Speechifying Applications at TechEd 2013
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Did my final session for TechEd US today. Great fun and a lovely audience. You can find the demonstrations for the session here.
Windows Phone Agents Secrets at TechEd 2013
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We started the day with a walk around the French Quarter, which was rather nice. Then it was time to head into TechEd and give my session on creating agents for Windows Phone. I was a bit worried, what with it being the last session on the day, but the audience was great and even seemed to like the “Everything Sound”. The slides will be on the TechEd site soon, I’ll post the link when I get it. You can find the demos from the presentation here.
Sorry about the lack of a picture of the audience, it was just too dark..
NavigationService.Navigate–Duh!
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Thanks to Ginny for the photograph. And for suggesting on Twitter that I might need some new jokes.
As if.
Anyhoo, this morning found me on the Windows Phone booth extoling the virtues of Windows Phone development. I told the happy tale of my PlayMusic application (22K downloads so far), the future with VoiceMusic and the dire tale of Procrastination Challenge. The game they dare not sell.
I was showing how easy it is to make programs and how you can navigate smoothly from one Windows Phone page to another. And then I completely forgot how to do it. Wah. Fortunately, after opening an existing project I managed to find the line.
NavigationService.Navigate(new Uri("/GameOverPage.xaml",
UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute));
This takes you onto the GameOverPage. How one earth could I have forgotten that? Anyhoo, I finally got to the end and people were kind enough to clap, which was nice.
Thanks to a great bunch of folks who were good enough to sit and listen. Larry was kind enough to video the session. With a bit of luck nobody will ever see it.
If you want to find out the awful truth behind “Procrastination Challenge”, I’m doing some more sessions on the Windows Phone Booth later in the week. Drop by to find out when. We’re in Hall D.
Tomorrow I’m doing my first session, Secrets of using Agents on Windows Phone tomorrow afternoon at 5:00pm in Room 383, followed by a session at 6:30 on Ask the Experts.
Going to Algiers
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This morning we caught the ferry to Algiers. Its just across the river and the journey takes fifteen minutes or so. The good news is that the ride is free, and Algiers is a great place to take a look at.
Some of the land is still underwater.
And some of the houses are beautiful.
Tomorrow the main conference starts. I’m looking forward to it.
Oyster Festival
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I’ve never been to an oyster festival before. And I’ve never had oysters from the BBQ before. Both were great.
New Orleans Saturday Morning
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My cure for jetlag is to try and get eight hours sleep each night. Snag is, that we went to bed so early that we had completed our sleepings by four thirty in the morning today. Oh well. Best plan is to get outside into the sunlight and wait for the body to catch up. So we did. Turns out that there is not much happening at seven thirty in the morning, but we did get to take some pictures.
These places were open.
Why we are here.
Heading for TechEd New Orleans
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Atlanta Airport has a nice ceiling.
After the excitement of yesterday, today I had to get up bright and early, or at least early, and head off to Manchester Airport to fly to New Orleans.
Such is life. The flights were smooth, everything worked and by the end of the day we were happily ensconced in the hotel. I’m really regretting not being around for the Three Thing Game finals but it was not to be this time. Simon has done a great job of finishing off the competition and you can find out what folks thought over at Hull Comp. Sci. Blogs.
Indeed.
Three Thing Game and Summer Bash
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A whole bunch of teams with their things.
We got our first ever “in week” Three Thing Game going today. We ended up with 18 teams, which was great, and included one from Boss Alien. I’m kind of in a hurry packing for my trip to New Orleans leaving tomorrow (Simon is taking over tomorrow to do the proper work) but I thought I'd post some pictures.
We had the usual routine of things, programming and Pizza. I made a pass through the lab and took a bunch of pictures. You can find them here. We also had a Summer Bash, lots of fun playing “The Resistance” and “Braggart”.
And now I’m off to bed. Which is more than the teams in the Fenner Computer Suite are doing….
C# Yellow Book in Persian
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I was very excited to hear from Rasoul Mohammadi that he and his friends have been busy translating my C# Yellow Book into Persian. You can get an english copy from here:
I’ll post a link to how to get the Persian version (poetry) when it becomes available. Great stuff.
