Dave Bost

Update: Registration is now open. Seating is *very* limited. Therefore, be sure to register early.

I’m happy to announce that we’ll be bringing our CodeFest to Madison (June 19th), Indianapolis (June 23rd) and Milwaukee (June 26th). So far we have held CodeFest events in the real world and the virtual world, and to this point they have been very well received. People like touching the bits. It’s much easier to learn while getting your hands wet with the code, and we’re doing what we can to help you along the way.

You can read all of the details of what you need to do to prepare for an upcoming CodeFest. The high-level items include:

1.) Bring your laptop (or desktop; whichever is easiest and you have access to)

2.) Download and install Virtual PC 2007. We will be using a Virtual Machine to run the labs on. You need Virtual PC install to use the virtual machine. Please pay attention to the system requirements for Virtual PC, as doing so you greatly enhance your experience. I recommend having at least 2 gigs of RAM for your machine.

3.) Download the Visual Studio Team System 2008 VPC, follow the instructions on the download page to extract and set up the virtual machine. This is a HUGE download and will take away to pull down. I suggest getting started on this one quickly. We will have some external hard drives available at each event for you to copy off the virtual machine. However, the devices are limited and depending on how many people wait until the last minute, your time at the CodeFest may be waiting for the hard drives. I suggest downloading the VPC prior the event.

4.) Download the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit.

5.) Download the Heroes Happen Here Labs

6.) 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.

Please note, you are not required to download the VPC to enjoy the CodeFest experience. Some people, who already have Visual Studio 2008 installed, will want to run the labs on bare metal. This is fine. However, we’ve had various issues with people doing this and its more difficult for us to support you because everybody’s machine is different. For some it was a security issue. For others, certain required components weren’t installed. To maintain an even playing field, I recommend running the virtual image. If you encounter any issues prior to the event, drop a comment here and we’ll try to sort it out.

For these events, we’re going to leave it up to an audience vote for 2 (maybe all 3 if time allows) of the following labs to choose from:

• Using LINQ to SQL (VS2008TrainingKit)
• Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008 (VS2008TrainingKit)
• Developing a WPF Application (VS2008HOLs)

Doors open at 5:00PM.