Flirting with Technology

Devscovery Austin 2011 Twitter Contest Rules

2011-08-04T18:48:00Z

Starting Monday, August 22^nd, Wintellect will be hosting a 5-week contest involving you. That’s right, YOU! We will be tweeting information about our upcoming Devscovery conference being held in Austin, Texas on October 18^th-20^th. Devscovery is a 3-day, all-inclusive conference filled with everything .NET. If you are an intermediate or advanced developer looking for an inside, under-the-hood tour of the latest .NET technologies, then plan to join Wintellect’s Jeffrey Richter, Jeff Prosise, and John Robbins for three days of intense .NET content for only $900. Microsoft turns to our Devscovery experts to train their developers and teams on their technologies across the world. Enjoy exclusive access to these industry insiders where you will receive a VIP tour of the latest bleeding edge technologies that matter to you including HTML5, Silverlight, Azure, WPF, Windows Phone 7, .NET Debugging, .NET Performance Tuning, VS2010, and much more!

Instructions:

All you have to do is re-tweet. Each week in the 5-week span mentioned above, we will post 3 tweets to our Twitter feed @devscovery regarding our upcoming Devscovery conference. These tweets will be filled with information about the conference in general and about the sessions offered at the conference. We will also be including the hash tag #DevAustin11, so every tweet you see with that hash tag, re-tweet it! The one who re-tweets the most with hashtag #DevAustin11 will win a $50 Amazon gift card. The contest will end on Monday, October 3rd at 11 p.m. EST. The winner will be announced on October 4^th at 11:30 a.m. EST.

The rules are simple:

Ø You must follow @Wintellectuals and @Devscovery on Twitter

Ø You must re-tweet with the hashtag #DevAustin11 on Twitter

Ø There will only be one winner that will be based on who re-tweeted the most

We really hope you enjoy hearing about our upcoming Devscovery conference in Austin, Texas! We also hope that you will choose to join us for this 3-day, all-inclusive .NET training conference!

#Wintellect10 December 10th Twitter Contest Rules

2010-12-01T13:57:00Z

As you probably know, we are hosting another Twitter contest on December 10. Because we want our new contest to be even better than before, we’ve added a few extra guidelines to ensure the cool technical prizes end up in the hands of those who will really use them!

The rules are simple:

1) Tweet or retweet using #Wintellect10 hashtag on December 10^th to be randomly chosen to win one of five prizes.

2) Follow @wintellectuals - this is a must to be eligible to win a prize.

3) Tweet or retweet between 12 a.m. & 11:59 p.m. EST. (The contest will be based on Eastern Standard Time only).

4) All prize winners will be randomly selected throughout the day.

And the prizes are cool:

1) 1 Devscovery 2011 Conference Pass

2) 1 Essential Studio Enterprise Binary Edition from Syncfusion

3) 1 Infragisitcs NetAdvantage Ultimate license

4) 1 $50 Amazon.com gift card

5) 1 Copy of Jeffrey Richter’s CLR Via C#, Third Edition Book

We hope you enjoy the contest and win cool prizes as we celebrate 10 years in 2010!

Oh – and we are really excited about our upcoming T.E.N. event on December 16^th. Registration is filling up so we encourage those of you who haven’t signed up to do so quickly, simply visit www.wintellect.com/TEN.

T.E.N. Event & Twitter Contest

2010-11-03T20:49:00Z

We are very excited to be celebrating our 10th Anniversary. A milestone like this is a great time to pause and appreciate this special moment in our organizations history and we have been doing just that throughout 2010. At our company retreat we had a Wintellect Anniversary Party where we ate cake, talked about old times, shared fun pictures and talked about the fabric that has helped build our organization and helped create the wonderful culture that makes Wintellect truly special. The one thing we all agreed on is that we have wonderful customers, who have helped us grow throughout the years. Without you none of this would be possible.