Rob at TechEd 2013
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I’ve finished my preparations for TechEd 2013. I’ve written the presentations, developed a bunch of new demos (including something that involve cheese and something that doesn’t) and also also created a custom Lumia 820 case using the Nokia design on Thingiverse. I’ve printed out a couple in white and they don’t look too shabby. I’ll be giving one away at each of my sessions next week. Come along and be ready to answer questions if you want to win.
If you are coming along to the conference, and want to know when all the Windows Phone sessions are (including mine) then here’s the info. See if you can spot which ones I’ll be doing:
6/3/2013 1:15PM WPH-B202 The Phone That Has Everything the Enterprise Needs: Windows Phone 8
Rob Tiffany 383
6/3/2013 3:00PM WPH-B205 Top Down Guide for Developers: Windows Phone 8
Larry Lieberman 383
6/3/2013 4:45PM WPH-B204 Radical Perspectives on Mobility Strategy
Kuleen Bharadwaj 383
4/2013 8:30AM WPH-B201The Power of Collaboration: Integrating Windows Phone with Microsoft Office 365, Exchange and SharePoint Online
Alan Meeus 383
6/4/2013 10:15AM WPH-B304 All Aboard for the Future of HTML5 Mobile and Hybrid Web Apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows Tablets
Rob Tiffany 383
6/4/2013 1:30PM WPH-B309 The Windows Phone 8 Networking Survival Kit
Andy Wigley 383
6/4/2013 3:15PM WPH-B303 Build It Once For Both: Writing Code and Designing for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8
Matthias Shapiro 383
6/4/2013 5:00PM WPH-B302 Secrets of Using Background Agents for Windows Phone 8
Rob Miles 383
6/5/2013 8:30AM WPH-B203 Mobile Security in the Enterprise: Windows Phone 8 Answers the Call
Alan Meeus 383
6/5/2013 10:15AM WPH-B308 Using C and C++ in Your Windows Phone 8 Applications
Maarten Struys 383
6/5/2013 1:30PM WPH-B305 Developing Large-Scale Enterprise Mobile Apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows Tablets
Rob Tiffany 383
6/5/2013 3:15PM WPH-B301Speechifying your Windows Phone 8 Applications
Rob Miles 383
6/6/2013 8:30AM WPH-B207 Manage Windows Phone Enterprise Apps
Robert Hoover 383
6/6/2013 10:15AM WPH-B306 Support Your Demanding LOB Apps With SQLite and Windows Phone 8
Andy Wigley 383
6/6/2013 1:00PM WPH-B307 Creating Windows Phone 8 Apps for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013
Jeremy Thake 383
It looks to me like room 383 is basically Windows Phone Central. I’m also going to “Ask the Experts” on the Tuesday (I’ve actually got some questions) and I’ll be on the Windows Phone Booth (sounds appropriate) on Wednesday and Thursday morning. Drop by and I’ll tell you a really funny joke. Perhaps.
A Japanese Walk
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Tokaido is a game where players seek rest and good experiences while travelling the “East Sea Road” in Japan. It is a nice twist on the board game format and has beautiful artwork on the cards and the board. I didn’t manage to win, but hey, it’s all about the journey, right?
Hull Waterfront
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We had a sort of plan to go to the seaside today. Then we figured that lots of other folks would have that plan too. And so we went for a walk around the waterfont at Hull. We went past the deep and round the old town, had a fantastic Beef and Stilton sandwich at McCoy’s and then staggered home to play some silly Table Tennis in the garden.
Shopping in Leeds
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Went to Leeds today and bought some trousers. And took this photo of one of the arcades.
Big Risk–Big Reward
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I’ve spent a lot of the last few days sitting in on Seed exit interviews. These are actually great fun, although they are also very hard work. They are part of the assessment process for our MEng students. Essentially we get them to write a case for the marks that they think they deserve, and then they come to see us and try to justify them. For more details of the kind of things we are about, take a look at this blog post from Tom.
