Sessions
Below is a list of all the potential sessions for 2013. All of these sessions can be voted for during early bird registration. Which will be selected for this year? It is up to – you – to decide!
You can't turn your head around without being confronted with a new CSS and JavaScript Library. With so many to choose from, it can be a daunting task to pick the right ones. In this session, Joh...
You want to be more productive, but in the world of cellphones, instant messaging, social networks and cube life, it can be tough. In this session, you'll learn how to get more than 15 ...
With the increasing variety of web enabled devices entering the market, the next generation of the web will need to be more flexible than ever before. In this session we will explore how Responsive D...
You and your team have unit-tested, continuously-integrated, and overall maintainably-crafted a great Web application. To match the rock-solid foundation underneath, why not give your site the visual...
WinJS combines the ubiquitousness of Windows with the popularity of JavaScript and HTML5. In this session, I will teach you what you need to know to get started writing applications for Windows...
JavaScript. Powerful, but dangerous. You can really blow your foot off if you're not careful, so a good suite of automated tests is critical for success. Jasmine is a framework that makes testing...
There are ways to make WordPress do anything you want on a case by case basis. The platform is that powerful, that it can truly power anything you might have in mind, and this talk will go over the b...
There are plenty of best practice guides on client-side web performance. There does seems to be a lack of information on how to diagnose performance problems on an existing website. In this session, ...
The Windows Phone API offers a broad surface area for mobile application development with opportunities for integration with built-in phone services. Building on the foundations of basic Window...
The ability to inspect and adapt is what differentiates good software development teams from great software development teams. For agile teams, the sprint retrospective is a ke...
Many mobile shops developing iPhone/iPad apps use GIT as their source repository. Meanwhile many enterprise shops utilize TFS as their ALM solution, including as a source repository. Can ...
It’s rare to have a true employer these days – instead developers race to project deadlines, after which their future is up in the air. A growing number of developers are steering t...
So you're a web developer, eh? But how well do you really know the medium you work in? Could you write your own web server? Well, in this session we are going to do just that. ...
PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com/) is an open source platform which encapsulates and exposes a mobile phone's native features (GPS, Phone, Compass) through a JavaScript API. The beauty of...
In this session, David Washburn, Vice President of the University of Tennessee Research Foundation presents an overview of how the University of Tennessee is ramping up their activity around spinning...
As developers, we often work with data in many forms. But we're just as prone to introducing bugs with our data as we are to introducing bugs in our code. Fortunately, you don't need to be a ...
In this session Angry Birds uncover concepts of modern JavaScript development. Each bird represents an area of JavaScript along with its strengths. Some topics covered include code organization, even...
AngularJS is a robust Javascript framework that moves beyond jQuery DOM manipulation and into an enterprise-level development mindset. It provides the right separation of concerns between the user in...
Learn basic usage of AngularJS. AngularJS is a super fast way to develop a small application and a very well architected way to build an easy to maintain large application. It combin...
Cross-cutting concerns are everywhere: caching, logging, transactions, and more. These can make your code a tangled, scattered mess. In this presentation, I will define cross-cutting concerns, and...
Want to learn how to make the most simple to do app using Appcelerator's Titanium Alloy? This talk will get you there, along with sample code that you can walk away with, and a detailed look at h...
The Raspberry Pi is an amazing little ARM based computer the size of a credit card that has the power of a 300 MHz Pentium 2 combined with the graphics horsepower of the orig...
In it’s 4th release, ASP.NET MVC continues to evolve as a first class web application development environment. In this session, John will take you through the new features, will highlight what ...
The cloud is here, and thanks to services like AppHarbor, it's awesome. In this risky, Internet-dependent session we will take an ASP.NET MVC application and push it to the cloud using AppH...
Even though ASP.NET MVC is all the rage, many companies have large applications build on the tried-and-true WebForms platform. Fortunately, Microsoft has continued to evolve and improve WebForms incl...
If you are a c# developer, you may have heard a great deal about the async and await keywords. You may have used them for some web service calls or some light backround work. Maybe you ar...
Sometimes learning about Automated Testing from the testing gurus might be a little daunting. It's hard for them to relate to the fears that developers who've never used automated tests befor...
Agile is where you want to be and Scrum was going to get there. Or so you thought. We know that Scrum is the most popular Agile framework, but many apply it as a thin veneer over traditional ways. Sp...