So we want to celebrate all of you – our customers and friends. We will be hosting our T.E.N. Event (Tenth “anniversary” Educational .NET Event) on December 16th. This is a complimentary opportunity for each of you to join our technical partners – Jeffrey Richter, Jeff Prosise, and John Robbins, as they provide you with in-depth technical sessions covering CLR & C#, Advanced Silverlight, and Advanced Breakpoints as we celebrate 10 years of Wintellect “Know How.” Registration is limited – click here to sign up today!

Plus, win great prizes by following us on Facebook & Twitter. We will give away 10 prizes between now and the T.E.N. event. Simply follow @wintellectuals and tweet and retweet using hashtag#Wintellect10 on both November 10th & December 10th. We will raffle off 5 prizes on each day (including : Amazon & Starbucks gift cards, one Devscovery 2011 pass, one Wintellect Virtual 2011 pass, & one VS2010 Ultimate license with MSDN subscription) to every 10th person (limited to 5 giveaways each day) who retweets or tweets using the T.E.N. Event hashtag (#Wintellet10). So 1 prize for every 10th person (Up to 5 recipients each day) who joins in on the fun! Share this free training event and prize offering with all of your friends and colleagues.

Our friends at Syncfusion are helping us celebrate as well. Those of you who attend our T.E.N. event will be eligible to receive a free license of their custom Silverlight Reporting Controls complete with 3 controls--XLSIO, PDF and DocIO. Check-out the offer here. This is a fantastic benefit so join us and get access to these great tools! Plus, they will be giving 2 full licenses of their Essential Studio Enterprise Binary Edition (the whole enchilada so to speak) in conjunction with our November 10th & December 10th Twitter contest. One license will be raffled off each day. Do not miss a chance to win!

We have also released our new web properties as part of our anniversary celebration where we will be sharing great resources with you throughout 2011. Check-out the new site and get ready for great articles, video training content, demos, and much more to come! I have been working with Wintellect for the past 5 years and I can say from personal experience that Wintellect strives for excellence in everything we do. From the integrity and expertise of our owners and team to a dedication to customer focus, we are committed to providing the highest quality services and expertise in the industry. I am truly proud to be a part of the Wintellect family!

Note: We've put our heads together to find a way to make the December 10th twitter contest even better. We'll have a few new rules and a few more prizes. Details will be posted in an upcoming blog post. Stay tuned!

Devscovery Quiz from Red Gate & Wintellect

2010-09-15T17:10:00Z

Red Gate hosted their “Man Hunt” game yesterday. Congratulations to yesterday's Master Hunter, Mike Treadway! I hope you all had fun tracking Paul down. Today Wintellect & Red Gate have teamed up to host a Quiz Game! Our expert team of quiz masters has formulated a short test that is truly a thing of beauty. Thankfully this quiz is also short, tricky, and tons of fun!

Take the Devscovery Quiz here

Keep in mind that to answer some of the quiz questions, you'll either need to attend the Red Gate lunch-time session on .NET Memory Management and Optimization (in the Rainier Room at 12:25 p.m. today), or keep your eyes peeled as clues are revealed this afternoon: Red Gate will post clues on twitter (#devscovery10), and as comments are posted on the most recent blog entry from Red Gate’s Laila Lotfi; or if you find Paul Hoeffer (wearing a Red Gate t-shirt) who can provide you with clues in person.

The participants with all the correct answers will be entered into a prize draw to win a couple of .NET books (The Complete Guid to .NET Testing and Optimization by Paul Glavich and Chris Farrell and CLR via C#, Third Edition by Jeffrey Richter), a copy of ANTS Memory Profiler, a $50 Amazon voucher, and a box of Red Gate goodies.

Don't forget the Grand Prize Draw tomorrow to win a 32GB iPod Touch! If you found Paul in yesterday's Man Hunt and you solve today's quiz, you'll be entered automatically. If you didn't manage to track him down, don't fear: for your chance of winning, solve today's quiz and send Red Gate your best caption for the photo posted on the most recent blog entry from Red Gate’s Laila Lotfi.

I hope you all have a great day and soak up all the great Devscovery Redmond 2010 content! So without further adieu, let the games begin!

Devscovery Sponsor Thank you & Wintellect Contest – Join the Fun & Win Prizes!

