Are you ready to gain access to the latest tools, turning your hobby into a source of revenue, or expand your network?

Stop dreaming. Start building. Join us for a new series of Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps where you can get an inside track on how to be part of the next step of Microsoft’s mobile strategy and get hands-on training for building Silverlight-based applications.  These free, live learning sessions explore the latest tools, discuss tips and technologies, and provide access to Windows Phone 7 experts.

ATTEND these special events and learn about:

• the Windows Phone 7 platform
• building Silverlight Applications for Windows Phone 7
• submitting your application to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

Take advantage of this opportunity to explore with a Hands-on Lab where you can leverage the Windows Phone 7 Experts and your peers as you build your Windows Phone 7 Application.

Events run from 8am–5pm

Seating for the live event is limited, so register today.

For those of you in the Oklahoma City area, I’ll be presenting the opening Keynote at the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch put on by the Oklahoma City Developers Group on August 2nd.  More information can be found at their website:

Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch

Come join us for all the fun!

I just received a note from the okcCoCo about an upcoming OpenBeta BarCamp in Oklahoma City.  Here’s the details from the email

BarCamp is back and will even bigger and better this year!

A BarCamp is an intensely participant-driven conference where attendees share and learn in an open environment. The primary goal of BarCamp is education of attendees. As compared to a traditional conference, the large majority of the talks, panels and other sessions are organized organically the day of the event. People propose presentations and it all gets sorted out at the beginning. Trust us, it just works. BarCamp is an event format that has been successfully applied across the country, including Oklahoma City.

We held the first BarCamp in Oklahoma City in July of 2009. We had approximately 60 attendees participate in 20 sessions divided into two simultaneous tracks. Session topics included HTML, Javascript, JQuery, Cloud computing, NoSQL, Python, PHP, Web 2.0 Business Models, Online Startups, and Growing Online Businesses. The theme of this year’s BarCamp is web development and entrepreneurship. The target audience is web development professionals and entrepreneurs.

Details
9am – 4pm (Main event), 5-8pm (Barbecue)
Date: Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Location: Oklahoma City Coworking Collaborative
Cost: $15

More Details Online

We’re looking for a few volunteers to help organize the event! If you are interested, email derrick@okccoco.com. Volunteers receive free registration!

If you’re interested in participating, feel free to reach out to Derrick as I’m sure he’d love to have your help!  I’m planning on attending, and I hope you can too!

Did you get to attend MIX 2010?  If so, I know you found it to be full of great information about our latest and greatest web technologies, and gave you some great insight into where some of our tools and technologies are headed.

But what if you didn�t get to go?  You could navigate your way through 141+ hours of content on the http://live.vistmix.com web site and try to pull out some of the more important nuggets (and I think you ultimately should) but that would take at least 90 hours (presuming you watch all the video on 1.5 speed in Windows Media Player having downloaded all the content the weekend before you started watching).

Another option is to attend a ugMIX event in your area.  Popular all across Microsoft�s Central Region, ugMIX is a highlight-reel of the top stories to come from MIX 2010 focusing on the key messages for developers.  Each district, and potentially each speaker, is doing something different, but all of us agree that MIX was a really important conference this year and one you should definitely catch up on.

For my part, I�ve just completed 2 of my 4 currently scheduled ugMIX talks, one at the Dallas ASP.NET user group and one at the Fort Worth .NET User Group.  I�ll be in Tulsa on Monday to bring MIX to them, and if you�re interested, we can make arrangements for me to bring it to you (see note at bottom of post).

Here�s the outline of what my version of ugMIX showcases:

• OData � a uniform way for sharing your data across organizational boundaries, the OData is your data over REST.  We�ll show what OData is, how you use it, and write some code to consume it.
• Windows Phone 7 Series � A new phone, designed for a life in motion. Calling all Silverlight developers – we�ll look at the phone design, specs and philosophy while writing some code using the free development environment (which includes a FREE express version of the Blend 4 Beta with Windows Phone 7 Series support)!
• Silverlight 4 � Overview of what�s new in the Silverlight 4 RC and show some cool code demos of those new features in action.
• Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview � interested in where IE9 is heading? I�ll show you the IE9 Platform Preview, released at MIX 2010, as we discuss the team�s plans for supporting HTML5, CSS3, in-line SVG graphics and hardware-acceleration in the browser.

I�ve shared a copy of my slide deck if you want to get a head start, but I can�t share all my demos at this time, unfortunately�  I can provide other links, though, to help you get started on this amazing new platform!

• My ugMIX deck
• Mix Session List
• OData.org
• Download Silverlight 4 RC and Silverlight Developer Tools RC
• Download the Windows Phone 7 Series developer tools preview
• Expression Blend 4 Beta
• Expression Blend 4 Beta SDK for Windows Phone

I look forward to seeing you at the next ugMIX!

Note: this offer good only in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, UK, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan.

My friend and teammate John Weston (a.k.a. @technetguy) just told me about a new SharePoint user group in OKC.

Their first meeting is Thursday, March 11th at the Dell facility in OKC:

3501 SW 15th
Bldg A, Hudson Hall
Oklahoma City, OK 73108

Map to Dell Campus in OKC

Eric Shupps, the SharePoint Cowboy, will be presenting at this first meeting, giving an overview of MOSS 2010.  For more information see the OKC SharePoint User Group website (coming soon!).

Do you want to be? 

I just heard about a FREE SQL Server 2008 Certification Boot Camp coming to OKC.  Full details are at the registration site, but here�s a teaser:

Course: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Certification Boot Camp 70-433 (31.5 hours)

Time: 6:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.

