Goodbye to SIGCSE 2012

Pat Yongpradit does his Kinect booth session at SIGCSE 2012.Very smooth work sir.

I said a farewell to the Microsoft crew at SIGCSE today. When I left they were still working hard manning their stands on the exhibition floor. I only went by to say cheerio but I ended up dishing out tickets for the booth prize draws and talking to folks until I had to rush out and grab my airport shuttle. Great fun these affairs. Nothing quite like talking shop with a bunch of like-minded people. Thanks to the Microsoft crew for inviting me over.

Just as I was leaving there was great excitement at the hotel. Michelle Obama was in the house. She was dropping by to meet with some military families in the area and then take part in a fundraising luncheon. The hotel was full of large blokes with big shoulders and earpieces plus a huge queue of audience members, all looking super smart and obviously looking forward to the event.

SIGCSE Fun

This was on the wall of the room that we used for the presentation today. Who knew tables and chairs could be so dangerous in large numbers?

Did my two sessions at SIGCSE today. And before them both I did a very shouty 15 minute booth session which was fun. And loud. Sorry if my booming voice was a bit noisy folks, I feel particularly bad about the chap standing in front of me who seemed to rise about six inches into the air when I went into “Town Crier” mode to promote the session...

These are some of the Kinect presentation audience at the start of the session, both audiences were great with some lovely questions. Thanks folks.

I promised that I’d make the slides and the demos available after the session. You can find them all here. Some other useful links that you might find, er, useful.

www.csharpcourse.com – my C# Yellow book and C# from Java Orange Book. Also some XNA content you might find useful.

Microsoft Faculty Connection – you can find the Kinect content by typing Kinect into the Search Curriculum Resources box and doing a search. You can also find my Windows Phone content here too.

Kinect for Windows – if you want to work with any of the Kinect content you will need to install the Kinect for Windows SDK.

Channel 9 Videos – these are videos of some of my stuff. There is a session on the Kinect (with working demos) and other stuff you might find interesting

Windows Phone in Rhyme – and why not..

After my talk I had a wander around the exhibition.

This is the Touch Develop team strutting their stuff at a booth talk. They’ve just released a free book about writing Windows Phone programs on Windows Phone. And they have some really exciting plans for the future. I plan to spend the flight back writing some code on my Lumia (in flight mode of course)

One way to stop folks wandering off with the pens…..

The Gadgeteer crew in action. They have some really nice stuff here including a scary powerful buggy.

Want one.

Out and About in Raleigh

Raleigh State Capitol Building

Lesson 1: Raleigh is properly pronounced “Raw-Lay” here. Lesson 2: It’s a very nice place. I had a quick wander around once I’d finished playing with my slide decks for tomorrow and sorting out emails and stuff. They have some lovely museums that I didn’t really have time to look round properly, but I did spend some time in the Museum Shop, which had some lovely stuff in it. And with it being Feb. 29th today they were offering 29% discount, which was very nice.

On the way back to the hotel I wandered past artspace. This was great. A large building has been given over to artists studios where you can view their work and even see them making it.

I had a quick wander round and even had a chat with some of the artists there. This chap, Kyle Highsmith, was even happy to have is picture taken. I loved his stuff, which you can see more of here. Unfortunately I don’t think any of his canvases would have fitted in my suitcase. There was a huge variety of work on show in Artspace with prices at all levels and anyone passing through Raleigh should seek it out.

If you need to find your way round the place….

If you are at SIGCSE and want to come along to my sessions tomorrow I’m doing two:

10:45 am–12:00 pm room 305A

Empowering Students: Teaching Software Development with Windows Phone

1:45–3:00 pm room 305A

Creative Uses for Kinect in Teaching—with Curriculum Materials

Flying to Raleigh

This is not Raleigh, this is Boston airport. It was pretty much dark when I arrived in Raleigh.

Flew out to Raleigh in North Carolina today to present some sessions about teaching with Windows Phone and Kinect. I’m speaking at SIGCSE 2012 and the thing that is worrying me most is that in my presenter bio I rather stupidly put “..and Rob knows a lot of jokes about cheese”. Snag is that at the moment I can only think of two…..