2010-09-09T19:14:00Z

If you happen to be attending Devscovery Redmond coming up next week on the Microsoft Campus (September 14^th-16^th) then you won’t want to miss out on these awesome contests and tidbits of news:

1) We are so grateful to have a wonderful lineup of Devscovery Redmond sponsors. Thank you to Microsoft, The Code Project, Infragistics, CoDe Magazine, Red Gate, Neudesic, & TekPub for all of your support! Several of these folks will be hosting contests via Facebook and Twitter for Devscovery Redmond attendees. Simply follow these folks on Twitter & “Like” them on Facebook to join in the fun! Plus, check-out this Red Gate blog post from Laila Lotfi to learn about the upcoming games & contests they will be running – http://bit.ly/a1c8lh.

2) Wintellect will also be hosting a Devscovery contest on Twitter. Tweet using the hashtag #devscovery10 between today and Monday, September 13^th at 4 p.m. PST and you will be entered to win a Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate license with MSDN. We have 1 to giveaway so start tweeting today. The winner will be randomly selected. In order to win you must be following @Devscovery and you must tweet between today (Thursday, September 9^th) and Monday (September 10^th) by 4 p.m. PST.

For those of you attending Devscovery Redmond we wish you safe travels! We are looking forward to spending next week with you! Join the social media fun and win some cool prizes compliments of Wintellect & Devscovery’s sponsors!

Wintellect & devLink2010

2010-08-05T15:02:00Z

I am in Nashville this week for the 5^th annual devLink Technical Conference (www.devlink.net). This is my first devLink and I am very excited about this week and getting to chat with all of the folks who are attending. So if you’re at the event be sure to stop by our table to say "hi". We will be raffling off some cool prizes that you won't want to miss.

We also wanted to show our love for the developer community and we are really excited to be teaming up with our friends at Infragistics to treat 10 developers attending devLink to a night out at the movies. For every person who “Likes” Wintellect & Infragisitcs on Facebook and post’s “Take me to the movies!” on each of our Facebook walls they will be entered into a contest where we will randomly select 10 folks to win a Regal Cinemas gift card! On Saturday each company will randomly select 5 winners. Post on both Infragistics & Wintellect to double your chances of winning.

But wait there’s more, each day; Wintellect & Infragistics will give away a big prize pack that includes: a copy of Jeffrey Richter’s CLR Via C#, Third Edition book, Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET, NETAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization, & NetAdvantage Icons. On Saturday, we’ll give away a Kindle Dx and a $50 Amazon.com gift card!

Experience Devscovery Ahead of Time - Get One-on-One Time with Redmond Presenters via Facebook & a Chance to Win a Devscovery pass!

2010-07-09T16:29:00Z

Devscovery Redmond is coming up September 14th -16th and we are really excited about another great event. It's hard to believe it but this is our seventh year hosting Devscovery on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond and this year's event is shaping up to be one of the best yet. You'll want to check the conference agenda out because the technologies and all of the presenters are truly world class. We will be covering Windows Phone 7, Azure, Silverlight, Threading, .NET Debugging, Performance Tuning, PEX, .NET Code Contracts, and much more.

Devscovery is intended to be a place where folks can get their pressing questions answered. Past attendees have expressed how meaningful and helpful Devscovery's one-one-one sessions have been for them. We wanted to share this Devscovery benefit with all of our friends so that you too can experience what Devscovery is all about.

Join Jeffrey Richter on Devscovery's Facebook Page on Wednesday, July 14th from 1:00 p.m. till 2:00 p.m. ET. "Like" Devscovery and post your CLR & C# Language questions – and Jeffrey will be available to answer them during the hour! If you don’t have questions "Like" Devscovery anyway and see what other folks are posting and use this as a technical resource in the future.

We want you to get a preview of what the Devscovery experience is all about - focused attention in our conference tracks and access to our technical experts in our one-on-one sessions. If you can’t be available on the 14th, you can join John Robbins on August 3rd where you can ask Debugging & Performance questions and Jeff Prosise on August 9th to get those tough Silverlight questions answered.

