The Midwest Evangelism team is planning an instructor-led lab road show to take place over May and June. The idea is for you to join in an opportunity to learn some of the latest technologies around Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. You bring your laptop (or whatever your development machine might be) and we’ll provide the labs, which will be led by Microsoft employees, MVPs, Regional Directors and your peers. The idea is to learn through a hands-on experience.
The first CodeFest will be taking place this Wednesday at the May meeting of the Chicago .NET Users Group in Downers Grove. We’ll be conducting additional labs in Chicago, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Madison and Second Life. Yes, you heard me right - Second Life.
To follow the leads of the recent success of our virtual launch event in Second Life, we will be partnering with the Second Life .NET Developers User Group to conduct some of these instructor-led labs in Second Life! This will give us an opportunity to reach developers who can’t make it to our local events and afford them the same benefits of the CodeFest events. I’ll post more details out the Second Life CodeFest once we finalize the details.
To fully enjoy the “first life” labs, you should bring your own laptop. If you don’t have a laptop, bring your desktop! If you don’t have a desktop (or don’t want to lug the darn thing), you can still join us. You can either buddy up with someone or just watch as these will be instructor-led labs. The instructor will walk through each step of the lab along with everyone else.
Also, I *HIGHLY* recommend downloading the lab materials ahead of time. We’ll be working off of the Visual Studio Team System 2008 VPC available from MSDN. Therefore, you’ll also need to download either Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. I suggest just downloading Virtual PC as it will be easier to set up for these particular labs. For the labs, we’ll be using the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit and the Heroes Happen Here Labs. It will take some time to download these materials, so I suggest you get cracking.
Step 1: Download Virtual PC 2007 and install
Step 2: Download the Visual Studio Team System 2008 VPC, follow the instructions on the download page to extract and set up the virtual machine.
Step 3: Download the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit
Step 4: Download the Heroes Happen Here Labs
Step 5: Copy the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit and HHH Lab files over to the VPC using a USB key or Folder Sharing in the VPC.
Running on the bare metal: Of course, if you already have Visual Studio 2008 installed, along with SQL Server or SQL Server Express, you only need to worry about steps 3 and 4.
If you have any questions or tips, just leave a comment on this post so others may share in the knowledge sharing
Keep an eye here as I’ll post the upcoming CodeFest dates once they’ve been finalized.
Downers Grove, IL – May 21st Sold out
Update: A question was posed in the comments about which labs we’ll be focusing on. Although each CodeFest may not focus on the same labs (we’ll filter them based on feedback), I can tell you that we’ll be focusing on the following labs for the Downers Grove CodeFest:
- Visual Studio 2008: Developing a WPF Application
- Visual Studio 2008: ASP.NET AJAX, New Designer Features and Script Debugging
- One of the LINQ labs (audience discretion and dependent on time available)
Update: The Downers Grove event has sold out. Keep an eye here for future dates.
May 19, 2008 at 05:56
Dave - The lab requirements state that Vista is required. Do you know if they’ll run on XP?
May 19, 2008 at 07:23
Dave,
This is a fantastic idea, an instructor-led lab road show to take place over May and June..I would like to be involved as much as possible so please let me know if there is anything I can do to get more involved with the process of CodeFest and keep the news coming! Hands on learning experiences are probably the number one way to go! Tonight I begin the process so I can be ready this Wednesday. Lets hope so anyways! Will you or is there anyone out there on Skype or any other means of communication, I’m open to all possible avenues that may be available to talk to if glitches occur? Can we talk here? Will the air be as electric as the night of the LoadFest? I took pictures with my laptop the LoadFest night, some turned out ok but I have not posted them yet! Lets talk more about second life and the Second Life .NET Developers User Group. I’ll attend some of these instructor-led labs in Second Life! I think I will set up a prototype for my business to see what its like to have a virtual world presence. And of course join the Second Life .NET Developers User Group when I get more information. See everyone Wednesday! Jeanne
May 19, 2008 at 09:57
I have been busy d/l’ing the VM files. Sometime it is fast (512Kbps) and the 700MB file is d/l’ed in ~25 min, other times it is at 120Kbps and takes over an hour. Started on Friday night and have not finished yet, hopefully today or tomorrow. Sometime the connection breaks so I have to keep on eye on the d/l progress - getting there, slowly, but surely. Regards.
