Rachel Hawley's DevExpress Community Blog

Free licenses for developers. Free licenses for charities.

October 21st to 23rd will see teams of volunteer developers hard at work creating new websites, donor databases and social widgets for a number of local charities as part of the second National GiveCamp event.

DevExpress is a national sponsor for GiveCamp, and we are working with Microsoft to support all the events throughout the USA and right here in the UK (co-ordinated, in part, by yours truly ).

GiveCamp developers have a raft of software to choose from, and we are very happy to be able to offer all developers working on a GiveCamp project the opportunity to implement a solution using DevExpress controls by offering free licenses to anyone interested in making use of them.

In addition to offering developers a completely free set of controls, it makes sense to allow the charities that they are supporting the opportunity to obtain the same, in order to maintain their solutions.

So there it is. If you are a developer volunteering on a GiveCamp project that could make great use of DevExpress controls, we’ll give them to you for free. In addition, when your code is handed over, your charity will receive the same set of controls in order to maintain their solution.

If you want to take up this donation, contact me for more information (rachelh@devexpress.com).

Just one more reason to sign up for a GiveCamp near you.

On October 15th Philly Code Camp rolls back into town for its second instalment of the year.

DevExpress is very proud to be supporting another great community event headed up by the wonderful Andy Schwam.

Friends of DevExpress, Miguel Castro and Kendall Miller, will be delivering some interesting sessions during the course of the day:

Miguel Castro: Advanced MVVM: Engineering the UI, Without the UI
Kendall Miller: Massive Scalability for ASP.NET You Can Afford

Make sure you check these guys out if you have not attended one of their sessions in the past. They are two speakers that you don’t want to miss.

If you are not already signed up for Philly Code Camp … eek! … It’s sold out! The team have created a wait list, so if you do want to try your luck you can sign up on their registration page.

If you are going to be in Philly, please show us what you’ve been up to - take some pictures of your antics and post them to the DevExpress Facebook page.

Safe travels!

As we career into the Fall, our DevExpress event calendar starts to get a little hectic! You’ll see a lot of posts cropping up about where you can find and spend time with DevExpress staff members over the next few weeks.

However, one place that you just have to be this month is the DevExpress Developer Mixer in New York City on Thursday 29th September from 8pm.

Azret and Rachel Reese will be in town for the NYC Code Camp. They’ll be bringing over a little bit of Californian fun from the West Coast as we host a casual night of drinks, appetizers and music in Manhattan. It’s going to be a great crowd, and there might even be a guest appearance from our new Chief Marketing Officer, Dave Mendlen.  

You can register your spot now by clicking on our invitation to the right.

We’d really like to have you there with us, so sign up and join us. The drinks are on DevExpress!

See you in New York City!

October 1st sees the Fall outing of NYC Code Camp move to a new home that will allow for more than twice as many attendees to come and join the fun! Steve Bohlen, Mark Freeman and the team are pulling out all the stops to bring another fantastic event to the Big Apple.

NYC Code Camp offers the breadth of topics of an entire conference distilled into a one-day event. Supported by sponsors like Microsoft and DevExpress, it offers the local developer community a chance to learn from experienced conference speakers and local community experts alike. Even the initial preview of the session schedule shows some great material like Program Manager Damian Edwards on ASP.NET Web Forms vNext, and Cross Platform Mobile Development with .NET by Greg Shackles.

Gary and I visited in NYC Code Camp in February for the Spring event and we had a fantastic time. Let’s face it, there’s no place like NYC, so naturally their code camp was going to be amazing. I think that the event in October is going to be even better, and the fact that it can now accommodate upwards of 700 session-hungry devs is just brilliant.

If you are headed to NYC Code Camp be sure to look out Azret and Rachel (the other Rachel that is ) and as them about DevExpress’ plans for multi-touch gesture support. With all the Win8 news coming from this week’s Microsoft Build Windows event, this is going to be exciting news for developers looking forwards to next stage of Windows application evolution for desktop and web apps.

