As every year, next week TechEd Developers 2008 will take place, for European audiences, at Barcelona's Convention Center. This event is the Microsoft premier technical education conference just for developers. For five days, more than 4,000 of your peers have countless opportunities to explore about the latest cutting-edge technologies from Microsoft related to embedded devices, web 2.0 and upcoming or existing developer tools. I'm sad they moved the conference from Amsterdam to Barcelona like 3 years ago (being a Spaniard I preferred traveling Amsterdam than Barna) but the same learning opportunities are offered.
But this year is, somehow, special... it's going to be my first year as a speaker at TechEd, and I'm quite nervous about it. I'm part of the Web and User Experience track, and I will try to introduce my points of view regarding UX + Microsoft Technologies. Some of you may already know something about how I think, about creativity, the control nerdvana and the pre-boxed experiences, but I guess this is going to be one of the most disruptive presentations at TechEd - at least, when talking about how to use the technology, from a pragmatic and user-centred perspective, focusing on results and mental models instead of the technology, using it to produce results instead of just to show off.
Nerdvana Annihilation: Improving Silverlight UX without out-of-the-box controls - WUX317, Wednesday, November, 12th, 10:45-12:00, Room 119
Silverlight 2.0 is a reality that is used across many different sites and companies. It includes an impressive feature set that can fulfill most requirements. Explore the possibilities of creating an avant-garde user experience by using those resources to exploit the concepts of simplicity, enhanced visualization, interaction, navigation, intuitiveness and adaptiveness. We would explore the field of User-Centered Design, so called Emotional Design, and how it is disappointed by the concept of Nerdvana, a place where all the needed controls and features are packed in a box ready to use. Let's play creating an alternative user interface through innovation tools like Expression Blend, without relying on common-wide-used controls, through the analysis, inspection and optimization of an online community and blog system.
Digging up DeepZoom - WUX08-IS, Wednesday, November, 12th, 17:30-18:45, Room 134
Experience the construction and exploration of maps of images and get into the details of the SeaDragon technology, used for the Photosynth Research Project and now applied to Silverlight applications. Through this session you will see how to use the DeepZoom composer to create collections of images that can be used to build maps of content that can be hidden, detected, scaled and integrated into other Silverlight interactions. A Hands-On Code session showing how to work with the tools and API you need to get proficient with DeepZoom technologies.
If you are attending TechEd Developers 2008, I will be glad if you reserve some time for my sessions. It would be great to listen your feedback and comments. I also have some time at the Ask The Experts pavilion but I don't have the schedule yet. This year, also a couple of Spanish friends are presenting at TechEd: Jose Manuel Alarcón, Iván Gonzalez and Hadi Hariri.