You’ve heard of backbone.js. You’ve probably watched a screencast or two on it. You’ve read some books, some articles, and you follow Jeremy Ashkenas on twitter. You’re well o...
Windows Phone 8 is Microsoft's newest operating system for today's modern smartphones. This session will introduce the fundamental concepts that developers will need to know in order to devel...
A key concept of any Agile methodology is communication. It’s no longer normal or acceptable for developers to sit and develop applications in isolation from the business. To that end, develope...
We live in a world where the web and mobile technologies are getting to be more attractive. Hell, things just look better nowadays, and if any developer fails to embrace this notion or tries to sweep...
As a developer, your image and your mind are your product. We’ll discuss the concrete activities and skills that transform average developers into outliers. You’ll learn why develop...
If you’re a C# lover and want to develop mobile applications across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, then Xamarin deserves your attention. Never heard of Xamarin? Not to worry. They’re th...
While many of us dream of jobs in game development, XNA Game Studio and Microsoft's AppHub give you the tools necessary to make and publish your own games for the Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplac...
Windows Azure offers an unprecidented opportunity for developers to easily stand up development environments and to incorporate source code control providers like Team Foundation Server and git. In t...
80% of statistics may be made up on the spot, but 99% of developers suck at design. If you aren't one of the lucky 1%, this is a talk you don't want to miss. Find out how to make ...
As the need for security increases, the use of biometrics will become more and more prevalent. This session will discuss topics in the space of Biometrics and introduce you to a few devices that are ...
Learn how to use the free and open source modeling tool Blender to create content for 3D XNA games. This presentation will cover the basics of using Blender to model a simple character, texture mappi...
Maybe you enjoy logging into your blog engine of choice, just to be informed that your blog software is out of date. Maybe you are ecstatic about the thought of tediously moderating each commen...
CSS Scaffolding systems have some a long way since Blueprint and 960.gs. Bootstrap extends beyond the basic grid system to provide a beautiful and powerful design framework, and its power increases t...
Bootstrap by Twitter is taking over the internet. It seems like all new websites are using this powerful front-end framework. In this session, I’ll take a look at why bootstrap is awesome and I...
With jQuery Mobile and HTML5 you can build mobile websites and applications that work on most of the relevant mobile operating systems and devices. The beauty of jQuery Mobile is that it is easy to d...
See how to build your first Windows 8 app. We will use what I learned when creating the app: .NET Gurus Can Cook, which contains recipes from famous folks in the software industry such as Scott Hanse...
For those of us who have spent most of our careers building business applications, the prospect of creating an e-commerce storefront can be quite daunting. Not only do you have to deal with calculati...
JavaScript has come into its own as a language for building large, rich applications. Browser improvements have made it lightning-fast and a healthy ecosystem of libraries has risen up around it. Sti...
Ember.js is a new client-side application framework that makes it very easy to get a lot accomplished with very little code. Once you understand the basics of how Ember.js handles MVC (it's...
Entity Framework 4 brings the ability to separate the data models from the data access implementation. We'll show how to build your MVC application models using the EF 4 POCO templates and be abl...
Phones are personal devices, so users expect their data to be local. But they are also collaborative devices, so users expect them to talk to each other. An occasionally connected application is the ...
Windows 8 represents a major step forwards for Microsofts flagship operating system. A major part of this new operating system is a completely new way to to create applications and distribute them to...
TypeScript is an exciting new superset of JavaScript that is aimed at making application-scale JavaScript development manageable. Windows 8 application development is a perfect place to try out...
Cross-cutting concerns are issues that impact the full application independent of business logic. In this session I show how you can use the community edition of PostSharp to write a single method fo...
Inspired by Steve McConnel’s “Code Complete”, Uncle Bob’s “Clean Code” and Andrew Hunt’s “The Pragmatic Programmer” this session discusses best p...
Are you promiscuous with your JavaScript code? Strewing functions and commands here and there? Nested closures, manual obfuscation, global functions… all of these "natural" JS convent...
TDD started out meaning Test Driven Development,. Now smarter developers than I replace the word Development with Design. That change shows how testing drives the design of our applicatio...
Using .NET Portable Libraries and the Dependency Injection pattern we will build an application with versions that run on 3 distinct platforms (Win8, WP8 and ASP.Net), with the goal of achieving the ...
A successful project is one that makes both the customer and the developer happy. Typically, doing this requires a project to be completed on time and under budget, as well as having a maintainable c...
