Another announcement coming down the Firestarter pipeline… this one is all about ASP.NET MVC. A full-day of ASP.NET MVC live from New York and online to take you from 0-300 level in a day.

At the ASP.NET MVC Firestarter, we’ll give you a quick tour of the framework, then peel back the layers and dive deeper into how it works. As part of that, we’ll spend time discussing the design and development practices that lead to the creation of the MVC framework. By the time you leave, you’ll have enough knowledge to get fired up and start building web applications on the .NET platform.

ASP.NET MVC Firestarter (Live from New York)
Saturday, Oct 3, 2009
8:30 AM – 5:15 PM Eastern Time

LIVE EVENT | REGISTER >>
LIVE WEBCAST | REGISTER >>

All times are EST.

Firestarter = Events to ignite your skills

Heat up your skills with the all-new Firestarter event series. Each day tackles a single Microsoft technology, including free sessions presented live by Microsoft developer and IT pro evangelists and technology specialists – with special appearances from community luminaries. Attend in person, via live meeting or download the webcast at your convenience.

On September 17th join Scott Guthrie, Tim Heuer, Brad Abrams, Karl Shifflett and other community leaders for a day of FREE Silverlight training. You’ll learn what’s new and noteworthy in the latest releases of Silverlight and Expression® 3. We’ll also give you a rundown on .NET RIA services, toolkit, and more. Don’t miss this sizzling opportunity to go deep into Silverlight 3 with Microsoft’s best and brightest.

Silverlight Firestarter (Live from Seattle)
Thursday, Sept 17, 2009
8:45 AM – 5:00 PM Pacific Time

LIVE WEBCAST | REGISTER >>

All times are PST.

  My colleagues and I have been hard at work for the past month or so working on bringing you the latest information to get you prepared for the upcoming launch of the Windows Azure Platform. We are going to discuss the latest and greatest of what the Windows Azure Platform has to offer and how our very own Microsoft IT team has been using it to build line-of-business applications.

This roadshow will travel across 17-cities in the Central Region with a session focused on the IT Professional in the morning and digging into the Development side of the house in the afternoon.

You can find all the details by visiting my Event Calendar.

What??? You didn’t know I had an event calendar? Well, I do. The Event Calendar gives me the ability to keep you up to date on the developer events taking place without getting lost in the blogroll.

We mixed up the process of recording the Thirsty Developer episode this time around. We’ve been wanting to get our good friend Tim Heuer back on for a discussion of the recently released Silverlight 3 and the future of Rich Internet Application development. The problem was, we weren’t going to see Tim anytime in the near future. All of our previous shows have always been recorded live. This time around, we went with a Skype hook-up with Tim across two time zones. You can certainly tell, but for what it was I think the quality sufficed to give you the opportunity to listen in on a great conversation with Tim.

With opening the possibilities of Skype, we have the opportunity to open the list of potential guests on the Thirsty Developer. If you have a technical topic that you’re passionate about and would like to share with the audience, let us know. Send an email to thirstydeveloper@live.com.

Thirsty Developer #71: Talking Silverlight with Tim Heuer

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the Thirsty Developer podcast through iTunes or Zune Marketplace, or you can grab the RSS feed and drop it into your favorite podcast downloading tool.

One of my colleagues, Brian Prince, has put a call out for anyone heading to DevLink next week that would like to participate in a Technology Community Leadership Summit.

Our goal is to gather together anyone who is rabid about the community: all of the community leaders, speakers, and contributors. We want to get together and share best practices, and learn from each other. This is OPEN. We aren’t just talking about .NET user groups. We are talking Ruby, PHP, Python, OSS, Linux, ALM, and anything else you can think of. It doesn’t have to be a big formal user group; your community might be the small group of folks that crack code at a coffee shop at 7am. Whatever it is, come on over.

In our industry, community is important. The sharing of ideas. The opportunity for self improvement through learning from others. The networking opportunities. When I was in the consulting world, I made sure to attend various community events: User groups, Seminars, Conferences, etc. The interaction with peers from my industry allowed me to share and learn new ideas, new technologies, new ways of doing things. It was a stimulation for my mind and gave me the necessary gusto to excel in my career. Now, as a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, it is my primary job responsibility to help foster and build these communities. Communities are important. They’re important for you and your career growth, and they’re important for our industry to help drive innovation.

If you’re interested in participating in a community, find your nearest users group. If you’re a community leader and/or contributor who’d like to work with others to share best practices in building a better technical community, head to Nashville on Aug. 12th for the Community Leadership Summit.

If you have any ideas how to build a better community, feel free to leave a comment here and let’s carry on the discussion.