Delicate Genius Blog

The web *is* the platform

Since the dawn of DHTML in the 1990s through the Ajax revolution of the mid 2000s, developers have been increasingly treating the web as an application platform. But applications writing for the web has been hard. Browser inconsistencies aside, the underlying technology of the web has been much more document than application-centric. A new generation of JavaScript libraries, like JQuery, and rich new additions to CSS and HTML5 are changing this.

In this session, John Allsopp gives an overview of the features in CSS3 and HTML5 (ones actually supported in shipping browsers!) that can help application developers create rich experiences, add geolocation to their apps, make their webapps work offline as well as on, interact better with the local file system, and much more.

John Allsopp

Author and developer John Allsopp has been working with, on and against the web since the early 1990s. His most recent book is Developing with Web Standards (New Riders Press). He’s also the developer of Style Master, the only cross-platform CSS development tool; and the co-founder of Australian Web Week, held in October, and of the Web Directions conferences, held around the world.

http://johnfallsopp.com/

http://www.webdirections.org/

The Microsoft & jQuery story and the new Templating plugin

James Senior from Microsoft will take us through a brief history of JavaScript at Microsoft and how in recent years the relationship with jQuery has grown stronger including when last month, Microsoft announced it would be contributing and collaborating with the jQuery core team instead of developing it’s own ASP.NET Ajax Library.

In this session we’ll explore some of the features in ASP.NET Ajax Library that will be made available as jQuery plugins to provide exciting new capabilities for jQuery developers and strengthen the jQuery community.

We will also take a tour of the new templating engine that Microsoft proposed and the jQuery core team have been working on as a plugin, including demonstrations showing how to use templates, the different syntax and new render methods.

James Senior

James is based in Seattle and is Microsoft’s Web Evangelist and holds a special interest in the ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and Social Web technologies. He is a noted author, blogger and speaker and generally helps developers make smart decisions about which technologies to use.

Prior to Seattle, James lived and worked for Microsoft in the UK for three years evangelizing Microsoft technology platforms. Before joining Microsoft he worked for Intel as a Software Developer and Technical Project Manager for four years and ran his own consultancy building software for small and medium businesses in Europe.

A published author on the topic of software quality, James writes a blog focussing on technology at www.jamessenior.com. You can also connect with him on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter (@jsenior).

Mash in and Mash up with Bing Maps Silverlight

Explore the latest in Silverlight innovation with Bing Maps, birdseye, streetside, WorldWide telescope and Photosynth. Learn how to mash up you data into the seamless spatial canvas and discover how Twitter, Flickr, foursquare and more are mashed into Bing.

John O’Brien

John is a software developer based in Brisbane, Australia. A Windows Live Platform MVP, John empowers companies with amazing new tools to extend their reach and enrich their applications. John is the moderator for the Bing Maps forums and co-ordinates the DeepEarth Silverlight project on Codeplex.

Bronwen Zande

Bronwen is a Director of Soul Solutions, based in Brisbane, Australia. With over 10 years of software development experience, Bronwen’s primary focus is Microsoft Live and .Net development.

When not working with Windows Live, Bronwen helps bring together “GeekGirls” from around the globe at http:\\www.geekgirlblogs.com

What We Know About You

Launched over 10 years ago, sitepoint.com is a popular learning resource for web designers and developers worldwide. In this talk, we take a journey back in time by analysing anonymous visitor data that provides a fascinating insight into the collective minds of web developers—past present and future.

Explore the topics that SitePoint’s early adopters find most popular, the browsers they use (or don’t use) and the patterns in their behaviour that reveal what the future may hold.

Matthew Magain

Matthew is the Creative Director for SitePoint, a Melbourne-based launchpad for aspiring web professionals. When not designing exciting new projects for SitePoint, he can be found regularly neglecting his personal blog, http://magain.com.

Using Expression Blend to design and build rich Windows Phone, Silverlight 4 and WPF 4 applications

Discover how you can take advantage of a host of new features, tools and capabilities of Expression Blend to produce significantly better user experiences with less code.

Jose Fajardo

Jose is a User Experience Designer/Developer with Cynergy. Skilled in .NET from its early days, he moved into the design world during the web evolution period. He fundamentally believes that the UI/UX are key to delivering a successful rich networked application and that everyone, regardless of what they believe, has a small designer waiting to come out. Jose builds these rich experiences out of Cynergy’s Sydney, Australia office.

How my customers got to understand the Nouveau riche Internet

Implementing the richer UX for the customer is helping them be a part of the new internet, frequently they have an idea of what they want but making that happen can be sometimes be quite an adventure. It isn’t always about how rich it is, often it’s about educating the customer about just how much of the rich experience is both client and server side.

