft Canada (1950 Meadowvale Boulevard) Friday, March 25th Click here to register	IE9 and WP7 sessions
Vancouver BCIT, Burnaby Campus (3700 Willingdon Avenue) Saturday, March 26th Click here to register	IE9 and WP7 sessions
Edmonton Art Gallery of Alberta (2 Sir Winston Churchill Square) Tuesday, March 29th Click here to register	IE9 and WP7 sessions
Ottawa National Arts Centre (53 Elgin Street) Wednesday, March 30th Click here to register	IE9 and WP7 sessions
Montreal Microsoft Montreal (2000 McGill College Avenue, Suite 450)Monday, April 4th Click here to register	IE9 sessions only
Winnipeg IMAX Theatre Winnipeg (393 Portage Avenue) Tuesday, April 5th Click here to register	IE9 and WP7 sessions

So be sure to register for the Boot Camps as they are free events.  And oh ya, there are also IE9 sessions

The 2011 Mobile World Congress is coming up on February 16 and the Windows Phone developer team will be there letting everyone know what the platform has to offer to developers.  MWC has an App Developer Conference and the Windows Phone team will be hosting a day long session.

The session is only limited to 200 people so make sure to send the following information to creators@microsoft.com to get your spot!

1. First and last name
2. Email address for the invite
3. Company name

This should be a great event and wish I could go.  Here are the entire details for the event

Windows Phone Wednesday 2/16, the App Developers Conference at Mobile World Congress

Calling all developers!!!!  If you are interested in learning more about developing apps for Windows Phone 7 then do we have the event for you...

“The Why and How’s of Windows Phone 7”  Presented by Microsoft
Join us on a whirlwind tour around the landscape of the Windows Phone platform. The daylong session will examine all aspects of development on the phone, including building apps and games, marketplace monetization, tips and trick for certification and an open panel discussion where you can get answers to your burning questions. Get in on the ground floor with us and see what makes
us different!”

Day long sessions includes:

Time	Session Title	Speaker
9:30-10:00	State of the Union	Brandon Watson
10:00-10:30	Platform Overview	Larry Lieberman
10:30-11:30	UX/Metro Design Review	Bryan Agnetta
11:30-11:45	Break
11:45-12:45	Mobile Web Platform Futures	Joe Marini
12:45-1:45	Lunch
1:45-2:45	Panel discussion
2:45-3:00	Break
3:00-4:00	Business of your App	Todd Biggs
4:00-5:00	Silverlight/XNA overview	Rob Cameron

The conference pass gets you into the ADC as well as into the Expo Hall at Mobile World Congress.

If you are interested please send an email to creators@microsoft.com with the following details:

• First and last name
• email address for the invite
• Company name

We are limited to 200 passes so sign up early!!