What’s more, we will randomly select one person who has posted a question to win a free Devscovery Redmond pass. The recipient will be announced on August 10^th. Share this with your friends and colleagues and start preparing your pressing questions that Devscovery’s experts can help you answer!

To learn more about Devscovery you can visit www.devscovery.com.

Wintellect & DevWeek in London March 15th-19th

2010-03-05T14:44:00Z

Wintellect is sponsoring DevWeek 2010, Europe's leading independent conference for software developers, database professionals and IT architects. While we won't be exhibiting this year, Jeffrey Richter and Jeff Prosise will be presenting several sessions you won't want to miss. If you are attending be sure to join them:

To view a full conference agenda click here.

Monday, March 15th DevWeek Pre-Conference Sessions:

Living the Silverlight Lifestyle (and Loving It!) WORKSHOP REF: M4
Jeff Prosise
If you’re envious of all the fun your Silverlight friends are having and are worried you’re too late to the party, don’t fret: our Silverlight pre-conference workshop will get you up to speed in a day.
You’ll learn about XAML, CoreCLR, the Silverlight BCL, controls, data binding, templating, networking, isolated storage, and a whole lot more.
The time has never been better to join the RIA revolution!

Tuesday, March 16th DevWeek Conference Sessions:

11:30 - Track 1

CLR and C# v4.0
Jeffrey Richter
In this talk, we’ll take a look at the changes in CLR 4.0, the base class library, and in C# 4.0. CLR topics include side-by-side support, improvement for interoperating with COM and native code, garbage collector/debugger/profiler improvements, and exception handling. We’ll then discuss new BCL classes including BigInteger, Tuple, code contracts, and improvements made to other classes. Finally, we’ll talk about improvements made to the C# language including dynamic, optional & named parameters, and generic covariance and contravariance.

11:30 - Track 3

What’s new In Silverlight 4
Jeff Prosise
Silverlight 4 is just around the corner, and it’s chock full of new features including printing support, webcam and microphone support, support for out-of-browser apps with elevated permissions, MVVM commanding support, and much, much more. Join the fun as Jeff leads a guided tour through the next version of Silverlight and peels back the covers to reveal features and enhancements that promise to make Silverlight 4 the most exciting version of Silverlight yet.

16:00 - Track 1

The performance of everyday things
Jeffrey Richter
There are many constructs that programmers use every day: arrays, mathematical operations, field access, finalization, string concatenation and interop, manipulating collections, calling methods (instance, static, virtual, interface, methods, via delegates, via reflection), just to name a few. The CLR and C# provide numerous techniques of working with these constructs and few programmers are familiar with the various techniques as well as the performance of one technique versus another. In this talk, Jeffrey will examine these commonly-used programming constructs, discuss how the CLR implements them internally, and how the CLR’s implementation affects their performance.

16:00 - Track 3

Power Silverlight programming: 10 tips for writing great apps
Jeff Prosise
If you think Silverlight is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you’re not alone; other developers are jumping on the bandwagon, too. As such, it is increasingly difficult to build Silverlight apps that stand out from the competition. In this action-packed session, Jeff presents ten ways to use Silverlight to build the better mousetrap. Don’t come if you’re happy writing mediocre applications!

Wednesday, March 17th DevWeek Conference Sessions:

9:30 - Track 1

Generics, anonymous methods and iterators
Jeffrey Richter
In this talk, Jeff looks at the internals of some C# 2.0 features that programmers use every day. For generics, he’ll talk about all the changes that had to happen to the CLR and compilers to make them work. He’ll also go into how the CLR creates type objects of generic types and memory and performance issues when using generics with reference types versus value types. Constraints and the odd behaviours they exhibit will also be discussed. Then, we’ll go into anonymous methods, what the compiler lets you do and not do as well as how the compiler implements closures. Finally, we’ll discuss C# iterators and how collection classes use them to return their ordered set of values. Iterators are a very heavily used feature in making C# 3.0’s Language Integrated Query feature work, and iterators you create can integrate with LINQ.

