Tracks

09:15 - 10:30 — MVC with Amazon Web Services, AppHarbor, Nuget

An ALT.NET Microsoft cloud: Developing and hosting ASP.NET MVC apps in the cloud without Azure. Demonstration and discussion of alternate tools and platforms for developing cloud based .NET applications including: Managing dependencies with Nuget. Source code control with Mercurial and Bitbucket. Continuous Integration and hosting with AppHarbor and Amazon EC2. NoSQL database backends with Amazon Simple DB.

Eric Bowen Eric Bowen is a former Microsoft Architect Evangelist specializing in enterprise architecture and technical project leadership of complex projects using Microsoft technologies. Eric has been programming for 28 years since he taught himself Z80 assembly language on his families TRS-80 Model I Level II. And he has still never worn the t-shirt that Bill Gates signed when he won the programming contest at the Microsoft PDC in 2001. In his spare time Eric works as a photojournalist providing independent coverage of the Minnesota National Guard and the war in Iraq. Eric has made multiple trips to Iraq, and his work has appeared locally on Channel 5 Eyewitness News and MinnPost.Com, as well as nationally on the CBS Evening News and in Parade Magazine. Eric is a former US Army Paratrooper, and former member of the US National Biathlon Team. 10:45 - 12:00 — Web performance and scale

Abstract: Improving Web Site Performance and Scalability While Saving Money Can you really improve the customer experience and save money? There are many simple techniques and free tools available that can do both! This session will start with a traditional ASP.NET web site and show step by step how to improve it for both client experience and cost savings. Review the basics of caching and learn how to avoid costly server round trips by using expirations to maximize use of the client's browser and also reduce server side execution time with data caching on the server. Use HTTP compression, minification of JavaScript and CSS, server side viewstate, and image optimization to reduce client downloads by 50-75%. Take advantage of free CDN networks to host jQuery and Ajax files. See how tools such as Ajax Minifier, Fiddler, Network Monitor, and Google Page speed can be used to help diagnose and verify improvements. Be the hero in tight economic times, doing the impossible by using these simple techniques to cut costs and make your customers happy!

Robert Boedigheimer Robert Boedigheimer works for Schwans Shared Services, LLC providing business solutions with web technologies and leads Robert Boedigheimer Consulting, LLC. Robert has been designing and developing web sites for the past 14 years including the early days of ASP and ASP.NET. He is a columnist for aspalliance.com, an ASP.NET MVP, an author, an "Early Achiever" MCSD for .NET with C#, an MCPD: Web with C#, and a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Robert has spoken at industry conferences including the Heartland Developers Conference, DevLink, DevTeach, Tulsa Tech Fest, DevWeek, TechEd, AJAXWorld, and numerous national and international VSLive! events. 01:15 - 02:30 — jQuery templates and data-link

The templates and data-link plug-ins for jQuery are the result of Microsoft's shifted efforts in client side programming. Rather than continue creating parallel client libraries in Microsoft AJAX, the team is now contributing to jQuery. These two libraries provide extremely rich APIs for data layout and manipulation. In this session you will learn how to use client-side templates to provide layout information for data you wish to display. Next we will see how to bind javascript objects to form input elements such that changes to the form are reflected immediately in the object. That's right - databinding for javascript/html! We’ll wrap up with a look toward the future as it relates to these plug-ins and jQuery.

Matt Milner Matt is a member of the technical staff at Pluralsight, where he focuses on connected systems (WCF, Windows WF, BizTalk, AppFabric) and web technologies. Matt is also an independent consultant specializing in Microsoft .NET application design and development. As a writer Matt has contributed to several journals and magazines including MSDN Magazine where he authored the workflow content for the Foundations column. Matt regularly shares his love of technology by speaking at local, regional and international conferences such as Tech Ed. Microsoft has recognized Matt as an MVP for his community contributions around connected systems technology. 03:00 - 04:15 — WCF REST

The intent behind REST, Representational State Transfer, is to utilize the simplicity and the success of the web architecture in other relevant areas such as services. WCF provides a flexible framework for developing and supporting services and because of this architectural flexibility, it's able to innately support REST, progressively narrowing the gap compared to core serviceable models. We'll define and quantitatively analyze qualities of REST within the context of WCF. A step by step discussion of how to develop, host, and consume WCF services using REST will be part of the discussion along with parallel comparison to Web API. Degree of RESTfulness and pros and cons of such along with the how-to are also part of the analysis.