May 19, 2008 at 12:01
Guy - no Vista is not required. I didn’t catch that one. Thanks for brining it up.
Jeanne - We’ll see you Wednesday!
Sgv - hang in there. I know it’s a lot to download. But think of all the cool stuff you’ll have when you’re done.
May 19, 2008 at 13:15
Do you know the specfic labs that you are going to focus on?
Thanks
May 19, 2008 at 14:01
Marc - boy that would be helpful information wouldn’t it. I’m not sure we’ll run the same labs at each event, but for the Downers Grove meeting on Wednesday, we’ll be working through the following labs:
* Visual Studio 2008: Developing a WPF Application
* Visual Studio 2008: ASP.NET AJAX, New Designer Features and Script Debugging
* One of the LINQ labs (audience discretion and dependent on time available)
May 20, 2008 at 15:40
Dave: I have the standard MSDN subscription that requires you to choose one of three versions of Visual Studio (I naturally have the Developer version). I have been waiting for MS to ship the DVD of Visual Studio 2008 and also SQL Server 2008. All I’ve seen so far is indications that these things can be downloaded. Do you have any info on a DVD shipment? Thanks.
May 20, 2008 at 15:57
Dave: I don’t have any info on specific MSDN shipments. I’d suggest logging into your MSDN account at http://msdn.microosft.com and choosing the “Online Concierge Chat” option to help find the answer you’re looking for.
May 20, 2008 at 21:31
I decided to download the 90 day trial for VS2008 and the training kit and labs. I spent one days worth of work getting everything downloaded and when I ran the Setup.exe in the training kit, it brought up a page which said I needed IIS 7.0.
I have been unable to find a version of IIS 7.0 trial or otherwise to run on my XP SP 2 laptop which I had planned to bring to the class.
May 20, 2008 at 21:36
DWeber: I guess when Guy mentioned that the materials stated Vista was required, he was correct. I missed that one. Looking a little closer, it does state Windows Vista or Windows Server 2003, as those OS’s support IIS7. If you’re running WinXP, I’d suggest using the VPC. The good news is we’ll have 20 external drives available for people to copy over the materials, if you don’t get a chance to download them prior to the meeting.
May 21, 2008 at 09:18
Dave: Does this mean that if I have WinXP Pro with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server Express 2005 that I need to install Virtual PC, install Vista within VPC and then re-install Visual Studio 2008 within VPC and SQL Server again withing VPC?
May 21, 2008 at 10:20
Chris: Well… you could do all that if you were really ambitious or you could just download the Visual Studio 2008 VPC image from MSDN (link above) that has everything you need except the actual lab content. You can also download the lab content (links above) and copy the files over to your VPC image.
Or… you could come to the CodeFest early, where we’ll have 20 external hard drives at the standby with all of the content available for people to download. Please note though, we ONLY have 20 drives. There will be a wait if everyone needs to copy the content off. The total content size is 15GB. It will take some time to copy the content off the drives. That’s why I *HIGHLY* recommend downloading the materials ahead of time, if you can.
May 21, 2008 at 11:08
Dave: Thanks for clearing that up, I appreciate it the response.
May 21, 2008 at 16:43
Thanks, Dave! I hope the 5/21 session went well. I would have liked to do that, but I’ve been in California for the past week. The WPF lab is outstanding, and having source files to study makes all the difference in the world!
June 18, 2008 at 07:36
Dave!
I’m trying to register for the 6/23 codefest but keep getting an “unknown errrrrooorrr” page when I click to confirm my email address.
The message is:
“An unknown error occurred while processing your request. This is most likely due to a connection failure. Please try again.”
Again, and again, no luck….
??