Maarten Balliauw {blog}

Being in the US for 2 times in a month (PDC09 and Web Development Summit) is fun, tiring and rewarding. The WDS09 was an invite-only event organized by Microsoft, focusing on interaction between Microsoft and the PHP community. I must say: the event has been helpful and interesting for both parties!

• The Heathman Hotel in Kirkland is a nice hotel!
• Traveling towards the US is far more productive than flying back: I did PHPMEF traveling westbound, I crashed (half sleep/half awake) on the eastbound flight…
• If you just traveled over 26 hours: do NOT go shopping immediately when you arrive home! It’s really frustrating and tiring.
• Did a session on Windows Azure SDK for PHP, PHPExcel and PHPLinq.
• Did an interview for the Connected Show
• Met a lot of people I knew from Twitter and e-mail, and met a lot of new people, both Microsoft and PHP community. Nice to meet you all!
• Event focus was on feedback between Microsoft and PHP community, overall I think the dialogue was respectful and open and helpful to both parties.

This was actually my first time at the WDS which has been around for 5 years already. The Interop team invited me there, and I want to thank them for doing that: it was a great trip, a great event and I got the chance to meet lots of new people.

Attendees were mostly people from the PHP community, like Cal Evans, Rafael Doms, Chris Cornutt, Romain Bourdon (WAMP server anyone?), Alison “snipe” Gianotto, … Next to that, lots of Microsoft people came by during various sessions. Some of them even reserved the whole week and were attending all sessions to make sure they were in the feedback loop all the time.

We’ve seen Microsoft sessions on IIS, Web Platform Installer, Silverlight, SQL Server, Bing, Powershell (sorry, Scott Hanselman, for disturbing your presentation with a tweet :-)). Interesting sessions with some info I did not know. PHP community sessions were also available: Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, the PHP community perspective, feedback sessions, PHPLinq, PHPExcel, interoperability bridges, … A good mix of content with knowledgeable speakers and good communication between speakers, product groups and audience. Well done!

Back from PDC 2009 with a lot of information on Windows Azure, I did an MSDN Live Meeting on ASP.NET and Windows Azure today. Here's the slide deck and demo code.

Abstract: "Put your stuff in the cloud! Windows Azure allows you to take advantage of cloud computing infranstructure for hosting, computing, and storage of your applications. In this demo filled session we take an existing ASP.Net Application and move it to be hosted in Windows Azure, while taking advantage of Windows Azure storage."

Example code can be downloaded here: MSDN - Converting an existing ASP.NET application to Windows Azure.zip (2.01 mb)

If you want more info about Windows Azure and how to develop, architect or benefit from the platform as a whole, register freely at the Azure User Group Belgium.

Before you get started, you need to have a Windows Azure token. Request a token by completing the application here. Tokens are generally issued within a few hours. Once you have received your token, redeem it at http://windows.azure.com. Afterwards, you can deploy your application using the interface at http://windows.azure.com or by issuing a right-click -> Publish... in your Visual Studio solution.

Thank you for attending!

It’s going to be a filled end of 2009… There’s Microsoft PDC which I will be attending and will probably cause me some sleepless nights (both due to jetlag and due to all the new stuff that will be released). Next to that, I’ll also be doing some sessions in the next few weeks. Here’s a list…

Looking forward to see you at one of these events!

On September 29, I did a session on ASP.NET MVC at Remix 2009 Belgium. All session recordings are now online, check the Remix09 site. Slides and code for my talk can be found in a previous blog post. The video material can be found below. Enjoy! And feel free to leave some comments!

ASP.NET MVC Wisdom

Abstract: "Building a Twitter clone in 60 minutes, featuring what's new in ASP.NET MVC 2 preview 1 and focusing on some of the core ASP.NET MVC features like security and routing."

As promised during the session at Remix 2009, here’s my example code and slide deck.

Abstract: "Building a Twitter clone in 60 minutes, featuring what's new in ASP.NET MVC 2 preview 1 and focusing on some of the core ASP.NET MVC features like security and routing."

Example code can be downloaded here: ASP.NET MVC Wisdom - ReMix.zip (8.91 mb)

Thank you for attending!

Just learned I’ll be doing a session on ASP.NET MVC at ReMIX Belgium. ReMix brings the best of MIX09 in Las Vegas to Belgium: it bring us international speakers presenting on the best of MIX09, as well as local cases, with a story focus on User Experience (UX).

The session will be around building a Twitter clone in 60 minutes. Bear with me at ReMIX 2009!

Abstract: “What are you doing right now?, that's Twitter's question to its users. How about you creating own microblogging platform? "What are you working on?", "What are you reading?", ..., are all specific questions for your own community. This session takes you along in building a Twitter clone using the ASP.NET MVC framework.”

I just returned from The Hague where Kevin and I delivered a session on PHP and Silverlight. As promised, we are putting our slides and demos online. Download the demo code from here: PHP and Silverlight - DevDays.zip (1.00 mb)

Abstract:

"So you have an existing PHP application and would like to spice it up with a rich and attractive front-end. Next to Adobe Flex, you can also choose Silverlight as a solution. This session shows you around in Silverlight and shows that PHP and Silverlight can go together easily."

We really enjoyed DevDays and want to thank everyone who was there (and was in our session while beer drinking seemed more appropriate that time of day).

The fifth episode of the ConnectedShow podcast is up. This podcast is all about cloud computing, Windows Azure, … Recently, they have asked me if I wanted to be in one of their podcasts on the PHP SDK for Windows Azure.

In this episode Dmitry welcomes a new co-host, Peter Laudati. Next, we speak to Maarten Balliauw about the new PHP SDK for Windows Azure which is designed to help PHP developers use Windows Azure services.

Here’s the link to the podcast: http://www.connectedshow.com/default.aspx?Episode=5

A new screencast has just been uploaded to the MSDN Belgium Chopsticks page. Don't forget to rate the video!

Mocking - VISUG session (screencast)

Abstract: "This session provides an introduction to unit testing using mock objects. It builds a small application using TDD (test driven development). To enable easier unit testing, all dependencies are removed from code and introduced as mock objects. Afterwards, a mocking framework by the name of Moq (mock you) is used to shorten unit tests and create a maintainable set of unit tests for the example application. "

Slides and example code can be found in my previous blog post on this session: Mocking - VISUG session

Thursday evening, I did a session on Mocking for the VISUG (Visual Studio User Group Belgium). As promised, here is the slide deck I’ve used. The session will be available online soon, in the meantime you'll have to go with the slide deck.

Demo code can also be downloaded: MockingDemoCode.zip (1.64 mb)

Thank you for attending the session!