9:30 - Track 3

Cool graphics, hot code: ten visual effects to make you the envy of your peers
Jeff Prosise
Silverlight is known for amazing browser-based UIs, but great graphical effects don’t happen by accident. In this demo-laden session, Jeff presents reusable eye-candy effects complete with samples and code libraries that will have you building eye-popping UIs tomorrow. Guaranteed to make you the life of the next Silverlight party!

11:30 - Track 1

Automatic memory management (the garbage collector)
Jeffrey Richter
The CLR manages the creation, lifetime, and destruction of all managed objects by way of the managed heap and its garbage collector. In this session, we’ll explain how the managed heap and the GC work. The difference between a reference counting GC and a reference tracking GC will be explained and why the CLR uses a reference tracking GC. The GC ensures that memory leaks do not occur, memory corruption does not occur, and also simplifies the .NET API due to the reduction of memory buffer negotiation. This session will also focus on features offered by the GC such as finalization and explicit object cleanup as well as techniques for improving performance.

11:30 - Track 3

Can you keep a secret? The biggest little-known features in Silverlight
Jeff Prosise
So you think you know Silverlight. But how well do you really know Silverlight? Did you know, for example, that Silverlight 3 features two very different HTTP stacks and that one of them can be used to circumvent the most frustrating limitations of Silverlight networking? Did you know that ComboBoxes can be virtualized for high-performance? Or that the BCL now includes support for CPU metrics? Join the fun as Jeff takes you on a backstage tour of Silverlight and presents it in a way you’ve never seen it before.

14:00- Track 1

Exception handling
Jeffrey Richter
Exception handling is an elegant and structured mechanism for reporting and recovering from errors in your software. In the .NET environment, exception handling is not just an option-it’s the only way to do error handling! In this session, we’ll describe how exception handling works in .NET, as well as successful design patterns for use in your software. You’ll learn how to apply exception handling to the various types of code that you write, from reusable components to application software. A large focus will be spent on best practices and guidelines so you learn how to use exceptions effectively and efficiently. Performance issues will also be addressed.

Thursday, March 18th DevWeek Conference Sessions:

9:30 - Track 1

Understanding thread synchronization – Part 1
Jeffrey Richter
This talk will explain the mindset behind proper thread synchronization. It will first cover the primitive thread synchronization constructs including volatile memory access, interlocked APIs, events and semaphores. We will go into the pros and cons of each. Then, we will discuss the various hybrid thread synchronization constructs including mutual-exclusive locks, reader-writer locks, and various new locks that are introduced in .NET 4.0. Jeff will also explain his own lock, the ReaderWriterGate, which Microsoft purchased the patent rights to.

11:30 - Track 1

Understanding thread synchronization – Part 2
Jeffrey Richter
This is the second part of the two-part talk detailed above.

14:00 - Track 1

Building dynamically extensible applications and components
Jeffrey Richter
Today, more and more applications are being implemented as small shells that compose their features by loading separate components implemented by various companies. In this talk, you will learn how to build applications that can be extended with other components discovered at runtime. First, you’ll learn how to use AppDomains which provide many features such as assembly unloading, security sand-boxing, and configuration settings. Then, you’ll learn how to use reflection to dynamically load types and create objects in another AppDomain. Finally, we’ll focus on how to get the host objects to communicate efficiently with the add-in objects. This talk will also address issues related to versioning of the host and add-in components.

Friday, March 19th DevWeek Conference Sessions:

Use Threads Effectively to Build Responsive and Scalalbe Software WORKSHOP REF: F1
Jeffrey Richter
CPU manufacturers are not able to squeeze more speed out of CPUs; instead all CPUs are becoming multi-core. The only way applications can gain high performance and scalability is by effectively using threads.
In this full-day talk, we’ll discuss the basics of threads (creating them, context switches, scheduling, properties, and debugging). Next, we’ll discuss the CLR’s thread pool, how it is architected and how to write applications to leverage it. Finally, we’ll focus on asynchronous programming models allowing you to build responsive, scalable, reliable applications and components making extremely efficient use of system resources.
Time will be spent on threading architectures and a lot of sample code will be shown.