I heard through the grapevine that the number of available places for NYC Code Camp is dwindling, so if you want to attend you need to get your inline skates on and register now!

See you in New York!

What is Tulsa TechFest?

Tulsa TechFest is the brain child of David Walker, Senior Application Development Manager with Microsoft. In a life before Microsoft, David set up Tulsa TechFest to provide the Oklahoma community with a technical conference that provided great quality content to the developer community completely free of charge. Now in its sixth year, Tulsa TechFest has gone from strength to strength, continually bringing phenomenal speakers to Tulsa to engage and delight the masses.

Tulsa TechFest is a one day community-driven event that aims to bring great speakers to its audience for no cost except “2 cans or 2 bucks”. This seemingly small donation meant that almost 470 pounds of food was donated to a local charitable cause last year. This year all canned food will be donated to the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and all financial proceeds will be donated to the Family & Children's Services.

Think about it this way: you’re giving a little to get A LOT!

Where is Tulsa TechFest?

OSU-Tulsa will be hosting this year’s Tulsa TechFest.

You can map it with Bing here.

When is Tulsa TechFest?

Tulsa TechFest will roll out its red carpet on Friday October 7th with registration opening at 8am sharp and sessions kicking off at 9am.

Why you should attend Tulsa TechFest

Tulsa TechFest is a fantastic community-driven conference that is co-ordinated by a community leader who has a passion for encouraging the process of sharing. Not only does the event provide the Tulsa development community with completely free educational material, but it also brings in leading figures from the Microsoft development teams.

This year, not only will you find our own Seth Juarez loitering and chattering about the Kinect API and Machine Learning for .NET, you will also find Microsoft Senior Program Manager Glenn Block onsite. Glenn leads the teams working on WCF, .NET FX and the Managed Extensibility Framework in .NET 4.0.

Tulsa TechFest is not just another community event. It is an experience.

Register now – you won’t regret it!

See you in Tulsa!

DevExpress is excited to announce that guests at the exclusive DevExpress party, at next week’s Microsoft BUILD event, will be treated to a live performance by multi-platinum selling artists, Smash Mouth!

In addition to dinner, drinks and a buzzing party atmosphere at the House of Blues in Anaheim, Smash Mouth will be performing their hit singles Walking on the Sun and All Star live.

We still have a few spaces left at this fantastic event and we’re inviting our local Californian customers and Microsoft BUILD attendees to join us. All we ask is that you be sure to RSVP for your spot on our guest list as our guest passes are limited.

Here’s the T's and Cs :

• All guest passes are distributed on a first-come-first-served basis
• We can only offer one pass per RSVP (i.e. no “plus one” passes can be given)
• Your name must be on the guest list and you must have a wrist pass in order to get into the venue
• We must receive your RSVP by 11:59pm Pacific Time on Monday, September 12th 2011 (the guest list will close at midnight)
• You can collect your wrist pass from the DevExpress booth at Microsoft BUILD or from 7:00pm – 8:00pm on Thursday, September 15th at the House of Blues

The DevExpress team can’t wait to let loose and enjoy the show with our guests, so if you haven’t already RSVP’d to this event, do so now by writing to me.

Click on the images of our party invite below to enlarge them and view information on the time of party, as well as the food and drinks you’ll be able to enjoy for free on the night.

You’re an All Star. Get your game on. RSVP!!

See you in Anaheim!

The Fall outing of the the Utah Code Camp will kick off this weekend and rumour has it that registrations have already reached a record level.

This is an intimate and friendly community event that you can guarantee will deliver a great experience.

What is Utah Code Camp

Utah Code Camp is part of the Utah Geek Events network of community activities. This is the team behind the local user groups, SQL Saturday Utah and, of course, Utah Code Camp.

You can expect a full day of events, lunch and a huge prize raffle at the end of the day.

The organisation is a registered non-profit and with the support of sponsors, contributors and speakers, this event continues to deliver a quality level of sessions and content.

