TattooCoder

This year started off with a nice surprise, an email with the subject "Congratulations 2014 Microsoft MVP!"

I am humbled and excited, as this is the first time for me, and as always to be a part of such a great community. I enjoy the time I spend at community events, speaking to other developers and hearing their challenges, ideas and what great projects they are working on.

ASP.NET is the category of my award, and although most know me for some the Windows Phone work I have done; Web API, MVC, and JavaScript/TypeScript is where I have spent a majority of my time. Mobile is as much about the back end services as it is about the front end.

2014 is going to be another great year. I am already putting together my speaking schedule, working on new material and projects and can't wait to see the new stuff from the other new and renewed MVPs.

Thanks to all of my supporters in the community! Especially those in Florida who I get to see on a regular basis.

owpug.tattoocoder.com

Wow what a great start to the new group in Orlando!

First, let me start by thanking Voxeo (@voxeo) for hosting the event. What a great room, theater seating, barista on staff, great office space...very tech! They do offer co-lo office space so hit them up if you are a startup and you need some space. Almost every wall in this place is a whiteboard.

Those chairs were awesome!

Attendees included Windows Phone MVPs, authors, ComponentOne, Windows Phone Marketplace champs, newbies and even non Windows Phone devs; exactly what I was looking for when starting this group. A really exciting group to engage in and the conversation and interaction was more than I expected.

As I said at the beginning, it's a very exciting time to be a developer in the Microsoft .NET stack of technology. If you're not, you either doing the wrong thing or you're dead!

With the recent announcements of Windows Phone 8 and Surface, I can't think of a better time to sharpen your skills or pick a new path in your development career.

Luis and Alex telling us the tricks.

Next up, we had Alex (@Aapg1102) and Luis Perez (@LuisNeuralnet) from Neuralnet Systems present their take on tips and tricks, the unspoken rules.

Now these guys have the goods! They have 42 applications in the Marketplace and have gone through the paces when it comes to marketing, updates, when to what how, and what NOT to do. For those of you who attended, the slide deck is available here to refresh your memory as I am sure it was more information then you could retain in the hour long presentation.
Highlights for me were:

How does the PubCenter really works

eCPM experiences
Why 10,000 impressions aren't 10,000 impressions

Aftermath of an application

kind of - "It's out there...what's next"

The group was full of questions and even the experienced developers in the crowd walked away with some info they felt was rewarding.

As a sponsor of the group Russ (@russcamtv) and ComponentOne dished out ComponentOne Studio for Windows Phone for all in attendance, huge thanks to them! I look forward to seeing some great apps using these controls.

ComponentOne offers great developer controls for Windows Phone, Windows 8, as well as other .NET platform development tools.

Next meeting will be hosted at the brand new Microsoft Store in the Florida Mall on August the 17th at 6:30 PM. This is there official opening week, and we have been asked to be there the day after they open to use their fantastic theater. Checkout the Meetup page for the store. for details on the location and theatre spec sheet. I will be sending out more information as soon as we secure the speakers and agenda.

And finally, please pickup Joe Healy (@devfish) and Kevin Wolf's (@ByteMaster) book; Sam's Teach Yourself Windows Phone 7 Application Dev in 24 Hours. Both were in attendance, signing copies and contributing much knowledge about current and future state of Windows Phone and Windows 8 development. Thanks to both of you!

Pictures courtesy of RussCam!