This talk explores the design topics of cohesion and coupling. In many ways, these two design qualities are at odds with one another and as with most architecture and design decisions, there ar...
A one hour very intense discussion of Win8 programming with an overview of many Win8 programming issues. Topics covered include Metro Style, What .NET Developers need to know, Markup and Code, Bu...
A second very intense discussion of Win8 programming with an overview of more advanced Win8 programming issues. Topics covered include Application Life Cycle, Contracts, Live Tiles, Secondary Til...
You’ve spent the past few months slaving away at a project, now it’s almost done, and you get hit with a killer requirement: “By the way, we want the customers to be able to extend ...
Do you want to create amazing presentations that will wow your colleagues? Do you have access to a Mac? If you answered yes to both of these questions then this is the session for you. &n...
iOS and Android present great opportunities for developers. Unfortunately, many developers shy away because of the unfamiliar development environment. It doesn't have to be that way! C...
Every developer secretly (or not so secretly) wants to develop games. However, most developers think there just is not enough time to learn the tricks needed to makes games. This session will show th...
Every developer secretly (or not so secretly) wants to develop games. However, most developers think there just is not enough time to learn the tricks needed to makes games. This session will show th...
Mayhem is an open-source project with a dirt-simple paradigm: link up an event to a reaction. Come learn the basics of folding this project into your automation scenarios, with specific focus o...
As 3D displays become more prevalent in the home, developers need to learn how to leverage these displays to stand out from the crowd. This session will show attendees how to create 3D enabled games ...
Push Notifications are nothing new, in fact we have been doing them for quite some time even before Apple released the Apple Push Notification System in 2009. So when Microsoft released the Windows ...
HTML5 includes a Canvas element that allows for dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes and bitmap images. Using this, web developers can draw images directly in their web pages with JavaScr...
You have heard of Infrastructure, Platform and Software as a Service (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS). What about Data as a Service (DaaS) ? DaaS is a close relative of Softwqare as a Serivce. The idea is that ...
D3 (http://d3js.org) is a javascript library by Michael Bostock that can be used to make impressive interactive data visualizations that work in any browser that supports svg (this includes IE9,...
Do you love your database versioning and deployment process? Do you work with the best DBAs in the world? Then this session isn't for you. But on a completely unrelated side note, are you hiring?...
This session will use the Deathmatch 2D project as a backdrop for a discussion about evolutionary algorithms, specifically in the context of creative coding. We will focus primarily on why these algo...
Do you avoid testing your Javascript because it seems so immensely painful? Or because you don't even know where to start? Or do you find that you can you only write Integrat...
Garbage collection is something you should never need to think about. You write your code, it just does its thing, right? Come and find out! This talk will do a few things for you, including 1) help ...
Design for Developers: things you need to know if your users are human. Windows 8 unlocks new technologies and new devices where we could put information literally at our users' fing...
Taking inspirational cues from Bauhaus design, International Typographic Style, and cinematography, the Windows 8 UI design style brings an application to life while presenting content clearly and be...
Do you have trouble staying focused on the task at hand? Have you ever made it to 11AM and realized the only thing you have accomplished is reading emails and checking up on Twitter? If s...
This talk is about developing applications with the Qt which is a C++ based cross-platform application and UI development framework. It offers an extensive set of classes with support for a multitude...
Learn how to leverage Mobile Services in Windows Azure to handle data, authentication and push notifications to build a robust Windows 8 Store Application. Technology: Azure, Windows Store, JavaScr...
The new F# Type Providers are components that provide types, properties, and methods for use in your programs; they're a significant part of the F# 3.0 support for information-rich programming. I...
In this talk I will show you each of the 4 major code frameworks from Microsoft in ASP.Net (WebForms, MVC, WebAPI, and SignalR — what Microsoft refers to as 'One ASP.Net') and put toget...
With so many WordPress themes being available to the general public, it is extremely easy to overlook a better solution as a developer in providing the best solution for your clients. With some knowl...
(Can be combined with A crash course in responsive design for a 2 hour session) In just about every industry, rapid prototyping is described as “A group of techniques used to quickly produce...
Maybe you Iterate, use Acceptance Test Driven Development to flesh out your user stories, and Pair Program with TDD to deliver your code. You probably have an automated build, and maybe even automate...
Elasticsearch is a search engine built from the ground-up to be distributed and scalable. It's written for the JVM, based on the industry-standard Lucene library, and supports an ...
