29 Jul 2008

Going with the Workflow

On the 21st August I'll be presenting my first full length session on Windows Workflow Foundation in Southampton. I'm attempting to do something slightly different with this session compared to the other WF session I've seen in the community. Instead of the normal This is the designer, this is an Activity, look they make a Workflow talk, I'll be attempting to answer the three burning questions I hear from most of the developers I talk to: Why should I use WF? When should I use WF? and How should I use WF?

So if this sounds something you'd be interested in, come along and check the session out. Slides will appear here after the session.

Silverlight Assault Course

This past weekend saw the first run of the Silverlight Assault Course run by us at NxtGen. You can see a link for it here. The basic premise is to fill the gap between seeing a 1-2 hour technology session at a User Group event and playing with the same technology at home.

I found that most of the cool technologies I see at events I never have time to get to grips with afterwards, so I came up with the concept of the Assault Course. The Assault Course is a mix of Hands On Labs and presentations which the attendees can flt between as the subjects they're interested in are presentated. The presentations take no more than 20 minutes, each being a contained wealth of information.

Feedback from the event has been incredibly positive! Everyone ha sthought the value for money was superb, which is good :) And I think the swag from Immediacy (the excellent company that allowed us to use their premises for the day, thank you so much!) and Telerik made it doubly worth while. We will have a tinker with the format, as the HOLs were pretty much deserted the whole day because of the stonking presentations being given by Rich Costall and Chris Hay.

If you're running a User Group in the UK and would be interested in having us run the Silverlight Assault Course in your region, then drop me an email :)