Session Dates: Monday, February, 8th, Tuesday, February 9th, Wednesday, February 10th, Monday, February 15th, Tuesday, February 16th, Wednesday, February 17th, Monday, February 22nd, Tuesday, February 23rd, and Wednesday, February 24th

Given the expertise and time commitment being provided by Michael Hotek for free, we ask that all registrants be able to attend at least 6 of the 9 sessions of this course.

Location:  1100 N Lindsay, Service Center Bldg, Room SCB-111, Oklahoma City, OK 73104. You can see the campus map and look for Service Center Bldg by going to this link (http://www.ouhsc.edu/about/findus.asp). Surrounding buildings are the Dean McGee Eye institute and the Oklahoma City Clinic.

The primary author and primary instructor of this course, Michael Hotek, brings about 2 decades of SQL Server experience in some of the largest and most complicated environments in the world. Mike is an accomplished speaker and trainer having delivered hundreds training sessions across dozens of training events spanning a decade or more with thousands of people having attended training from him.

Course Modules

• Module 1 – Database Design
• Module 2 – Indexes
• Module 3 – Data retrieval
• Module 4 – Data Modification 
• Module 5 – Programmable Objects
• Module 6 – Partitioning
• Module 7 – Full-text Indexes 
• Module 8 – Service Broker
• Module 9 – Performance Analysis and Tuning

If you have any questions about this event, please e-mail BOTH president@okcsql.org and vp@okcsql.org.

Ok gang � it�s almost November 6, and you know that that means� it�s time for Tulsa TechFest!  TTF is our annual tech conference featuring 13 tracks and over 60 sessions of high-quality, expert contributed content.  I�m really excited about this year�s speaker line-up!  Here are just some of the speaker highlights you can look forward to when you attend:

• Joe Fletcher � UX Lead for Microsoft Surface, talking about Touch Computing
• Jennifer Marsman � DE from Ann Arbor, talking about Azure, WF and Win7 Multi-touch
• Mike Benkovich � DE from Minneapolis, talking about Expression Blend, XAML and LINQ
• Chris Patterson � C# MVP from Tulsa, talking about Message-driven Architecture
• Cory Smith � Windows Client MVP from Fort Worth, talking about Click Once deployments
• Jay Smith � ASP.NET MVP from Fayetteville, AR, talking about Visual Studio 2010 and Agile Software Development
• Eric Shupps � SharePoint MVP from Fort Worth, talking about SharePoint and Visual Studio 2010
• Rob Vettor � ASP.NET MVP from Dallas , talking about ADO.NET Data Services
• Shawn Weisfeld � C# MVP from Dallas, talking Generics
• Todd Anglin � ASP.NET MVP and Chief Evangelist for Telerik from Houston, talking about Silverlight 3 and ASP.NET MVC
• Robert Boedingheimer � C# MVP talking about ASP.NET 4.0 and jQuery with Visual Studio 2010
• Chris Koenig � Developer Evangelist from Microsoft, talking about C# 4.0, Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Service Bus

As you can see, there are a LOT of very experienced speakers delivering some AWESOME sessions.   For speakers of this quality, you�d normally have to spend several hundred dollars at a paid conference, or attend a bazillion user group meetings all over the country.  Luckily for you, David Walker has brought all this talent together into one FREE event!

When is this event  and how do I register, you�re asking?  Here�s all the important info you�ll need to share with your boss/manager/spouse/etc to get the day off to come out to Tulsa:

Tulsa TechFest
November 6th 2009
OSU-Tulsa (map)
8:00 AM � 6:30 PM

Price: FREE!  Just bring 2 cans of food to donate to the Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma

More Information at http://tulsatechfest.com

Make sure you head over to http://tulsatechfest.com and register today. Even though the event is free, we would like to get an accurate count of attendees so that we can adequately estimate the amount of food and drink to get.

Here�s hoping to see you there!

The session list for Tulsa TechFest 2009 have been posted to the event website.  I�ve got 2 sessions, one on cloud (that I�m not sure what I�ll be presenting on yet � any suggestions?) and one on C# 4.0 / VS2010. 

Agenda: http://techfests.com/Tulsa/2009/Agenda/default.aspx

Tulsa TechFest is one of the premier cross-platform, cross-discipline conferences in South Central.  Over the past 2 years, we�ve hit over 1000 attendees per event, and are looking to really make a big splash again this year.  Following the trend from last year, registration will be �two cans or two bucks�.  Food collected will be donated to the Community FoodBank of Eastern Oklahoma, and all money will be donated to the Family & Children�s Services.

You can keep up with what�s going on with Tulsa TechFest by following @TulsaTechFest on Twitter, or subscribing to newsletter-request@tulsatechfest.com. 

Here ye here ye � Tulsa TechFest is coming, and you should be there!  Jam packed with tons of sessions across multiple tracks, Tulsa TechFest is the premier ABSOLUTELY FREE community-led developer event in South Central.  Tracks are in the planning stages, but you can count on seeing sessions on development, infrastructure, systems management, project management and more!  I�ve submitted a couple of topics, as have many of my teammates, so I�m sure it will once again be an awesome experience!

To get up-to-date information as the conference evolves tune in to their twitter account at @tulsatechfest or join the mailing list at newsletter-request@tulsatechfest.com!

As soon as the speakers are selected and the sessions announced, I�ll post a followu.p with all the latest information.  If you want to help promote Tulsa TechFest, you can include this graphic on your blog or website and link back to http://tulsatechfest.com