Silverlight DevCamp 2007 - Dallas, TX

Here's a quick (ok, not so quick) message to all of you attending the Silverlight DevCamp here in Dallas on Saturday, Nov 10th.  If you're registered on Microsoft World Wide Events, then you already got this message.  If not, here it is in its entirety. 

PS - please use the tag "SLDC07" for all blogging, flickering, Twittering and other Social Networking so that we can find your posts!

Hello Silverlight DevCampers!

Thanks for signing up for our first ever Silverlight DevCamp in Dallas, TX! I wanted to share a little bit more about the event with you so that everyone comes prepared and we can have the best possible time.

Format

The format of this DevCamp is based on the ideas of Hack Day – instead of a day full of lecture, you’ll spend the majority of the day writing your own Silverlight code using your laptop, a VPC image, or one of our 30 provided computers. We will have some people proctoring the event, and we’ll provide a few hands-on-labs for you to use to get up to speed, but the majority of the day will be focused on you getting a chance to dive into the technology and learn Silverlight by writing your own code. We encourage people to work together, in teams, to create some interesting Silverlight applications and share our Silverlight development knowledge with each other.  It's OK if you've never written any Silverlight code before - this is a great opportunity for you to give it a try, in a fun, collaborative environment!

Location

The event will be held at the Improving Enterprises offices at 15950 Dallas Pkwy Suite 500, Dallas, TX 75248-6615. The building should be open and unlocked for you to come upstairs to the 5th floor. Please park in the attached garage using code #5000 to get in, and NOT in the Visitor Parking area.

Materials

Since the format of this event is a hands-on Dev Camp rather than a classroom lecture, we will be expecting everyone to come ready to write some code. Since not everyone will be able to install all the software needed to run their own environment, we will provide 3 alternatives for you:

  1. Preferred method: Prepare and bring your own laptop to the DevCamp with all the software you’ll need already loaded and ready to go. For a listing of what software you should install, please refer to the Get Started page on Silverlight.net.
  2. Bring your own laptop and utilize our VPC image. Virtual PC is a free download from Microsoft, so this should be an easy way to get started quickly.
  3. Use one of the workstations at Improving that will have the Virtual PC image (or, possibly a native Silverlight development image) installed on it. Since there are 100 people registered for this event, and only 30 computers, you will probably have to team up to use this option.

Agenda

The doors will open at 7:30 am for registration. Tal McMahon will start the day with an overview of Silverlight from 8am – 9am, followed up by the open coding-fest from 9:00-6:00. At 6:00, we will reconvene as a group, and go through the code that people have written and submitted (this is optional - we want to reward those that have done some cool things with some prizes, but you're not required to participate in the review if you don't want to).

Thanks again for signing up for Silverlight DevCamp – if you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact me at 214-385-5616. I look forward to seeing you all there!

If you're planning to attend - leave me a comment on this post.  If you've got any questions, please send them through comments here, or call my cell phone at the number listed in the post.

I hope to see you there! 

Technorati Tags: SLDC07 , Silverlight , DevCamp , Dallas