Naz Siddiqui Nazmul is a consultant with over 15 years of software development experience primarily on Microsoft platform. He began his career writing client applications and switched between client and web application development. His interests lie in distributed architecture, object and relational modeling as well as developing design patterns and raising code security, performance, maintainability, and scalability awareness. He’s currently the CEO of Naz-Tek, and regularly blogs on technology matters and leads the local WCF user group, hosting monthly (1st Wednesday of the month at noon) knowledge share meetings at Bloomington Microsoft. His main focus is to bring efficiency and quantitative measures into the software development industry and reorient the general concept of information technology as an investment center rather than a cost center.

09:15 - 10:30 — MVVM Light Toolkit - Works Great, Less Complicated

Building XAML-based enterprise applications poses some some tough architecture choices. The proliferation of patterns and frameworks does not ease the decision. This session explores a few of the many options, as well as, a deep dive into one of them. We’ll work thru implementing a Silverlight application with the MVVM Light Toolkit.

Tom Fischer Tom's software development assignments include designing and delivering several enterprise applications. He has coauthored two books, "Professional Design Patterns in VB .NET" and ".NET Security"; written a few articles; and presented on a broad range of topics. Tom currently works as an application architect. 10:45 - 12:00 — Shed some light on Visual Studio LightSwitch

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch is a tool for building business applications. But what does that mean? If you are professional developer, is LightSwitch a tool you would / should use? What kind of application is a “business” application? In this session, you will learn about the architecture of LightSwitch applications, the development experience and how professional developers can go beyond forms and data to add code and custom controls to LightSwitch applications. You will learn what LightSwitch is, how it works, and then be able to decide for yourself if it’s the right tool for your development project.

Matt Milner Matt is a member of the technical staff at Pluralsight, where he focuses on connected systems (WCF, Windows WF, BizTalk, AppFabric) and web technologies. Matt is also an independent consultant specializing in Microsoft .NET application design and development. As a writer Matt has contributed to several journals and magazines including MSDN Magazine where he authored the workflow content for the Foundations column. Matt regularly shares his love of technology by speaking at local, regional and international conferences such as Tech Ed. Microsoft has recognized Matt as an MVP for his community contributions around connected systems technology. 01:15 - 02:30 — How Blend Makes Developers Look Good

Silverlight gives us the ability to make beautiful applications, but not every project has the luxury of having a Blend designer on the team. When design is handed over to us, the developers, how do we make the applications look better, not worse? In this session you’ll hear from a developer who had to be the designer, but had no design experience. You’ll learn the basics of how lighting, glass, reflection, and dimension are used in basic controls like buttons and toggles. See how advanced binding techniques combined with clipping paths are used to build compelling “percent complete” visual controls. Finally, see how you and your designer can work better together. How do designers build rich styles with simple biding schemes? How do developers reduce the demands on their understaffed designers? This session is intended to give developers the first steps towards building more visually appealing Silverlight (and WPF) applications.

Scott Davis Scott is a seasoned consultant with over a decade of consulting experience on both the Microsoft and Java platforms. Scott began working with Silverlight in the 1.1 Alpha, and continues to focus on Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7 as his primary developer focus. Scott is also the leader of the Twin Cities Silverlight User Group. He was honored to be invited by Microsoft to deliver the keynote address at the Windows Phone 7 Developer Launch conference in Minneapolis last fall. Scott is currently the owner and principal consultant for his consulting firm Ignition Point Solutions, as well as COO of QONQR, a tech startup in the mobile gaming industry. He is heavily engaged in the Twin Cities entrepreneurial community, and is the current president of BizLounge, an entrepreneurship group for emerging and aspiring entrepreneurs across all industries. 03:00 - 04:15 — Silverlight 5

See what is coming in the next version of Silverlight.