This time around there are some really interesting sessions planned on a huge range of topics including Android and iOS development, NoSQL and Knockout JS, as well HTML5, jQuery and a session on code katas (check out one of my blogs from a little while back to find out more about those!)

When is Utah Code Camp

Utah Code Camp will fire up the engines on Saturday September 10th.

Where is Utah Code Camp

This year Utah Code Camp will be held at Neumont University, South Jordan, UT.

Why you should attend Utah Code Camp

Utah Code Camp is a great opportunity to meet other local developers from your community. You can share anecdotes, war stories and new job opportunities with like-minded people, and you get a full day of great technical content.

The best part about Utah Code Camp is that it is a completely free event. There are no costs to attend this event. To me that makes a pretty great return on the investment of your time .

Utah Code Camp has already broken previous registration records and you wouldn’t want to miss out on your chance to attend. Register today!

Tulsa TechFest returns for its sixth event this October. DevExpress Reporting Evangelist, Seth Juarez, will make his way to Tulsa to participate, and DevExpress are proud to be supporting David Walker and the organising team behind the event.

We know that Tulsa TechFest will be a terrific community event, which is why we are a Gold sponsor. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the virtues of this conference, here’s a bit of information to help you consider registering as an attendee.   

What is Tulsa TechFest?

Tulsa TechFest is a one-day event that focuses on educating attendees in a number of areas: software development, tooling, development trends, database management and personal development. This year the team have also added tracks on mobile technologies, social media, entrepreneurship and mentoring.

There aren’t many conferences that offer such a wide scope of exciting areas to dip into.

Tulsa TechFest aims to invite both industry leaders and innovative peers to speak at the event, giving attendees the opportunity to listen to and share thoughts with professional speakers like Glenn Block and our own Seth Juarez without having to travel to an expensive vendor-led event.

When is Tulsa Tech TechFest?

You can start planning your trip to this event right now. Registration is open for the conference which will be on Friday October 7th. 

Where is Tulsa TechFest?

Tulsa TechFest will kick off at OSU-Tulsa’s downtown campus for a full day of content and networking.

If you are travelling from outside of Tulsa, you can find some useful information on accommodation and transport on the Tulsa TechFest FAQs.

Why you should register for Tulsa TechFest

Tulsa TechFest is a conference that is driven both by and for the community. It is an opportunity to get exposure to exciting topics, network with industry professionals and your peers, and also chat with vendors and recruiters that are relevant to your day job.

By attending, you can also be in with a chance of winning some great prizes donated by sponsors and supporters of the event. Last year, the prize pile amounted to over $100,000 worth of prizes.

Best of all, thanks to sponsorships and the support of OSU Tulsa, this event can be provided to the Tulsa technical community for free. The organisers operate a charitable donation scheme that encourages you to bring “2 cans or 2 bucks” that is donated to the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and Family & Children’s Services.

Aside from this small charitable gift there is no charge for food, no charge for drinks, no charge for registering, and absolutely no charge for attending.

What are you waiting for, register free for Tulsa TechFest now!

See you in Tulsa!

The Heartland Developer Conference returns to Omaha, NE in a week’s time for its eighth outing. Wow! 8 years! DevExpress’ Mehul Harry will be taking some time to get to know the folks attending, as he heads out to participate.

HDC offers attendees 3 days stuffed full of workshops, lab sessions and breakout talks, all wrapped up in a great community-centric event. In addition to all that education, there are networking lunches, evening receptions and a developer jam (this year it’s at Lucky Bucket Brewery!), all of which offer you the opportunity to relax in a friendly atmosphere and pass the time with old and new friends.

With all this excitement brewing, it is really no surprise that HDC11 has completely sold out. And when I say “completely”, I mean totally! This event is going to be hoppin’!

Sessions and Keynotes

I mentioned in a recent blog that developer’s developer, Scott Hanselman, will be delivering the opening keynote on Thursday September 8th. I’m sure it’ll be an interesting take on the future of Microsoft development technology … I wonder if Scott might drop any pre-BUILD hints? We can but hope!

