TechDays Update: Windows Phone 7, IE9, lunch sessions and community!

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Just a few days left before we kick off this year’s TechDays event in Antwerp. Time for a last update with very exciting news.

After last week’s MIX conference you probably have seen the announcements around Windows Phone 7 developer platform, Internet Explorer 9 preview and much more. Well, we have good news for you: some of the stuff from MIX is coming to you next week at TechDays.

Windows Phone 7

We have no less than two sessions on Windows Phone 7 Series development:

  • Charlie Kindel himself, Group Program manager for the WP7 developer experience will be joining us for a lunch session on April 1st.
    This session will give you an overall view on the developer experience.
  • Giorgio Sardo, Technical Evangelist will also be bringing a session on Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight
    Learn about the developer tools, the frameworks and the new functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform. We will cover the new input paradigms including multi-touch, software keyboard, accelerometer and microphone, as well as the APIs to leverage phone applications like email, phone dialer, contact list and more.

Internet Explorer 9

Dean Hachamovitch and Steven Sinofsky demo’ed Internet Explorer 9 at MIX. At TechDays, Giorgio Sardo will be bringing you a session on this new preview release as well:

HTML 5 and Internet Explorer 9
Learn more about HTML 5, CSS 3, SVG, Fast JavaScript support coming in the Internet Explorer 9 platform. This session will include demos showcasing the latest code, providing you best practices to make your web application standards compliant, fast and interoperable cross browsers.

Lunch sessions

To keep you even more busy during lunch time ;-), we have foreseen two developer lunch sessions per conference day. They are shorter than the normal breakouts and will be fun.

On Wednesday March 31st we have the following sessions:

  • XNAsteroids: How to develop the asteroids game in 30 minutes with the XNA framework. By Timothy Vanherberghen, Triangle Factory.
  • Developer Walkthrough: how we built De KinderpuzzelUse SHIFT+ENTER to open the menu (new window).. Learn how the Surface application for this television show was built. By Boris Rogge, Metaneous.

On April 1st you can join Scott Hanselman or Charlie Kindel:

  • How to make your blog suck less – Scott Hanselman
    Join Scott Hanselman as he talks about why you should blog and how you should do it. How much effort should you put into your Personal Brand online? Is Social Networking appropriate for Developers or should they hide in dark rooms and avoid other humans. Learn his rules (and when to break them) for making your blog Suck Less.
  • Introducing the Windows Phone 7 Series developer experience – Charlie Kindel
    This session will provide an overview of Windows Phone 7 Series and it’s developer platform. Charlie will show off the new phone user experience and then give a deep tour of the application & game platform, developer tools, and other developer services. You’ll gain insight on how to build beautiful and compelling applications and games for Windows Phone 7 Series using Silverlight and XNA.

Community lounge

Like previous years, the very active user community is also present at TechDays. This year we have foreseen a Community Lounge area in the expo, where you will be able to meet and talk to the different user groups and experts. Join a user group, talk to peers, be part of the community!