Speechifying Applications at TechEd 2013

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

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!

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

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

I’ve never been to an oyster festival before. And I’ve never had oysters from the BBQ before. Both were great.