From TechEd Expo Floor – Day 1 Recap & let’s connect

Over the next few days we will be at TechEd New Orleans and we will be posting a few blog posts to recap highlights of our day.

TechEd begun with keynote by Bob Muglia. I am sure you’ve read the news all over the net, so I will spare you many details. The big theme wasn’t a surprise – the cloud and Windows Phone 7 and changes these will bring to developers. While Azure is a major shift in how companies will look at IT, Windows Mobile 7 development is expected to be ‘hassle free’ – developers will be able to use all existing Silverlight skills to deploy applications to WP7. In addition, Microsoft announced SP1 beta for Windows 7 and availability of AppFabric.

It was a busy afternoon as Telerik booth crew tried to accommodate all questions, and of course requests for Telerik GEEK INSIDE t-shirts. If you are at TechEd, make sure you stop by the booth and meet Telerik product group – the guys who code controls you use, as well as our developer community crew. We think that providing you access to our developers gives you a unique opportunity to give feedback directly to the core product team team. In the past I have seen a number of companies which slowly enclose their developers in a silo (aka marketing folks J ) . It really helps our developers to have first-hand connection to clients – to hear the challenges they are facing and how Telerik can help them. In Telerik’s case, our developers are engaged online at Telerik Forums, and we make sure they are present face-to-face at events like TechEd, PDC etc. So, drop by and let’s connect!!!

Telerik is also known for hosting small (or big as at DevConnections Las Vegas, but that stayed in Vegas J ) parties. On Monday we expanded a bit and co-hosted a party with ACT at Crescent City Brewhouse. Here are a few pictures of the event.

More pictures are at this album at Telerik Facebook Fan page. If you have any party pics, I would appreciate if you upload them there.

Lastly, Telerik will be presenting a number of sessions over the next few days. See the schedule below and drop by:

Building RESTful Applications with the Open Data Protocol  - Wednesday, June 9, 3:15 - 4:30 pm

Stephen Forte, Chief Strategy Officer, Telerik will lead a discussion that defines REST, demonstrates how REST can enable data using the Open Data Protocol (OData) and provides an overview of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Data Services.

Scrum vs. Kanban: Enemies or Synergies? - Tuesday, June 8, 1:30 - 2:45 pm

Stephen Forte, Chief Strategy Officer, Telerik and Joel Semeniuk, Chief Executive Officer, Imaginet Resources, will lead discussion on what makes Scrum and Kanban unique as well as how they can work together to produce stunning team results.

Lean Thinking, Hefty Results Thursday, June 10, 8:00 - 9:15 am

Joel Semeniuk, Chief Executive Officer, Imaginet Resources, will lead a discussion on the fundamentals of Lean Thinking as it applies to building great software. Discussion will cover how various agile practices, from XP, Scrum, to FDD support Lean Thinking as well as how Lean management techniques such as Kanban can be used to enhance how teams think about and produce software.