Marc Gregoire’s Blog

TechDays 2013 is planned for 5-7 March 2013 in the Kinepolis in Antwerp.
The agenda planning is still in full swing but the first speakers and sessions have already been announced.

There will be two pre-conferences on March 5th:

• Modern application lifecycle management with Visual Studio 2012 (Brian Keller and other speakers to be announced)
• SharePoint 2013 Platform and App development (Dan Holme, Lieven Iliano and TBA)

Content on March 6th and 7th: focus is on developing Windows 8, Windows Azure and Windows Phone apps, of course supported by sessions on EF, tools, ASP.NET, identity and more.

There will also be a corner with MEET members and MVPs who can help you with any questions or problems you might have.

You get an early bird discount of 15% if you order tickets before January 1st 2013.

More information on the official TechDays site.

There are a couple of seats left for the Windows 8 App-a-thon that will be held on Friday September 28th at the Microsoft Offices in Zaventem. Register your place now.

What’s in a name? Of course you know hackathons. App-a-thon is your version of the ‘Windows 8 apps hackathon’.

Mark your calendar for 28-9 and spend your day coding/designing at last app-a-thon before GA on October 26th!
Team up with your best UX or developer friend to build a killer team, come alone, sign up with a group, whatever you want!

Hands on. Code. Build. Shine. Totally Windows 8.

There will be 2 coding sessions, 1 for Day Birds from 10AM – 4PM and one for Night Owls from6PM – 12AM. You can join us for one or both sessions.

Build an app, have fun and go home with fantastic prizes!

1st prize: Xbox 360 + Kinect
2nd prize: Deluxe App’ero Bongo Box
3rd prize: Professional Sharp Knife Set

No app idea yet? No problem! We have a bucket full of ideas and scenarios you can use right away to kick start your project!

Questions about UX & design? Don’t worry, we’ve got that covered. You’ll be able to talk to a Windows 8 UX Expert (will be there for 4 hours) and a designer (will be there the entire day!) to help out with logo’s, graphic design, etc.

Technical pre-requisites (for developers)
– Familiarity writing either desktop apps, mobile applications or developing websites. Familiarity with either Javascript, C# or C++.
– Bring your own laptop: any device capable of running Windows 8 and Visual Studio Express
– Required software:
Windows 8 RTM via MSDN downloads  (for MSDN subscribers) or Windows 8 RTM via Evaluation Center
Visual Studio 2012
Windows 8 SDK samples

UX designers: Photoshop or your familiar wireframing tool
• Check out the Windows 8 UX Guidelines
• You might want to download Windows 8 Style Apps Assets

The dates for TechDays Belgium 2013 have been nailed down: 5-6-7 March 2013 🙂

The location hasn’t been determined yet, so stay tuned…