Amsterdam Gets XNA

Had great fun today doing a session about XNA for DevDays. The audience were wonderful, and I took some happy snaps:

on the right...

...in the middle...

...and on the left

Thanks for paying attention people, and I hope you use XNA to get to some interesting places.

Before my talk we had a session from Dave Mitchell of Microsoft. He was able to tell us that the XNA Creators Club memberships are going to be part of Microsoft Academic Alliance. This is the best news. Now we can put a bunch of machines in our labs for people to write for and it won't cost us extra on top of our AA subscription. That news alone was worth going to Amsterdam for. If you are a member of a university faculty you owe it to yourself (and your students) to follow this up and get your hands on one of the best bargains in education at the moment).

Dave at the start of his presentation

Earlier today I went to a presentation by Scott Guthrie about Silverlight. This is a fantastic technology that lets you make very impressive user experience. It lets you put .NET powered behaviour into web pages and also gives you the Windows Presentation Foundation to drive your user interfaces. Excellent.

Scot talking about multiple language support in Sliverlight.

I've had a really good time in Amsterdam. I went out for a meal last night and took even more pictures:

Standard Canal picture

Artistic cake

There are some more on my Flickr site.

Comments

[Paul Veer]

I attended that presentation this afternoon, Rob! Good stuff, it was pretty interesting, being a Game Design student and all.
I had some great laughs too. The joke about the two fish and the tank was brilliant!

[Glenn Wilson]

Good to see that XNA is making it's moves.

Remember if you do need help on XNA you can always drop over to the #xna Channel on IRC (Efnet Server) there are alot of XNA Dev guys hanging around there that are more then willing to assist.

Glenn "Mykre" Wilson
www.virtualrealm.com.au
XNA News and Resources from Down Under.

[Eric van Feggelen]

Hello Rob,


Just wanted to let you know I enjoyed the presentation very. I know you're a lecturer, so I'm probably not suppose to give you any props at all.. but you deserve them! Had some good laughs...

.. the one that cracked me up was "I don't know what she sees in him..." :)

[Marcel Sorger]

Great session!
Had a lot a laughs and good info.

Don't think the line "the game industrie eats people" really hit home.
You forgot to mentioned that, if one has ideas about how a games should be one should not become a proffesional game developer. Proffesionals work in huge teams where your just a number and you have to implement sombody else his ideas.
It's much more fun to use XNA to create games yourself exactly how you want them to be and save yourself a burnout.

[Jelle Doornbos]

Hi Rob,

I enjoyed your lecture..sorry, session, on XNA very much! Even though it's not really my league professionally seen, it was a truly compelling story from an avid gamer's point of view. Keep up the good work and great jokes :)

[Arie Leeuwesteijn]

Rob,
Great session!!
Thanks for starring at our conference.
Thanks,
Arie

[Pierre Bakker]

Hoi Rob,

Great Session, great laugh’s! After your session i immediately bought the book XNA Game Programming. I have a new hobby!

I’m on right photo with my two hands in the air!

See ya!

[Daniel Moth]

Artistic cake?! Why don't you tell people the truth: this is what they brought to me after I ordered the "lemon tart" :)

[JC Denton]

Hello Rob

Thanks for the great, entertaining session in Amsterdam and taking the time to answer my question afterwards concerning your games development course and XNA. In all honesty I can say it was the best session I attended that day.

By the way, only when one walks up to Rob does one notice how tall Rob is. The stage does not offer a good perspective.

Your best joke? The opening joke about how your wife loves to stroke your hair.

[Marco Balk]

Hello Rob,

Great session. I almost fell asleep at some sessions during the day (yes, even in the morning-sessions), but your session kept me on the edge of my seat.

Thanks for your presentation and hilarious jokes.

[Yorrik]

one conclusion to be maid out of the photos of the audience. people like one side of your face better than the other ;)

[Noeska Smit]

Hi Rob,

I had so much fun at your presentation, that cheese game was just the best ever!

Bought the XNA book and working on a game as I write this (even though I should really be studying). Despite the fact that it has no cheese in it yet, I hope it turns out well!

Just wanted to thank you for the inspiration!

xxx
Noeska (middle of the front row seats of the middle photo ^^)

[Krook]

Hai Rob,

Your session was very entertaining and instructive. About the parrots on the perch joke: my guess is that most people understand that one, at least I didn't at first. About half a day later it occurred to me that perch also is the name of some species of fish, which in Dutch is "baars".
For the curious, I am the middle photo, front row, the rightmost (on the picture) chair.

[Krook]

I meant"did not understand" the parrot perch joke

[Krook]

Hai Rob,

Your session was very entertaining and instructive. About the parrots on the perch joke: my guess is that most people did not understand that one, at least I didn't at first. About half a day later it occurred to me that perch also is the name of some species of fish, which in Dutch is "baars".
For the curious, I am the middle photo, front row, the rightmost (on the picture) chair.

[Martijn]

I thoroughly enjoyed the XNA session - It was a crash course for me, as I've not spend much time on it and so it was a bit of an eye opener to learn how easy it is to program games using the framework. Thank you kindly for showing us this. :)

[Ricardo Portela]

Hello Rob.
I was excited with the news about the free MSDNAA XNA Creators Club Memberships. Do you have any further news on the subject? At my school we have a MSDNAA subscription, and it isn't yet available for us.

[Rob]

I think that Microsoft are still working on the nuts and bolts of the deployment. They want to allow students to be able to develop projects using XNA but they don't want a situation where anyone can get hold of a key. We at Hull are going to be deploying XNA in our labs for next session, I'll keep you posted as to how it goes on.

[Ricardo Portela]

Great!

Thanks for the information!

[tuncsanda]

Nice post thanks for the information, keep it.
Greetings!