Devin is one of our great friends from days of ole'. Devin was a great community leader in
St. Louis .NET space. The then moved to New Jersey to work at Infragistics where he was a huge
asset for the .NET and Usability communities. He is now at Twilio as an evangelist and you will
see him pretty much at every cool conference promoting Twilio and educating the masses.
In this show, we talk about what Usability is and how developers can understanding what the how to
solve problems with usability and some of the patterns we can use. Devin really wants to bring the
focus back to the beginning of knowing who your users are and we talk about how to produce personas
of the users of our products. We dive into REST for the second piece of this podcast. Devin helps
us understand more about REST and what goes into a RESTful application or service.
We are very excited about this show. John and Jeff sat down with Scott Davis and his son Tommy to talk about Gamification and Programming for Kids. Tommy is nine years old and the Iowa Code Camp was his second time presenting. Scott and Tommy introduce a package called Scratch that was developed by MIT to teach kids about logic and interacting with programming using sprites. Tommy's favorite experience with programming right now is Lego Mindstorms because of the interaction with the Legos and the development. Most adults when they get started with development also got started with interacting more with the physical machines. The next generation is given amazing tools, but the tools tend to be sealed and the physical interaction is not there. With some of these alternative hobby platforms like Legos, Arduino, and .NET Micro Framework, kids can write some amazing application and see their code work with physical movement and interaction with devices and sensors.
In the second half of this podcast, Scott talks about how companies can us Gamification to prompt employees to interact with software and processes in the organization. We see gamification throughout the consumer space and you need to do is open up the majority of the apps on our phones or tablets and there is some interaction point to give the user a reward for using the tool. Scott gets into his product Qonqr which is described as the board game Risk and Foursquare together. Scott gets into the different mindsets of gamers (Bartle Index) and how you can use these mindsets to get the most out of your team through gamification techniques.
Patrick Delancy, the first person we interviewed on the AJI Report, is joining us again for Episode 18. This time around Patrick explains what Code Smells and Anti-patterns are and how developers can learn from these issues in their code. Patrick takes the approach of addressing your code in his presentations instead of pointing fingers at others. We spend a lot of time talking about how to address a developer with bad practices in place that would show up on the radar as a Code Smell or Anti-Pattern without making them feel inferior. Patrick also list out a few open-source frameworks that use good patterns and practices as well as how he continues his education through interacting with other developers.
Javier Lozano opens up the conversation with John and Jeff about the importance of web applications in the cloud and we walk through some options for enterprise developers to consume today. Javier has been an ASP.NET MVP and ASP.NET Insider for years and is a great resource in the Midwest when it comes to ASP.NET. Javier is one of organizers of the ASP.NET conference, aspConf.
This episode we sit down with Jason Bock to talk about Windows Runtime and his upcoming book on Metaprogramming. Jason has been a consultant at Magenic for the past 11 years. In this show, Jason walks us through how to get started with Windows RT and talks about what the experience is like deploying to the Windows Store. We get into the new frontier of device development and the restrictions that are in place to protect the users and other applications. Towards the end of the show we start talking about Jason's book on Metaprogramming that he is co-authoring with Kevin Hazard.
We sit down with Zac Harlen and talk about Iowa Code Camp, what makes up a Code Camp, and how to start your own Code Camp. Zac has been a part of the leadership team for a few years for Iowa Code Camp and is the Development Manager for JP Cycles. We also get into what it takes to speak at a Code Camp if you are interested in growing beyond the user group as a speaker.
We sat down with Brian at the Iowa Code Camp to talk about his sessions, WPF, Application Design, and what Infragistics has to offer developers. Infragistics is a huge supporter of regional events like Iowa Code Camp and we want to thank them for their support of the Midwest region. Brian is a sharp guy and it was great to meet him and learn more about what makes him tick.
Brian Lagunas is an INETA Community Speaker, co-leader of the Boise .Net Developers User Group (NETDUG), and original author of the Extended WPF Toolkit. He is a multi-recipient of the Microsoft Community Contributor Award and can be found speaking at a variety of user groups and code camps around the nation. Brian currently works at Infragistics as a Product Manager for the award winning NetAdvantage for WPF and Silverlight components. Before geeking out, Brian served his country in the United States Army as an infantryman and later served his local community as a deputy sheriff.