Using the ASP.NET Web API for callbacks on your client-facing web servers makes a lot of sense, especially if you're using Microsoft's MVC framework. But many developers are beginning to see ...
This session will cover the use Entity Framework in .NET based applications. Discussion will include model creation and organization as well as schema evolution via migrations. The role o...
Demo-ware is great for getting your head around a new topic but we’ve been seeing Entity Framework demo ware for 5 years now. You’re probably not writing an application to manage your mus...
Bring a laptop [*] because in this two hour lab/workshop you're going to learn how to write Erlang. Erlang is an open source, functional programming language that is battle-tested. Amazon...
Virding's First Rule of Programming says “Any sufficiently complicated concurrent program in another language contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half ...
RESTful services are the next big new, yet not so new thing. After years of dealing with SOAP Developers, Architects and even Users are looking for a simpler alternative for working with resources on...
There are many Agile methods that can be used to help your development team deliver value. One of the latest is called KANBAN, from the Lean manufacturing movement. A lot has been written...
Expression Blend, the premier GUI editing tool, is not just for XAML anymore! In this introductory session we will explore using Blend to develop Windows 8 style applications in HTML, CSS, and JavaSc...
Explore your options for building a robust ALM strategy on the Microsoft stack! Both on hosted and non-hosted environments for free! Leverage Microsoft's Team Foundation Server, T...
Business' change their mind. A lot and often. Having your database evolve with these changing business requirements would make life much simpler. MongoDB is a Document Database ...
The shift of focus by the development world to Functional Programming concepts, represents probably the largest change in generally accepted programming thinking since Object Orientation. ...
Brian freely admits that he will do anything for an achievement on his Xbox; after all he has four of them at home. One day Brian wondered if he could get achievements for just putting on pants going...
Glenn Zahn, President of RecruitWise, will discuss writing effective resumes and mastering interviews to get a job in this competitive IT marketplace. This is a "nut and bolts" session...
As the availability and feature set of the Kinect expands, it is becoming more important for .NET developers to become familiar with the abilities of this amazing device. This talk will bring you up ...
Enhance your Windows Store apps by learning how to create applications filled with geospatial visualizations. Learn the basics of the Bing Maps Api licensing model. Leverage Bing Map Apis Locat...
I'll cover the fundamental concepts of the language, and functional programming in general; make sure you're up to speed on the benefits and use cases of F#; and familiarize you wit...
This session will be a good introduction for .Net developers who love mobile, but haven't made the leap to iOS development yet. Xamarin's MonoTouch and Mono for Android platforms ha...
This session is an introduction to working with MongoDB using 10gen's C# driver for .NET. The emphasis will primarily be on the development-side as we explore how to stand up a simple data store ...
Are you ready to add NoSQL to your toolbelt, but not sure where and how to begin? In this session, you will get your feet wet with a gentle introduction to RavenDB. We will start at “File > ...
Twitter Bootstrap is a very popular web UI framework that takes advantage of CSS Media Queries, JavaScript, and LESS. With Bootstrap, you can rapidly develop sites that are sleek, fluid, respon...
IoC Containers aren't magic, but explaining how one works to your co-workers can be frustrating. Let's take the magic out of an IoC container by building one for ourselves. We'...
So your a git-ster in a land of Team Foundation Server. Maybe just want to check out the neighborhood. Either way, you want your local branches, git-flow and rebasing, but the rest o...
Look, it’s a simple 4-step process: Make awesome software Give it away and let people do what they want with it ??? Profit! Okay, maybe not that simple – so let’s h...
We've all heard the arguments of "Web vs. Native vs. Hybrid" mobile apps, but there's simply not enough time to learn it all. What if you're already an experienced Web developer...
Breaking free from the confines of the cubicle farm and going out on your own can be one of the most satisfying things you do for your career. It can also be one of the most terrifying...
So, you need a Content Management System on the .NET framework. While your business might spend wheelbarrows of money on a platform that is powerful and extensible, your personal site would abandon e...
The Windows Azure Data Marketplace offers over 140 very large data sets from all over the world that can be easily consumed in Excel or in your applications. I show you how to use the data and also...
Lessons learned from building a 3-D Printer over a single weekend. The future of 3-D printing holds a world of promise, but right now the path to owning your very own printer can be difficult. In thi...
Tightly coupled applications lead to heartache. They are difficult to manage. They are difficult to maintain. The create applications that are inflexible. They make TDD, or even TAD (Test After Devel...