Andrew Muller

Developer, trainer, mentor, presenter and blogger, Andrew Muller has been involved with the production, development and education of Rich Internet Applications in Australia since 2002.

Working with Flex since it’s release in 2004 Andrew’s development expertise with Adobe AIR applications has meant creating applications for the likes of Panasonic and Sony Music.

With vast experience building RIA, Andrew has broad knowledge that spans the technology spectrum and has a lot to offer all developers, regardless of platform choice.

Andrew has written articles for the Adobe Developer Center, labs.adobe.com, BuilderAu.com.au, SitePointInternet.au, Digital Media World, Australian Developer and International Developer magazines; and has spoken at Macromedia/Adobe related conferences both in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.

Over the Fence – Designers and Developers Working Together

Traditionally work flows between designers and developers have been misunderstood and often lead to mis-communication and frustration amongst team members. Who does what and when?

Where are responsibility boundaries drawn? Is it good enough for a designer to throw their comps over the fence? How much can a developer ask a designer to do?

Times have changed with Expression and Visual Studio as they enable unprecedented developer and designer workflow.

Jordan Knight and Alex Knight draw the battle lines in this interesting debate and demonstrate working solutions to the above problems. See how tooling and convention can help introduce understanding and a smooth flow of work (and responsibility) between project camps.

Jordan Knight

Jordan’s passion is the web, and more recently Silverlight. He is a seasoned presenter and is heavily involved in the technical community in Australia. He also runs the SDDN (http://www.sddn.org.au) Australia’s only Silverlight user group. He is a Microsoft MVP in Silverlight.

Alex Knight

Alex is a freelance designer mainly focused on Silverlight/WPF interface design. Working on projects from around the world which have included multi-touch interfaces for Microsoft Surface.

Alex runs the popular site silverzine.com , an online resource for designers working with Silverlight.

DotNetNuke: From Open Source Team to VC Funded Corporation

The concept of Open Source projects is still in its infancy and many developers and business people still don’t really get it. This session will follow my journey from a “keep it secret because that’s my edge” developer to a “give it to everyone, because my edge is my speciality” developer on the DotNetNuke project.

DotNetNuke is the largest Open Source project on the Microsoft .Net platform and has grown from a bunch of geeks working together to a multi-million dollar enterprise spanning the globe.

DotNetNuke is one of the most downloaded projects on CodePlex, is the most installed application on the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, has nearly 800,000 registered users, and currently powers over 500,000 web sites worldwide.

The session will also cover some of the ways contributors to OSS projects can generate an income which is always the first question people ask me when I tell them I give away my product for free. I will also give you some advice on how to manage your own OSS project so you too can grow your brilliant idea into a multi-million dollar commercial enterprise.

Philip Beadle

Philip Beadle is a self-taught .Net developer who has been working on the DotNetNuke Open Source project since day dot. Philip was one of the original geeks working with the IBuySpy example .Net project when Shaun Walker (the father of DotNetNuke) decided to release his IBuySpy Workshop gift, which would become DotNetNuke, on Christmas Eve 2002.

This release forced a major rethink of how to approach software development and was the reason Philip changed his company from a closed source to an open source shop. The decision was not taken lightly as his company had invested a lot of time and effort into developing features for the IBuySpy portal – donating the features to the project, however, turned out to be a great idea.

Philip has watched and contributed with glee as DotNetNuke evolved from a bunch of geeks into a multi-million dollar enterprise with millions of users and hundreds of thousands of web sites worldwide. He now works full-time for DotNetNuke Corp.

Philip is co-author of the books DotNetNuke for Dummies and Silverlight for Dummies and has been the technical editor for three other DotNetNuke books. Philip has spoken at many conferences including ReMIX, Tech Ed, and Dev Connections and always manages to add a DotNetNuke aspect to his sessions!

Silverlight Media – building on the the “SMURF”..

This session will build on the media focus technology of Microsoft, particularly on Silverlight Media Framework (SMF aka SMURF), IIS Media Services, Microsoft Expression and some Windows Phone 7 series for good measure. This session will demonstrate how to build an adaptive player in seconds, implement ad injection and scale your delivery for live and on-demand broadcast scenarios. We’ll take an output from a live HD feed and show you how to push it out to the web.

Jorke Odolphi

Jorke is a Web Platform Evangelist for Microsoft Australia, and works on the technical side of the community of the Web. Jorke has previously worked with large service providers specialising in the deployment and management of many different weird and wonderful technologies in multi-tenancy situations, had he has developed an unusual relationship with IIS and tries to male everything work with it.

