Rob at Tech Days 2014 NL

In a few days I'll be off on my travels again. I've done sessions at TechDays in the Netherlands for as long as I can remember, and they are always great fun. Even when all the demos fail. This year I'm doing three:

• 16 April 2014
  07:45 - 09:00
  Bluetooth and NFC phone to phone communication
• 16 April 2014
  14:50 - 16:05
  Talking to hardware with Windows Phone
• 17 April 2014
  13:15 - 14:30
  Creating games for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 with monogame

For the hardware one I've got flashing lights and all kinds of good stuff, and I'm really looking forward to telling folks about the wonders of MonoGame. And there will be special treats for the ones who turn up at the 7:45 am session to find out all about Phone to Phone communications. If you are coming along to the conference I'd love to see you.  I've even written some new jokes..

Singapore Imagine Cup Finals

These are the winners, congratulations to the four team members from NYP-School of IT who are about to get covered in celebration bunting…

I was lucky enough to be invited to help judge the 2012 Singapore Imagine Cup Final presentations today. Yesterday a series of sessions had taken the teams down from 16 to 4 and today we had to pick the winner from these. For the teams in the room it must have been especially nerve wracking because the finalists were announced just before they had to present and had a scant 10 minutes to prepare for their session. Not that it showed.

Every team delivered a very professional result which brought home to me just how much the standard has improved in the competition. All the presentations were what I would call “world standard”, in that they were the equal of ones I have seen at the World Final level.

However, there was a standout winner and so congratulations to Eustace Zheng Xiangwen, Nur Nadiah Binte Zailani, Koh Kai Wei and Mong Xunheng (hope I got your names right) who made up Team AlphaWaves. Their system, the Dementia Assistance and Recall Engine (DARE) provides support to sufferers of one of the nastiest things that can happen to a person. I wish them the best of luck in the world finals in Australia later this year.

If you want to find out more about the competition and get some tips about preparation for the next rounds I’ll be hosting a Live Meeting on Wednesday 18th of April at 16:30 GMT.  You can sign up here for the meeting.

After the finals I had a quick look around Singapore and then we headed off for a really posh meal. Thanks for inviting me folks, it has been great. My only regret is that I’m in town for such a short time.

I’ve not bought many souvenirs, but that’s because I’m definitely coming back some day…

Campfire Fun and Games

A great audience to die in front of…

Did my keynote session today at Campfire. It was great fun, once I’d got over my nerves and lack of sleep.Pretty much everything worked as it should, apart from my “bomb proof” Kinect driver wrappers blowing up. Oh well. I said I’d put some resources up here for you to take a look at:

Slides and (mostly working) code from the presentations today - here
C# Yellow Book, Windows Phone Blue book and other free stuff - here
.NET Micro Framework embedded development - here
Gadgeteer embedded development -  here
Three Thing Game student madness – here
Windows Phone development - here
Dreamspark, free software for students - here
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio – here
Kinect For Windows SDK – here

I think that is everything, if you remember something I forgot, let me know and I’ll add it. Once the presentations were over I went for a wander round the city. After some fun and games on the transit I managed to get all the way down to the bay. I took loads of pictures which I’ll play with properly when I get home. In the meantime here are just a couple.

Lovely

A boat on a building? And why not.

More tomorrow, I’m off to bed now…

Rob at Campfire

I’ve just got back from Bulgaria and already I’m preparing for the next trip away. The week after next I’ll be heading for Singapore to give some sessions (and be part of the keynote) at Microsoft Campfire. I’ve had a look at the agenda and it looks really interesting. I’ll be doing some Windows Phone and some Kinect stuff (let’s see if we can lay ‘The Curse of the Kinect’ to rest once and for all) and there’s some Imagine Cup action too. Should be great fun.

If you are in the area you can sign up here.

Flying Back from Sofia

Flew back from Sofia today, everything was fine including the 7 hour stay at Schipol airport. The McDonalds there was serving “1955” burgers which are ace.

The Curse of Kinect

A very patient audience, thanks for putting up with me.

Just completed my Kinect session. Having done lots of tests I then got lots of problems during the demos. But everything worked in the end. For those who were there and wondering what the problem was, I think I’ve found the solution. Sometimes the sensor doesn’t wake up before my update thread tries to use it. Which doesn’t end well. I’ll be putting up a nice long blog post (and some useful code) to address this later.

After I’ve had a lie down..