Jeff Brand Jeff Brand is a .NET Developer in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Group. Jeff assists customers in evaluating, developing and deploying applications built on the .NET Framework and the Microsoft platform. He has been with Microsoft for fourteen years and has served in variety of roles including infrastructure consultant, e-commerce technology specialist, and enterprise technology advisor.

09:15 - 10:30 — Mango

Jeff Brand Jeff Brand is a .NET Developer in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Group. Jeff assists customers in evaluating, developing and deploying applications built on the .NET Framework and the Microsoft platform. He has been with Microsoft for fourteen years and has served in variety of roles including infrastructure consultant, e-commerce technology specialist, and enterprise technology advisor. 10:45 - 12:00 — Custom iOS Controls

Learn to build custom iOS controls from scratch that look great on any device. Don’t be discouraged when Apple’s built-in controls don’t give you the flexibility you need. Walk through examples and learn tips and techniques that you can use to write your own.

Sam Kirchmeier Sam Kirchmeier is a software developer at Livefront. Sam has over 10 years of experience as a software developer, building mobile apps for iOS and web apps with a variety of technologies like Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, and hand-crafted XHTML/CSS. When he's not writing the next big iOS app, you might find him teaching at Hennepin Technical College or out on the disc golf course practicing his technique. 01:15 - 02:30 — Title: Strategies for Multiplatform Mobile Engagement - Web, Apps, and Beyond

With the number of "app stores" growing at a breakneck pace, this session will discuss how to choose the best technologies to reach your target mobile audience. Explore the pros and cons of native SDKs, HTML5, Appcelerator Titanium, PhoneGap, Unity, Flash, and other options.

Aaron Kardell Aaron Kardell is the author of iGarageSale, founder of MobileRealtyApps.com, and co-founder of Deals.by. Aaron has now delivered apps in five different "app stores" and his apps have been featured multiple times by Apple. 03:00 - 04:15 — Roboguice - Dependency Injection for Android

In this session developers will learn how to use Roboguice, the dependency injection framework for Android. Whether starting from a greenfield or brownfield project Roboguice can help streamline your application to allow it to become more decoupled as well as more testable. You will learn how to inject views, resources and use some of Roboguice's built in helpers to help streamline your day to day work process.

Donn Felker Donn Felker is the founder of Agilevent a innovative creative development firm that specializes in web, mobile and agile technologies. He has over 10 years of professional experience in various markets that include – entertainment, health, retail, insurance, financial, and real estate. He is the author of Android Development for Dummies and the author of the TekPub.com Introduction to Android video series. He is also a Microsoft ASP Insider, an MCTS in Web Client Development for .NET 2.0 and 3.5 and is also a certified ScrumMaster. He founded and coordinates the Twin Cities Give Camp and leads the Twin Cities Developers Guild. He writes, presents and consultants on various topics ranging from architecture, development, agile and patterns & practices. Follow Donn on twitter: @donnfelker or read his blog here: http://blog.donnfelker.com.

09:15 - 10:30 — HTML5, CSS3, & Mobile: Responsive Design

Learn how to design and build flexible sites that look great regardless of screen size and are optimized for both mobile + desktop web. This presentation introduces Responsive Design concepts, HTML5, and CSS3.

Mike Bollinger Mike Bollinger is a designer, coder, entrepreneur, and explorer. He is founder of Livefront, a mobile software design & development firm, and co-founder of TECHdotMN, a media group covering technology news in Minnesota. Mike has been designing and building mobile and web software for 14 years with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. He is an active member of the Minnesota technology community, a regular speaker at local events, and is on the Board of Directors for two non-profit organizations: Cheerful Givers and BizLounge. In his spare time Mike is an avid world traveler, a musician, a photographer, and a super-fast-sailboat-racer-guy. 10:45 - 12:00 — .NET Tips and Tricks

Visual Studio took over 43 MILLION lines of code to write – it's big. Really BIG. There is no way that a single developer can know everything about Visual Studio that will be useful. That's where this session comes in. We'll cover a plethora of shortcuts, strategies, hidden features and freeware that will save you a gigantic amount time when developing your .Net application with Visual Studio. Beginners and advanced programmers alike will walk away saying, "I didn't know you could to that!"

