Conference Buddy

When I changed organizations within Telerik and came back to DevTools, I was assigned Windows 8 (JS/HTML) and our Just* Products to evangelize.  That meant getting up to speed on WinJS and Windows 8 as rapidly as possible.  I also know the pitfalls of writing too much “demo” code and not enough real project code.  What is the best way to learn a language?  Get assigned a deliverable!

My fellow Evangelists in the Windows 8 and Windows Phone space (Jesse Liberty and Michael Crump, respectively) and I got on a call and brainstormed about building something real that would:

• Demonstrate our knowledge of our respective platforms,
• Show off the Telerik controls, and
• Contribute to making not only our lives easier, but easier for all of the people involved in events.

Conference Buddy grew from this brainstorming session.

What is it?

Jesse does a really good job explaining the concepts in this post, but in short, the app will

• Help Evangelist/Sales/Marketing when they are at an event gather:
  • The entries for the raffle
  • Gather information about the attendees
    • Product Interest
    • Current Customer status
    • etc.
  • Gather information for Engineering
    • Feature requests
    • Problem reports
    • etc.
  • Enter requests for follow up
• Helping Event sponsors/back end processing
  • Track Event data
    • Attendee count
    • Organizers
    • Speakers from Telerik
  • Track Sponsorship data
    • Was it sponsored?
    • What Level?
    • Was there a booth?

From inception, this effort has grown to include Carey Payette and Jeff Fritz, providing some help with the services and back end processing.

Where can I learn more about it?

Right here at the Telerik Blogs!  Each of us are blogging about Conference Buddy in our unique product line, and my intent is to keep this post up to date as a central repository for all of the Conference Buddy content.  I have them listed here in alphabetical order by product.

ASP.NET (WebAPI, Ajax, WebForms, MVC) – Jeff Fritz (http://blogs.telerik.com/jefffritz/posts)

• Introducing the ConferenceBuddy WebAPI service

Windows 8 – WinJS – Phil Japikse (http://blogs.telerik.com/skimedic/posts.aspx)

• Fixing VS2012’s Intellisense for WinJS
• Creating JustCode Templates to speed WinJS development – JustCode Templates For WinJS
• Getting started with Model View ViewModel (MVVM) in WinJS with Observable Models
• Discussing how ideas become manifest by Using Wireframes in application design
• Expanding the MVVM Story with Observable Collections
• Removing Chrome but not the functionality through AppBars in WinJS
• Interacting with the user through AppBar Flyouts
• Handling “JQuery is not defined” error with RadControls for WinJS
• Taking advantage of some browser quirks when developing Windows Store Applications with WinJS
• Following the User Interface Guidelines for Windows Store Applications
• Reusing the layout settings with a Custom Project Template for Visual Studio 2012
• Binding Initializers and two way binding in WinJS
• Introducing the RadGrid for Windows 8 HTML

Windows 8 – XAML – Jesse Liberty (http://blogs.telerik.com/jesseliberty/posts.aspx)

• Conditional Column Color in RadDataGrid for Conf. Buddy
• Pie Chart of Stats
• Be A Sharing Target
• Be A Sharing Source
• Let Templates Simplify Sharing
• Win 8 – Conference Buddy. Storing to Local or Roaming Files
• Windows 8–Storing App Data
• Windows 8 – Conference Buddy and Remote Data
• Using the Grid App Template in Windows 8
• Windows 8–Conference Buddy. Reading JSON From A File
• Windows 8 GridView, ListView and SnapView
• Windows 8–Grid View
• Windows 8 Persisting Conference Buddy JSON To A File
• Windows 8: Storing JSON Data for Conference Buddy
• Windows 8: Adding An AppBar to Conference Buddy
• Evolving Simple Wireframes With AppMock
• Creating A Win8 App From Scratch–A Scrolling Home Page
• Creating a Windows 8 Application From Scratch

WPF - Jesse Liberty & Carey Payette

• Conference Buddy on WPF

Windows Phone – Michael Crump (http://blogs.telerik.com/michaelcrump/posts.aspx)

• Adding Charting Capabilities to Conference Buddy - We added a Pie Chart to display the total number of contacts requesting follow ups. It will also show those that do not want follow ups.
• Displaying Contacts in Conference Buddy –We added a second page to our app and displayed the collection saved in IsolatedStorage to RadDataBoundListBox using RadExpander as a DataTemplate.
• Wrapping up the Contact Details Screen – We refactored some of our code for the contact details page and explored how we can create the multiple Pivot items into a JSON file that can be serialized and deserialized very quickly.
• Dynamic AppBars for Conference Buddy – We discussed how to implement dynamic Application Bars as your user navigates between pages.
• Persisting Conference Buddy to a JSON File – We expanded on what we learned earlier about RadDataForm and showed you how to persist the first Pivot Item to isolated storage using our control with the very popular Json.net.
• Creating Data Input Forms in Conference Buddy –This new component allows you to automatically generate the UI for your input forms, with support for validation and custom layouts.
• MultiResolutionImage –Makes it easy for Windows Phone 8 developers to support images in the various screen resolutions supported in Windows Phone 8.
• Speech Recognition – Is a powerful way for your end-users to navigate and interact with your app using their voice.

Windows Forms – Carey Payette (http://blogs.telerik.com/careypayette/posts)

• http://blogs.telerik.com/careypayette/posts/13-02-11/winforms-conference-buddy-creating-the-shell

Summary

As we continue to build Conference Buddy, keep checking back here for the latest information!