Tulsa Tech Fest Recap

I had the pleasure of speaking at Tulsa Tech Fest on October 11. This was a very interesting (and tiring…more on that later) event because it was the first time I have given a keynote. This trip also marked the first time I’ve been in Oklahoma where I wasn’t just passing through. I don’t have a lot

First session: Creating Cross-Platform Mobile Apps Using C# with Xamarin

While I do not have a dedicated slide deck for this presentation yet (it’s coming soon!), I used a version of my Xamarin.iOS session for Tulsa Tech Fest. That presentation is available on YouTube if you want to review it here.

In this session I also mentioned and showed the Starter Mobile template that was recently released by Paul Betts from GitHub. You can find instructions on getting started with this template on Paul’s site or on the GitHub repository. This template is a great way to get started building cross-platform applications that target iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 8.

Second session: What Have I Done?

This was my first keynote session ever and the presentation was brand new. Given those two situations, I felt like this session was very well received. I hope the productivity tips offered in this session were helpful. There were some great questions raised in the Q&A and in conversations after the session. One person asked how to deal with situations wherein interruptions are guaranteed but unpredictable. One suggestion I made with respect to the Pomodoro Technique was to try shortening the length of the Pomodoro work period until it can be conducted without interruption.

The slides for this presentation are on SlideShare.

Third session: Building Single Page Applications with Ember.js

I want to apologize a little bit for this session. It did not go as planned at all and part of that had to do with spending a lot of time on the prep for the keynote and not enough time updating my presentation for this session. Also, by this point in the day I was just dead tired. I think in the future I might have to reconsider giving 4 sessions in one day. I’m not going to post the slides or demo from this talk, but I will point you towards the pieces of technology that were covered:

• Ember.js
• Yeoman - Modern workflows for modern webapps
• Grunt - The JavaScript Task Runner
• Bower - A package manager for the web

Fourth session: Designing for Windows 8.1

I caught my second wind (and a few cups of coffee) before this session and given the number of times I have given this session, it went well. Since there was a dedicated design track for Tulsa Tech Fest, this session was the first time I had more than a few people identifying as designers in the audience. This made for some fun discussions including a designer calling me out on a font in a slide. Love it!

You can find a recording of this session from a previous event here.

Summary

I thought Tulsa Tech Fest was a very well-run event and I would definitely go back. Giving 4 sessions was a bit of a daunting challenge but I’d try it again if given the opportunity. I hope everyone in attendance got something out of the sessions they attended. Thank you to the organizers of the event for putting on a great show.

Contact

If you want to comment or reach out to me, the best place to do that is on Twitter @brentschooley. I can also be reached via email at bschooley@infragistics.com.