Jon von Gillern Jon is an IADNUG leader and consultant from West Des Moines, Iowa. He has been programing for the past 15 years and currently infatuated with writing WPF and Silverlight applications. Recently, Jon has created two tools that help .Net Developers write better code – Nitriq Code Analysis and Atomiq Duplicate Code Finder. 01:15 - 02:30 — You Can Do What in Windows Azure?!

You already know you can run your .NET based web sites, service, and applications on Windows Azure, but this only scratches the surface of what you can do. Encoding video with Expression Encoder, hosting adaptive streaming video in blob storage, hosting multiple web sites, enabling remote desktop, creating a VPN and more are all possible with the Windows Azure platform. In this demo intensive session I'll show you how to do these things and more to unleash the power of Azure.

Adam Grocholski Adam Grocholski is a Technical Evangelist at RBA Consulting where he spends time focusing on the Windows Azure Platform as well as the latest UI technologies such as Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight. He also has a penchant for hanging around some of the darker corners of the .NET Framework (i.e. T4 and MEF). In 2010 he was named as a Microsoft MVP for his commitment to the Microsoft development community. From founding and presenting at the Twin Cities Cloud Computing user group to speaking at the local .NET and Silverlight user groups along with code camps and local, regional, and national conferences, he is committed to building a great community of well-educated Microsoft developers. 03:00 - 04:15 — Arduino Android Accessories

Arduino and Android's Open Accessory Development Kit combine to provide a short path for developers to create electronics accessories for Android. This talk will show you how. No previous electronics experience required.

Dan Grigsby Dan Grigsby is a founding partner at the mobile app agency Drivetrain. Dan previously founded Mobile Orchard, which became the number one iPhone developer news site and podcast. He founded half a dozen other companies, including an early e-commerce provider that was acquired by Microsoft and the only ever successful competitor to PayPal. He received the Business Journal's "40 Under 40" award, Finance and Commerce's "40 Minnesotans On The Move" award, was named one of MPLS/St. Paul magazines "75 Best Brains" and featured as one of fifteen "Innovatives" by Twin Cities Business. Dan is an Adjunct Instructor and Entrepreneur-In-Residence the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota.

09:15 - 10:30 — CoffeeScript, Rails & Endless Sunshine (A Soliloquy in Three Parts)

The Past: Many rails apps are littered with an ugly combination of JS event handlers, inline events, global functions and rails JS helpers The Present: CoffeeScript bundled in 3.1 along with other asset pipeline enhancements help you create a happy, healthy and clean-behind-the-ears app The Future: Powerful front-end frameworks such as SproutCore and back-end technologies such as Node.js may change Rails place in the world

Kelly Heikkila Kelly Heikkila has more than 12 years development experience in web technologies and enterprise platform development, including 6 years software Product Management experience. He currently splits his time between his role as CTO of MixMobi, a post-revenue mobile marketing platform and founder of :coderow, a custom web and mobile application development company. Whenever possible he works in Ruby and Rails but also has extensive experience in a number of other four-letter languages. 10:45 - 12:00 — Releasing Culture

Release early. Release often. Listen to your customers." Easy to do and difficult to master, releasing reliable code consistently is about tools and culture. We will explore a startup's path from a two month cycle down to a two week iteration and pressing for more. Using tools like Vlad the Deployer, Sprinkle, Vagrant, Capybara and test driven development and the interplay between building and fighting for a culture.

Cory Preus Cory has more that 16 years experience developing for the web, when formmail.pl and 56k ISDN lines were leading technologies. He worked as a VBScript, ColdFusion and PHP developer in prior lives and has been writing Ruby full-time for over two years. He enjoys exploring technologies with no immediate utility and is a practicing code deletionist. Cory is currently the lead software engineer at GoKart Labs, a digital innovation company and has been involved with launching two successful startups as part of the GoKart Labs team. 01:15 - 02:30 — Programming and Minimalism: Lessons from Orwell & The Clash

Programming is writing. A programmer's job is to express abstract ideas in a specific language - just like the poet, the essayist, and the composer. But while writers and composers spend years improving their style, many programmers think style stops with "two-space indentation". This needs to change. This presentation will discuss style in music, writing, and software. We'll look at such diverse sources as George Orwell, Mozart, and punk music, and will find that much of art revolves around complexity and minimalism - just like software. Finally, we'll look at specific patterns and tools for writing software that is not just effective and efficient, but stylistically beautiful.

