Silverlight Rumblings

This weekend is the Boise Code Camp (Mar 27-28). These guys do a great job putting on a great show. I know it's short notice, but if there is anyway you can attend then know that I whole-heartedly recommend it. While I'm there I'll be presenting two sessions on developing for the Windows Phone 7 Series platform (WP7). I'm currently scheduled for right before/after lunch on Saturday.

• Building Games in XNA for the Windows Phone 7 Series

  We'll first walk through an overview of developing XNA games for the Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7) platform, and then examine the tools provided for building these games. We'll then jump into a demo of creating an XNA game similar to MineSweeper for the WP7 platform.

• Developing Silverlight Applications for the Windows Phone 7 Series Platform

  We'll first go through an overview of the Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7) application platform, and then examine the tools provided for developing WP7 applications. The majority of the session will be a demo of building a WP7 application in Silverlight.

While this is a code camp and I'd prefer to spend most of mine time in the code, I realize that with this topic I'll be doing a lot of explaining and QA at first. Let me make this clear, there will be code. However, I've also discovered that I'll need to be prepared to spend some slides and time discussing other things such as developing for the enterprise and how the marketplace works. I'm assuming that most of my audience will be folks who most likely haven't downloaded the tools, and watched all the MIX sessions. If I'm wrong in this assumption then please correct me.

If you're planning on being there then please do find me and say hi. I'm excited, the Boise Code Camp is always a ton of fun and always worth my time in attending. One thing you might find interesting is that when we do the planning for the Portland Code Camp it is Boise that we look to as example for what we define as success.

The TechStart Education Foundation, in affiliation with the Oregon University System, is proud to host the Oregon Game Project Challenge (OGPC 3.0) for its third year at Chemeketa Community College on Saturday, May 1, 2010 (details).  Last year I was a judge for OGPC 2.0 and found it to be a very rewarding experience; so rewarding that I’d like to ask you to consider joining me in being a judge for this 2010 event.

Last year 41 middle and high school student teams created computer games specifically designed to be fun, challenging and innovative.  Teams competed from around the state of Oregon and Southwest Washington for trophies and prizes. We expect this year to be the biggest OGPC yet!  We also expect it to be the most exciting and rewarding for students:  New this year we’ll be allowing students to create games using any platform of their choice in addition to Game Maker!  (Can you say XNA!)

In order to make this a valuable experience for the students involved, we need over 50 volunteer judges to spend the day reviewing and scoring the teams and their projects.  Please rejoin me this year by being a judge and by helping to recruit some of your colleagues to join in on the fun and to share this rewarding experience with us.  To register to be a judge for this year’s OGPC please send your name and e-mail address to Mark Lawler (mark.lawler@comcast.net).  The students and I look forward to seeing you there!