We couldn’t start the West Coast leg of the .NET Rocks! Roadshow without a full recap of all the awesome events that took place in December. There was no rest before the holidays for James or for me, as we rounded off the year touring the great Midwest and Texas, showing off the power of Xamarin, Azure, and Visual Studio 2013 with Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin from .NET Rocks!. I will first give you the highlights of my tour of the Midwest followed by James’ highlights of his tour of Texas.
Chris takes to the Midwest
Chicago provided a cold and wintery kickoff of to the midwest. Rich Taylor and I decided to go on a small hike through the snow before the event to really take in Chicago. I started off the event with a surprise, by using the same portable class library that was used for Android, iOS, and Windows Store to create the same app for Google Glass utilizing our new component. Using the handy Google Glass mirroring app, I was able to show off full debugging live on stage of what I was seeing through my Google Glass. Everyone in the crowd and folks on Twitter seemed to really love it. After I closed out my session, Richard and Carl were joined on stage by Stephen Forte for an awesome interview.
The next morning bright and early we were off to Columbus and the beautiful Marcus Crosswoods Cinema with plush seating for all who attended. Google Glass with PCL and session from Billy Hollis were the highlights of the show, but afterwards my fellow C# developers were in for a treat. The same movie theater we were sitting in for the event transitioned over for a full viewing of Thor: The Dark World!
Like clockwork we hopped in another plane and set off for St. Louis where I was greeted by a fellow Google Glass wearer! As we settled into St. Louis we got to sit down with Kathleen Dollard, .NET Coach and Microsoft MVP who was set to be interviewed later that day for .NET Rocks!. As the Midwest section of the tour came to a close and I headed back to Boston, James was ready to pick up where I left off and drive all over Texas on a 3 city tour. Over to you James.
James heads down to Texas
Southern hospitality was in full swing in Dallas, TX, my first stop on his tour, with plenty of BBQ and sweet tea to go around at the beautiful SMU. After a full day of C# and an interview with ASP .NET MVP Chris Love for The Tablet Show we headed off to the Dallas drink up. There we got to spend a lot of time chatting with developer group leaders Sean Sparkman of DFW Mobile .NET and Toi Write of Dallas ASP.Net User Group about all of the amazing things they are up to. Plenty of C# T-shirts and monkeys made their rounds to all of our awesome developers.
We didn’t stop there as the short drive over to the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin blew us and fellow developers away with their amazing theater. Set in stadium seating, I started off the show with an awesome talk on code sharing with PCL and Azure Mobile Services for iOS, Android, and Windows Store. I wasn’t alone as Anuj from Xamarin was also there helping provided answers to our awesome Xamarin developers and give away some awesome swag!
Our final stop brought us to beautiful Houston, Texas and Rice University. I was joined this time by fellow Xamarai and co-organizer of the Houston Xamarin C# Mobile Developers Group, Jason Awbrey. There was an amazing turnout and yes you guessed it, plenty of BBQ to go around!
It was great getting to connect with so many Xamarin developers not only at the event, but after as well at the Houston developer group meetup at Platform Houston. I continued on with my love for PCL and gave a talk entitled “Portable Class Library Deep Dive“.
Off to the West Coast
Thanks for the awesome recap of the Texas events James. The Central leg of the .NET Rocks! roadshow was a blast, and we are set to do it all again by tackling the West Coast. This time James is set to fully cover the West Coast and kick things off next week in Phoenix, AZ on Monday, January 13th. If you live on the west coast be sure to join us:
Phoenix, AZ – where James will be kicking off the West Coast leg and .NET Mentor Julie Lerman will be interviewed.
San Diego, CA – where CTO of Microsoft Disaster Response Tony Surma will be interviewed and we will be throwing a Drink Up!
Irvine, CA – where James will continue the roadshow and Dan Wahlin will be interviewed.
Los Angeles, CA – where James wraps up the first half of the West Coast leg.
We have many more dates in store for the west coast, including San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Portland, and Salt Lake City. So be sure to check out the rest of the west coast dates. And, of course, there are plenty of Xamarin meetups happening around the world in the month of January.