Jon Dahl Co-founder of Zencoder, a Y Combinator-backed startup that provides awesome video encoding as a service in the cloud. Before Zencoder, ran a Ruby on Rails development shop, blogged at http://railspikes.com, wrote a Master's thesis on philosophy and theology, and made a failed attempt to become a Lisp hacker. 03:00 - 04:15 — Better living through Metaprogramming

More than just method_missing and open classes, ruby's willingness to augment and alter itself at runtime can add some powerful additions to your toolbox.

Phil Crissman Phil Crissman is originally from Vancouver, Canada, and has been here in Minnesota since the year 2000. He makes things for the web with ruby and JavaScript, and is currently at Ackmann & Dickenson, Inc.

09:15 - 10:30 — Techmasters Demo Meeting

Think Toastmasters for Geeks. Would you like to be showing your tech skills as a presenter instead of just being in the crowd? Has your career reached a plateau? Do you have technical knowledge but get frustrated communicating it to your co-workers? Would you like to break free of your cubicle and actually influence the direction of your projects and organizations? Or maybe you'd just like get through your next status meeting without stressing out about talking in front of a group. If any of these sound like you, Techmasters can help. We're not just about public speaking -- although many of our members speak at tech conferences in the area and across the country. We're a group of tech types that have realized that the combination of technical, communication and leadership skills are key essentials that will unlock the rest of our careers. In this session we'll run through a short version of one of our meetings. We'll follow the "mini" meeting by fielding questions from the crowd.

10:45 - 12:00 — Making the Leap to Freelance Programming

Have you ever felt like your day job just might not be for you? In this session, Avonelle Lovhaug will cover all the basics that you need to know to start your own freelance programming business. You'll learn how to find your perfect client, some non-sleazy marketing techniques, and how to get paid what you're really worth. We'll also cover setting rules and boundaries for your business, and some ideas for regular income that can help you to avoid the feast or famine cycle that plagues most freelancers.

Avonelle Lovhaug Avonelle Lovhaug escaped the corporate grind in 2003. Since then she's been running Code Poetry, her freelance programming venture serving tech savvy small businesses in the Twin Cities. Avonelle lives just outside St. Paul with her husband, and after raising two geek sons with careers in tech-related fields, she's done her part for future generations. She'd tell you how long she's been working with computers, but her age is classified. Avonelle writes about going freelance at www.IndyCoding.com. 01:15 - 02:30 — Turning Passion Into Words - Tips, Tricks, and Tools for Aspiring Authors

For many of us, writing code isn't just what we do for money; it's something we love to do and share with others. One of the best ways to share that passion is through writing. In this talk, we'll explore the world of writing and publishing content for programmers. We'll explore the writing and editorial processes, including how to really connect with your audience, and we'll go over some tools and techniques you can use to organize your writing and produce something real, useful, and unique. Finally, we'll talk about what it takes to make a great book proposal and what it takes to get the word out about your writing. Visit http://ietherpad.com/U6zreCRCSP and add specific questions / topics you'd like to see.

Brian Hogan Brian Hogan is an author, editor, trainer, speaker, musician, and web developer who loves to tinker with HTML5, CSS3, Ruby, and JavaScript. He coordinates the RailsMentors.org project which pairs people who want to learn about Ruby on Rails with experienced mentors. He's the author of "HTML5 and CSS3" and "Web Design For Developers" and consults. When not hacking on code or writing, he can be found improving his guitar chops or spending time with his daughters. 03:00 - 04:15 — Covert Agile: How to Employ Agile Practices in the Enterprise While Avoiding Detection

You understand the benefits of Agile Software Development, but your Pointy-Haired Manager insists that you need to follow Standard Procedures. Join this discussion about the challenges of Enterprise Development and learn how you can creatively circumvent the Process Police to get things done.