Wintellect is Headed to Nashville to Boot Scoot with Microsoft’s “A Lap Around PDC Featuring Steve Ballmer”

2010-01-19T16:19:00Z

Wintellect is headed to boot scoot boogie in Nashville, Tennessee with “A Lap Around PDC Featuring Steve Ballmer.” Plus, our own Jeff Prosise will be presenting on Silverlight 4 as well. This one day event is shaping up nicely and we are excited to be a part of it as it hits the highlights from the PDC09 conference. This FREE event is almost completely full and will be covering the latest Microsoft technologies and exciting announcements from PDC09 complete with 16 sessions presented by Microsoft, Partners, MVPs and Community Leaders. With a keynote delivered by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, this event promises to be music to your ears. ;) I'm a bit cheesy but it's true!

If you are planning to attend we hope that you will stop by and visit us in the Technology Showcase area. The Wintellect gang will be there, plus Jeff Prosise will be stopping by the booth to answer your pressing questions about Silverlight 4. Additionally, we will be raffling off a Virtual University and Devscovery 2010 pass so be sure to stop by and enter your name into a drawing to win. We hope that you all come prepared to wrangle the future of developer technology!

Stay tunned I will be posting pictures from the event this week!

RING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH OUR FREE TECH FOCUS SERIES

2010-01-08T16:31:00Z

I hope that everyone had a very happy holiday season! 2010 is underway and I wanted to let each of you know that Wintellect is launching its NEW Tech Focus segments. The goal of our Tech Focus segments is to provide developers, all of you, with exclusive, free content straight from Wintellect experts that will help you in your day-to-day work. Each Tech Focus segment will be offered in a bi-monthly format and will showcase a specific technology that is a core part our training and consulting services. Tech Focus members will have access to articles, blog posts, live/free webinars, technical tips via social media, discounts, and much more covering topics like - Silverlight, Azure, Debugging/Performance, Threading, WPF, and ASP.NET.

Our Silverlight Tech Focus series is underway and Jeff Prosise will be providing Silverlight 4 content this month. To learn more or to register simply click here.

Happy New Year!

PDC Bound

2009-11-06T15:06:00Z

Wintellect is exhibiting at PDC 2009 coming up November 17-19 in LA. Stop by booth #1111 and register for our NEW 2010 Tech Focus Segments and receive a chapter from Jeffrey Richter’s soon to be released CLR via C#, Third Edition book.

We will also be raffling off (3) Wintellect Virtual University passes – 1 each day so be sure to stop by and enter the drawing. You won’t want to miss out on any of the other Wintellect goodies we will be sharing as well. Or simply just stop by to say hello and catch up with us, we always enjoy visiting with each of you!

Flirting with Technology?

2009-11-06T14:54:00Z

If you are wondering what in the world this blog title means and at the same time wondering where in the world all the hardcore, technical content is, then rest assured you are in the right place and on the right track. I am not a developer but I am an active part of the developer community and I am passionate about technology. As a newbie to the blogging world my hope is to connect developers – all of you - with important information that helps each of you achieve your goals, learn something new, or just simply enjoy yourselves. While I will “flirt” with technology and provide as many technical details as possible my real goal for Flirting with Technology is to share with you all of the Wintellect happenings – tradeshow presence, events, new projects, pictures, offerings, etc. While you won’t receive any Silverlight tips and tricks from me you will get an inside look at Wintellect and all of its goings on. I’m guessing this is probably the point you all look to the left side of your screen and select “blogs” under the Navigation tool to learn from the likes of our technical greats.

However, if you decided to keep reading, then let me thank you. I hope that those of you who want to stay plugged in will visit me here as I begin my blogging journey. I have a bit of stage fright so hang in there with me, and even respond if the mood strikes you. I will be happy to chat with you and to share your insight with all of our wonderful Wintellectuals! Engage with me here…I hope to make many new friends.

If you want to find out more about me just click here to read my bio.