It’s Your Day

That was the mantra that James Montemagno repeated time and time again during his opening remarks yesterday, August 22, for Xamarin Dev Days – Madison. And truly, it was the developers’ day, as there were tons of insightful questions, comments and positive reactions throughout the day as people learned and explored the Xamarin platform.

We have an amazing community of .Net developers here in Wisconsin who came together to make Xamarin Dev Days – Madison a success! We had people drive in from Milwaukee… Stevens Point… Wausau… in other words, we had people driving upwards of 3 hours to attend this event! That really speaks to both the passion of the .Net community here in Wisconsin and the product that Xamarin has developed.

All in all – about 65 people made it to the event … and they just didn’t come for the delicious bagels provided by Code Mill Technologies!

I want to extend a thank you to James Montemagno, Krystin Stutesman, and James White – all from Xamarin. They performed like a well oiled machine! Professional, in-sync, and constantly on their game! Nothing phased them.

James Montemagno gave an outstanding introduction to cross platform development with Xamarin – including Test Cloud.

Then Krystin Stutesman took over to give the crowd an intro to Xamarin Forms. Mitch Muenster – a local developer – followed by speaking on enabling network connectivity for your apps with Xamarin.

Then it was my turn – I talked about cheese – and Azure integration with Xamarin.

The afternoon was a ton of fun as James Montemagno led the attendees through creating a Xamarin Forms project from scratch. It wasn’t just somebody standing at a podium typing away and people trying to follow however … James would explain what we were trying to do – then stop if anybody had any difficulties, while Team Xamarin helped anybody who needed it.

Nobody left the day without having created a fully functioning Xamarin Forms app.

All in all – a very successful day!

A Funny Story …

My company, Code Mill Technologies, sponsored the breakfast for Dev Days. And as such, I had arranged to have the bagels and coffee delivered to the venue. However – there was an issue with the delivery…

The City of Madison’s Engineering Department picked the summer of 2015 to have 92.7% of the streets under construction in the city. Obviously that’s a made up number, but there are a ton of streets closed due to construction … so many closed that only one street remained construction free to the venue.

So of course that street was closed the morning of the event for … are you ready for this? … a mini-marathon!!

Right on schedule I received a phone call from the delivery guy saying that he couldn’t get to the venue and was wondering what to do. I said I’d meet him around the corner & we’d figure something out. When I arrived (in somewhat of a panic), I saw a Toyota Prius parked half on the sidewalk, half on the street (barely a street – more like a gravel path), with two people talking to the driver … and that was my introduction to James Montemagno and Krystin Stutesman … (nothing like making a good first impression)!

Delivery guys being the resourceful fellas they are – suggested that instead of having us carry all the bagels and coffee the one block to the event – he just drive on the sidewalk and follow us. So with that – I led Krystin & James to the venue … making idle smalltalk about their travels and hotel … while the bagel delivery guy followed us on the sidewalk in his Toyota Prius.

Somehow this didn’t phase Krystin & James in the least. In fact it seemed perfectly normal to them! Not only are they talented developers, but also complete and total professionals… even with a car following them down the sidewalk!