Windows Phone at MS Days

The audience at the end. Some of them are still smiling....

Just done my Windows Phone session for MS Days here in Bulgaria. Great audience. I promised all the content, you can find the slide decks and sample code here.

Next stop Kinect at 12:45. What could possibly go wrong?

MS Days in Sofia

Got up bright(ish) and early this morning to head for Sofia. Nothing like a 6:10 am flight. But the journey was smooth enough and this time there was no rain when I arrived, which was nice.

This is the rather funky buildings you can see from my hotel room. Although now you’ve seen the photograph there is probably less need to do so.

In the evening we went out to the Timeless Cafe for tea. Nice place. There was a clock there but it had stopped – which seems fair enough. We had a great evening of good food, drink and Geek Speak.

The universal language of beer…

Then it was back to the hotel. Sessions tomorrow, looking forward to them. Hope the audience is too…

Heading for Sofia

I’m on my travels again. Tomorrow morning at the lovely time of 6:10 am I should be flying out to Sofia to take part in MS Days. I’m doing sessions on Windows Phone game development and Kinect fun and games. And I’ve tested all my demos. A lot.

Come and see them all work if you are at the conference.

Rob on the Road

I’m off on my travels again next month. I’m doing sessions about Windows Phone and Kinect at TechDays in Belgium and the Netherlands and then hopping over to SIGCSE in the USA to give some sessions there too.

The plan is to develop and maybe even publish a complete Windows Phone application during one session and then play some rather silly games during the Kinect one. Should be fun.

Hull Digital for Breakfast

Had a chat with Jon Moss today. He’s one of the movers and shakers behind Hull Digital. I’ve been to a few of their events, which are usually (and very sensibly) held at one of my favourite eating places in Hull, Fudge in Princes Ave. If you want to sync up with what’s happening with developers in Hull they are a great way to do this.

Jon was telling me about future events, including a regular programme of Digital Breakfast MeetUps, where  like minded folk get together for “the most important meal of the day” every month. The next one is on Friday this week, which is a shame for me because I’m not able to go. I’m helping out with the Graduation Ceremony on the Hull campus. However, if you want to go along and meet up with digital folk - if you see what I mean- and enjoy some fantastic food (my advice, go for the omelette) then you should pop along.

Jon was also telling me about TEDx at Hull, which brings together a bunch of interesting folk for a day of discussion and debate about the future of, well, everything..

What with that and Platform Expo coming along it looks like it is going to be an interesting few months around here.

Robot Fun at the University Transition Event

Making Robot Cowards with C#

Sometimes it helps to read the specification. I’d been asked to prepare a talk for a schools visit today. Six sessions in front of students from schools who were visiting the university to learn about the kind of things we do. I thought Oscar the robot and the Kinect SDK might hit the spot, so I made my slides, built some demos and turned up to give a talk to a bunch of interested Sixth Formers. Who were between 8 and 9 years old. Ooops.Turned out that this was a visit from youngsters looking at moving to the new Northern Academy which opens in 2012. If I’d taken the trouble to read up on the event I would have known all this. Oh well.

During the introductory talk I made some frantic changes to the slide deck and then off we went. Children at this age are about the toughest audience you can get. You either have them, or you haven’t. The good thing was that I had some nice props. I had a robot that you could control by touching your hand on you head. And this proved very popular. At the end of every talk we had a queue waiting for their turn to step in front of the Kinect Sensor and make Oscar the robot do a wheelie.

Who wants to have a go next?

It was really hard work, but enormous fun. All the kids were fantastic and a real credit to their schools. I got some great questions from the audience and everyone left happy, including me.

Two satisfied customers

Watching Oscar

Thanks to Moy Lanade for sorting everything out and Mike Park, University Photographer, for the pictures.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the Yorkshire International Business Convention

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. I was lucky enough to take a few students up from Hull today and hear him.

During his talk today at the Yorkshire International Business Convention he mentioned that 20% of the world now has web access, and that access to the web is being made a human right in some countries. It was great to hear him speak of the origins of the world wide web as a side project and how it has developed to become the massively complex beast that we have today. Having designed the way that systems on the web interact he has made it his mission to ensure that it continues to develop according to the original vision of free access for all, to all.

He was preceded by Roy Walker who, as a highly accomplished comedian, gave a master class in comic timing and reminded me of a simpler time when jokes were just funny, and not complicated.

