Skills Development at TechDays Online

Couldn’t make it out to TechDays Canada? Made it out but couldn’t split yourself into 6 people to attend all of the tracks? No worries! All 70 sessions of technical content across the 6 track are now available to everyone at TechDays Online ( techdays.ca ).

With full HD videos of the sessions from Toronto and Montreal, PowerPoint decks, and virtual labs for that hands-on experience, you and your colleagues and/or friends can enhance your skills and learn about awesome new technologies right from the comfort of your home or office.

Since I know you’ll want to start with the Development Tracks (you are on the Canadian Developer Connection blog after all), I’ll start with those:

• Developing for 3 Screens and the Cloud with Joey De Villa (@AccordionGuy) will show you how to develop and enhance your applications for the three key platforms – web, mobile, and desktop – and how to leverage the cloud where it makes sense. You’ll also learn how Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010, Windows Phone, Silverlight, and other technologies can help enhance the application experience for your users.
• Optimizing the Development Process, also with Joey De Villa, will show you the importance of leveraging best practices to address the delivery of software. You’ll learn how to take your skills up a notch while at the same time ensuring effective and efficient interaction with all members of the development team. You’ll see the practical techniques of consistent delivery of robust solution components, through the use of Microsoft’s application lifecycle platform, Visual Studio 2010, and Team Foundation Server 2010.

If you’re interested in IT Pro content, take a look into these tracks:

• Collaboration: The Next Generation with Damir Bersinic (@DamirB) will show you how to leverage key technologies to help increase the productivity of your users while at the same time helping reduce the burden on IT to manage your users’ needs. You’ll also see how to design your environment to help enable users to collaborate whether on premise or on the road, plus how to extend your business productivity infrastructure to the Cloud while integrating it with your on-premise components.
• All About Deployment with Ruth Morton (@RuthM) will show you the best approach for deploying your operating system, off-the-shelf, as well as custom applications.  You’ll see how to leverage tools in Windows Server 2008 R2, the System Center product line, and others to help make deployment run more smoothly.
• Managing and Helping to Secure Your IT Infrastructure with Rick Claus (@RicksterCDN) will show you how to integrate Cloud-based technologies in the security and management framework of your organization. You’ll learn how to migrate to and implement on-premise and Cloud-based infrastructure components to help reduce costs and increase agility. You’ll also see how Windows Server 2008 R2, virtualization, and the System Center suite of products provide a robust solution to deploy and manage your datacenter, as well as how to help secure your organization from external and internal threats with the Forefront® suite of security products.

Local Flavours

And last by not least, for something completely different, Local Flavours with John Bristowe (@jbristowe) highlights the unique needs and characteristics of Technical Professionals across Canada by celebrating these differences – individuals shared their knowledge and expertise, showcasing the great work that is happening in their region.

We made the commitment to you to have the content available for everything, and now we’re happy to say that we’ve delivered on it! A big thanks to our leadership team for this investment, enabling you to make the investment in your skills development.

TechDays 2011 and MSDN Flash

With TechDays 2010 now available to you, it’s time to get working on TechDays 2011.  Dates and locations should be coming out in Spring 2011 (so soon!) Keep in touch with us by subscribing to our newsletter – MSDN Flash.  It’s free, delivered to your inbox every two weeks, and it’ll keep you informed of key details such as dates and locations, early bird notices, as well as other technical news that may be interest to you. 

Tell Us What You Think

A lot of effort when into putting together TechDays Online, so we’d love to hear what you think, what you liked, what we can do better with TechDays 2011, and anything else you’d like to share with us.  Join the discussion at Ignite Your Coding on LinkedIn or post comments here on our blog.