Want to know how to get your digital identify stolen in a few minutes? We will show you how poorly written mobile apps can divulge sensitive information over untrusted wireless networks. Mo...
Users of web applications are demanding more. More interaction, more usability and a better overall user experience. A great way to do that is with AJAX and REST services. These technologies allow de...
With technology moving at such a rapid pace the demand for quality, up-to-date content is higher than ever. Books are still key players in this field, but writing a technical book is a daunting task....
Managed Extensibility Framework was originally designed and release to help you develop extensible applications that supported plug-in-type patterns but its built-in container made it a fully qualifi...
The Model-View-ViewModel adaptation of the Presentation Model pattern has proven itself in XAML based technologies. Now it's time to reap the benefit in JavaScript and WinJS. In this ...
Behavior driven development has been around for a long time. With the help of Dave Chelimsky (RSpec) it's been fully embraced in the Ruby community. As a long time Ruby developer I learned how BD...
Are you or your client looking for PayPal integration with any development work? After having integrated with PayPal's Adaptive Payments, Direct Payments Pro, and the other packages provided by P...
Javascript is the oldest, new and upcoming technology of recent memory. And now that many teams no longer have the “Is TDD valuable?” argument, they’re looking for a good way to uni...
The use of non-relational databases is gaining momentum, and can be a great solution in some scenarios. RavenDB is the foremost document database for .NET, and offers support for JSON, LINQ, a REST-f...
This introductory workshop will present the basics of scrum and how to implement ccrum practices for your software development team. An overview of scrum will include a hands-on excercise to all...
TypeScript is Microsoft's entry into the JavaScript pre-compiler space. As a javaScript superset, TypeScript compiles to JavaScript and introduces concepts such as strong typing, classes, modules...
Aimed at non-technical users with little or no WordPress experience, this session will walk attendees through starting up a WordPress site. We'll cover topics such as the distinction between post...
This session, aimed at intermediate level developers with little or no experience developing for WordPress, will introduce the basic mechanics of interacting with WordPress's hooks API by walking...
If you are new to Android this session is for you. We will cover Android basics and then walk through building an application to display data from a web service. We will parse the JSON returned and d...
This session is intended to introduce attendees to most common problems associated with slow page load times and sluggish performance within page actions. The primary topics to be covered are: ...
If you are a web developer, then Knockout.js is one of those “must haves” in your JavaScript toolbox. Knockout.js is an open source JavaScript library written by Steve Sanderson, member o...
This session will introduce you to the basic concepts of NoSQL data stores by way of RavenDB – a transactional, open-source document database written in .NET. Time will be spent comparing...
PowerShell is one of those tools that gets a lot of attention from the IT administration side, but many developers think it's not a tool aimed at them. But trust me, PowerShell is an arrow ...
Having spent most of the last 15 years writing web apps on a Microsoft platform, the switch to iOS was a tricky one for me. I will share all that I have learned in the last year making the transition...
Douglas Crockford’s book “Javascript: The Good Parts,” is one of the best selling javascript books of all time and is only 176 pages long. For most developers, there’s a...
One of the nice things about Windows 8 development is that we can leverage existing JavaScript skills. The question is, how does JavaScript fit into the Windows 8 Application Space? What is WinJS? Ca...
Over half the JavaScript code written today suffers from two problems: 1 – it's not testable and 2 – even if it's testable, it is not tested. In many languages, you can cont...
If you can answer these questions, you may not need this presentation: If everything is an object, why does "2.toString()" throw an error? What is the value of "function(a,b,c)...
"The fool who persists in his folly will become wise." – William Blake I want to encourage you to do what you have been dreaming. You have great ideas of what you can do with yo...
Since the launch of Kickstarter, many projects have raised millions of dollars in funding. Beneath these headlines though lives a vibrant community of smaller projects getting the funds they need eve...
Knave Blackjack is a Windows Store app written by Jason Follas using HTML/JavaScript that is currently for sale in the Windows App Store. This session will tell the story of how the game came t...
MVVM on the web… that works! Yes, finally; thank you Steve! If you don’t know who I’m thanking, Steve Sanderson is one of the brilliant minds behind major contributions to ASP.NET w...
Knockout is a Javascript library that helps you use the MVVM pattern in writing web apps. It provides 2-way data binding between properties in your code and objects in the DOM, decreasing the...
