2015 Tracks

Registration and Breakfast

Delivering digital content for TV stations, newspapers, and magazines is more complex than you might think. Myriad content integrations, publishing workflows, and the sheer scale at which most mass media outlets operate present a plethora of technical challenges that service bus technologies are well suited to solve. From the case studies presented, you will learn successful patterns for implementing service bus approaches that you can apply to your own business domain. Examples will reference NServiceBus, but the approaches presented can be easily generalized to any service bus technology.

Digital X.509 certificates are the fundamental technology enabling secure communication over the web. However, for most of us, our experience with certificates begins and ends with installing a purchased certificate on a server. Come to this session to learn: - How RSA public/private key encryption works - How x.509 certificates and TLS implement RSA encryption - Tools and libraries available for working with certificates - How CRLs and OCSP account for compromised private keys - How to build your own Certificate Authority to issue client certificates for authentication

We all know and (sorta) love relational databases. Why not, we've only been using it for years now! But relational databases presents challenges for the modern web developer: it's hard to scale and there's an upfront cost in designing a schema. Enter RethinKDB, an open-source, scalable database for use with the real-time web.

Creating the best possible mobile experience extends beyond the device to the services your app depends on. The unique constraints imposed by mobile devices should influence your API design. Learn how to build great mobile web services, what REST doesn't cover, and lessons from years of experience designing and refining mobile web services.

The only thing that’s constant is change, and nowhere is that more true than in mobile technology. New phones, tablets and phablets mean new opportunities for developers to create great ways of connecting people and the data. Developers today have choices to make in terms of platform, frameworks and technologies to use to create apps. Cordova, Xamarin, and Mobile Web have their points, but they also have tradeoffs. In this session we’ll explore the options available to the developer to see how you can go cross platform with data, identity and services to create the ultimate connected experience.

The Android Wear framework may be best known for its rich support of Android notifications, but it also allows developers to go beyond notifications and actually build full apps for Android Wear devices. We will give an in depth look at the available tools and best practices for doing so, with a particular emphasis on building custom UI.

For developers interested in game development using native iOS technologies. I'll give a brief overview of various game architecture issues and strategies, and then talk about implementing games using various apple frameworks.

Learn how to use the Touch ID and Keychain APIs in iOS to implement secure authentication strategies.

"Using Angular? Memory Leaks! Redundant Code! Too many directives! BreezeJS? RequireJS? It's testable (with unit tests) What about end to end (gui) testing? In this discussion Mike Emo will talk about Do's and Don'ts when building your SPA using Angular. We'll take a look at a sample Angular application using WebAPI and what to consider when designing your SPA".

Interested in Aurelia but not sure where to start? You've done the navigation skeleton project but you’re not sure how to translate that knowledge into your own app? Announced in early 2015, Aurelia has gathered much attention for its use of plain JavaScript classes and simple HTML templates. I will cover going from an empty directory to setting up a SPA that has multiple views, uses custom elements, and makes HTTP requests. Come learn how and where to get started using this new and exciting development tool and leave your boilerplate code at home.

We’ll discuss & build a Node API using Express and MongoDB from scratch explaining how it all works with tips and tricks along the way. Not to worry, we’ll be doing more than just some simple CRUD operations. Some bonuses include custom middleware for logging and output formatting on-top of some exotic Mongo queries. We’ll then explore full integration testing of the API + Mongo to make sure it all works. Expect to leave knowing how to and if you should be leveraging this stack for your next project.

Writing an AngularJS application with TypeScript takes a lot of pain out development process and how helps in learning the AngularJS API and best practices. In this session I will show the best practices for building an AngularJS app with TypeScript and explain why the two are a great combination. Some of items we will cover include: authentication, authorization, controllers with ControllerAs, services, minification, and routing. We will also talk about how to use the TypeScript tooling to make learning and working with the AngularJS API easier while automating the compilation process.

Making a case for ending (or significantly cutting down on) the dreaded practice of writing unit tests. What is the motivation behind unit tests? Testing functionality? Testing individual components? Making sure all the tiny circles are green? Let's examine this together and maybe you'll end up writing more (and better quality!) code instead of spending your time writing unit tests.

"Have you seen information on things like Rasperberry PI, Arduino, or the like? Wondering what either of those are or why you should care? In this talk we'll look at how to get stared with embedded systems/IoT devices and build something to solve a real-world problem along the way."

Now that most projects require a javascript 'build' step, it's good to know what is available out there. I will briefly go over a handful of tools to make your life easier and your process (and your javascript) better.

Many web developers have only a casual understanding of image formats and how to use them, yet they are 60% of the client footprint for most web sites. Learn which image formats are appropriate for different types of images. Discover techniques for improving the performance by using a CDN, CSS Sprites, and other approaches. Review the new "picture" and “srcset” standards and how to use them for responsive images and high pixel density displays while still supporting older browsers. Web developers understand HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, why not review how to best utilize images as well!

"Do you feel like most interactions with your DBA/IT team result in statement ""It Depends""? Do you wonder what metrics your DBA is evaluating to make assertions about the system? Do you want to know key tips for performance tuning applications? A former DBA turned full-stack web developer will take you through some of the metrics and tools that DBAs use to evaluate performance so that you can more easily communicate with your DBA or troubleshoot your SQL server personally."

As company IT departments continue to grow, many of us have woken up at that crossroads between IT leadership and People leadership. While mentoring other IT resources can come natural to most, it can also be overwhelming; setting up “career pathing”, setting "SMART" goals, establishing HR policies such as work at home, flexible time, etc... Also a key area of middle management is how to work with groups outside of IT and how you manage your manager and Sr. management has an art form all its own. In this session we will review many of these topics in some real life examples.

Windows 10 Core supports development of apps, using XAML and C#, on the Raspberry Pi 2. In this session we will walk through everything necessary to build a BBQ temperature monitor using Windows 10 and a Raspberry Pi 2. This talk will be focused on writing the code for the application, but a step by step set of instructions will be shared for wiring up the hardware as well. You'll leave with a knowledge of how to work with GPIO devices, and some great pointers on BBQ from the Captain of the Improving Enterprises BBQ Team.

This is an interactive talk NOT a lecture. Tired of working at a big company? Want to start your own small team, studio or startup? Managing smaller teams, budgets and timelines are much different than when you had levels of management or a large company behind you. You will need to take a completely different approach when creating your own team. you need to be be prepared to manage communicate and interact with your studio team.

Introduction To The 10th Annual Minnesota Developers Conference

Keynote Speech