Justin Peck Justin Peck is the Co-Founder and CEO of QONQR: The Geosocial Game of World Domination! But before leaving to hone his Nanoweapons Expertise full-time, Justin completed several tours of duty as a Developer, Development Manager, and Agile Evangelist at several large, humorless, bureaucratic corporations. The experience has scarred him for life. When he's not working on his startup, Justin can often be found at the movies, probably watching something with subtitles and subtext. Follow him on Twitter: @justinpeck.

09:15 - 10:30 — Introduction to Google App Engine

Perhaps lesser-known than other cloud hosting platforms, Google App Engine nevertheless provides a powerful Platform as a Service which lets your applications leverage the power of Google's infrastructure and APIs. The promise is attractive: play by App Engine's rules, and your app will scale effortlessly without your intervention. In this talk, we'll take a look at how to build web apps with Google App Engine, what its sweet spot is, its limitations and weaknesses, and compare and contrast it with other cloud hosting platforms.

Luke Francl Luke Francl is a long-time web application developer, using everything from Perl to Tcl (yes, really!). Lately, he's focused on Ruby on Rails and Google App Engine. A Y Combinator alumni, he is also co-founder of Minne?, which organizes MinneBar, one of the largest BarCamps in the world. He is the co-author of the PeepCode ebook "Receiving Email with Ruby" and has spoken at conferences around the world. Luke blogs at http://www.recursion.org and can be found on Twitter @lof. 10:45 - 12:00 — Windows Azure Product Roadmap

The Windows Azure Platform is quickly evolving and expanding. New features are being added and its nearly a full time job just keeping up to date on all the latest. In this session we’ll cover what platform is today as well as what is yet to come. Whether you’re new to the platform, or looking to catch up on the latest announcements from the 2011 Windows Build conference, this session is for you.

Brent Stineman Brent's nearly 20 year career has spanned platforms from the mainframe to mobile devices and industries from manufacturing to entertainment software. He started working with the Windows Azure Platform during its CTP phase and is now focused on helping fellow IT professionals explore the promise of cloud computing. Brent is also one of the inaugural Microsoft MVP's for the Windows Azure Platform. 01:15 - 02:30 — Rock Paper Azure!

Did you play Rock, Paper, Scissors as a kid? Does it still determine who makes the afternoon coffee run? Then you already know how to play the game. Now's your chance to code your own player "bot" and test your skills by taking the game to a whole new level in the Cloud. In this session we explore how the competition works and what you need to know to come out on top. We’ll show you how to get in the game, write a couple bots and upload them to compete in the tournament.

Mike Benkovich Energy, laughter and a contagious passion for coding - Mike brings it all to the podium. Mike has worked in a variety of roles including architect, project manager, developer and technical writer. The coolest part of his job? Running into people who are still using (and liking) his software applications. Mike is a published author with WROX Press and APress Books, writing primarily about getting the most from your SQL Server database. Since appearing in Microsoft's DevCast in 1994, Mike has presented technical information at seminars, conferences and corporate boardrooms across America. 03:00 - 04:15 — git push heroku. Deploying Ruby Apps to the Cloud.

Ruby on Rails has become a framework of choice for many web application developers. The elegance of the Ruby language along with the ease of the Rails framework have made it simple and fun to build applications. Deployment and scalability, on the other hand, has been disproportionately difficult – until now. Heroku is a Ruby hosting platform that uses the Amazon Cloud and is owned by Salesforce. Heroku makes deployment and scalability ridiculously easy and possibly even a little fun. In this talk you'll get to experience the power of Rails and the simplicity of Heroku as we build an application, deploy it to the Cloud, and scale it up to handle millions of users. Presented by Jeff Lin and Paul Cantrell.

Jeff Lin Jeff Lin is the Founder of Bust Out Solutions, Inc. [http://bustoutsolutions.com/] and an adjunct faculty member at Hennepin Technical College where he teaches Web Design and Production. He started Bust Out Solutions in 2004 while house sitting in Hawaii. Yeah, tough work. In addition to a decade and a half in the software/web/mobile industry, Jeff also enjoys competitive soccer, paddles a hot orange kayak around the lakes, drinks good beer with lots of friends (or lots of beer with good friends), and hangs out with his wife and dog in Uptown, Minneapolis. Follow him @jefflin.