In addition to that, there are also some interesting sessions on user design and user experience from Jason Bejot and Drew Davies, as well as DevExpress friend, Jason Follas, discussing “Looting Design Ideas from World of Warcraft”. Now that’s *got* to be worth a look, right?!

Videos from HDC 2010

Back in 2010, Mehul represented DevExpress in our first outing to HDC and he got some great video footage from Joe Olsen, HDC President, and also some of the HDC speakers.

Check out what the great minds of HDC 2010 we’re discussing this time last year:

• Jonathan Sharp with AppendTo Talks JQuery
• Javier Lozano Talks ASP.NET and MVC
• HTML5 with Molly Holzschlag
• Robert Boedigheimer Loves jQuery
• Drew Robbins talks about Open Data Protocol
• Jeff Brand Talks Windows Phone 7

If you can’t make it to Omaha this year, do not panic. Our roving reporter, Mehul, will be out and about collecting feedback and video to give you a feel for the hot topics at HDC11. If you are going to be at HDC, be sure to stop by and chat with Mehul, and send our DevExpress Channel viewers your shout outs.

See you in Omaha!

BUILD is slated to be a pivotal conference for Microsoft, and without even a hint of an agenda, tickets have already completely sold out!

If you have a ticket to the event you are one of the lucky few!

The DevExpress Party at BUILD 2011

DevExpress has been selected as a key VSIP partner at this event and while we are there we wanted to create the opportunity to meet with as many of you as we can.

To that end, we are inviting all of our customers attending BUILD 2011 or residing in the area of the event to be a VIP at our exclusive event at the House of Blues in Anaheim, CA. We’ll kick off a night of dinner, drinks and music on Thursday September 15th from 8pm.

Space is very limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible can to avoid disappointment: rachelh@devexpress.com

Click on the invite below to find out more about the event and how you can meet with DevExpress staff members if you plan to be at BUILD.

See you in Anaheim!

The Future of Microsoft Developer Technology

Microsoft Principal Program Manager, Scott Hanselman, will be delivering the opening keynote at developer conference HDC 2011 on Omaha, NE next month.

Hanselman will be opening the event with a session on the future of Microsoft technology for the developer. With everyone on tenterhooks about the news expected to come out of BUILD 2011, it’s probably not surprising that the session description for this keynote simply says “surprises in store”

In addition to the keynote, Scott will also be delivering a session on the evolution of web app development with the Microsoft stack. Something tells me Scott has been spending a bit too much time with ASP.NET MVC and the “Magic Unicorn Edition” of Entity Framework though, since the title of this session is Open Source and the Microsoft Web Stack of Love.

Over and above the future of web technologies, Scott will also offer the chance to spend an hour just sitting and chatting in an open forum hour called Ask Hanselman: “Off the Cuff”.

Register for HDC 2011

If the Heartland Developers Conference is not on your conference radar I would seriously consider taking a look at what they have on offer. Hanselman is not the first high-profile Microsoft representative to appear at HDC. In fact he is not the first Scott either!

Scott Gu has been a long-standing supporter of HDC commenting:

One of the best developer events in the country, period. Each time I’ve come I am blown away with what you guys do in the Mid-West.

Scott Guthrie - CVP, Microsoft, .NET Developer Platform

HDC 2011 will run from September 7th through September 9th 2011 and as a sponsor of the event DevExpress ASP.NET evangelist, Mehul, will be attending to show our support. If you are planning to be at the event please drop him an email and let him know (mharry@devexpress.com).

There are still a few spaces left if you are interested in bagging yourself a ticket to HDC 2011. You can find out more about the sessions on offer by visiting the HDC 2011 website. You can register for a full pass for this event for just $250.00. In addition, as a pass holder, you can register for the half-day workshops on Wednesday 6th September for only $25.00. Pretty great value for money.

Don’t hang around for too long – head over and register for your spot for HDC 2011 now.

See you in Omaha!

