Open XML workshop videos

MSDN has published the complete set of videos of the San Francisco Open XML developer workshop that was hosted by Mindjet in June. This was one of the series of workshops that we did in over 30 locations this spring, covering the content that was recently posted on OpenXMLDeveloper.org.

If the workshop didn't come to your city, now you can watch the videos from anywhere, and you can also download all of the presentations, hands-on labs, and demo files used in the workshops. The focus of the workshop was on document generation for .NET developers, but there are also Java versions of the labs available as you can find on the content page.

I participated in 16 of these workshops, starting with the one Wouter and I did in Paris last December. For the San Francisco workshop, I was lucky to be joined by Chris Predeek of the Ted Pattison Group, who was the author of many of the hands-on labs we used. It was great to work with Chris, and I learned a lot watching him walk through the code for the hands-on labs. He also covered topics such as the packaging API, XML programming in .NET, XSLT, and the Microsoft SDK for Open XML formats.

The attendees at this workshop were an enthusiastic and interesting bunch, and many of them have longstanding experience in XML formats. Here's a video covering some of their reactions to the training.

I've never been involved in a video production like this one, and it was really fun. There were lights mounted in the ceiling, cables running everywhere, cameramen and a sound person and even a guy who re-applied makeup to my head every hour to keep it from shining too much. It often felt like chaos at the time, and yet the finished result looks so ... organized.

At the risk of forgetting somebody, I'd like to thank a few of the people who helped create these videos. Producer Brad Cochrane and his crew were great, and Anthony Roy and the folks at Mindjet were gracious hosts. Isaac Leonard, Erick Watson, William Leong, and Don Campbell helped with numerous little details that kept things running smooth during the event itself, Michael Scherotter gave a great overview of Mindjet's use of Open XML, and Pauls Zommers, Kelly Bowen-McCombs and Erika Ehrli all helped get the final videos published.

And I'd like to add a special note of appreciation to the attendees, who put up with all sorts of hassles and interruptions during the workshop so that we could get these videos produced for a wider audience. Thanks, everyone!