Jorke loves talking about datacentre’s, infrastructure and the fat pipes the make the internet , cloud or … whatever.

Jorke also feels quite strange talking about himself in the third person…http://blogs.technet.com/jorke/

Pimp My App

Are you design-challenged? Do you long for the days when user interface design simply meant following the Windows standards? Can you design screens in any colour as long as it’s grey? Do you do your best to design pages that are usable and attractive, only to have them come out looking like angry fruit salads? In this session Shane Morris will tell you everything about user interface layout and design that fits into 50 minutes.

Shane Morris

Shane Morris is one of Australia’s most respected user experience professionals. Through consulting, mentoring and training he has helped organisations create compelling digital experiences since 1991. In that time he has worked on desktop applications, internet applications, mobile user interfaces, physical devices and web sites. Shane has taught user experience topics around the world and is a key contributor to “101 Things I Learned in Interaction Design School” at ixd101.com.

Shane has worked with companies like Microsoft, Lonely Planet, M&C Saatchi, Cochlear, Amnesia Razorfish and Sensis – helping creative and technical professionals collaborate to create services that empower, inspire and reward. His passion is transforming the complex and constrained into the simple and powerful. Not just because it’s valuable endeavour, but because it’s hard – and therefore immensely rewarding.

Shane’s experience includes:

Director of Austomatic Studio (Formerly Echo Interaction Design).

One of Microsoft’s first User Experience Evangelists world-wide.

General Manager and Principal Consultant at The Hiser Group.

Silverlight 4

Silverlight 4 brings a huge number of new features to Silverlight – for business application developers, media application developers, and graphic designers alike. Business applications will benefit from new printing support, a rich text editor control, a HTML editor control, commanding support, right-click support, elevated trust, better validation handling, COM object access, drop target support, XAP signing, and much more. Media based improvements include the ability to capture webcam and microphone input. Design-related improvements include new support for implicit styles (enabling easier theming), and support for custom chrome (when running outside the browser).

This session will take you through these new features and demonstrate how Silverlight 4 will help you design and build rich web-deployed applications.

Chris Anderson

Chris has been a professional developer for over 10 years now, specializing in building desktop, web, and mobile business applications using Microsoft technologies for industries as wide ranging as accounting, property valuation, mining, the fresh produce industry, pet cremations, logistics, field services, sales, and construction.

Now running his own business (Peer Placements, as co-director) he has turned to Silverlight as the ideal new technology for developing and deploying business applications. Chris is the author of the upcoming book Pro Business Applications in Silverlight 4 (Apress), and was a co-author to Professional Visual Studio 2010 (Wrox).

Architecting For The Cloud

All you hear nowadays is ‘cloud this’, ‘cloud that’. But what does it really take to write applications for the cloud? Are all applications even suited for the cloud? How are applications best architected for the cloud?

In this session we’ll explore these concepts as we take a

scenario based focus on architectures that need to be scalable and durable, focusing on real world examples of companies already using Azure.

Steven Nagy

By day, Steven is a .Net consultant for Readify who likes diving deep into the technologies he is passionate about, and has been learning, teaching, and presenting on Azure since its first public release at PDC 08. By night he cackles gleefully basking in the glow of his laptop screen as thousands of Azure worker roles carry out his evil bidding.

Windows Phone 7: The Emperor’s got some new threads

News flash – Microsoft has a phone and is back in the game! With a new minimalist user experience entitled Metro, Windows Phone 7 is all about a Personal, Relevant and Connected experience on your mobile phone. This session will showcase the new phone, the inspiration behind Metro and its associated design language, and then jump in and get dirty showing how you can build applications using both Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4. You’ll see just how easily you can leverage your existing Silverlight skills and tools to build awesome Windows Phone 7 applications.

Nick Randolph

Nick runs Built To Roam (http://www.builttoroam.com) which focuses on building rich mobile applications. Previously Nick was co-founder and Development Manager for nsquared solutions where he lead a team of developers to build inspirational software using next wave technology.

Nick was the lead developer at Intilecta Corporation where he was integrally involved in designing and building their application framework.

After graduating from a combined Engineering (Information Technology)/Commerce degree, Nick went on to be nominated as a Microsoft MVP in recognition of his work with the Perth .NET user group and his focus on mobile devices. He is still an active contributor in the device application development space via his blog at http://community.softteq.com/blogs/nick/ and via the Professional Visual Studio website, http://www.professionalvisualstudio.com/.

