Tag Archives: RIA

Cross training in software

Several months ago, the opportunity arose to work on a project in Flex.  Brian Genisio has had a lot of experience with WPF and Silverlight and he expressed interest in the Flex project.   While there are a lot of differences between the Adobe world and the Microsoft world, Brian found similarities as well.  And he learned that there are things about each platform that he appreciates over the other.  By learning Flex, he’s become a better Silverlight developer, and by knowing Silverlight, he had quick and substantial success with Flex.  He’s been blogging about the experience, and it’s quite interesting.

We asked James Ward if he would like to do a Flex Jam in Ann Arbor, as we’ve done in previous years. We were thrilled when he agreed.  If you think that you might want to join James (and Brian) in learning Flex in an interactive coding workshop, you can get more information or register at http://www.srtsolutions.com/flex-training.  It’s not just for Java or Flex developers!  If you’re a Silverlight developer, check out Brian’s blog and see if you think learning Flex would help make you a better developer.

Startup Weekend Ann Arbor … and RIA Tools Tutorial

On Tuesday, June 17, Microsoft is presenting a free one day RIA Tools Tutorial day at SRT Solutions.  Spend the day with Microsoft developer evangelist Jennifer Marsman and RIA evangelist Josh Holmes to learn how to effectively use Visual Studio and Expression Suite to build Silverlight applications.  The event will be heavily hands-on, and space is limited to 15 participants. Register soon.

Next weekend, Ann Arbor is hosting a Startup Weekend. These have been held all over the country and now it's our turn!  Here's a quick blurb about what that means, from startupweekend.com:

Startup Weekend is a intense 54 hour event bringing together brilliant tech minds (developers, designers, marketers, ect.) together to create a company (or as many as the community wants) from concept to launch!

The event will start on Friday June 20 at 6 pm, when teams will be chosen.  By Sunday June 22,  COMPANIES will be launched.  On June 23, some people may begin hiring to move foward if they're ready. Others will probably wait.  SPARK is offering its "Starting your own Business" program to startup weekend participants, for free.  

If you want to attend Startup weekend, sign up soon!

 

Day 1 of the RIA Jam … and RIA at Special User Group meeting tomorrow

Today was the first day for the Rich Internet Application Jam, being held at SRT Solutions' offices.  James Ward (Adobe)  and Bruce Eckel are here, working side-by-side with people who are in various stages of learning Flex and Josh Holmes (Microsoft) is here representing Silverlight and working with people interested in that.  The Jam goes through Wednesday.

Tomorrow night (Tuesday January 15), James and Bruce will present a talk, "Connecting Java with Flex using Open Source Blaze".  The discussion will include how Blaze differs from LiveCycle Data Services and perhaps even a little bit of Scala.  You see, James spent some time this past weekend connecting Flex to Scala.  Interesting.

This is a special joint meeting of the Ann Arbor Computer Society and Ann Arbor Java User Group, and will be held at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.  The meeting starts at 6 pm, and is free and open to the public.  AACS is providing pizza.