Once outside we made for the beach and an ice cream:

These are the crew that came along from Hull in the minibus.

See Sir Tim Berners-Lee for Free by the Sea

The university has obtained a limited number of places to go and see Sir Tim Berners Lee speak at the Yorkshire International Business Convention on Friday 10th of June at Bridlington Spa. His talk is on Friday lunchtime, so we will be leaving the university around 9:45 and getting back on campus at around 2:00, depending on whether we also go for a paddle or not…

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is widely acknowledged as the person who invented the World Wide Web and is chairman of the World Wild Wide Consortium.

If you are a student at Hull who is interested in coming along please get in touch as soon as possible.

24 Hours a Day at the World Trade Centre

Yesterday lunchtime I popped down to the World Trade Centre in the middle of Hull. They were having an event to mark the start of their “24 Hours a Day Opening”.  I was there to show off some technology and be the only one present not wearing a suit. When I arrived the whole place was packed with business folk, as you can see above.

This was my setup, where I was showing off what the Kinect can do when you write your own software for it. (and giving a none too subtle plug for the blog…)

I had a brief chat with Alan Johnston MP about game development, which was nice. I managed to get in the fact that Criterion games (who make titles like Burnout) have just hired four of our students, which counts as all their graduate recruitment for the year. I think he was suitably impressed, which was nice.

I also met up with a number of people who, once I’d told them what Kinect can do, instantly started thinking how they could use it in their business. Great fun.

DevDays 11 Windows Phone in Rhyme

My Geek Night Windows Phone session in Rhyme is now available for viewing at Channel 9. 

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/DevDays/DevDays-2011-Netherlands/Devdays055

XNA Windows Phone Session at DevDays 11

Two more halves of a room and one last Windows Phone XNA session. I seem to have taken a lot of audience pictures over the last few weeks. Thanks to you all for making the final session such a great one.  Remember folks that you can get all the code that you saw  from my demo pages:

/demos

The marks the end of my World Tour for a little while. Thanks to Helen for organising the European leg so well, and to Microsoft for inviting me along.

Windows Phone in Rhyme at Geek Night

Some of the audience arriving.
The rest of the audience arriving

Well, that was fun. Once I found my notes. Thanks to the audience for really getting into the spirit of the event. The roar every time we had a “Silverlight Rhyme Alert” was most impressive. Hope you all had a good time. You can find the notes from the original Red Nose Day lecture here.

If you would like to donate to the Red Nose Day cause (which is very, very worthy and does lots of good work around the world) then you can find my donation page here.

And now I’m going for a lie down…

Recalcitrant Robots

Both sides of the room, click through to larger versions on Flickr.

I did my most “challenging” presentation this afternoon. Robots, hardware and the .NET Micro Framework.  Lots of things to go wrong, and most of them tried to. However, having carried my robot, a controller and a radio watch all the way around Europe I was going to do my level best to make sure that they worked at the end.

And work they did. In the end I had two debugging sessions running at the same time, one in the controller and the other in the robot. It was nice when the command went out of the controller and the robot program hit a breakpoint to indicate that the message had been received. Everyone was watching patiently to see the robot jump off the desk and shatter on the floor. Fortunately this didn’t actually happen, but the programs did all work.

Thanks for being a patient audience folks and remember, you are all embedded developers now.

Dev Days Keynote and Ambition

Also available for parties and discos…

Some time back I was asked the very perceptive question “What are your ambitions?” This is not a question that I get asked very often, and it gave me pause to think a bit about life. Eventually I  said “One day I’d like to take part in a keynote presentation at a technical conference”.  The keynote is the big session right at the start where everyone attending the conference turns up to hear some talks that set the scene for what follows.

Today I got to do that. I was on the same billing as Scott Hanselman, Wade Wegner and Ben Riga. I was talking about the joys of Windows Phone game development.

Everyone had their own laptop, mine is the Dell nearest (and they kept making fun of it because the video output was a bit dodgy).

Brandon Foy’s video looks great, even from the back of the screen. Remember that you can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/windowsphone

The presentations were all great, although I must admit I wasn’t concentrating that much – what with being the last man in.  My bit seemed to go OK, which was nice.

I now have to move on to my next ambition, which is to buy Bill Gates a drink. I’d just love to be standing at the bar with Bill, see him reach towards his pocket to pay for the glasses of Coke and say “No worries Bill, I’ve got this” and the produce my wallet….