Rob Windsor's Weblog

VSLive Toronto and DevTeach Montreal

VSLive returns to Toronto for the third year this spring. The conference will take place at the Toronto Congress Centre from April 24 to 27.

VSLive! Toronto will bring together Microsoft insiders and industry experts for four days of real-world insights and demonstrations on Visual Studio.NET, ASP.NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, Windows Communication Foundation (Indigo), VB, C#, and more.

VSLive! Toronto is designed to address the issues developers face on a daily basis, providing practical code and architecture in dynamic sessions, keynotes and full-day workshops. VSLive! will also offer .NET Day, a full slate of sessions from the Microsoft VS development team on what to expect next.

If you’re a member of a local .NET user group, you can purchase a Gold Passport for $1,250 USD which is more than $400 off the standard price. Each user group was given a priority discount code for its members to use when registering. If you don’t have the code you should contact your group leader to get it.

For more information please visit http://www.ftponline.com/conferences/vslive/2006/toronto/

DevTeach International Developer Conference will take place at the Marriot Chateau Champlain in Montreal from May 8 to 12.

DevTeach stands for Developers Teaching. It is a conference done by developers for developers. It offers the elements of an international conference and the elements of a community event. Sessions include both presentation material and, whenever possible, hands-on training. Again, this year, the developer community will meet in Montreal for this international event.

Local .NET user group members can get a $50 discount off the cost of registration. Each user group was given a rebate code for its members to use when registering. If you don’t have the code you should contact your group leader to get it.

For more information please visit http://www.devteach.com/

Barry Gervin on .NET Rocks!

Barry Gervin, who's a collegue at ObjectSharp and our upcoming speaker at the Toronto Visual Basic User Group (and a Regional Director, a Solutions Architect MVP and all around good guy), is this week's guest on .NET Rocks!  Barry  discusses LINQ, a nascent set of language extentions providing query services for list-based objects..

Toronto Code Camp and First Time Speakers

First off, the Toronto Code Camp was a big success. Thanks to Jean-Luc, Chris and all of the volunteers for such a well organized event. Your hard work definitely paid off.

One of the great aspects of this event, and of Code Camps in general, is the opportunity for anyone from the community to do a talk. There were several first-time speakers at this event and while most of them were nervous in the speaker’s room before their talks, I'm sure all of them thoroughly enjoyed themselves and would do it again in a heartbeat. Kate Gregory post links to blog entries from two of the first-timers, Paul Scarlett and Shaun Hayward, who describe their experiences.

Paul wrote to Carl and Richard at .NET Rocks! and he talks about his letter being read on the air [1]. Carl and Richard also have a sm=imilar discussion with Don Demsak (a.k.a. DonXML) following a New Jersey Code Camp last October [2].

If you have ever thought about doing a technical presentation you don’t have to wait for the next Code Camp, just find a local user group and let the leader know. It’s a great way to learn (you always learn more when you prepare to teach someone else) and a great way to market yourself.

[1] http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=163 (about 5 minutes in)
[2] http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=141 (about 40 minutes in)