Anyhoo, the meetings take around an hour each and they can get pretty intense. Students put very strong arguments that they should get 5 out of 5 for a particular category, and we have been known to revise their scores up as well as down. One of the assessment categories has to do with planning. This is always an interesting issue. I made a point of heading straight for the Risk Assessments that we get the development teams to produce for their projects. These are supposed to set out the major risks to a successful outcome of the project.
Managing risk is a very good plan in a project, most of the projects that fail do so because of a failure to identify and track the things that could go wrong. But sometimes folks didn’t seem to quite get the whole story. Most of the Risk Assessments covered things like data loss, changes to personnel and the like, but some missed out the most important risk of all.
“What if we can’t get it to work?”
It is not unknown for a project in real life (and our projects are as close to real life as we can get them) to fail on this one. The system can have a beautifully crafted user interface, a carefully targeted audience and snappy marketing but if it doesn’t work, all this comes to naught. If you ever, ever, get into a development project you should make it your business to put this in the Risk Assessment and then track it. Maybe the Risk can be removed really quickly, once you’ve built a working prototype. Maybe it’s a slow burner, when you have to do a bunch of work and wait on other people before you find out whether it is a workable proposition.
I make this point as often as I can, and I often get the response “Well, Duh! The project is all about making this thing work, why would you add this as a risk?”. That’s true, but I know about projects, and people, and that defect in human nature that tends to push tricky things away into the distance where you don’t have to think about them too hard. Much easier to design that pretty user interface than work on that nasty interrupt handler code, or whatever.
With experience you learn to identify the “stoppers” in a project; the things that, if you can’t make them work, render the project a failure. These go onto the Risks and are tracked regularly to make sure that nothing in the project is built on sand. By the end of the meetings I think that the students we saw had taken this point on board, which I think is a one of the many really useful outcome from this part of the course.
Future Imperfect
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Everyone should read this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/19/driverless-cars-pilotless-planes-jobs-human
The future that is described is quite believable and rather worrying. Particularly if you drive a lorry for a living.
Three Thing Game and Summer Bash
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We are trying something new this year. A Three Thing Game during the week and synchronised with the Summer Bash. Worst case we get the summer to recover. Best case it should be fun. All the action takes place over the 30th and 31st of May. We have a Thing Auction at 1:00 pm on Thursday the 30th of May, a Summer Bash starting at 4:30 in the afternoon of that day, and judging and presentations starting at 3:00 pm on Friday 31st. You can find out more about Three Thing Game here and Summer Bash here. With a bit of luck, I might find you at both.
Finalists BBQ
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We had our Finalists BBQ today. This is pretty much the last free food that students get out of us (except perhaps for the sandwiches at the Degree Ceremony reception in July). Plenty of folks turned up to avail themselves of the various forms of cooked meat (which were all delicious) and talk about old times.
There are some more pictures on Flickr, you can find them here.
Thanks to Warren for paying for it all.
Thwaite Gardens Open Day
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We’ve been to Thwaite Gardens Open Day a few years in a row. We had the best weather a couple of years ago, last year was a bit iffy and we weren’t too hopeful about this year. But in the end it was nice and bright, and the sun even made a guest appearance. The Friends of Thwaite Gardens spend all year making the place look lovely and then we come along, take photographs and have tea and scones.
Thwaite Student Hall. If you live here you get all this loveliness thrown in.
You wouldn’t believe this was right in the middle of suburbia.
Some plant or other (gardening was never my strong point).
We bought some plants for our garden, and we’ll be back next year. If you live in the area you really should go along.
Star Trek into Darkness
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Went to see "Star Trek into Darkness" today. It is truly splendid. Great story, great ending, nods to the original series and film. I'm looking forward to seeing it again, so that I can get more of the references.
The only part of the film that didn't work for me was the uniforms that they all wore to the inevitable dressing downs that Captain Kirk gets from time to time from which ever admiral takes against him. They were really stupid. Think Russian Army circa 1960 mixed with Pan Am flight attendant 1970. But apart from that, excellent film. Go see it.
Update on 2013-05-21 15:14 by Rob
Hmmm. Re-reading this post reminds me of the old car that I used to have with the broken headlights. Most nights it used to be a case of "Start Wreck into Darkness".