Lead, Motivate and Manage a High Performance Organization Building a High Performance Culture Why do some companies excel and others simply survive? This session will cover the top five focus p...
Many front-end libraries, like jQuery, have become popular in the last several years. Unfortunately you might have found that organizing your application with these libraries can become difficult and...
An introduction to AngularJS – what it can do and how you would use it in a real app. This isn't just for those SPAs – Single Page Apps – but for real world apps that have real ...
This session is all about leveraging the power of data binding from knockout and traditional ASP.NET MVC views with unobtrusive validation. We will see how we can inject knockout binding using ...
Writing web services using the ASP.NET Web API can be quite satisfying. For SOAP developers accustomed to strict separations between bindings and contracts, it can also be a frustrating experience. W...
MVC is a great way to develop line of business applications, but sometimes you need to use a webform page along with your MVC Application. For example, you may need a page with a custom control such ...
Want to understand how small game development companies are making millions in the mobile game space? Want to know how you can get started with your own casual games? This session will cover str...
The mobile web is blowing up as more and more smartphones and tablets are being used to access the web. This session will prepare you and your website for mobility by going over responsive ...
WordPress began as a tool to build blog sites, but it has evolved into a general purpose content management system. WordPress powers a significant amount of the world's top websites, and an even ...
What is MVVM? It's a simple question, but if you ask it of ten developers, you'll get as many different answers. And that's okay! Come join Mike Brown as he dives deep into the mysteries ...
The Open Data Protocol (OData) enjoyed a banner year in 2012 with a new version (3.0), submission to OASIS and expanded industry support. Always a WCF darling, the newer ASP.NET WebAP...
The goal of responsive web design is to provide a functional user experience across a vast and growing array of web-enabled devices. And while creating a single codebase which can dynamically reconfi...
Last year, my team contributed to a project in progress - a responsive redesign of an e-commerce site. We got a crash course in Backbone.js and were exposed to many good and bad approaches ...
This session focuses on the basics of what makes a Windows 8 Store App professional and polished. Learn from my direct experience gained through sessions with Microsoft Certification Specialist...
Postgres has long been known as a stable database product that reliably stores your data. However, in recent years it has picked up many features, allowing it to become a much sexier database. We&...
Concurrency is hard and threads are evil. Every developer has heard this at one time or another. I won't dispute either claim, but I do believe with only a basic understanding of the iOS concurre...
An architect’s job is to reduce complexity, not increase it. Yet the developer life is filled with jargon, acronyms, and seemingly infinite choices. So how do we know when complexity makes sens...
Agile is where teams and organizations want to be and Scrum is a tool to help get you there. Microsoft uses Scrum to deliver Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server every 3 weeks (say what!?). &nb...
No, this isn't a show & tell…. Software development is an awesome career, but if you're not careful it will whittle away at your body until it's ru...
The practice of meditation can help you to program to your utmost potential and maximize your longevity in the field of software development. Come listen to some benefits, ideas, and techniques that ...
In addition to the tremendous amount of power available in today’s mobile computing devices, the abundant availability of network connectivity provides the ability to create extremely rich and ...
There’s a place for SOAP and there’s a place for REST, and many applications benefit from using them both. There’s plenty of sessions, classes, and other resources that teach you ho...
QA and You Jon Robinson How do QA and developers work together in a manner that is not combative, and delivers the highest quality product. I will explore this topic, and provide exa...
In physics, two particles can act together in order to behave as one system so that a change made to one particle instantly affects the other – even if they are separated by great distances.&nb...
So you are a web developer and you have read the hype about node.js, but don't have the time to actually play with it, and you are not really convinced that it has value for you. I...
You may have seen the theoretical discussions of Reactive Extensions and heard about the duality of IEnumerable and IObservable, but are still scratching your head to know how and when to use them. I...
Web programming has always been a one-way conversation; a client calls a server and the server sends a response. But what if you could go the other direction? What if your server could call your clie...
Virtual reality has long been an ambitious marriage of hardware and software. In this session we'll talk about some of the challenges facing a "good" VR experience and take a look at th...
One of the hardest aspects in programming is understanding what the current code base is doing. Many tools and practices are geared toward creating code that is readable and understandable, but one t...
OK, so maybe is a little too harsh. But interesting, outrageous, ridiculous, weird? Sometimes even all four fit the bill. Let’s face it, recruiters are part of our world, and ...