Nick has been invited to present at a variety of events including Tech Ed Australia, MEDC and Code camp. He has also authored articles for MSDN Magazine (ANZ edition), two books entitled Professional Visual Studio 2005 and Professional Visual Studio 2008, and helped judge the 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008 world finals for the Imagine Cup.

Web development with Visual Studio 2010 & ASP.net 4

Visual Studio 2010 contains some great enhancements for web developers that make it a great tool whether you are developing an ASP.net application or debugging a tricky JavaScript problem.

In this session learn about web development IDE changes such as improved supports for standards, jQuery integration, Javascript intellisense and much more! We will finish off by covering some of the major enhancements in ASP.net 4.

Alex Mackey

Alex is author of the Apress book Introducing .net 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 and is a Microsoft MVP (C#). He is very involved in the programming community, a regular speaker, organized the .net community conference dddmelbourne.com and runs a .net user group in Melbourne (www.deveve.net) .

Alex has lead development on a number of healthcare related projects and applications and is looking forward to starting work with Readify. Alex migrated from the UK and has been lucky enough to work around the world in the UK, Ireland, United Arab Emirates and America.

The future of exposing, visualising and interacting with data on the web

Come and explore the future of data on the web. We will seek to understand how exposing, visualising and interacting with massive amounts of premium commercial and public domain data is changing the way we develop powerful, intuitive and informative user experiences and applications. Learn about the new and emerging technologies such as OData, Pivot and Project Dallas that are making data a first-class element of the web.

Graham Elliott

Graham is an Architect within Microsoft Consulting Services in Australia where he works with enterprise customers to unlock the power of the Microsoft platform. His role is to help customers in heterogeneous environments understand and address business and IT challenges, and to help them build systems using Microsoft’s platform, tools and architectural practices. Graham is a frequent speaker on Microsoft’s application platform, architecture practices, application security and web strategy.

Before joining Microsoft, Graham was a Solutions Architect for Avanade Australia and Accenture, developing and supporting enterprise solutions across a range of technologies and platform.

Building The Open Web

The Open Web is an evolving term that encompasses technologies from web standards stalwarts like HTML, to almost-mainstream buzzwords such as OpenID, and on to emerging specifications like PortableContacts, but it’s more than that. It is a philosophy.

It is the dream of technical building blocks that mesh together to discover and define identity, authorise accessible data, and validate membership of social or professional groupings. It’s one big personal data party and everybody on the web is invited.

Lachlan Hardy will cover specific technologies and their usecases, showing how they plug together to make a cost-efficient open stack. He examines what the Open Web really means, how it works, and how you can use it to reach more people, more powerfully.

Lachlan Hardy

Lachlan is a Design Engineer at Atlassian, where he is responsible for their common UI library and leading front end development. He’s spent his career working on projects ranging between massive high-profile sites and pretty little fun ones. Lachlan firmly believes in making a beautiful free and open web.

His expertise lies in the field of best practice web development, incorporating knowledge of web standards, cutting edge techniques and functional interaction design into every project he works on. He believes that open architecture, technologies and practices produces the best possible web sites and applications.

Lachlan runs the very popular Webjam events promoting Australian web innovation and speaks regularly about open web technologies and best practice web development.

His site is Lachstock.

Riding the Geolocation Wave

It’s pretty obvious by now that geolocation is a heavy player in the next wave of applications and APIs. Now is the time to learn how to take advantage of this information and add context to your own applications. In this session we’ll look at geolocation at every layer of the stack – from open protocols to operating system APIs, from Firefox to Windows Phone 7 Series

Tatham Oddie

Tatham Oddie is a Microsoft awarded MVP and regular presenter at conferences and usergroups throughout Australia, New Zealand and North America. Director of a creative agency, turned Senior Consultant with Readify, his focus is on web technologies that look good and work well at the same time. His technical focus lies around ASP.NET and its extensibility with frameworks like ASP.NET MVC, as well as quelling the misheld belief that ASP.NET and web standards don’t get along. http://tath.am

ASP.NET MVC 2 with Malcom Sheridan

Come see and hear about the latest innovations in ASP.NET MVC 2 and the tooling support in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. Topics will include enhancements such as template helpers, model validation, and the new “Areas” feature, which enhances the team development of large websites. With improved server side validation and brand new client side validation support, your business data model can define the behavior of your application automatically. All this and more!

Malcolm Sheridan

Malcolm Sheridan is a Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET with over 10 years experience with the .NET framework. He has a passion for building for the web, especially using ASP.NET MVC as well as jQuery and JavaScript.

He has presented at user groups around Melbourne and loves contributing to the ASP.NET community.