It is always such an honour for those of us at DevExpress when we find that our customers and supporters have seen fit to nominate our products for industry awards.

Once again, DevExpress is thrilled to have been nominated for the 2011 DevProConnections Community Choice Awards. We are pleased to say that DevExpress technologies have been nominated in a massive thirteen categories.

Vote for your favourite DevExpress products

Many of you out there perhaps won’t use every single product that DevExpress produces, but if you are a happy user of any of the nominated products, please consider voting and showing your support. The nomination form even gives you the chance to leave a short note about why you like the tool you are nominating. We’d love to hear from you if you have included feedback in those fields .

So if you are ready to vote for your favourite tools, you can find DevExpress products and services nominated in the following categories:

• Add-in Category: DevExpress CodeRush
• Charting and Graphics Tool Category: DevExpress XtraCharts Suite
• Component Set Category: DevExpress WinForms Suite, DevExpress ASP.NET AJAX Controls, DevExpress DXperience Universal (You get a choice!)
• Grid Category: DevExpress XtraGrid (WinForms) DevExpress ASP.NET Grid View Control
• Navigation Control Category: DevExpress ASPxperience
• Online Editor Category: DevExpress ASPxHTML Editor
• Printing/Reporting Tool Category: DevExpress XtraReports
• Scheduling/Calendar Tool Category: DevExpress ASPxScheduler, DevExpress XtraScehduler Suite
• Silverlight Product Category: DevExpress DXperience Silverlight, DevExpress DXGrid for Silverlight
• Training Category: “DevExpress Professional ASP.NET Controls”
• Utility Category: DevExpress ASPxSpellChecker
• Free Tool Category: DevExpress Data Editors Library
• Best Vendor Support Category: DevExpress 

Now I know that many of you folks reading this are huge fans of our support team. How do I know? I know because the last time I blogged you told me so . The guys and gals would really love your support in this category. Go on, show the team a bit of community love and vote for them as Best Vendor Support Team.

Your support always inspires us, and we are very grateful of your continued loyalty to DevExpress, our teams and our community. If we make the grade for you, please consider voting for us in the 2011 DevProConnections Community Choice Awards survey.

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our 50th Newsletter celebration that, as you may realise now, marked the lead up to the launch of Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch and the release of the DevExpress LightSwitch Reporting Extension.

I was really pleased to get so many great messages from those of your who took part. The positive messages of support that you sent detailing how much you were enjoying using our controls and products was great for all the team to hear. Our support team were really grateful of all the fantastic messages of support that you sent.

But enough of all that fluff – to the winners!

We selected 25 winners at random from all of our entries. Each of our winners will receive a free copy of DXperience Universal with a 12 month subscription and not only that, but they will also get $50 in Amazon gift vouchers.

And with that, our 25 contest winners are:

Chris Pitt
Robson Vitor Rezini    
Daniel Baies
Luca Centimeri
Jim Argeropoulos
Jacco van Beelen
Remo von Ballmoos
Alejandro Charbonnier
Terry Swiers
Joshua Ryan
Donald Leclerc
Joseph Guadagno
Jennifer Carr
Fredy Treboux
Alain Deschenes
Dustin Stokes
Mike Fitzgerald
Matt Calsada
Christopher Blevins
Patrick Flahan
James Parker
Craig Nicol
Don Bailes
Charles Romaine
Tarik Souirji

Our winners will be receiving emails with details of their prizes very soon.

We’ll have a couple of surprise goodies for the following folks as well, who posted some great messages of support to Twitter and Facebook:

Christian M.Z.
Phil Collins (not the singer) 
Peter Thorpe
Travis Illig
Django Dunn
Travis Cherry
Steeve Bérubé
Christian Ista

Thanks again to everyone who took part. We’re really glad you enjoyed the contest. Look out for more chances to win with DevExpress soon.

That’s right folks, you have just four days left to get your hands on a ticket for this year’s DEVLINK event in Chattanooga, TN.

John Kellar, DEVLINK Conference Chairman, has done a wonderful job of pulling together a fantastic conference experience for a fraction of the usual conference price.