Does your CSS code remind you of an episode of Horders (minus the dead cats)? In this session we'll look at how to apply back-end development principals like OOP, DRY, SoC, and Encapsulation to C...
Be afraid. Be very afraid. For you are about to enter the mysterious and foreboding land of regular expressions. A land of strange-looking hieroglyphics. A land of many flavors and implementations. A...
The US contains 5% of the world’s population yet consumes 19% of global energy production with residential and commercial buildings consuming almost 40% of US primary energy (~67% of the electr...
Whether they realize there's a name for them or not, many developers have experience with the SOLID principles. This acronym and the set of ideas it represents get thrown around a lot these ...
Appfication is driving our industry. The focus is moving from web sites to everything must be an app. Customers now first turn to their app marketplace when they need something. The best apps are not...
You're an application developer, not a plumber (or carpenter), so why are you writing your own MVVM framework? Worse yet, maybe you're jamming all sorts of code in the code-behind! ...
Everyone is talking about Single Page Applications(SPA) these days but where do you get started? What javascript libraries are out there to help? In this session we will cover using Durandal JS ...
Either freelancing or operating any business where you make money, process is king. Without process, you have no product to sell, and without any product to sell, you make no money. This talk goes ov...
If you've ever deployed to Heroku, built an Amazon AMI, or spun up a Linode, then you have felt all manner of pain: (1) inability to reproduce your exact production environment locally, (2) ...
This session will review some of the most common and dangerous code smells and anti-patterns with some debate about why they should be avoided. There will be many examples and a lot of interactive di...
In today’s business world, there is a shift in the way we are all communicating. You must keep up in order to stay relevant and to connect with clients in today’s marketplace. I have spec...
Your team practices agile, and has had success with it. But problems with commitments, and story estimation still rear their ugly head. To tame these problems, your team is ready for more matur...
Ok, maybe not stupid tricks. "Various techniques you can use to craft xml in the exact shape you need" is more accurate, but far less catchy. Although XML is less sexy as it was 10 years ag...
Web API is great when real interoperability is needed but WCF is still the best choice for developing service-oriented systems inside the firewall, and discoverability is a feature unique to WCF that...
Test Driven Development (TDD) has been one of the biggest and most compelling paradigm changes to software development of the past few years. The ability to bake quality into your application as you ...
If you don’t test it, how do you know it works? Over the past few years, we have been compelled to write unit and integration tests for our applications–code that validates code–and...
Most everyone can agree automated tests are an essential part of any modern, maintainable software. Unfortunately, testing JavaScript—the modern Web's ubiquitous development language—...
Sure, you're doing some unit testing for your C# code, but how much of your application are those tests really covering? As more and more functionality moves to the client-side, and as our ...
Let's walk together through the ASP.NET Web API starting with the absolute basics. We'll use a raw installation of Visual Studio and NuGet to install the right stuff. Next we'll write a s...
The Single Responsibility Principle states that a class should have one (and only one) reason to change. Classes that don't adhere to this principle can result in tightly coupled spaghetti code t...
In Spring 2012 I taught a second-semester (CS2) Java programming class that utilized Daniel Shiffman's book "The Nature of Code" which walks students through the development of a physic...
The list of solidified ECMAScript 6 (ES6) features keeps growing and we, on the client side, just get greener with envy. Many of these new features won’t be supported in a broad base of browser...
Startups are unique and do not benefit from traditional business management tools; primarily because startups do not have a history and their business models can (and should) change frequently. ...
You're a PowerShell convert, and you live with a shell open now. But you're finding yourself wishing that PowerShell handled something differently. You know you could solve the pr...
JavaScript is not just for DOM manipulation: with its growing presence in browsers, on servers, and now the desktop with Windows 8, JavaScript is fast becoming the ubiquitous programming language. Re...
Many would consider laziness, impatience, and hubris to be qualities that are better left checked at the door in a professional environment. Others consider them virtues and core components of the mo...
"The cloud" will not solve all your problems. Your application will fail. Deal with it. Whether it is a hardware problem, software bug, or a human error, there will ...
Improve authentication and security in your applications using two factor authentication with solutions such as Yubikey and SMS. Discuss: the ramifications of the user experience both pro an...
Dependency Injection is one of those terms that advanced programmers throw out with an expectation and assumption of full understanding on the part of the receiver. However, I constantly get asked by...
