Free 2-day Windows 8 Developer camp

Microsoft is holding free Windows 8 Developer Camp and Hackathon in many cities across the US.  Sign up for the Atlanta event on August 3^rd – 4^th  by clicking here.  Sign up while there are still slots available.

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Other training near Atlanta

There are two inexpensive conferences being held “close” to the Atlanta area.  They appear to be extended code camps (2 to 3 days) with slightly broader topics but many of the same speakers.  Both appear to have some good sessions:

• ·        Codestock - http://codestock.org/
• ·        Dev Link - http://devlink.net/

Atlanta Code Camp

I enjoyed the Carolina code camp so much I decided to attend Atlanta’s version 2 weeks later (May 19^th).  This was my first time attending Atlanta’s code camp and I had another good day of sessions.  Glen Gordon gave a nice overview of Windows 8 HTML5 development and I learned what SignalR is all about (and that it doesn’t seem quite ready for prime time yet). Comparing the 2 code camps I would say that Carolina’s is a step above – maybe because the sessions offered this year in Carolina more aligned with my current interest. 

• ·        http://www.atlantacodecamp.org/

Carolina Code Camp '12

I missed it in ’11 but returned to Mathews, NC on Saturday May 5^th for their annual Carolina code camp.  I had another great experience meeting fellow developers and catching up on some of the latest technology and practices.  I focused entirely on web and client s sessions that covered MCV 4, HTML 5, CSS3, single page applications using knockout and upshot.  The organizers of this code camp do a great job and highly recommend attending next year if you are in the area…or want to make a geek weekend out of it…5 hour drive from Atlanta allowed me to catch up on my backlog of .net rocks, java posse and other podcasts.

• ·        http://codecamp.developersguild.org/

Carolina Code Camp

I attended Carolina Code Camp on Saturday (May 15^th) in Mathews North Carolina. The camp had 9 conferences and approximately 45 sessions of which I attended:

• Introduction to Functional Programming with Scheme
• C# Ninjitsu
• Advanced WPF-Model-View-ViewModel Apps
• Silverlight on MEF
• Become an rX Pusher with the reactive Framework

A very good geek day and I came away with a couple of books:

• Advanced MVVM by Josh Smith
• Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises

ReMix Atlanta

I attended Remix Atlanta on Saturday (May 8^th) and found it well worth the $25 to attend. The keynote by Brandon Watson on Windows Phone 7 was my favorite session of the day as it was my first exposure to Windows 7. At this point there is still a lot of details still being worked out by Microsoft such as the device specs, market place (very raw at this time) and pricing, but overall the Windows phone 7 looks very intriguing.

The conference offered 3 tracks: Windows Phone 7, Silverlight/Blend/Web and User Experience. I stuck with the Silverlight/Blend/Web track which included the following sessions:

• Silverlight 4 and Blend 4 Essentials
• Why Blend 4 has become Indispensable
• What's new in ASP.NET 4 WebForms
• Silverlight for the Enterprise

All were good but enjoyed Silverlight for the Enterprise the most of the 4 – it was the first time that I've heard of MEF and look forward to diving into it more. Another bonus was the free copy of Silverlight spy that I won in one of the sessions.

Definitely recommend attending it if the organizers offer it again in 2011.