Windows Phone 7: Personal Preparation for Attending a WP7 App Dev Workshop

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Randy Guthrie – Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist
blogs.msdn.com/MIS_Laboratory

At most Windows Phone 7 app development workshops that I have hosted or attended, we spend the first hour or longer getting everyone set up with the proper accounts and software. A lot of time can be saved (and more other content covered) if attendees can arrive with the essential accounts set up and software installed. The following essentials can be easily accomplished in about two hours with little or no guidance in advance of your Windows Phone 7 workshop: If you get stuck on any of these steps, let your event host know, or arrive early to get help with last piece of preparation.

Personal Online Preparation: (note: this should be done in order)

1. Create AppHub Account https://create.msdn.com (student-type is free)
-a. enter or create Windows Live ID
-b. accept terms and conditions
-c. select “Student”-type account (you will be re-directed to the DreamSpark website to verify your student status)
-d. complete account registration
Note: if you have problems getting verified as a student in DreamSpark, please log a support incident with DreamSpark support ASAP
2. Create PubCenter Account https://advertising.microsoft.com/mobile-apps
3. Create Bing Maps Developer Account https://www.microsoft.com/maps/developers/mobile.aspx

Computer Hardware Preparation

Note: Visual Studio and the WP7 phone tools will only run on Windows 7 (and Windows Vista); They will not work on Windows XP. Apple/OSX users can install BootCamp or other Virtual HD software and then install and run Windows 7 and the phone SDK in dual boot mode (student Mac users can get a copy of Windows 7 from their department’s DreamSpark premium account from from your Microsoft event host). Mac users should allocate as much memory as possible to the Windows 7 VM else performance, particularly of the phone emulator, will be severely degraded.

Express Option:

Pro Developer Option

Cheers,

Randy