WCF gives us a certain level of interoperability with its services but it’s not enough. The nature of a SOAP message makes it complex at a fundamental level and sometimes the tooling for proper...
I learned how to develop software in an environment where "working software" represented only half of the expectation. The other half referred to things like readability, maintainabil...
Clones, forks, branches and pull requests… Help this sounds complicated. It is not. We will learn how to get up and running with Git and Github. We will go over the tools that you need and...
This session will cover the basics of creating a mobile service, exposing the data through the service and consuming this data in a Windows Store application. We will cover CRUD operations and ...
This session will focus on using Bing maps to develop web-based applications. The participant will be able to develop a simple web-based application using JavaScript, Ajax, and Bing maps. Technolog...
You can use jQuery to build Windows Store apps. If you choose the JavaScript with HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) template, you can reuse your existing jQuery skills and code. But should you? ...
KnockoutJS is a framework for implementing MVVM architecture in client side JavaScript. Purely JavaScipt, it leverages HTML5 features to provide robust data binding and UI support. In this session we...
This session will cover the controls that are new in XAML for Windows Store applications. Those will include new list based controls such as GridView, ListView and FlipView. We will talk ...
There are four different ways to manage a remote Windows 8 workstation. The first is to use WMI remoting, the second is to use the computername cmdlets, the third is to use WinRm and Windows PowerShe...
This session will concentrate on features of SSDT as it pertains to creating and updating data structure while incorporating your databases into source control management as well as full application ...
Did you know that Microsoft has a cross-platform cloud solution for mobile applications? Windows Azure Mobile Services offers a variety of easy to use features such as user accounts, data, and ...
While Visual Studio is an amazing IDE, it clearly lacks the power of the world's best text editor! Whether as a stand-alone editor or as a plugin to your favorite IDE (Visual Studi...
WatiN: Web Application Testing in .Net -plus- SharePoint Development Doesn't Suck as Much With WatiN (it's two sessions in one, bonus!) There lots of options out there for automated test...
Whether you are building for mobile, client/server desktop, line of business web applications, or the next social media phenomenon, web services continue to be a critical ingredient of scalable archi...
As game designers we spend a great deal of effort laying out levels, creating a consistent art style, and telling a story. As game developers we focus on smooth gameplay, intuitive controls, an...
What Makes the Great Ones Great – As a sports writer and author of more than a dozen books, Don has had a front row seat with some of the greatest winners in athletics, including Walter Payton,...
ASP.NET MVC has come a long way from its initial release in 2009. Its feature set and maturity have grown by leaps and bounds with each release, and the new fourth version is no exception. In this pr...
Many employers now look for Agile methodology experience or certification when interviewing for new positions, but all of the various certifications require significant investments in time and money,...
Windows 8 provides an entirely new set of API’s for developers to learn and understand. Among these API’s, Microsoft has added some interesting integration points through a set of charms ...
Come on in, strap your self down, and get ready to drink from the fire hose. In this jam-packed session I will cover WinJS fundamentals, Windows Store Application style, Controls, Navigation, L...
Come on in, strap yourself down, and get ready to drink from the fire hose – again! In this jam-packed session I will cover Application LifeCycle, Contracts, Live Tiles, Notifications, Fi...
It’s time to accept the hype – “the cloud” is a component of nearly all modern applications going forward. This will be a code-heavy session were we’ll walk throug...
This isn't one of those pitchfork and torch sessions on NoSQL that advocates the erradication of the Relational Database! Rather, this session is how Non-Relational NoSQL data addresses specific ...
Learn Windows PowerShell best practices as they apply to each stage of the script development lifecycle. See the differences between working interactively from the Windows PowerShell prompt, writing ...
Whether you work in a cube or the comfort of your home office, there are many challenges facing the lone developer. Everything, from estimation to project management to coding changes when ...
In an age of high speed internet and instant communication, working from home is becoming more common, especially for developers. At first, it might seem like the perfect arrangement: no more commuti...
You're a developer, not a designer, but with no designer on the team, it's your job to make your WPF or Silverlight application look good. With a little effort and an understanding ...
You're a web developer with years of experience creating amazing web applications, but you've just been assigned to a *gasp* WPF project! Because you're an expert deve...
The methods for producing quality games that perform in real time are much different than the methods used to produce quality productivity software. This session will present attendees with the nuanc...
One of the most tedious parts of a web application project has long been dealing with its database. The limitations of relational databases – particularly the time involved to change or update ...