Meet fellow attendees & speakers

DEVLINK has a number of networking opportunities and the conference venue, the Chattanooga Convention Centre, provides a great all-round experience for DEVLINK attendees with it’s numerous bars and proximity to a selection of eateries and bars (I can thoroughly recommend the huge pots of tea, delicious breakfast selection and great service at the Bluegrass Grill on E. Main St!).

With networking events on both the Wednesday and Thursday evening of DEVLINK 2011, you will not be lost for ways to spend your free time if you are a newcomer to this event. The evening events will give you great opportunities to meet new people and forge new friendships.

If you are nervous about meeting new people, seek out our very own Seth Juarez. He may be extroverted, but he is great at conversations and will provide the perfect wingman for you .

Technical Sessions by Seth Juarez

Seth will not only be buzzing around the networking events with Julian and Bryan, he’ll also be delivering four technical sessions:

- Functional C#
- Machine Learning for .NET
- The Kinect API
- C# Design Patterns

You can view the full agenda on the DEVLINK 2011 website where you will also find sessions descriptions for all of the technical presentations and also the keynotes from Ayende Rahien and Keith Elder.

Grab swag from DevExpress

DevExpress is proud to be the Partner Sponsor for this year’s DEVLINK, and as such we have some of our team heading to Chattanooga, TN to participate at the event. You’ll find CTO Julian Bucknall and Charting Evangelist Bryan Wood on the DevExpress sponsor table so please do look them out during the conference.

Oh, and if you offer to buy the guys a drink, be prepared, Julian likes Cosmos … no, we’re not joking (but he likes pale ales too ).

See you in Chattanooga!

[UPDATED on 26th July 2011: This contest has now closed. Thanks very much to everyone who participated, I was really pleased to hear that you enjoyed taking part in this fun distraction. Our winners will be announced on or before Friday July 29th as mentioned – keep an eye out to see if you were one of the lucky winners! ~ RH]

When I joined DevExpress back in March 2009 one of my first tasks was to create a customer newsletter that would highlight all things interesting, entertaining and important that were coming out of DevExpress HQ.

Just over two years later, here we are with fifty issues of DX Press: The DevExpress Newsletter wrapped and blasted to our community.

Reaching such a milestone can only mean one thing – a 50th birthday newsletter contest.

We all love a good contest, and if you enter our Find the Fifty competition you could be in with a chance of winning one of twenty-five $50 Amazon gift cards and free copies of DXperience Universal complete with 12 months support and upgrades (which will prove significant to this contest … just a little nudge to get you thinking).

Find the Fifty: The Contest

The premise of the Find the Fifty contest is simple – you must find the $50 bill hiding in one of our recent DevExpress blog posts. It will look like the examples that you see here to the right, but do be warned, it could be tiny in comparison. You’ll need a keen eye for detail.

To help you find the fifty, I have included a riddle below that will serve as a clue to help you figure out which blog post contains the loot.

Find the Fifty: The Rules

The rules are very straightforward. Follow these simple steps and you can be in with a chance of winning:

1) Answer the riddle below and navigate to the blog post that you think contains the $50 bill.
2) Find the $50 bill hidden somewhere in that blog post and click on it.
3) Follow the link to the hidden blog post.
4) Complete the instructions that you find on that page.

Easy!

Find the Fifty: The Riddle

Are you ready to play? Then let’s begin.

Riddle me this:

My v2011.1 outing has been just a sample. But when I am flipped on July 26^th, I will illuminate a new DevExpress solution that is sure to electrify. Which DevExpress blog post am I?

Think you’ve got it? Hurry, Find the Fifty!

Find the Fifty: Announcing the Winners

This contest will close on Monday 25th July 2011 and our winners will be announced before Friday 29th July 2011.

Post your notes of encouragement to others, your birthday wishes for the newsletter and any other feedback you have on DX Press: The DevExpress Newsletter in the comments below.

Good luck to everyone who enters!